The Phone of the Year is...

This week, the crew sits down to talk smartphones. They go over each of the phones that Marques picked and offer a few hot takes along the way. On top of that they also talk about the Android XR show, a new smart ring from Pebble, and the Xiaomi SU7! Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Links: Verge - Google Project Aura Verge - Pebble Index smart ring Adweek - Google Gemini Ads Video of Tesla robot MKBHD - Smartphone awards MKBHD - Xiaomi SU7 review This episode brought to you by: Framer - wwww.framer.com/design (code: wave) Grammarly - wwww.superhuman.com/podcast LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/mkbhd Wealthfront - www.wealthfront.com/wave T-Mobile - www.t-mobile.com Music provided by: Epidemic Sound Social: Waveform Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Waveform Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/?hl=en Waveform TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Hosts: Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Intro/Outro music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Andrew Manganelli?

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, host Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring your fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episodes and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Support for the show comes from Jira by Atlassian. AI is only as useful as the context it has to work from, but when that context is scattered across tools, threads, and DMs, that means your team and your AI agents end up flying blind. That's the problem that Jira solves. What's the goal tied to your project? What got decided last week in Slack? Atlassian's teamwork graph pulls all these pieces together, from Jira, Confluence, Slack, GitHub, and more, so nothing falls through the cracks. With Jira, you can actually share that context with the AI agents you already use, like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot, assign them work directly, or connect your agents through MCP. Spend less time digging through endless links and DMs, less time chasing down what got decided and by who, and more time actually shipping. Learn more at jira.com.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  That's J-I-R-A dot com. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the biggest online argument of the year.

• 1:24Andrew Manganelli?

  That's such a good Reddit post.

• 1:26David Imel?

  You know what's funny? I watched this and I was like, wow, I agree with all these. And I was like, oh, wait.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Damn, this is a good ass list. Yo, I love this list.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, what is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marquez.

• 1:48Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm Andrew.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  And I'm David. And it's December, which means there's still huge videos happening and still a lot to talk about, which is very exciting. We had two really big videos we can talk about from this week. We had the Smartphone Awards 2025. So feel free to argue with me about any of them. And we also had the Xiaomi SU7 video go up, which was a long time in making. They had to import a car, a whole bunch of like, living with it, shooting it. It went really well, and obviously, that video's been out. Also, new Android XR stuff, and glass, and a pebble ring. But first... I just want to shout out that this channel is a mere, at the time of recording, 4,000 subscribers away from half a million on YouTube. The Waveform YouTube channel is so

• 2:30Speaker 01

  close to 500,000 subscribers. So I just want to give that little nudge. If you're watching on YouTube, or even better, if you're listening somewhere and haven't subscribed on YouTube, go subscribe to the YouTube channel and then we'll be able to celebrate before the end of the year.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  It's the last chance to hype us.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  It is the last chance to hype us. We become ineligible for hype once we cross over the threshold.

• 2:50David Imel?

  Oh, true.

• 2:51Andrew Manganelli?

  We want to pass the hype's on to other channels.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Help us graduate from hype. And once we hit 500K, Netflix will put us on the platform. And we will be part of Warner Brothers Discovery.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  By the way.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, yes.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Someone, uh, someone, uh, I think it was on threads. They, yeah, there was a clip from us from a year and a half ago predicting that Netflix would eventually buy Warner Brothers.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  Predicting is a strong word.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Well, jokingly, but also it turned out to be right. Oops.

• 3:21David Imel?

  Unless, you know, that kind of thing.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  I can see it now. Netflix, Paramount, Skydance, Discovery, Warner.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Don't put this out there now.

• 3:29David Imel?

  Waveform, Waveform, that's right.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  Waveform, Netflix, Paramount, Skydance.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Look, Netflix, I know that you're getting a bunch of hostile bids for Warner Brothers, and you might not even be able to buy it. But if you want a good B plan, we're available.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  We have like $6.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  I just want to say, speaking of hostile bids, hilarious story that showed up on a timeline this morning.

• 3:50David Imel?

  Okay.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Uh, it was just someone who was squatting on Lambo.com, obviously waiting for a certain car manufacturer to scoop it up, uh, got nothing out of the deal. A judge ruled that they were acting in bad faith and then.

• 4:04David Imel?

  So what?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  They didn't get, yeah, I know. This is the thing. When you're a pirate, when you just like sit on a domain because you know you're going to eventually sell it to someone, that's maybe arguably good faith.

• 4:15David Imel?

  That's called capitalism.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Reserving it for their rightful owner. But I read the story and it's like, um, this person called Richard Blair from Arizona, he bought this for $10,000 in 2018. Lambo was already well-known to be Lamborghini by then. Uh, but then he listed it for $1.1 million in 2020, and then raised it to one and a half million, and then raised it to 3.3 million, and then raised it to 12 million, and then raised it to 58 million. And then by 2023, just settled at a nice even $75 million.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  I see nothing wrong.

• 4:46David Imel?

  That's like having a house on the market and it's not selling for years and you just keep raising the price.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he he claims that Lambo is just a pun on the word lamb and people call him lamb.

• 4:58David Imel?

  Just like Lego Flegos.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Yeah. So anyway, he didn't get the money.

• 5:04Andrew Manganelli?

  That's crazy. I kind of think so. I think they had plenty of money to buy that from a long time ago. He took a big risk, but um. This reminds me of for a while, it doesn't seem like it's anymore, but steam.com feels like almost the opposite. But for a while, like Steam, the video game.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Platform.

• 5:23Andrew Manganelli?

  Platform is steampowered.com. So steam.com used to be, you would just go onto it and it was like this white page with background of a bunch of pipes. And then it said, welcome to steam.com. Steam.com is the former home of Steam Tunnel Operations. And then it just says, this domain is not for sale.

• 5:40David Imel?

  Damn. And now it just doesn't resolve.

• 5:42Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, now it doesn't resolve to anything, so.

• 5:44Speaker 04

  So is it for sale?

• 5:46David Imel?

  Still probably privately owned.

• 5:47Andrew Manganelli?

  I feel like that person just really hated Steam.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  I feel like by this point, Steam doesn't need that domain anymore.

• 5:52Andrew Manganelli?

  They don't.

• 5:52David Imel?

  Yeah, everybody already has it. Nobody, yeah. I just think the whole Lambo story, if if they didn't buy it by 2018 and Lambo was just sitting there as a domain in 2018, that's on them, bro. I don't know why the judge would rule that.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you already knew Lambo as Lamborghini by then.

• 6:11David Imel?

  By 2018, of course.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Nobody, I guess it was like accidentally people going to Lambo.com. Like, how many buyers are you going to get? I guess that's the thing. What's the conversion rate of someone who accidentally goes to Lambo.com instead of Lamborghini got.com? Did you really lose a customer there?

• 6:27David Imel?

  Two Lamborghinis.

• 6:29Andrew Manganelli?

  That's a good point. The customer base is pretty small.

• 6:31Speaker 04

  You're not buying a Lambo.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So it's like probably not as valuable to them, but it would be nice to have and that he they just.

• 6:37David Imel?

  And then they sued him instead?

• 6:39Speaker 01

  It was more just like the judge took the domain from him.

• 6:42David Imel?

  Yeah, but they would have had to sue sue him to get it, right?

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Uh, did Lambo.

• 6:46Andrew Manganelli?

  Did he have anything on the page or was it just a?

• 6:48David Imel?

  He did.

• 6:49Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, it was something on the page. What was on the page?

• 6:52David Imel?

  Yeah, I can see that.

• 6:53Andrew Manganelli?

  Was it just like pay me this money? Was it something? Because if it's something.

• 6:57David Imel?

  I have your children.

• 6:58Andrew Manganelli?

  Uh, or yeah, like. Uh, targeting Lambo? Yeah. Lamborghini?

• 7:03Speaker 04

  It was a Bitcoin wallet address.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  He directed lambo.com to a separate personal website where Rodeo Track reported that he posted a statement that says, "I am Lambo of lambo.com and I will defend, defeat, and humiliate those endeavoring to steal any of my domain name brands, including my moniker."

• 7:20Andrew Manganelli?

  You...

• 7:21David Imel?

  How many does this man have?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  He was in for a fight.

• 7:23Andrew Manganelli?

  That guy, a little too much confidence going into that one.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:27Andrew Manganelli?

  It's a little funnier knowing he had that statement and watching him lose that. You also have to assume this guy wasn't very good at bargaining because he probably had, he was easily making more than 10,000 he paid for it.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:38Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah. But he had to go up to, what, 70 million?

• 7:40Speaker 01

  75 million.

• 7:41Andrew Manganelli?

  He probably could have gotten 500,000 out of that pretty easy.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  He won it all.

• 7:45David Imel?

  He is hiding every single part of this domain on the Whois lookup page. Like, he is, everything is hidden.

• 7:51Andrew Manganelli?

  I feel like it's not his anymore.

• 7:53Speaker 04

  Hidden on that for like, three years now.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm guessing he's squatting on more than just that domain.

• 7:57David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  So.

• 7:59David Imel?

  Nice.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Maybe he'll get some money out of the other ones.

• 8:00David Imel?

  Well, Lego, if you want to buy leagueoflegos.com from me, I still have it available.

• 8:05Andrew Manganelli?

  How much did you buy it for?

• 8:06David Imel?

  75 million.

• 8:08David Imel?

  I think it was like 12 bucks, I don't know.

• 8:10Andrew Manganelli?

  So, 75 million, starting.

• 8:12David Imel?

  75 million is a fair, it's fair market value.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Do you, do they raise the price on you every year?

• 8:18David Imel?

  No.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Who'd you?

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, who?

• 8:21David Imel?

  Well, it was Google Domains.

• 8:25David Imel?

  Back in the good part of the internet.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  A certain, a certain domain seller that maybe is sort of similar to Buy Mommy, every year raises the price of my obscure-ass domain.

• 8:39David Imel?

  Oh, switch off of that.

• 8:40Speaker 03

  It's so, I...

• 8:42David Imel?

  You can transfer it.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  I can?

• 8:43David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  I recommend it, actually.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  I bought it, I bought it for [bleep] dollars, like, because it's, it's just a, it's almost a random string of characters.

• 8:54David Imel?

  What's the domain?

• 8:55Speaker 03

  Uh, I don't want to say it because, well, I can say it's...

• 8:57Andrew Manganelli?

  Can you bleep it out?

• 8:58David Imel?

  You own, you own it.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's ellisrow.vin.

• 9:01David Imel?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  It's not something that anyone would ever need.

• 9:04Andrew Manganelli?

  It going up is proof that your popularity is climbing.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  They raised it by over...

• 9:10Speaker 03

  Times when I tried to renew it.

• 9:11David Imel?

  What?

• 9:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, like.

• 9:13David Imel?

  X.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  Bleep this out because I don't want to get the numbers wrong and like, yeah, but I bought it. Dollars and when they renewed it, they were like that.

• 9:20David Imel?

  What?

• 9:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, for the year. And I was like, I'm gonna do this. But you're acting in bad faith.

• 9:26David Imel?

  Yeah. I feel like I shouldn't say this into a podcast microphone, but MKBHD.com has not changed in price once.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  What?

• 9:34David Imel?

  Yeah, since, since we first like.

• 9:37Andrew Manganelli?

  I think you're getting scammed.

• 9:39David Imel?

  I wonder. If all Vin domains went up in price, maybe that's what.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe like the, the global wine, winery industry. Experienced. No, Vin is, is the one for vineyards and wineries.

• 9:51David Imel?

  Oh. The Italian word for wine.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Maybe they're mad at me because I'm not making wine as far as they know I am, but you know.

• 9:57David Imel?

  They're trying to price you out so some. Alright, Jesus.

• 9:59Andrew Manganelli?

  I will say, going back a little bit further, I think it's a bold move to hear a story about a guy. Holding on to a website to try and get money and then immediately say, hey Lego, I'm willing to sell. Me doing the exact same thing.

• 10:14David Imel?

  Lego is gonna want that domain. Either Lego or Riot and I've got League of Lego and League of Legos, so.

• 10:19Andrew Manganelli?

  Well, League of Legos isn't correct, right? Because Lego is.

• 10:22David Imel?

  Lego flagos. It's League of Legos.

• 10:25Andrew Manganelli?

  Isn't Lego not sports bar?

• 10:26David Imel?

  Irish sports bar that sponsors the soccer league.

• 10:29Andrew Manganelli?

  But you don't use Lego as a plural, right? It's Lego bricks.

• 10:33David Imel?

  Oh, true.

• 10:34Andrew Manganelli?

  Is the plural of Lego.

• 10:35David Imel?

  Yeah. It's like AirPods. AirPods Pro.

• 10:37Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 10:38David Imel?

  Yeah, Lego bricks. Yeah, there's no.

• 10:40Andrew Manganelli?

  So you can ditch that one.

• 10:40David Imel?

  Or wouldn't it be Lego's brick?

• 10:43Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah. I want everyone to know, we do have actual news coming up.

• 10:46David Imel?

  Oh, right, right, right, right. Sorry. Yeah. Are we still on topic or are we off topic? Still on that.

• 10:51David Imel?

  Anyway, okay. So what happened this week? What do you want to talk about? There is actually a lot of stuff this week. I, I'm very happy that things keep happening. Because it's usually around this time of the year that we're like. The things stop happening? Yeah, that things completely stop happening, that molecules stop vibrating, the absolute zero starts entering. Although in New York, it's close to absolute zero right now.

• 11:09Andrew Manganelli?

  It's the heat death of New York.

• 11:09David Imel?

  It sucks. But one of the things that did happen this year, this month, this week. Was the Android show XR edition. Which Andrew F, not Andrew, Adam was very hyped about.

• 11:21Andrew Manganelli?

  I was. I watched the whole thing on 3X, so. I could be hyped, but I didn't watch it, so it's your job now.

• 11:28David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 11:29Andrew Manganelli?

  You like me on this.

• 11:29David Imel?

  Well, so now they're doing like more Android shows per year. They're sort of trying to like just have Android be this rolling update thing as opposed to those big platform releases.

• 11:38Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 11:38David Imel?

  And one of them is XR. And clearly, you know, the Vision Pro style of XR is falling out of popularity. However, something that they really wanted to kind of like drive home during this Android XR Edition show was that we have four versions of XR currently in development, which felt extremely similar to the video that we did about the difference between the Oculus version of VR and like the Meta like Ray-Ban Smart Glasses. But they put two more in the middle because there is a new product coming out called Project Aura, which is made by XREAL with Gemini. And have you ever used like those XREAL glasses before?

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're like the, they're, they look like regular glasses, but then you essentially flip down like blinders, I guess, in front of you and then they can project a screen so you can watch stuff on those.

• 12:26Andrew Manganelli?

  They have the screen no matter what. The cover is just to like black out the background, so it's easier to see the screen.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  And then you plug them into a device.

• 12:34David Imel?

  Yeah, you can either plug them into, they now have wireless casting, which is, which is cool. But they really-

• 12:39Andrew Manganelli?

  That would have been so nice for our third person video that we did.

• 12:43David Imel?

  Oh, if that lagged though, that would have been-

• 12:45Andrew Manganelli?

  And there was definitely some lag in there no matter what.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  I have a stupid question.

• 12:48David Imel?

  Go for it.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Is XREAL and NREAL the same thing?

• 12:52David Imel?

  They rebranded from NREAL to XREAL.

• 12:54Andrew Manganelli?

  It's the same thing.

• 12:55Speaker 03

  Stupid.

• 12:56David Imel?

  Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, you can project virtual experiences onto it, sort of have like multiple displays. The battery puck looks extremely similar to the Vision Pro battery puck, but it is also a trackpad.

• 13:10Andrew Manganelli?

  That's kind of sick.

• 13:12David Imel?

  It's kind of interesting. Yeah, you can use a trackpad.

• 13:14Andrew Manganelli?

  I was not excited about this until I saw them use it as a trackpad. I was like, that is so clever.

• 13:20David Imel?

  Yeah. You can plug it directly into your computer to get an additional screen above your floating screen, but also your screen. And then because it is built with Google alongside them, Gemini is available anytime about anything. So that actually, in my opinion, is probably the most beneficial feature is that you just constantly have this Gemini assistant who sees what's on your screen and you can talk about things with and it can provide actions for you.

• 13:46Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 13:47David Imel?

  So that's being developed right now. They still don't have like a price or availability for it, but they did show it to a number of journalists as well as detail them a little bit more.

• 13:56Speaker 04

  Can I confirm something real quick?

• 13:57David Imel?

  Sure.

• 13:58Speaker 04

  So it's wireless casting, but there still is a wire hanging from it for the

• 14:02David Imel?

  For the battery.

• 14:03Speaker 04

  Okay. And it's not totally wireless.

• 14:05David Imel?

  I believe you can also plug it in directly to your computer if you want.

• 14:08Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 14:08David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 14:10David Imel?

  Okay. They are also working on AI glasses which have a display and which do not have a display because they're with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, which are very different brands. They showed, they showed like this video of the Warby Parker people talking about glasses and they were just very like suave and kind of casual. And then they jumped to the Gentle Monster, which is this is like Korean hype brand.

• 14:32Speaker 04

  High fashion.

• 14:32David Imel?

  High fashion.

• 14:35Speaker 04

  And they did it for like a minute. It was like five minutes of straight A B back and forth between the two sets. And I was like, this is very, this was a choice.

• 14:42David Imel?

  Exactly. And it seems like the way that they're thinking about the Android XR platform is that it's going to exist across like multiple different types of devices.

• 14:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:50David Imel?

  You know, just kind of like how Android exists across multiple different types of devices. But the biggest benefit about making this ubiquitous platform that works on multiple different devices is that they've made it so you don't have to code your apps differently for different types of devices, right? So if you're using like the X Real glasses, for example, and they have the screen and you have an Uber app integration, say you're wearing the X Real glasses, or say there's a future in which there is a smart glasses with the screen, because the X Real glasses in this context are just like showing you what Android XR will look like on more like meta Ray-Ban display type glasses. But imagine you, you know, you call an Uber with your glasses, you get the little notification

• 15:35David Imel?

  in the bottom that shows like how long it's going to take for the Uber to get there. Then when you look down, you can see a map of the area around you and where the Uber is. So then you can like walk to the Uber. That was like their, their big kind of showcase. But the big benefit was that they said that you don't like developers do not need to code anything differently. So as long as they still have these integrations for their actual Android app, it automatically adds all these features for Android XR, which I think is a pretty big deal.

• 16:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:07David Imel?

  They also unveiled new Likeness features, which is their equivalent of personas. And honestly, they looked very, very good. They kind of look like the new generation of personas. So they skipped that really creepy.

• 16:21Speaker 04

  The gimmicky weird part.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  I keep forgetting what each one of them's called. Like, is Apple's called personas?

• 16:27David Imel?

  This is Likeness.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Likeness, and then there's Samsung's, whatever that one's called. They all have a different version of it.

• 16:33David Imel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:34Andrew Manganelli?

  The better all of these get, the more they look like old, bad portrait mode photos, where like, the things, everything in the middle is really good, but then the cutout of it gets worse and worse and like more fuzzy.

• 16:47David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  It's a really good visual.

• 16:49David Imel?

  Yeah. Also, you can now turn any 2D content that you're viewing in Android XR into 3D content.

• 16:56Speaker 04

  Including YouTube videos, which I found very interesting.

• 16:59David Imel?

  So you know how Apple in the Vision Pro has that feature where you can spatialize everything, and also on your iPhone? Now you can spatialize literally anything, which is, I think, pretty cool, because it makes you want to actually wear it more, because you're actually getting a novel, different experience in the headset.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  I want to try it out, because I'm curious how like, different kinds of content are going to behave with that.

• 17:20David Imel?

  Do we have the Project Moonhand headset? Do we have one?

• 17:23Speaker 01

  We don't have it here.

• 17:23David Imel?

  Oh, we don't? Okay. Well, we could try that.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Or no, we do have a Galaxy.

• 17:27David Imel?

  Galaxy XR? Yeah, yeah, we should try that then, because I think it's.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Oh, the update's out.

• 17:32David Imel?

  It's across any Android XR device.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:35David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  I will try it.

• 17:36David Imel?

  And then they also introduced a travel mode, which is basically the travel mode that they introduced for the Vision Pro.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  So when you get on a plane, it doesn't have your windows flying behind you at 500 miles an hour?

• 17:47David Imel?

  Perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 17:49David Imel?

  Okay, and then, kind of as a secondary to that, they did give some hands-ons with Google's Project Aura smart glasses things.

• 17:57Speaker 04

  I'm excited for these.

• 17:58David Imel?

  Yeah. Victoria Song at The Verge said that Google told her to consider it a headset masquerading as glasses, which is an interesting way to put it. But they have a 70-degree field of view, which is quite wide.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 18:12David Imel?

  Like, I think usually these kind of headsets have about 40, so that's a lot. And they do have integrations with the Pixel Watch and other smartwatches. So basically, you can take a photo on the headset and then it'll appear on your Pixel Watch. And the reason they're doing this is because as they expand the Android XR platform, and they know it's going to be across multiple devices, there might be some XR devices that don't have a screen.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:36David Imel?

  So if you take a picture on that, you can just see it on your watch to get a preview of what it looks like.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Oh, that's smart.

• 18:42David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:42David Imel?

  So they're kind of trying to make this whole XR ecosystem. And then the big news that they announced was that iOS users can also use the glasses, as long as they have the Gemini app installed.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  It's actually an enormous deal.

• 18:54David Imel?

  Which is actually a big deal.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Here.

• 18:55David Imel?

  So if Apple never gets into making glasses, just like they didn't get into making cars, then, you know.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Then there will be a fight for the iPhone users.

• 19:05David Imel?

  Yeah, there won't be a fight.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  Pixar made cars.

• 19:07David Imel?

  Oh, right. I forgot.

• 19:11David Imel?

  And cars too.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Cars too.

• 19:13David Imel?

  Speaking of...

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Wait for it, wait for it. There's a good segue somewhere. Hold on.

• 19:18David Imel?

  Things that have microphones in them that you can wear on your body?

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Speaking of wearables.

• 19:22David Imel?

  Oh, my god, that was obvious.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Speaking of wearables.

• 19:24David Imel?

  Speaking of wearables.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Pebble announced a ring with a microphone in it.

• 19:28David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:29David Imel?

  It's...

• 19:30Speaker 01

  At first, I was like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And then I just read through it. There's obvious use cases for it. You want to just whisper into your ring, you know, a nice command that nobody else can hear in the room. And it's like an easy way to say it.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Like, like, like Gollum?

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just whisper it. It literally said whisper on the website, and I was like picturing someone like...

• 19:50Andrew Manganelli?

  I was wondering why you immediately went to that and not just like that.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:54Andrew Manganelli?

  A ring's right there and you can talk to it?

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I guess. So it's that it's convenient. It's on your hand. You always have it in your hand, basically. But it's also, you can like hold it right up to your face and it doesn't seem insane.

• 20:05David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  And so you can whisper to it and nobody else can hear you.

• 20:07David Imel?

  Yeah. The way Eric Michakovsky, the guy that made this, who is the founder of Pebble, brought it back, we talked about that a lot, the way he pitched it to me was that it is a second hard drive for your brain. Because he says he has things all the time that he wants to remember, or like, create a task for, or a calendar event for. But he always forgets to do it unless he does it like in the moment. So, he put a button on a ring. It's, it's a physical, hard button. There's no wake word. And you press it, and it's very hackable, so you can do single taps, you can do double taps, you can do triple taps, you can do tap and hold. And it can do different actions. Uh, but the main point of it is to be able to record some audio into it, which it has local memory that stores on the ring. And that sends it to your phone.

• 20:51David Imel?

  And it uses the MCP protocol, which is like this new AI protocol that Anthropic made.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  They just donated it, by the way.

• 20:59David Imel?

  Yeah, they donated it to everybody. Uh, which allows it to perform actions for you. So right now in the Pebble app, you'll be able to like, save a reminder, or you'll be able to make a calendar event. Um, and the whole point, basically, is just to have something that is just instant, easy access that you won't have to like-

• 21:17Andrew Manganelli?

  Only do that in the Pebble app?

• 21:19David Imel?

  You have to have the Pebble app. But it, it can take actions in other apps. But as, the Pebble app is just the connecting, like, thread. Uh, but, for example, Eric told me that when he saves notes, he always does it in Notion. So he has it immediately save a note to Notion, which I thought would get you guys excited.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I kinda want this now.

• 21:37David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  You can only use it for two to three years, though, because it's a one-time-use product.

• 21:41David Imel?

  That was also crazy. This is the weird-

• 21:43Speaker 01

  I've seen Rings charge, so I'm not sure why they chose to do this.

• 21:46David Imel?

  This is the weird thing. So, yeah, it has about, it has about two years of battery life. Because it can, you know, it, it has a battery that they send in it, and you record a certain amount of audio, and it can last that long. And Eric's, kind of like, reasoning for this was that you would have to have a proprietary, proprietary charger. And if it lasts two years, you're gonna lose the charger. That was his reasoning.

• 22:10Andrew Manganelli?

  I lose the ring before the charger. My charger just sits in a spot.

• 22:16David Imel?

  So it's, I don't, I don't love that it sort of feels like it's e-waste. He said you can send it back to them and they'll recycle it. And then you just buy another one because they're $75.

• 22:26Speaker 04

  I feel like that, that is e-waste. Doesn't feel like e-waste.

• 22:29David Imel?

  Well, it depends how they're recycling it, right? It's like if they're taking it apart and putting a new battery in it, then it's different. And if you get money off the new one.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  If you get money off the new one. I should, or I should be able to. If it's literally just sending it back and getting a new one because the battery died, or a charge should be pretty cheap or free.

• 22:47David Imel?

  Right.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  I shouldn't have to pay full price again, right?

• 22:49David Imel?

  I agree.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Seems like.

• 22:50David Imel?

  I think they haven't thought that far ahead yet because it lasts two years and they're just releasing this.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:56David Imel?

  I by default don't really love single use products like this in general. But we'll see how, how they're recycling it.

• 23:05Speaker 04

  It's a cool idea, but I just wish you could charge it.

• 23:08Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah. Has, he confirmed this is not coming to the watches that they're making that are also thing on wrist that can all you talk to?

• 23:17David Imel?

  You can do that on the watch.

• 23:18Andrew Manganelli?

  You can do it on the watch.

• 23:19David Imel?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:19Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay.

• 23:19David Imel?

  It's just, he said that it's for people that prefer to just like wear a ring or you can use it with your watch and it can sort of do multiple actions. So you can ask it to do an action, adding some to your calendar or whatever, and then it'll show up on your watch to confirm if you want to do that. That kind of stuff.

• 23:35Andrew Manganelli?

  That's cool.

• 23:36David Imel?

  So it's sort of, they're building like a pebble ecosystem in a way. Um, and they're $75. So again, it's like fairly cheap. They come in matte black, probably just for you.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  All right.

• 23:47David Imel?

  Gold.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  You got me.

• 23:48David Imel?

  Gold and silver.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Says if you record for 15 straight hours, then you will kill the battery.

• 23:53David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. 15 hours roughly total.

• 23:56David Imel?

  That's sort of the, yeah, the, the estimate that they made for the two years was like, if you, if you use it for like one minute a day for two-ish years, then you get about that. So.

• 24:05Speaker 03

  I think they're missing a great opportunity here where instead of putting a microphone in the ring, they should put a speaker in the ring and make it thumb sized. And then make a much smaller microphone ring for the pinky. Bluetooth it.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  Every phone call.

• 24:24David Imel?

  Damn, that'd be dope.

• 24:25Speaker 03

  Hebbel.

• 24:26David Imel?

  The cool thing though is like Eric is like very hardcore about things being open source and hackable. So everything about this ring is open source. So the community can do whatever they want with, I don't know, it's an extra button that you just have on you all the time. So it's sort of like an action button, but it's on your hand instead of on your phone. I think that's cool.

• 24:44Andrew Manganelli?

  The concept is super dope. Find a way to not turn this into key waste. Yeah. And this is really cool.

• 24:50David Imel?

  I mean, you know, or it dies and you just use it as a ring, I guess. There is that too. But I, I, I agree. I don't love, I don't love the idea of just a single use product like that.

• 25:00Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm mostly hyped that this is coming to the watch because I've been more and more wanting to get the watch lately.

• 25:06David Imel?

  Totally.

• 25:06Andrew Manganelli?

  And this seems like a cool thing.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  Isn't this just what Gemini is going to be doing? Like, you know, the raise to talk to Gemini thing.

• 25:14David Imel?

  On like the Pixel Watch.

• 25:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, sorry.

• 25:15David Imel?

  Or if you have glasses that are listening for your wake word.

• 25:18Speaker 04

  I like the button though. I like pressing a physical thing.

• 25:21David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 25:22Speaker 04

  Like, that's cool.

• 25:22David Imel?

  And theoretically in the future, it'd be nice to have multiple ways to interact with this, depending on the way that you like to wear things, you know? If you don't want to use a Pixel Watch and you want to use your, a ring instead of your ring guy.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  It's also waterproof. I feel like if I get all my best ideas in the shower and I don't have my phone or my glasses on.

• 25:41Andrew Manganelli?

  You don't have a Google Home in your shower?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  No, I don't. Wait, is that a good, wait a minute.

• 25:45Andrew Manganelli?

  No, it's terrible.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  I don't have that.

• 25:48Andrew Manganelli?

  You'd have to be just outside enough to where you would be like yelling through the curtain or door and probably annoying and.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and splashing it.

• 25:55David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 25:56Andrew Manganelli?

  Allegedly, Adweek. In Minecraft. Posted an article claiming that advertisers working with Google, at least two different ones, have indicated that ad placements inside of Gemini's AI mode will be rolling out in 2026. This is obviously the AI mode just in. Uh, like in the

• 26:17David Imel?

  Google search.

• 26:17Andrew Manganelli?

  Search results were like, or rather the results, the separate mode.

• 26:21David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 26:21Andrew Manganelli?

  Um, but that's all there really is.

• 26:23Speaker 03

  And Google denied that?

• 26:24David Imel?

  So yeah, uh, according to Google's VP of Global Ads, Dan Taylor, quote, "The story is based on uninformed anonymous sources who are making inaccurate claims. There are no ads in the Gemini app and there are no current plans to change that." Which is That is a lie. Kind of intentionally vague. Like no plans to change that this year? Yeah, exactly. It feels

• 26:45Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh yeah, he does specifically say right at the start, there are no ads currently.

• 26:50David Imel?

  In, there are no ads in the Gemini app and there are no current plans to change that.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  There are definitely plans.

• 26:56Andrew Manganelli?

  Is AI motor app?

• 26:57David Imel?

  They're not current, they're future plans to change that.

• 26:59Andrew Manganelli?

  This feels

• 27:00David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 27:00Andrew Manganelli?

  Crazy because Gemini still feels like a beta program. It's wrong all the time.

• 27:05David Imel?

  Uh huh.

• 27:05Andrew Manganelli?

  Here's some anecdotal evidence. I listened to a disc golf podcast and listened to all four hosts the other day make fun of Gemini because of how wrong it is.

• 27:12David Imel?

  Oh my gosh.

• 27:12Andrew Manganelli?

  These are non-tech people just randomly getting Gemini stuff and being like, yeah, but don't trust that.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  Where they did the same thing.

• 27:18Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 27:18David Imel?

  Really?

• 27:18Andrew Manganelli?

  Like pretty common knowledge that like no one takes this seriously.

• 27:21Speaker 03

  I had a non-tech person be like, you know, I saw that like Gemini is at the top of the AI leaderboards or whatever. And whenever I try to use it, it's completely useless.

• 27:30Andrew Manganelli?

  What are the leaderboards?

• 27:31Speaker 03

  There's like, there's a, there's a website that does like a series of trials and stuff like that to try to guess which one. And the newest version of Gemini took over Claude as like the top of, the top one.

• 27:42David Imel?

  Most capable.

• 27:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:43David Imel?

  Smarkest. Yeah, although OpenAI's Code Red is coming next week, I believe, or this week.

• 27:50Andrew Manganelli?

  And then

• 27:50David Imel?

  Yeah. Whatever that means.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  If you're plugged in enough, it seems like everyone's panicking over Gemini being so good.

• 27:55David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 27:56Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, wow.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  But if you're not plugged in.

• 27:58Andrew Manganelli?

  Seems crazy. But if you're the ones using it, um.

• 28:01David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 28:01Andrew Manganelli?

  I just wanted to point a finger here because I think I've, I've whittled it down to where tech in the last 10 years has gone downhill.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  And I'm told you, I apologize.

• 28:12Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm blaming it on PUBG.

• 28:14David Imel?

  Whoa.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Explain.

• 28:15Andrew Manganelli?

  Not specifically that, but PUBG to me feels like one of the first, not the first, extremely successful alpha paid for games that came out, where they made so much money off of this game never even getting to beta, let alone a like, public full release, they claimed. But they made so much money that they're just like, we can still just keep shipping a broken ass game, and people will pay money for it.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:43Andrew Manganelli?

  And since then, everyone's just like, I don't need to finish this project. People will pay for it. And I hate that.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  It was really.

• 28:51Andrew Manganelli?

  And I loved PUBG, but I think it's PUBG's fault.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  So that's really interesting. Why did people buy PUBG so much if it was so broken? It was still, it must have been still good. It was still really good.

• 29:03Andrew Manganelli?

  Really fun.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  You still have to get over the threshold of being really good. So that if it does have bugs, it's still worth trying.

• 29:10Andrew Manganelli?

  It is, but just like in all those scenarios too, like, people assumed that the game would be finished. And you're like paying 30 bucks to get the game and you'll keep it once it comes out as a full release. But then they just kept realizing like, we're the most popular game on Steam right now. Everybody's playing us.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  That's the thing.

• 29:25Andrew Manganelli?

  We just don't need to leave alpha.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, if people vote with their wallets and it turns out the thing that they're voting on is, we don't actually care if the game is finished. We just care that it's good now. Then everyone takes the hint and just starts copying that.

• 29:39David Imel?

  Yeah, what even is alpha and beta and?

• 29:42Speaker 01

  In a game?

• 29:42David Imel?

  Gamma in a game?

• 29:43Speaker 01

  I guess there's just unfinished features that are not ready. Or like, different modes or whatever that they're going to ship that they're not ready to ship yet. But they ship one mode and it's like.

• 29:51David Imel?

  Isn't that just all software now, though?

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's what we're saying. Cause there was some inflection point. Yeah, there was some inflection point where that became the standard to ship something and charge people for it. That's not done yet.

• 30:02David Imel?

  Right.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  And people became okay with it because the part that they're buying was good enough.

• 30:05David Imel?

  Yeah, like Star Citizen. Yeah. The game that is still technically in early, early access.

• 30:11Andrew Manganelli?

  I was gonna say, I'm minorly wrong already.

• 30:15Andrew Manganelli?

  I guess it did technically get a 1.0 release in 2017. It was out for a bit before that. But the first game became insanely popular in alpha. And I guess they did update it. So maybe it's not all PUBG's fault, but I'm still blaming.

• 30:29Speaker 04

  I'll go back further and blame Google.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  Cause there's like an inside joke now where you're like, all Google users are just beta testing whatever new software and features and stuff to do. And now they've turned it into a feature with pixel drops. It's like, hey, now you're in on it, you know? It's like, look at this.

• 30:46Andrew Manganelli?

  I just feel like we're all buying beta software lately.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  The game Star Citizen, which is still in early access alpha, has nearly weighed $1 billion. $922,579,978.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  It's not just, it's hardware too.

• 31:03Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  Like, like, remember?

• 31:05Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh no, I know.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  Remember when, when, when someone was like, hey, we're gonna sell you this truck and eventually you'll be able to go put an extra battery in the truck. Just buy the truck now.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  We're gonna sell you this pin.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  You know the story. Oh, we know.

• 31:18Andrew Manganelli?

  Well, I wanted to point a finger and it seems like I'm already wrong about that, but.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Well, also.

• 31:23Andrew Manganelli?

  Still just mad about all.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  Didn't Minecraft do this first?

• 31:25Andrew Manganelli?

  Did they?

• 31:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, you could, you could buy Minecraft in its alpha version, I think in 2010.

• 31:31Andrew Manganelli?

  I'd rather blame Minecraft.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  I guess that's also the thing is like, if you're labeling it as the alpha version and unfinished.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  And you're honest about that, but you still make it for sale and people still buy it and give you tons of money for it. It must've been good enough.

• 31:45Speaker 03

  I will say also, as someone who was an alpha Minecraft player in the fifth and sixth grade. It, it at no point was ever unstable. Like, I can't recall it ever.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  Crashing.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  It was just maybe missing a mode or new.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, just, yeah. It was just like dirt simulator.

• 32:02Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, seems like it was in alpha for five months and beta for 11 months.

• 32:06Speaker 04

  Technically, isn't alpha supposed to be for like internal testing?

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Dude, I don't know. No, that's the dog food version.

• 32:12Speaker 04

  I, yeah, I thought that was alpha. And then beta was like external testing. Like then you release it to users and like check.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  I just think that literally everything is in beta now, cause everything is constantly being developed.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  Alphas are the ones that need to get paired with omegas in order to, anyone?

• 32:28Speaker 01

  So like. The point I'm making is true though. Like, the more I think about Dia, this browser, it's like clearly not finished. There's tons of features that they're obviously planning on adding, but they shipped it super early because people wanted the core of it allegedly. And it's like. Kind of always in beta, like they're always adding tons of stuff.

• 32:47David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  So.

• 32:49David Imel?

  Does it feel significantly better now, by the way?

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Dia? Yeah, yeah, I can pin tabs now. I have all these like, I can double tap to rename tabs. There's all these features that they've added from Dia.

• 32:58David Imel?

  From Ark.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Ark. So, yes.

• 33:00David Imel?

  I know it's getting closer to Ark, but I keep wondering when the point is when I can actually switch. Cause I just love Ark.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  I think it crossed that threshold for me with like two updates ago.

• 33:10David Imel?

  Okay.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Cause of the pinned tabs. I still wish I had mobile sync. I still wish I had like two spaces to swap back and forth between sync tabs. But as of right now, it is good enough for me.

• 33:18David Imel?

  I don't think they're doing spaces.

• 33:20Speaker 04

  I mean Chrome added split view, so it has me back now. I'm back on Chrome.

• 33:23David Imel?

  Oh yeah, split view is nice. Anyway, let's duck duck, go to the polls and take it to an ad break.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Six, seven.

• 33:32David Imel?

  Oh no.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  Guys, exciting news. Waveform Trivia is allegedly in Minecraft partnering.

• 33:42David Imel?

  With Netflix?

• 33:43Speaker 03

  With DraftKings. You listening at home.

• 33:46David Imel?

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  Bet.

• 33:49David Imel?

  It's a joke, it's a joke, it's a joke, it's a joke.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Who is going to get this question?

• 33:52David Imel?

  I'm just kidding.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  It's a joke, it's a joke, it's a joke. Guys, welcome back to Waveform Trivia. Android XR is here. And we all know this is not Google's first foray into AR XR. We all remember Google Glass. But between Google Glass.

• 34:09Speaker 04

  And cardboard.

• 34:11David Imel?

  Don't forget cardboard.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  That's the answer, right? How did none of you guys see that?

• 34:15Speaker 03

  It's not, none of these are the answers.

• 34:16Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 34:16David Imel?

  Okay.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  Okay?

• 34:18Speaker 04

  I knew that.

• 34:18David Imel?

  Yeah. Project Daydream?

• 34:20Speaker 03

  Also, also, everybody, remember Daydream, cardboard, that is VR. That is VR.

• 34:26David Imel?

  True.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  True. Yeah, so maybe let me finish the question. None of you are RuPaul on Family Feud, if anyone gets that reference.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 34:34David Imel?

  Famous clip. Not at all.

• 34:35Speaker 03

  Thank you, Marquez. Between Google Glass and yesterday's event, Google had a secret ARXR project that was canceled in 2023. What was the code name of this project?

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Well, it was a secret, so it should be really hard for us to know.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  The Verge reported on it about, I think it was a few months after it got canceled. And then a bunch of Google employees were like, yeah, this existed. And they were really mad. And it got, if I remember this, what happened correctly is Vision Pro came out. Then it came out that Google was working on this and had canceled it. And a bunch of Google employees were like, you know, we could have been competing with Vision Pro.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Which is what every company is trying to do.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:19Andrew Manganelli?

  Why? We're not sure.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 35:22David Imel?

  I don't think they're sure either.

• 35:24Andrew Manganelli?

  I agree.

• 35:25David Imel?

  I don't think Apple is sure either.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Well, we'll think about this one. Answers will be at the end, like usual. We'll be right back.

• 35:39Speaker 01

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• 36:23Speaker 01

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• 36:39Speaker 05

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• 37:18Speaker 06

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• 37:47Speaker 01

  All right, welcome back. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the biggest tech online argument of the year. It's time. I took that directly from a Reddit comment about the smartphone awards, but it is super accurate, so shout out to iron underscore quirk. Uh, smartphone awards are out. I gave my favorite and best and worst and most notable smartphones from 2025. I'm gonna go through them all and maybe if you guys have alternate opinions or thoughts on my awards, obviously some of you guys helped chip in and we discussed these all kind of as a group, so some of you probably already got your thoughts in, but for the pod, we can go over each of the awards, which one won and some thoughts and some arguments that happened online about them.

• 38:30Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, afterwards I took some of the most common

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 38:33Andrew Manganelli?

  comments and arguments I saw.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  I'm glad you did that.

• 38:35Andrew Manganelli?

  So let's go through the list first.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  All right, let's start, let's just go in the order of the show. For the beginning best big phone, Xiaomi 17 Pro Max. Huge 6.9 inch display. When are we gonna get a seven inch screen on a phone? We're probably pretty close to that, but 6.9 inches is like as good as it gets without being a tablet. And it had everything. It had the Snapdragon 8 Elite. It had the 7500 milliamp hour silicon carbon battery. It had all the specs. It had the triple 15 megapixel cameras. And then around the back, it also had a 3 inch full brightness 120 hertz corner to corner screen on the camera bump. And it was actually very useful.

• 39:09David Imel?

  Crazy.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Uh, super fast charging, 22 and a half watt wireless charging, reverse wireless charging. Hilarious. Just a complete use of space. No argument. Everyone agrees.

• 39:19David Imel?

  Just like their car. They just went way too hard.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  That's actually kind of true.

• 39:23Andrew Manganelli?

  Wait, was this the one that had the reverse wireless charging at 22?

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 39:27Andrew Manganelli?

  It's so funny.

• 39:29David Imel?

  Faster than many phones charge with the wire.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  Faster than some battery banks.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Very valid. I don't think there's any, anything close. Am I crazy? I gave a runner up to, I mentioned the Oppo Find X9 Pro because it also had a lot of this stuff. Just the screen on the back was what separated the Xiaomi.

• 39:46David Imel?

  Right. Because technically, if you count the total screen real estate, it's basically 700.

• 39:51Andrew Manganelli?

  That's what I was thinking. Like, screen to body ratio. If we were going back to those days. What do we start adding this to?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  120%. It's funny, actually. When we had that, remember the, the concept phone? That had the screen and it wrapped around the back?

• 40:04David Imel?

  Yeah, it was Xiaomi.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  It probably was Xiaomi.

• 40:05David Imel?

  It was the Mi Mix.

• 40:07Andrew Manganelli?

  Ultra, I think it was called.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Mi Mix Alpha?

• 40:09David Imel?

  Alpha.

• 40:09Andrew Manganelli?

  Alpha.

• 40:10David Imel?

  Alpha.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think they did quote a number for the screen to body ratio for that phone.

• 40:14David Imel?

  Really?

• 40:15Speaker 01

  And I don't remember what it was, but it was definitely over 100%. It was hilarious.

• 40:19David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Anyway, yeah, that was best big phone of the year. Now, best small phone of the year is where it gets interesting.

• 40:24David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Because, well, we used to give this award to like a 5.8 inch screen sized phone. And then that was the Zen phone that went extinct. So then we started giving to like 6.1 inch phones. Last year it was this iPhone 16, I think. 6.1 inch phone. This year, it's like, all the small phones are not like incredible anymore and they're all getting bigger. And there's just one type of phone. That maintains, that preserves like some element of small phoneness. And that is the flip phones.

• 40:55David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  And specifically the Z Flip 7 this year with its like full corner to corner four inch cover screen.

• 41:02David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Was more usable than ever as like a take it out of my pocket, use it, put it back in and never open the phone. And I was like, you know what? I think I'm gonna reward that as like the best of a compact phone experience because you can still open it and use it as a 6.9 in flagship. Fine, but it was more usable than ever as a closed phone and that's why it's the small phone of the year.

• 41:21Speaker 04

  That's what this should have been this whole time.

• 41:23Andrew Manganelli?

  I've been fighting for this for a long time, but I'll agree. I think this is the most deserving since.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  It has gotten runner ups before and honorable mention.

• 41:33David Imel?

  I think considering they finally added basically the full screen to the front and in a year specifically where people are doing anything to not use their phone. Like using Apple Watches as their phone in a little case or you know, just like finding other ways to be able to be in communication with people while not looking at their phone. I think a phone that you do not have to open if you don't want to is a very good small phone awardee.

• 41:57Speaker 04

  The reason I always felt like this one should have went one small phone is because if you ask people why they got that phone, it's because it folds into something smaller. Like yes, it unfolds into a bigger screen, but that's not why they got it.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  I'd always, I, yeah, I always mentioned that because it was like, yes, it folds smaller, but like that's not while you're using it. So I didn't, I didn't reward it for that. I was like, yeah, you're using a huge phone and then you fold it up smaller and put it away. So it wasn't until you really could use it small that I like flipped that switch. Get it flipped, but also honorable mention to OnePlus 13S, which had a 6.3 inch screen, but they called it the 13S because it's the small one. And it was a pretty good phone.

• 42:38David Imel?

  Alright.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 42:40Speaker 04

  That's Ellis's next phone, the 13S.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, is it small enough?

• 42:44David Imel?

  Ellis will never.

• 42:45Andrew Manganelli?

  Ellis loves OnePlus.

• 42:46Speaker 03

  I know, but I would never use a OnePlus phone again as much as I like the open, but I will say the OnePlus 13S intro we did, I think was my favorite.

• 42:54Andrew Manganelli?

  It's crazy. Really good.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  It's one of my top three this year. Yeah. That was a fun one. Alright, next one, straight into the ones that people had alternate opinions about, but best camera. Oppo Find X9 Pro. Absolutely. Took the win this year. Correct.

• 43:09David Imel?

  So good.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  It was, this is a triple 50 meg, sorry, a triple camera system, 50 megapixel main, 50 megapixel ultra wide, 200 megapixel telephoto. And, you know, I took a lot of sample shots. I was debating this. I was, we, we literally, I think we had, we had like alternate trophies, like we were ready to give this to like two or three different phones. And I was testing the Vivo X300 Pro. I was testing this, testing the iPhone. And I just found that this one was the most versatile and the most capable at the same time. Yeah. And it had the fun. Yeah. So, great primary camera, really consistent, awesome colors, great detail, great dynamic range and all that. Ultra wide was really good. Then the telephoto, thanks to having 200 megapixels, was very, very cropable. We'll talk more about megapixels in that upcoming bonus episode.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  But, uh, there's also the Hasselblad like zoom lens you could attach to it, which I had a lot of fun with. It's not the best thing in the world, but it was super cool and fun. It also had really good portrait mode, good night mode, pretty good video too. You could shoot log. It was 4K. Yeah. I like that complete package.

• 44:12David Imel?

  I think my favorite thing about this phone's camera was how natural the bokeh looked.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  That was important for me over the Vivo.

• 44:19David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  So the Vivo, very similar set of hardware, uh, but just had like this weird over processing going on with it. And I was doing a lot of side by sides because I was like really happy with the detail in the Vivo shots. But the, I think because of how much processing and a lot of those AI processing was going on, the bokeh started to look weird, even on regular shots of just like a single subject. And it wasn't consistent enough for me to give it the win. Yeah. That was important.

• 44:46David Imel?

  I felt that the color, the skin texture was like perfect. It wasn't overly smooth and it wasn't overly sharpened. And then the, the naturalness of the bokeh, especially on the telephoto, but like on any of the lenses, but especially on the telephoto with the Hasselblad attachment, when you get that long, um,

• 45:02Speaker 01

  10x.

• 45:03David Imel?

  Yeah, that long look with like the natural sort of falloff. I, I thought it was like, I could not distinguish this between this and an actual dedicated camera. Yeah, it's crazy good.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, the shots from the Hasselblad attachment lens were kind of insane.

• 45:18David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Uh, so it was a lot of fun.

• 45:20Speaker 03

  Does Hasselblad now partner with Oppo in the same way they used to partner with OnePlus?

• 45:25Speaker 01

  They are partnered, yeah. And I think they will probably continue that longer. I think Oppo and OnePlus shared that partnership or something. I don't even know how to describe the partnership, but yeah, OnePlus dropped it.

• 45:36David Imel?

  They're all under BBK group.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  That was my follow up question.

• 45:38David Imel?

  I mean, when you said like, I was thinking about giving it to Vivo, but I give it to Oppo. I just imagine that picture of Obama giving himself the medal.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  The BBK trilogy, yeah, they, they're all part of the same giant group. But, yes.

• 45:54Andrew Manganelli?

  This was like the first time there was a lens attachment that you seemed excited to use. Not excited to use, you've been excited to use once, but you use it and you're like, wait, this is actually like good and fun.

• 46:05David Imel?

  And also the build quality of that lens is crazy.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Oh, Hasselblad's got a reputation.

• 46:09David Imel?

  They, yeah.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Can't just put their name on anything.

• 46:11David Imel?

  Sorry, DJI's got a reputation.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Fair enough. Uh, yeah, honorable mention still goes to the iPhone 17 Pro. The video is still undisputed. This is the reason the iPhone was winning so much, almost every camera award before this, is because the video is a head and shoulders and a head and more shoulders above every other smartphone that I use. Ask anyone who shoots stuff on social media and uses phones to shoot them. We have an entire channel that we run just on phones. And guess which one is the most reliable that we shoot the most with? It's the iPhone 17 Pro. That's because of the ease of shooting. That's because of the quality of the footage, the flexibility, the log, the dynamic range, the look. It looks better than ever this year. Uh, and all they did was like add Gen Lock. Like they don't even shoot, there's no 8K. They don't really do much to it every year, but it's just great every year.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  I kind of want them to add to it. I want them to get rid of some of the, the point light problems at night in the lowlights. I kind of want them to get 8K and improve the mics, but it's just, it's just the best video on this.

• 47:08David Imel?

  I want them to add True RAW, because right now they only have Pro RAW. And you have to use all these apps and there's all these apps that are blowing up like The Moment Pro Camera 2 app got really big and then Halide. And if Apple just like sherlocked all of those by next year, just announcing, all right, we're just allowing True RAW out of this camera in this like promo setting.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  I always wonder about that. Yeah. So that and 8K I always wonder about because it seems like a storage problem. And I don't know if it's, it's not even a problem. It's just that they don't want to give people the ability to fill up their entire phone storage with an hour of video.

• 47:40David Imel?

  I think that Apple is more afraid of people taking photos that they don't like.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  But they let us shoot log, which is

• 47:47David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  Like, they, they give us pro features and, and people who know what they're doing can shoot, quote, ugly videos and then make them look great. Cause like 4K log looks, quote, bad and then you make it look great. So I figure they shouldn't be afraid of that so much.

• 48:02David Imel?

  I guess so. I think that they're definitely leaning more into it finally. And I think they're getting a little less afraid of it. And honestly, like every single year, they have to release some new camera feature, right? Because they know that the camera is the main selling point of a lot of these phones. That's why they had announced Gen Lock because they It's, it's a pointless feature for literally like 99.999% of people, even most people on these sets.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:25David Imel?

  But, you know, it's a new thing that they can say like, look how even more pro this is now. So notably friend of the show, Mr. Mobile, Michael Fisher, who hates iPhones with a seething passion.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 48:36David Imel?

  Still carries the newest iPhone on him just for like B cam footage to put in his videos.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Says a lot. He could carry anything, but for videos, you know what it is. So yeah, that was my runner up and my winner. And I also mentioned the X300 Pro, but any other camera thoughts before we move on?

• 48:52Speaker 04

  Have you not tried the 8K uploading from Pixel up to the cloud so that

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Oh God, I have.

• 48:58David Imel?

  24 hours.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  I actually remember having really high hopes for that. What did they call it? It was like a post-processing in Google Photos. Like you could shoot a certain mode and your photos or videos, I think mostly videos would get like this massive quality boost. Number one, the quality boost turned out to not be that big for most of the stuff that I tested. And number two, is that even a phone feature?

• 49:19David Imel?

  I know.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  It's uploading it

• 49:21David Imel?

  Google Photos feature.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  For post-processing. It's technically Pixel only, but like, that was, that was tough.

• 49:26David Imel?

  It's good in low light because it gets, it gets rid of a lot of the like low light artifacting and noise.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:32David Imel?

  But it takes like 20 hours.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:34David Imel?

  So it's not

• 49:35Speaker 01

  It's tough. It is tough. I like the idea of like offloading super high processing stuff to cloud. That's not a new concept, but that just wasn't it.

• 49:44David Imel?

  That just wasn't it.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Wasn't it?

• 49:46David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. All right, next up, best value. This is one that gets a lot of chatter every year because this is, there's a thousand definitions of best value. Most phone for the least money, best phone under X dollars, however you want to phrase it. Uh, I went with the CMF phone two pro. It's under $300. It's the best phone under $300. But it's also the, I feel like it was really close to flagship feeling. It's like a big, smooth screen. The software is super smooth. It's got great battery life and all these things. It's got multiple useful cameras. And it was just like a very good usable phone in the price range and I thought that deserved. It also had like the fun orange color and the modular accessories and all that. So that was a nice cherry on top. But I did give a runner up or a mention to the Moto G play, the Pixel 9A and the base iPhone 17.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  All good values in very different price categories.

• 50:33Andrew Manganelli?

  I'll throw something out there to just, another reason why I think this CMF phone two pro, the Nothing Phone 3A Lite is the exact same phone and it's $10 more and one less camera.

• 50:45David Imel?

  And has ads on it.

• 50:46Andrew Manganelli?

  And has ads on it. I forgot about that. Which makes this phone look awesome.

• 50:51David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Very good strategy for winning an award. Put out another phone.

• 50:55Andrew Manganelli?

  Sabotage your own sister company.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Looks like a way worse deal.

• 50:58David Imel?

  Being able to buy any phone in 2025 under $300 is pretty awesome.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Moto G is under 200.

• 51:03David Imel?

  That's crazy.

• 51:05Speaker 03

  That's insane.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  It's funny because Moto excels in this category a lot every year and never quite breaks into like true flagships. And it's almost like they're destined to have like a cap of like, you shouldn't buy a Motorola phone over $400. You probably just shouldn't. Like get the Razr or anything under it. Don't get the big, the edge phone, which is not a good buy.

• 51:22David Imel?

  Yeah, edge for a thousand. It's like, why?

• 51:24Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 51:25David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Okay, best battery. This one I also feel really good about, OnePlus 15. Ridiculously long battery life. I went, I tweeted about this. I went three straight days. I went Friday, Saturday and Sunday without charging the phone. All day for all three days, three hours screen on time, all of those days. So I ended up with like 10 and a half hours screen on time and the phone was still going.

• 51:49David Imel?

  Now do this to smartwatches challenge.

• 51:51Andrew Manganelli?

  Garmin, accepted.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  It's pretty incredible that we're about to get a bunch of phones with 7,000 milliamp hour batteries next year with silicon carbon. Yeah, so like Samsung doesn't Motorola doesn't, Apple doesn't, the ones that are big here are not doing it, Pixel doesn't. So they're all like kinda capped. And if they did, that's the thing is a lot of these phones would be awesome if they were silicon carbon batteries. Like iPhone Air would be way better. S25 Edge would be way better with silicon carbon battery. These folding phones, their thinness, they'd be way better. Anyway, the point is, this lab phone was just as thin and light as the previous one. It added 1,000 milliamp hours and it still charges at a bazillion watts. So when it finally did die, I plugged it in for two seconds and it was back to 100%. So it was like, this is no clear. That's how it feels.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  So it was great. It also has super fast wireless charging. I gave runner up to the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max and I did also mention the Doogee S11 Ultra. I wanna make, that's probably not even the right name, but it had an 11,000 milliamp hour battery. S200 Ultra, I think is what it was called.

• 52:55David Imel?

  They still doing that?

• 52:56Speaker 01

  It was the biggest capacity battery of any phone in the studio this year.

• 53:00David Imel?

  Dang.

• 53:01Andrew Manganelli?

  When can you not go on a plane with it anymore?

• 53:03Speaker 01

  It's pretty close to that, right?

• 53:05Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, it's a.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Is it? It's 110 watt hours or 100 watt hours?

• 53:09David Imel?

  100 watt hours.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  So I don't know how that translates because there's voltage and comparisons. Anyway, great battery life in this phone, no regrets. I think that one deserved the award.

• 53:18David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 53:19Andrew Manganelli?

  Can I say, this sandstone in this trophy shot?

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:22Andrew Manganelli?

  Looks so good.

• 53:23Speaker 04

  It's my favorite color. It's so pretty.

• 53:26David Imel?

  I want to be able to use a phone that color.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  I just don't like that the bezels around the outside, I can see them all the time. Same with the orange iPhone. Being able to see the orange from the front.

• 53:35Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  It's a little picky thing of mine. Anyway.

• 53:39David Imel?

  Yeah, if there was no cap for real for real on American phone batteries or like Western phone batteries, that would be nice. Cause I, we're just locked and loaded down to like 40, 4,200 or whatever.

• 53:51Andrew Manganelli?

  All day.

• 53:52David Imel?

  I have it all.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  The OnePlus 15 is available for preorder on AT&T. It's still not, I still haven't been able to switch my eSIM to it because the whole like government shutdown, FCC didn't approve any new phones for a while thing. So I still haven't been able to get my, my AT&T SIM in it, but it's coming to AT&T.

• 54:10David Imel?

  Are you gonna mainline it?

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:12David Imel?

  Really?

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:14David Imel?

  Even with the bad cameras?

• 54:14David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Because I'm gonna have the iPhone in my other pocket and the Hasselblad in my back pocket.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:19Andrew Manganelli?

  Back pocket?

• 54:20David Imel?

  Is that a Hasselblad in your pocket?

• 54:21Speaker 01

  It's, yeah.

• 54:22David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Metaphorically.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Okay, Design Award is next. Yeah, there's some comments about this one. Are you doing all your comments at the end?

• 54:31Andrew Manganelli?

  Am I doing, yeah, I'll do comments. If one particular pops out, but yeah, I'll do most of the comments at the end.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  So, Design Award, I gave it to the iPhone Air. And there's probably six phones I could have given this to, but I, the iPhone Air

• 54:45David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  was so uniquely like, I, this is not a good phone for me. But I want to be the type of person who could use this phone. Because when I was testing this phone, I was, I was loving it. I was like, dang, this battery sucks. Dang, this lack of an ultra wide sucks. But, oh man, holding this phone, using this phone, it's so ridiculously light and thin. Using any other phone directly after it feels shockingly bad.

• 55:10David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Weird.

• 55:11David Imel?

  You know, Quinn was, Quinn Snazzy Labs on YouTube was, was posting online. He's, he has been posting about how much he loves the iPhone Air and how much it like, just is an awesome phone that feels amazing.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Because it's awesome.

• 55:22David Imel?

  And then he posted either yesterday, the day before, like, oh no, the iPhone Air just feels like a regular phone now and everything else feels insane.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You get to this point.

• 55:32David Imel?

  It ruins you.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  So like, I tested it. I think I used it for like a week and a half for my review, but continuing to try to use it after, you do get to this point where it feels, it starts to feel normal. And you're like, oh, it's finally worn off. Maybe I'll switch back. And then I used this iPhone 17 Pro and it was like, this is heavy. This is a thick phone. It's not even that big of a phone, but it was like, it changed, it just warps your perspective of phones.

• 55:54David Imel?

  Yeah. Yeah. But New York is not a real place because I keep seeing the Air everywhere. Like yesterday I saw five.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:02David Imel?

  And it's what, like a failure by sales standards?

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it sold 10% of what they thought it would sell.

• 56:06David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Oh!

• 56:07David Imel?

  But it is. But it is out there and it is really clever. They rearranged the internals.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  You gotta think on Apple's scale. That's still a lot of phones.

• 56:17David Imel?

  It's a lot of phones.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  I'm not surprised you're seeing that many.

• 56:19David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  And they were all in New York and San Francisco.

• 56:23David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  The highest density of iPhone Airs and Z-Folds.

• 56:26Andrew Manganelli?

  I will say one comment I liked about the thin phones is, and this goes for the S25 edges, well, a phone is only as thin as its largest part. Which I thought was interesting and the way they described it the best was.

• 56:41David Imel?

  Socrates said that actually.

• 56:43Andrew Manganelli?

  If you had, so what is this again, 5.6?

• 56:48Speaker 01

  I think it's 5. something, yeah.

• 56:50Andrew Manganelli?

  So like if you had a 5.7 millimeter hole to slide this phone through, it wouldn't make it all the way through because of the camera bump.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:58Andrew Manganelli?

  And same with S25 Edge. I think the thing with that is, is like, yes, I agree that it still doesn't fully meet its thin. But also, I just don't think there was a ton of other design things this year. Maybe the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll give the others, because I had some other mentions. I will say the thickest part of the phone thing. I, I.

• 57:20Andrew Manganelli?

  In hand feel.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  You never hold the thick part. So it's like the thinness is the part you're holding. Anyway. I mentioned the Xiaomi 17 Pro, which had the screen on the back, and that design was awesome. Very complete phone. I mentioned the S25 Edge, which had better spec execution, not better design execution. It's more of like a brutalist square version of the thin thing, but it had a primary, like real flagship camera to match the S25 Ultra. And it had a second camera, and it had a bigger battery. So it was like, it felt closer to usable every day, but wasn't as like shockingly awesome to use. Still very cool.

• 57:56Andrew Manganelli?

  Overall battery life was probably still worse though, right?

• 57:59Speaker 01

  Because.

• 57:59Andrew Manganelli?

  Worse than the big phones?

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:01Andrew Manganelli?

  Yes.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  No worse than the Air. Um, I don't know if I've compared them directly, but they're both not great. Yeah. And then.

• 58:08Andrew Manganelli?

  Holding both, I think the iPhone Air feels better, which is like, buying this is like a hand feel thing and kind of, but like.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you can emphasize. Yeah, you can emphasize thinness with like the curves and the chamfering and the proportion. They just did it very well.

• 58:22Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 58:23Speaker 01

  I also mentioned Fairphone 6, which has obviously the most repairable, most sustainable phone design maybe ever. And actually kind of feels pretty close to a regular phone. It's still a little thick, but it feels very close to a regular phone this year. A nice accent color power button.

• 58:38Andrew Manganelli?

  You loved the Switch too.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So shout out to the Switch on the.

• 58:43Andrew Manganelli?

  The Switch too.

• 58:43Speaker 03

  Wait, are we, how are we gonna talk about a phone design award and not talk about the Nothing Phone 3?

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Because I like to award good design.

• 58:54Speaker 03

  That design, it was brave.

• 58:56Andrew Manganelli?

  You love spinning the bottle.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:58Andrew Manganelli?

  I.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Play spin the bottle every day. The phone, yeah, the weirdness of it never quite wore off to me of the Nothing Phone 3.

• 59:07Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  The pointlessness of it.

• 59:08Andrew Manganelli?

  There are a lot of comments about Nothing Phone 3. We'll get to that later. We'll get there.

• 59:12Speaker 03

  I thought that design aged like fine wine. The more I looked at it, the more I was like, that is a good looking phone.

• 59:21Andrew Manganelli?

  I like the.

• 59:22Speaker 03

  I thought the prettiest phone of the year was the OnePlus 15, personally. If we're just going off pure aesthetics, which I know is different than design.

• 59:30Andrew Manganelli?

  Interesting. I think the Nothing Phone 3 aged like wine, similar to that bottle of Snoop Dogg wine that's been laying outside the parking lot for like six months.

• 59:40Speaker 03

  No, that thing is cool, man. That thing is cool.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Is there still wine in it?

• 59:43Andrew Manganelli?

  I think it finally exploded.

• 59:44Speaker 03

  There might be vinegar in it.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's an interesting take, the OnePlus 15. Would you, the Sandstone one, you think is the best looking one?

• 59:50Speaker 03

  That one looked so nice.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  They had this like purple violet one that was interesting to look at.

• 59:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, and like the way the light comes off of the ceramic back too is like really pretty. I know it's like sort of a matte, not matte, but like it's not, it doesn't exactly have a texture, but the light does come off of it in a really cool way.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  I like the matte black one. It is.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, you would say that.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Well, it is the darkest matte black phone I've ever seen.

• 1:00:14Speaker 03

  Oh, that's a good point.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  So I thought that was nice.

• 1:00:16Speaker 03

  That's a good point.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Andrew Manganelli?

  Can I throw a design award out?

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:20Andrew Manganelli?

  Actually, I almost have two, but that TCL Nex Paper. Bro, that switch that switches it from like color E Ink to regular E Ink is like. I think it's one of the most jaw dropping things a phone has done in a long time.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  I want to rewind that. I was like when the sermon in church hits a really good bar, everyone goes.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Preach, Andrew. Yes.

• 1:00:45Andrew Manganelli?

  It's, I feel like we barely showed that thing off. Just the animation.

• 1:00:50Speaker 03

  I know we barely showed that thing off. I still get tweets that are like, what are you gonna talk about the TCL Nex Paper?

• 1:00:55Andrew Manganelli?

  All right, make sure we show a clip of B-roll in this, but like it has this switch that goes between colored E Ink to black and white E Ink. And the animation.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's awesome.

• 1:01:05Andrew Manganelli?

  Is chef's kiss. I think when I first saw it, my jaw literally dropped.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  It kind of looks like the Harry Potter mag, whatever the magazines are called in Harry Potter.

• 1:01:14Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, like the Quibbler?

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Is that what it's called? Where the images move on the paper and you're like, this seems crazy. Yeah, it's like magic. It's pretty cool.

• 1:01:21Andrew Manganelli?

  I have to throw that in there.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  That's valid. Okay. Yeah, yeah, you know, ultimately, I gave it to the iPhone Air. I don't regret it. And I just need them to give it a silicon carbon battery and dual cameras next year. I just, I know they're not gonna do it, but I need to put that out there.

• 1:01:35Andrew Manganelli?

  Wait, I have a suggestion for next year.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:01:38Andrew Manganelli?

  What if we remove the best small phone award, since there really are none anymore?

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  Go on.

• 1:01:45Andrew Manganelli?

  And then we add.

• 1:01:50Andrew Manganelli?

  Like a best technical achievement award. Because we had the screen on the back of the phone this year that you can actually use.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Best gimmick.

• 1:02:01Speaker 04

  I like best gimmick.

• 1:02:02Andrew Manganelli?

  The best gimmick is cool.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  That's interesting, because there's a lot of stuff that comes out that qualifies for that. You could say the screen on the back. You could also say like one of those super thin foldables with like no crease. Could be interesting. You could also say.

• 1:02:14Andrew Manganelli?

  Display that we just spoke about.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Valid, okay. Yeah, best gimmick.

• 1:02:17Speaker 03

  I love the idea of it, Adam, but you have to put yourself in the, in the perspective of these tech companies, right? Boardrooms across the world are saying, look, market research shows people don't want small phones. The things people do want in their phones will not fit in a small phone. But we have to win the MKBHD Small Phone of the Year Award. This is the only thing keeping the category alive.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  It's why the OnePlus 13s exists.

• 1:02:43Andrew Manganelli?

  But all they did was make a not small phone and put an S next to it. And the only reason that's small is because they said it was small.

• 1:02:49Speaker 03

  I'll take it, man.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  Slightly smaller.

• 1:02:51Speaker 04

  I'm open to bringing the award back if they actually release small phones.

• 1:02:56Andrew Manganelli?

  We should hold the award hostage until someone breaks.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  We, I know this phone had some issues, but shout out to the minimal phone. That was a small phone.

• 1:03:05Andrew Manganelli?

  I'd say the light phone was small.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  The light phone was even smaller.

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  I never used that.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  The light phone was like a, like a squat. Little box. Little box.

• 1:03:12Andrew Manganelli?

  I was gonna say, the light phone design looks so cool that I want to use it, except it has, literally, I couldn't survive. I couldn't work or do anything on it.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  You know.

• 1:03:21Andrew Manganelli?

  I thought the design was nice.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Eric Michakovsky, the Pebble guy, owns the website smallandroidphone.com. Because he wants there to be another small Android phone.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  75 million bad faith.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  If you're gonna, if you're gonna make a, a ring, I feel like you could make a small Android phone, Eric. Don't let your dreams be dreams. Yeah, come on. This could be awesome. This could be real. Yeah. Bring it back.

• 1:03:43Speaker 04

  Award waiting for it.

• 1:03:44David Imel?

  Bring it back with a six pack.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I like, I like, we'll, we'll, we'll play with this. I think this small category award will be really interesting next year.

• 1:03:50David Imel?

  What would be the best gimmick of the year for you?

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Okay, the, I think it's the screen on the back.

• 1:03:56Speaker 04

  Cause it was attached to an actually good phone.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  On the Xiaomi, right?

• 1:03:59David Imel?

  Yeah, the, the Xiaomi 17 Pro. So we got that, we've got the Nothing Phone 3, which is a bad gimmick.

• 1:04:05Speaker 04

  That sucks. What about the Hasselblad camera attachment?

• 1:04:07David Imel?

  I think that's a cool gimmick.

• 1:04:08Speaker 04

  That's really cool.

• 1:04:09David Imel?

  That's a good gimmick, yeah.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  Trillions of dollars spent on AI assistance and not one, one mention in this conversation.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Apple Intelligence. I will say, I shot the Xiaomi car review on the Xiaomi 17 Pro, and I've always been doing this thing where I use the primary cameras and I flip the camera around.

• 1:04:26David Imel?

  Oh, now you can see yourself.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  And I've gotten really good at that with not being able to see myself, but I could see myself on that phone. That was like, super useful, I think. It's gotta go to the Xiaomi 17.

• 1:04:34David Imel?

  I think best gimmick would be great, because there's all these Chinese phones that we can't use consistently, but they all have awesome weird gimmicks.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, 1000 watt charging.

• 1:04:42David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  And I feel like, not actually 1000.

• 1:04:45Speaker 04

  Gimmicks used to be bad, and now I think there are actually useful gimmicks on, on phones, on good phones.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  There's a, there's a, there's a spectrum.

• 1:04:54David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  There's definitely good gimmicks, there's definitely still bad gimmicks.

• 1:04:57David Imel?

  The LG G7 Thin Q with its, uh, blood, blood sensor.

• 1:05:03Speaker 04

  Palm sensor?

• 1:05:04David Imel?

  Palm, it was the glucose sensor. You could do this, and it never worked.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  That is a, that's a good candidate for next year's award.

• 1:05:12David Imel?

  That's a gimmick.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:05:14David Imel?

  All right.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  We had one more interesting one. Best foldables is maybe the last boring one. Uh, Samsung Z Fold 7. Any questions?

• 1:05:21David Imel?

  Uh, no.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the safest, it's like the only one that I could really daily and be like happy that I can use a closer.

• 1:05:28David Imel?

  I wanna point out, like, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  I liked it.

• 1:05:34David Imel?

  No, I'm not saying that I want to point it out to win, to win, because no. That's the thing, but this is the thing is because the the the original Pixel 10 Pro Fold to the Pixel 9 Pro Fold was so astronomical. This is why businesses every year with their year over year growth only want to have like 1%. Because if they have 50% in one year and then the next year they don't have another 50%, their stock goes down.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:58David Imel?

  Right? So Google did too much of a good thing in one year. And then all they did was add MagSafe or Chi 2.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Which is big.

• 1:06:05David Imel?

  Which is big.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  Pixel drops.

• 1:06:06David Imel?

  But it kind of sags a little bit.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  Pixel snap.

• 1:06:09David Imel?

  Pixel snap. And then they, you know, they made it waterproof. That's important. It's important and good, but like in a year when the the Galaxy Z Fold 7 came out and was super thin and had a really good screen to body ratio. And was just like a great.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Same size battery as the thicker version.

• 1:06:27David Imel?

  Exactly. And then you got the Pixel, which is just like, it's better than it was, but now it's, you know, now they feel really behind. So I feel like next year, Google is really going to have to try to make it thin.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  New strategy, go way backwards next year.

• 1:06:40David Imel?

  Make it small again.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  And then step up again.

• 1:06:43David Imel?

  The 12 will be great.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  We're back, baby. The window strategy, just go worse, better, worse, better.

• 1:06:48David Imel?

  Exactly.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I gave a mention to the Z Flip 7 and the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, but it was the Samsung to lose this year.

• 1:06:55David Imel?

  And Becca recently just put out a video about the Z Fold 7. She said it was the best phone of the year. And she said, sorry, I'm QHD.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  There's two categories left. There's the bust.

• 1:07:04David Imel?

  Let's do bust last.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  No, we got to do the bust now because there's interesting chatter about this one.

• 1:07:09David Imel?

  All right, it's bust.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  The bust of the year for 2025 is the iPhone 16E. And I think that was pretty clear. A lot of people actually said they forgot it existed by the end of the year because it was that forgettable.

• 1:07:20David Imel?

  Proves the point, yeah.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Um, because number one, if you actually had $500 to spend on a new iPhone, you should just get the 16 or the 15 Pro or something. There's no reason to buy a new 16E and get a 60 Hz screen and no MagSafe.

• 1:07:34David Imel?

  And one camera.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was just silly. It just didn't have any reason to exist for regular people. Then I got the comments about like, oh, it's a B to B phone. It's really just like the fleet phone for all the, you know, the old E phones that are all getting replaced at once, which is valid, but you still, it's not, that doesn't make it good.

• 1:07:50David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  That doesn't make it a good deal or a good phone. And so the cherry on top is the one I reviewed was a 512 gig 16E, which was nine. Hundred dollars. So there was just no reason for this one to exist at this price. Doesn't mean it's a bad phone. It's just a bad price.

• 1:08:07David Imel?

  If it was 450, it would make, it would be just like the other iPhone SEs.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  Three seventy-five. Take it or leave it.

• 1:08:15David Imel?

  Dang.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  Single camera, no MagSafe, 60 Hz notch? What are we talking about? It's 2025. Why does this still have 60 Hz, to be honest?

• 1:08:25David Imel?

  Well, they just added 120 to the new ones.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  The Moto G Play is a hundred and eighty dollars and it has a hundred and twenty Hz display.

• 1:08:32Speaker 04

  But it doesn't have a little apple on the back of it.

• 1:08:33David Imel?

  That's actually true.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is true.

• 1:08:35David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, anyway, yeah, bad. Regular phone, bad price. So that one bust of the year.

• 1:08:42David Imel?

  Bad phone, bad price.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Pretty bad. Yeah, don't buy that one.

• 1:08:44Andrew Manganelli?

  This, I think this may have gotten the most

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Chatter.

• 1:08:47Andrew Manganelli?

  Comments on.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  Go on.

• 1:08:48Andrew Manganelli?

  My favorite thing about this was the Nothing community hates the Nothing Phone 3 so much.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  I mentioned.

• 1:08:54Andrew Manganelli?

  They were almost, they almost seemed mad that an iPhone 1 bust. Because they think the Nothing Phone 3 should have won Bust of the Year. They hate that phone.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  They were pretty hard.

• 1:09:05Andrew Manganelli?

  So much.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  Look, yeah.

• 1:09:07David Imel?

  That phone's fine.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  It's just Nothing's, Nothing's strategy with phones is just all, kind of all over the place this year. Like the 3A and the 3A Pro were pretty interesting. And then they, they got rid of the glyphs with the 3 and then

• 1:09:19David Imel?

  3A Lite.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  And then 3A and then the community edition. There's just a whole lot happening.

• 1:09:24David Imel?

  It's a whole lot.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  I don't, it was a seven, that was 799, that phone, when it launched. I'm pretty sure.

• 1:09:29David Imel?

  That's actually a lot.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  So it was not good for the price either. And I think people expected a very different direction with like making the glyphs on the back more functional. And instead it was like, here's a little screen with 25 pixels. Spin the bottle. And we're like, what are you doing? So yeah, that actually did get a mention in Bust of the Year.

• 1:09:45Andrew Manganelli?

  I think like it got posted as this is the runner up and everyone's like, it should have won.

• 1:09:50David Imel?

  I don't, no, the E is worse. Sorry. The right, the Nothing Phone 3 is a fine phone. It's just that they went with the worst possible gimmick and tried to make it seem good. That's really the problem. And it was too expensive. Those are the, the main problems. Otherwise the OS is fantastic.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  It was a usable phone.

• 1:10:08David Imel?

  It's a fine phone.

• 1:10:09Andrew Manganelli?

  I think the Nothing 3A Lite is a worse phone because of the CMF phone. 2 Pro, Pro 2.

• 1:10:16David Imel?

  Oh.

• 1:10:17Andrew Manganelli?

  Like, I think the light is a

• 1:10:18David Imel?

  Just as a

• 1:10:19Andrew Manganelli?

  There's no reason to ever buy that phone when the CMF phone 2 Pro is around.

• 1:10:23David Imel?

  Yeah, the budget companies, budget lines, budget

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  Pro phone.

• 1:10:27David Imel?

  Pro phone is better than the, I'm not even gonna do this. I can't even do this.

• 1:10:32Andrew Manganelli?

  Cause you forgot already where you were.

• 1:10:34David Imel?

  Yeah, I did forget where I was.

• 1:10:35Andrew Manganelli?

  Can I throw one more in here?

• 1:10:36David Imel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:37Andrew Manganelli?

  Maybe this is self-loathing.

• 1:10:38David Imel?

  Hmm.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Interesting. Pixel?

• 1:10:40Andrew Manganelli?

  Pixel 10, man.

• 1:10:41David Imel?

  Really? What? I thought you said phone of the year earlier.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  I heard some of these takes.

• 1:10:45Andrew Manganelli?

  Did I say that?

• 1:10:46David Imel?

  I have a hot take later.

• 1:10:47Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay, well, yeah. I think this segues into phone of the year very well, but like

• 1:10:51David Imel?

  Wait a sec.

• 1:10:52Andrew Manganelli?

  Pixel 10 base?

• 1:10:54David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:55Andrew Manganelli?

  Being, it was $800, right?

• 1:10:58David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:58Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, $800.

• 1:11:00David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:00Andrew Manganelli?

  It got triple cameras, but all, but they're downgraded cameras compared to the Pixel 9.

• 1:11:06David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:06Andrew Manganelli?

  The Pixel 9A sensors, or can't, whatever. The 128GB base storage. Now, watching, I, if you told me in the Pixel 7 days that the iPhone base would be the better deal and have more features and stuff, I would never believe you. But we're in a place right now where even though it has one more camera, the base iPhone has more base storage for the same price and like, and has 120Hz, it has all the other things now. I feel like I got scammed. I still love the phone. Don't get me wrong. Like, it's a fine phone. I am enjoying it. But I can't believe they're up at $800 and we're finding an iPhone has a better deal. That just feels so un-Pixel.

• 1:11:49David Imel?

  They just dropped the price. I mean, it's on sale, but it's $599.

• 1:11:53Andrew Manganelli?

  It's been on sale for like a month now. Be proof that it's not, dude.

• 1:11:56David Imel?

  Which, yeah, which is proof that that's what it should have been at, which is what they used to be at, which is what the 16E is.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 1:12:05Andrew Manganelli?

  Did you guys all just agree with me?

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  Well, I'm saying like, that phone for $7.99 is a bad deal. But you could see it being a pretty good deal at $5.99. Yeah. The 16E is $5.99 and is a horrible deal. Right, right, right. So that's why it got the award. But I agree that it was a bit of a disappointing year for Pixel. I've used Pixel 10 Pro for a lot of this year as well. Yeah. It's not great. The camera has been fine. The battery is not that great. We were kind of hoping like a lot would come from this Tensor refresh and it didn't.

• 1:12:40Andrew Manganelli?

  It didn't, yeah.

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:42David Imel?

  I have a question that you guys probably don't know the answer to. In Japan.

• 1:12:48Speaker 04

  No idea.

• 1:12:49David Imel?

  Do, are they also on like a carrier system where people just pay monthly for their phones? And then they get into carrier contracts?

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  I assume that was just here.

• 1:12:58David Imel?

  Because I have a big question that's going to lead into the phone of the year that we're about to talk about.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:13:03David Imel?

  And that is that my friend from college just bought a regular iPhone 17. And we, you know, we named it phone of the, well, I guess I'm jumping the gun. We named it phone of the year. And we talk about how like they made all these upgrades and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I have literally never seen one in the wild.

• 1:13:24David Imel?

  So my question.

• 1:13:25Andrew Manganelli?

  Cause they're all in cases.

• 1:13:26David Imel?

  Probably. So my question becomes like in America where, or in the West where everything's a carrier contract. And I see so many Pros. And I'm for some reason seeing Airs.

• 1:13:37Speaker 03

  I think that's just in America. In Europe, I don't think you're locked into carrier contracts like that.

• 1:13:41David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Very American.

• 1:13:42David Imel?

  But the reason I say Japan is because the iPhone is also incredibly popular in Japan.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  It is, yeah.

• 1:13:47David Imel?

  Where in Europe, like it's a mix. It's a, it's a grab bag. So that's kind of my question. I just like, it's crazy that the iPhone 17 both is like the best value phone this year. And also I haven't really seen that many because everyone keeps using the carriers. So.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  This could be the same exact reason you why you see so many Airs and Folds is because the masses that are using the 17s are like slowly trickling out and getting them in a way that people who just snap up the Air. Probably aren't. So I think it's kind of like the Camry where you don't realize how many you see. Right. That they're everywhere. That's true. And the fact that it looks like the last iPhone. It looks just like the last iPhone. So it's hard to know. If you got the silver one or whatever, you'll never know.

• 1:14:30Andrew Manganelli?

  I think also, part of it is like, phone of the year doesn't necessarily mean most popular.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:36Andrew Manganelli?

  Mostly because consumerism, and so many people are okay with spending way more than they really need to. But like, I see this as like, the people watching our videos who are going to try and find like.

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  Enthusiasts.

• 1:14:49Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, like, it's not just bang for your buck, but there's so many things about this phone that just nailed it this year that I think our audience would be more inclined to be like impressed by it.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Well, I guess we'll just get right into it. The phone of the year is the iPhone 17.

• 1:15:03Andrew Manganelli?

  It is?

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it also won most improved, which we skipped over, but that's basically hand in hand here. So iPhone 17, they finally did the thing, 120 hertz, much brighter, better display. Thank God, it's way overdue. The other thing is the much improved selfie camera, which is across the entire lineup, which is sneaky, great upgrade. And I'm expecting to see a lot of people copy that. The big square sensor where you can do horizontal or vertical portrait selfies, that's awesome. Yeah. And then doubling the base storage to 256 gigs, also didn't have to do that, but kept the price the same. So now it's a better deal at 256 gigs than Pixels base, than S25's base, than a lot of other phones. And it's just become the easiest phone to recommend. I had a couple of people ask me like this year,

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  "Oh, I'm due for an upgrade, like which phone should I recommend?" And you'd look at the lineup and you'd go, "Oh, you're staying with the iPhone? Okay, I think, yeah, you could probably go with like an old 15 Pro or 16 Pro." Or maybe you should get like a, I don't want to recommend the base though, you'll have a 60 hertz phone for five more years. Now it's just like, oh yeah, get the 17. Yeah. That's the one. That's way easier. Yeah. So, yeah, iPhone 17 won it, and my runner up was the Xiaomi 17 Pro. I've talked a lot about it, this podcast already, in the review. I loved it. The screen on the back is awesome. It's a super complete phone. It's never going to be on sale here in the US, but the fact that I got to test it, it impressed me a lot and it was definitely deserving. And I always mention the phones that have spent the most time in my pocket in between reviews.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  So I'll at least do that again, which is, it started off S25 Ultra for like the first half of the year. Then it went to a whole lot of Pixel 10 Pro, and then OnePlus 15. So that's me.

• 1:16:44David Imel?

  I was gonna say how Samsung has fallen. Next year, like, no, we've, we've had the S Ultra phones in, in the, like, lineup of this for, like, ever since the S21 Ultra, basically.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, the really good ones.

• 1:16:59David Imel?

  Cause S20 Ultra was horrible. I think that was bust of the year that year.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:17:02David Imel?

  But like, yeah, the fact that they're not in the lineup at all is kinda crazy. It kinda just shows how they just totally went super boring. Until we get the trifold in the beginning of next.

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's crazy. The same company is doing like incremental baby steps on their biggest, best phone and is also like, by the way, here's one that folds twice. And like, what do we, that's, that's the same company.

• 1:17:22David Imel?

  Next year's gonna be crazy, cause we're gonna have that trifold, then we're gonna also have the iPhone foldable allegedly.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Seems like it's gonna be next year.

• 1:17:27David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  We'll see. Would you go from a mini to a fold?

• 1:17:33Speaker 03

  That's why I'm not buying a Pro.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:17:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm waiting for the fold.

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  Wow, two areas glued together.

• 1:17:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:39David Imel?

  To the fold.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  Could be awesome. Rumor has it, it's 2026, so.

• 1:17:44David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  We shall see.

• 1:17:45Speaker 04

  Wait, didn't Adam have a hot take?

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:17:48Speaker 04

  That's around this category.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  It was Pixel related. My hot take was that Pixel 10 was phone of the year.

• 1:17:54Speaker 04

  Can you press that button for me?

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:17:58Speaker 04

  I'm surprised you actually did it. I have the Pro.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03Speaker 04

  And I feel like I spent too much. Like, I should've just gotten the 10, because the 10 does everything the Pro does. It's super on sale almost immediately. If you don't get it at launch, like, if you just wait a couple of weeks, it's on sale. And besides that, the AI, I hate to say it, but the AI stuff that the Pixel has been doing, compared to something like the iPhone, which is just another iPhone, it's actually been very useful. And like, thinking about switching phones, even Android to Android, I'm like, ah, I'm gonna miss some of those AI features though. Like, I really enjoy them. I mean, I could go to Samsung, because Samsung just has all the Gemini features anyway.

• 1:18:38David Imel?

  I was, that's exactly how I would pick it apart, is like, if I were giving an AI of the year award, it would go straight to Google, and then by proxy, also Samsung, because they use all the same stuff. And then I would also say, to your point of the Pixel 10 Pro feeling like a ripoff, I think it's because it was a worse deal than ever this year.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:55David Imel?

  And it doesn't mean that 10 is phone of the year good, it just means it's a way better deal and feature set, because it has all the same software features and it has the same tensor chip.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  And triple cameras.

• 1:19:08Speaker 04

  I just feel like if you're gonna, like, if you take, I mean, I know this is a hard ask, but if you take someone out of the like, Apple versus Android world, like a fresh person coming into the world, who's just looking for their first smartphone, and they have no, no horse in any race. And they're like, give me a phone, I'd probably give them a Pixel. Because it's doing more interesting things than the iPhone. It doesn't matter.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  You're giving them the phone, or they have to, they don't have to pay for the phone?

• 1:19:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, no, I'm giving them the phone.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  You're giving them a Pixel 10?

• 1:19:35Speaker 04

  Like, the best phone, I'm giving you a phone, here's a Pixel 10.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  That's interesting, I, that's an interesting question, I would probably give that person an S20, no, I would give them an S25 Ultra, probably.

• 1:19:48Speaker 04

  Just like the most beefiest, crazy phone.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  Stable, it's the most boring, the most stable, it doesn't improve that much year to year, but it always has good battery, good cameras, good software updates, good screen, every time.

• 1:19:59David Imel?

  You wanna give someone fresh to the universe a boring phone?

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I don't wanna give them a phone that, like, if I give them a Xiaomi 17 Pro, next year, there's gonna be like, a totally different design, and no screen on the back, but this other crazy feature, and they're gonna have gotten used to one thing and have to switch around. People just want stability.

• 1:20:16David Imel?

  That's exactly what we went through in the early 2010s, okay? Every single year was fresh as hell.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

• 1:20:23David Imel?

  Consistency was not a thing, I don't know.

• 1:20:25Speaker 04

  As the only Pixel 10 owner here, Andrew, what do you think of my take?

• 1:20:28Andrew Manganelli?

  I think you're wrong. Well, it's funny, cuz you, you keep thinking, I feel like I should go down, I keep feeling, I feel like I should've spent another $100, and went up, because then I would've gotten 256 base storage, and better cameras, and a better, I mostly wanted the yellow, which was my ultimate downfall.

• 1:20:47Speaker 04

  The only reason I got the Pro was because I wanted the porcelain.

• 1:20:50Andrew Manganelli?

  It would be so bad, yeah.

• 1:20:55Andrew Manganelli?

  I think, one thing you did mention, though, which is kind of a comment I wanted to address, is, there's so many people, we judge everything on MSRP at launch. Which is like, a lot of people keep saying, well, this was actually a great phone, once it went on sale, blah, blah, blah. It's like, that can be true, but it's so hard for us to ever base that off of, I know we've said this a thousand times, but like, I can't, we can't things off of carrier deals and two for one deals and like on sale, the pixel will go. It's great to know. It's great. It's great to say like, hey, this kind of sucks at $800, but if you're willing to wait three months or Black Friday, the pixel will be way cheaper.

• 1:21:30David Imel?

  I mean, MSRP stands for manufacturer's suggested retail price, and that means that that's what they think that that device is worth. So if that's their judgment of it, then that's probably what we should be basing it on.

• 1:21:41Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah. And I could also, you could probably make the argument that things that constantly go on sale means that a suggested price probably wasn't the best idea in the first place and it's correcting pretty quickly.

• 1:21:54David Imel?

  Well, Google should figure that out because they do the same thing every single year. Just make it cheaper to begin with and you'll sell way more. They had that. They had it for a while. I know they did.

• 1:22:03Speaker 01

  They almost did it.

• 1:22:04Andrew Manganelli?

  Remember when like

• 1:22:05David Imel?

  They could have had it all.

• 1:22:05Andrew Manganelli?

  We were saying that like Pixel 7 was too good of a deal to not even look at the Pro and people on the Google team were like, I guess we should just make it more expensive. Ha, ha, ha. Well, you should have. You really screwed the pooch on that one, man.

• 1:22:17David Imel?

  Well, they shouldn't have made it $300 more for the Pro before. Like, that was insane.

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  Overall, though, I'm pretty happy with the awards. I think that people picked up on some trends of like this. I don't know. When's the last time Samsung or when's the last time Google won zero awards and Samsung S series won zero awards?

• 1:22:36David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:37Andrew Manganelli?

  Probably never.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  First time in a while.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  iPhone winning bust and winner in the same year is hilarious. I think that's also happened before. Didn't HTC pull that off?

• 1:22:47Andrew Manganelli?

  No, they did most improved and bust.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  Oof.

• 1:22:51Andrew Manganelli?

  And we, they asked for the most improved trophy. So we sent them the toilet bowl trophy also.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  Hilarious. Yeah. Anyway, so let us know in the comments. If you agree, disagree. We enjoy reading all the

• 1:23:03Andrew Manganelli?

  Let me speed run a couple of the comments. All right. The most comment was wearing a blazer and a hoodie is diabolical.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  Last year.

• 1:23:11Andrew Manganelli?

  I thought it looked sweet, but I have no fashion sense at all. So maybe that tracks.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  I loved it.

• 1:23:16Andrew Manganelli?

  All right. Next comment.

• 1:23:17David Imel?

  Good lord.

• 1:23:17Andrew Manganelli?

  This one recently has been nagging at me a little bit, but there's so many people who love to say, you're in a bubble. You don't get to experience all the other phones, but like, we're all in our own bubbles.

• 1:23:29David Imel?

  Yeah. I said at the beginning, this is my awards.

• 1:23:31Andrew Manganelli?

  I thought you were super clear about it this year.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Phones I test.

• 1:23:35Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah. Phones you test and ones like. It's within the US bubble because we live in the US.

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  Unfortunately.

• 1:23:44Andrew Manganelli?

  We try, like, we probably get more phones than the average US reviewer gets. And you definitely try them. But I thought you were very clear this year, like, these are my awards, the things that I like.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  It's, I also said that specifically because other YouTubers also do their own awards. If you have your, people were quote tweeting my list and giving their own set of awards, which is, maybe they have used some of those phones, maybe they haven't, but like, anyone can make their own set of what they think is the blank of the year. I give mine because I think I have a unique perspective of I've been able to test all these devices. So here's my perspective from what I've tested. And then other people will give theirs. So, yeah, I'm, I'm sticking with mine. Obviously.

• 1:24:22Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay, I went through a couple of these just in our normal thing. Okay, here's one that made me mad.

• 1:24:29Andrew Manganelli?

  No, and it has nothing to do with our audience. It has to do with YouTube. Where's the timestamps?

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  Okay, I added them at, at launch.

• 1:24:36Andrew Manganelli?

  Did you?

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  They were there, yeah. So they were there for a couple hours and then I saw that comment and I went back up and I was like, they're gone? So I went back to the description. They're all still sitting there. So I simply deleted a letter and added a letter and hit save again and all the timestamps came back.

• 1:24:51Andrew Manganelli?

  Why does YouTube do this?

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  So we do this with the pod. We've, we've had this struggle before. Obviously, this is a video that we should be timestamping. So I, I'm sorry, but also like not, because I, it's not my fault. But yeah, the timestamps should be back. And if they disappear again, just ping me on Twitter again and I'll put them back.

• 1:25:06Andrew Manganelli?

  There was a comment that did the timestamps and everyone's like, you're a savior. And it's like, they were in the description the whole time. But just like, yeah, YouTube. What the fuck, man?

• 1:25:17Speaker 01

  Please let that.

• 1:25:18Andrew Manganelli?

  I want a public apology. Fix this.

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  Also, this isn't like UI, like, this isn't like a YouTube feature where you click the timestamp button and add them. This is if you decide in your description to type out timestamps with titles, it auto detects it in the description of the video and adds timestamps. Everyone has sort of figured out that that's how you do that at this point. But there's never been official UI from YouTube to add timestamps to a video.

• 1:25:43Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:44Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:25:44Andrew Manganelli?

  It's unofficial.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  It's a super useful feature.

• 1:25:46Andrew Manganelli?

  Like a hashtag.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  This should be the easiest.

• 1:25:48Speaker 03

  Like a trillion dollars in data center investment away from pulling this off. They're gonna get it soon.

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  It seems very doable.

• 1:25:54Andrew Manganelli?

  They basically have it already, right? You can pick where ads go in the middle of your video through a UI system, right?

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  But Andrew, Andrew.

• 1:26:02David Imel?

  Ads make them money, okay?

• 1:26:05Andrew Manganelli?

  It can insert dynamic ads into timestamps, but I can't just pick that timestamp and write this text.

• 1:26:12David Imel?

  Do timestamps make them money?

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  They got rid of annotations, they got rid of all the clutter. I think it'd be super easy to add a timestamp feature, please.

• 1:26:22Andrew Manganelli?

  I wanna scream. It makes me so mad.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  Seems so obvious. By the way, the video we did, the Smartphone Awards, is a 2.4 by 1 aspect ratio, which meant it's not supported for end cards. So I couldn't add end cards to the video.

• 1:26:34David Imel?

  Really?

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  It's an unsupported aspect ratio, which I thought was a bummer. But yeah, that's another weird quirk about this video.

• 1:26:41David Imel?

  I saw a lot of comments about that, too.

• 1:26:44Speaker 03

  Why didn't this autoplay?

• 1:26:46Andrew Manganelli?

  I think the last thing I have here is, there's a lot of love for the Red Magic 11 Pro.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah.

• 1:26:52Andrew Manganelli?

  They wanted some love there, yeah.

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have flirted with the idea of adding a gaming category every year, but I never really test that many gaming phones. And I'm also not even that into gaming. A lot of the gaming phones I end up testing, I end up looking at them through the lens of, are they a good phone the rest of the time that you're not gaming?

• 1:27:10David Imel?

  Right.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  So like the two or three gaming phones we got this year were good phones, but this phone had like a liquid like cooling loop that was like visible through the glass back. It was super interesting. I'm pretty sure Zach tore it down. It was a really interesting interior. Like a phone on the side of the phone blowing hot air out of it. Like it was a cool phone.

• 1:27:27David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  But it didn't really, it wouldn't have won like my design award. It wouldn't have won my best big phone, so it just kinda didn't get mentioned. So that's valid. I just haven't, like, there is no gaming category, so.

• 1:27:39Andrew Manganelli?

  Did you see what it looked like in your story about the?

• 1:27:44Speaker 01

  I saw someone screenshot it. It looked kinda weird.

• 1:27:45Andrew Manganelli?

  You took like a story that we were shooting Smartphone Awards, and because it's like a, it's like a clear back, but it has this like faded black border, and for some reason, the way the light was hitting the phone and you took it, it just looked like this almost see-through phone with black bezels, and no one could figure out what it was.

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. That's funny.

• 1:28:04Andrew Manganelli?

  It was, yeah, it was kinda funny.

• 1:28:05David Imel?

  It does have 80 watt wired and wireless charging.

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, they got wireless charging in there, which is cool.

• 1:28:09David Imel?

  80 watt wireless.

• 1:28:11Speaker 03

  Is that just like a space heater?

• 1:28:13David Imel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's probably losing 90%.

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  It's kinda crazy how many phones charge at 80 to 100 watts.

• 1:28:18David Imel?

  Especially when they don't have Qi 2, and so they can't perfectly align. They're probably losing so much heat.

• 1:28:24Speaker 01

  Wait, 80 watt wireless?

• 1:28:26David Imel?

  It has both. 80 watt wired and 80 watt wireless.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:28:30David Imel?

  Losing a lot of heat.

• 1:28:31Speaker 01

  You need like the perfect charger.

• 1:28:33Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay, I have one more thing I noticed. Quite a few people mentioned, Ellis, did you use the PS3 startup sound?

• 1:28:41Speaker 03

  Let me, let me, I, this was a real, this was, this was a healthy learning experience for me. You know what I mean? Because I went into this, I was like, I want to use music to explain what makes this Smartphone Awards different from all the other Smartphone Awards we've done in the past, because that's something that we can't exactly express visually. I do think this was the most beautiful set and the most beautiful lighting we've ever had for Smartphone Awards. But also, we're, we're, we're at the top of our game right now. We are, we are, we are chugging out these excellent videos, and I wanted the theme of this Smartphone Awards orally to be prestige. And I thought very hard about that. And I said, how can we, in about eight seconds, communicate prestige and, and tradition?

• 1:29:26Speaker 03

  And the fact that we've been doing this longer than anyone else has been doing this. And I thought, you know what would be great?

• 1:29:31David Imel?

  Playstation.

• 1:29:32Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  Playstation.

• 1:29:34Speaker 03

  For 300 years, for 300 years.

• 1:29:38David Imel?

  Before America.

• 1:29:39Speaker 03

  Orchestras have been tuning the exact same way, with an oboe starting, then the concert master.

• 1:29:46David Imel?

  Oh, that's true.

• 1:29:47Speaker 03

  Then the rest of the orchestra. I thought, I thought that for three, because that had been happening for 300 years, everyone would know that's the case. But apparently, this little company that makes a little box called the Experia rewrote what that sound was for everyone in the world. And I probably should have known that. But yes, apparently, you cannot use the sound of an orchestra tuning without people being like, oh, that's the Uncharted machine.

• 1:30:17David Imel?

  Ellis, Ellis, Ellis. You think too highly of us. It's an expensive.

• 1:30:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, so yes, no.

• 1:30:22David Imel?

  Almost $2,000.

• 1:30:23Speaker 03

  My goal was not to use the Playstation. Actually, fun fact, that is the second original piece of music that has ever been written in a video here. Rufus and I wrote that from scratch and, and, and produced it ourselves. So no, I didn't use the PlayStation 3 startup sound in our video.

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  It's just a great minds thinking alike situation.

• 1:30:44Speaker 03

  I guess so. And also, how dare everyone pay so much attention to that? And I didn't see one comment about the toilet flush I used in the bus of the years, Carl.

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  I was shocked that nobody mentioned that. I will say, we, we put so many Easter eggs in videos that it's sort of trained people to look for Easter eggs, even some of which don't exist. So I am both shocked that they didn't notice the toilet flush, but also not shocked that they assigned PS3 sound to the others. To the oboe. So we'll just have to take sound. We'll win some, lose some.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  To the oboe.

• 1:31:21Speaker 03

  Anyway, but thank you for listening.

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  It's trivia time.

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:27Speaker 04

  It's trivia, dude. Someone yelled at me last week for not doing that. So, real quick, Ellis, what's your battery percentage right now?

• 1:31:33Speaker 03

  Oh, shit. Okay, so, uh, may have forgotten to charge my phone last night, so we got a little juice in David's car this morning.

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  How was it even, dude, you could have plugged, oh no, you couldn't have because you have lightning.

• 1:31:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I wireless charged in David's car. Also, it's a 12 mini, which doesn't really line up with the Tesla's.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  It really does not.

• 1:31:52Speaker 03

  So it mostly just gets hot. Anyway, anyone want to guess what my battery percentage is at?

• 1:31:55Speaker 04

  27.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  20.

• 1:31:56Speaker 03

  27, 26. Marquez?

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  34.

• 1:32:00Speaker 03

  34. You guys give me too much credit. I have a solid 18% right now.

• 1:32:05Speaker 01

  Honestly, you know how phones sometimes will just die even though they have like 18%? I'm sure, surprised yours didn't. Like, that's just not misreading the battery.

• 1:32:13Speaker 04

  All right, next trivia question. So earlier, we were talking about Android XR. They introduced a new UI toolkit called Jetpack Compose what? And it looks kind of like if Material U expressive had a baby with glass, liquid glass. And I think it looks kind of dope. I hope they don't bring it to phones, but it's.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  I skipped this part of the keynote and I remember, dude, I swear to God, as I was skipping this part of the keynote, I was like, Adam actually watched this thing. Not because of trivia, just because I knew that you would be interested in the developer stuff. That's when he slowed down to 1X and was like, yeah.

• 1:32:52Speaker 03

  I'm not even joking. That's the first thought I had.

• 1:32:55Speaker 04

  I knew it would come to bite me in the ass.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  All right. Well, those of you who 1X that part will know the answer, but we'll think about it. We'll be right back.

• 1:33:10Speaker 01

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• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  All right, we're back. Wrapping it up with a couple last thoughts and things that we wanted to at least chat about. One is the Xiaomi SU7 review is finally up. And also chats just in general about The state of Chinese electric cars and what would happen if they came here and how good they are through the lens of checking out this one EV. It's a really good car.

• 1:35:17Andrew Manganelli?

  It's nice.

• 1:35:18Speaker 01

  Um, the conversation is basically it retails for the equivalent of $42,000 in China. And so if we were to get a car like that for $42,000 here, it would be just completely ridiculously out of this league. Good. It feels like a 75, $85,000 car. And I said that in the video. Lots of cool features, really good drive, uh, self-driving, great build quality, all this great software. And you should check out the video if you haven't seen it already. Any other thoughts on it? I just thought it was a, one of the most interesting products of the year that we reviewed.

• 1:35:54Speaker 03

  It has multiple reverb engines in the karaoke system, which like most karaoke systems only have one reverb. So to have multiple reverb in a car, I was like.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  For those, for those confused on what the karaoke system is, this car had software that was really good. It also had, uh,

• 1:36:11Andrew Manganelli?

  Karaoke mode.

• 1:36:12Speaker 01

  Modules that you could buy that would attach to the car, things like an extra speedometer at the top or ambient light bars on the sides to move up and down with your music or USB type C cables at the bottom. And one of them is a pair of high-quality karaoke microphones that will plug in and charge based on the car's battery and will work with the car's built-in karaoke mode in the software. Said software had multiple reverbs and lots of other features. We actually demoed it briefly. It was hilarious. That is a feature that exists in this car. Just one of many.

• 1:36:46Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm just so disappointed you didn't mention the mini fridge.

• 1:36:49Speaker 01

  Ours didn't have that option, I don't think.

• 1:36:51Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 1:36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, but yeah, there is a mini fridge.

• 1:36:53Speaker 03

  Yours did have Douyin built into the back screen, which is Chinese TikTok for anyone curious, which provided me with ample time to scroll Chinese thirst traps and League of Legends live streams. It was quite fun.

• 1:37:07Andrew Manganelli?

  I drove it for like 20 minutes to go get charged. And as I'm like sitting there while it's charging, I'm just like, oh, this thing's got a lot of stuff. And then I was like looking under the center console, thought, oh, Miles and them left some walkie talkies here from when they were doing rollers. And then I clicked them and they like popped in perfectly. I was like, this car has walkie talkies in the bottom of it. Two of them.

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  Built in. They were, they were better than our walkie talkies. We were using them to do our shoots because they had a longer range and were incredibly good and had a long battery life.

• 1:37:37Andrew Manganelli?

  I have a super small gripe, or something that they should add. Okay, so on the left side of the steering wheel, there was a little raised MagSafe puck for you to put your phone on. That needs wireless charging on it.

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  The YU7, it does.

• 1:37:51Andrew Manganelli?

  It does?

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:52Andrew Manganelli?

  They thought of everything.

• 1:37:54Speaker 01

  I thought the same thing. I was like, this is like a little mounting point, but you know, it would take it to the next level if it could charge my phone. The YU7, it does get power, yeah.

• 1:38:02Speaker 04

  So when did we get the YU7?

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I kinda wanna get the hands on the YU7. The YU7 is like the Model Y to this Model 3. Although that's not a good analogy. These are super premium. This is like the, hmm, this is like the Purosangue.

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  One of you guys.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  These cars are essentially stealing design from the other most popular luxury cars that you see everywhere that are successful. So the SU7 just looks like a Porsche in a lot of ways. It has lines from like Lotus and McLaren headlights and like thin embezzled mirrors like a Polestar. But essentially, they just said, let's make a Porsche Taycan, but better.

• 1:38:39Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  And they made a livable, incredibly cheap version of a Porsche Taycan, and it's amazing. The YU7 is more of an SUV. It's a little taller. And if you look up the Ferrari Purosangue and put it next to a YU7, you're like, oh, they just made the Ferrari. The Ferrari is $400,000.

• 1:38:56Speaker 03

  Andrew, the Purosangue is the car that almost burnt my eyebrows off. We were recording exhaust sounds and I was like, oh, I'll just sit behind the car while Miles revs it. And it had a hot exhaust.

• 1:39:10Andrew Manganelli?

  Literally blew his hair back, like.

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:12Andrew Manganelli?

  Or maybe it's, whatever.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:15Andrew Manganelli?

  One thing I found funny, I couldn't get over that there was a me logo on the front of it. There's just like something about a phone.

• 1:39:24Andrew Manganelli?

  A phone logo being on a car, which now makes me wonder if there was an Apple car, like, how long would it take me to get used to seeing an Apple?

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  An Apple logo.

• 1:39:31Andrew Manganelli?

  Like hood ornament or logo on a car?

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:34Andrew Manganelli?

  It was kinda silly. It almost made it look less expensive, if that makes sense.

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:39Speaker 04

  I was just thinking.

• 1:39:40Andrew Manganelli?

  It felt more gaudy.

• 1:39:42Speaker 04

  I don't know if I would think of that as premium.

• 1:39:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was one of the things I said at the beginning. A lot of these older car companies that you do think of as premium have this like history of premium. So you assign that shape with prestige. And Xiaomi doesn't have any of that history. So they kinda just, yeah, they just borrow prestige shapes. They just borrow the Porsche silhouette. Obviously their logo is like, we don't associate that with prestige, but they just borrowed that a lot. And the more I think of this car, the more crazy features that are just coming to my, back to my mind from testing them. So I'll just blurt some of them out. One of them was the 50 watt wireless chargers in the center that charged the Xiaomi 17 Pro I was using extremely fast.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Another one is the speakers in the headrests behind me, which no matter what phone and navigation I was using, would separate out the navigation voice from the music I was playing from the same phone. And would play it just in the speaker while the rest of the music played in the rest of the car.

• 1:40:38David Imel?

  So much better.

• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  I don't, I can't underestimate how awesome that was. Like I would be using Waze and Spotify on the same phone at the same time and it would separate just the Waze voice and play it on the speaker and keep the music the same. That was awesome too. The ambient lighting in the car, at night it was brighter and more visible, would pulse with the bass of the sound I was listening to in the color of the album art of the song that I was listening to.

• 1:41:06Speaker 04

  Did Dolby work with them?

• 1:41:07Speaker 01

  It was crazy. I don't know, but it was like, it was built into the software. It just knew. What else? There was this full on like rad tuner equivalent from Rivian where essentially the Xiaomi, you could change all of the driving dynamics with a custom mode. You could flip it to be fully rear wheel drive if you want, fully front wheel drive if you want, change the brake calibration, change the acceleration rate and how much it slowed down and regen. All this stuff was in the software.

• 1:41:30David Imel?

  That's crazy.

• 1:41:31Andrew Manganelli?

  I noticed that because I was flipping through the drive modes and one was called miles. But it was lowercase. I was like, huh, they didn't capitalize this. I was like, wait, they use kilometers? Oh, this is Miles, our employee who made one.

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. There was also, stop me if I'm getting boring. There's another one where you could mirror the screen of your phone in real time. For some reason. For some reason. Cause it's a Xiaomi phone and a Xiaomi car. CarPlay, full screen, the whole thing, 16 inch CarPlay, wireless CarPlay. Why do they even have CarPlay? I guess because people will buy it and not have iPhones? Or not have iPhones. And will have iPhones? Yeah. So.

• 1:42:06Andrew Manganelli?

  If a.

• 1:42:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:08Andrew Manganelli?

  Hold on, I didn't know it had CarPlay. If a main competitor smartphone company can put the competitor's CarPlay inside. Suck it Tesla and Rivian and everyone not giving me CarPlay and Android Auto, get over yourselves.

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  Didn't they say Tesla was finally gonna add CarPlay?

• 1:42:24Andrew Manganelli?

  Are they?

• 1:42:24Speaker 01

  Allegedly.

• 1:42:25Andrew Manganelli?

  I'll give them a ton of credit for doing that. They should do it.

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. They said that, well, everyone assumes that they need that to like pump their sales up again. Yeah. But they haven't done it yet. But they might do it. Because according.

• 1:42:35Speaker 03

  That's what they need.

• 1:42:36Speaker 01

  Well, remember, according to Apple, like 95% of people wouldn't buy a car without CarPlay in it. Yeah, that was the best CarPlay experience I've had in a car. Yeah. Anyway, the list goes on. Shout out to Hugo Barra, who, ex-Google guy, friend of the show, had him on a show one time. He was able to source this for us because he was also a big guy at Xiaomi and that's how he was able to get us the car.

• 1:43:00Andrew Manganelli?

  What would it take for you to want this car? Assuming it was sold here?

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  To want it?

• 1:43:04Andrew Manganelli?

  Like.

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  Nothing, nothing.

• 1:43:07Andrew Manganelli?

  Like actually buy it? Like, okay, it's available for sale. Price aside.

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:43:12Andrew Manganelli?

  Like what? Would you just buy it? Like no matter what?

• 1:43:16Speaker 01

  I mean, I already have a daily that I love, but if I didn't, yeah, I would, I would get this car.

• 1:43:19Andrew Manganelli?

  Even if it was like the price of the daily that you love?

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:43:23Andrew Manganelli?

  Cause what, we don't know what it would realistically cost if you brought it here, you know, so like.

• 1:43:28Speaker 01

  I mean, if I didn't have a car and I was like trying to pick a car, I would pick the SU7 up until about 75, $80,000.

• 1:43:36Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay.

• 1:43:36Speaker 01

  It's really good. Do you like it more than the Lucid Air Sapphire? No, but that car is $250,000 and I would pick that car, pretty much anything over 250, but like, yeah, the, the Xiaomi is. I would pick it over any Tesla. Yeah. I think I would pick it over any, like the Lucids that I tested with the air suspension that are not the Sapphire. I would probably pick this Xiaomi over those. I just wish it had a little more range because the Lucids have like 405 or miles of range. But everything else about the Xiaomi was awesome. So. Yeah. Really good. Very nice.

• 1:44:09Andrew Manganelli?

  Can I, um. There's a lot of chatter on Twitter, which mostly was like, wow, these cars are amazing. I'm sad we don't have them in America. There's a lot of Tesla fanboys absolutely freaking out about this and being pretty mad, which kind of makes it seem like it's doing really good.

• 1:44:24Speaker 01

  Well, it's really funny. I reviewed this car. People on YouTube went, oh, cool car, and commented about the car. People on threads went, oh, cool feature, and commented about the feature. People on threads saw it and went, oh, let's talk about how this compares to Tesla. Twitter. That's how Twitter is. So I saw that, too.

• 1:44:42Andrew Manganelli?

  That's very funny.

• 1:44:43Speaker 03

  It's so weird that like the website where people get paid to say nice things about Tesla. People say nice things about Tesla. Like, who would ever expect that?

• 1:44:50Andrew Manganelli?

  It was very obvious when all the meme comments, you'd click on their profile and dollar sign TSLA was in it every single time.

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  A lot of them were like, well, this car doesn't have self-driving, so it's not as good.

• 1:45:02Andrew Manganelli?

  Self-driving saves lives. That was an actual comment I saw.

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  I guess you could just reduce every car to, does it have Tesla self-driving or not? And if that's your version of an advanced take on cars, then keep shipping that. But I think there's a lot of interesting things about this product.

• 1:45:14Speaker 03

  Most Teslas don't have Teslas.

• 1:45:17Speaker 01

  Ignore that. Ignore that. Ignore that. Yeah, this was, this was a really good, complete product in a lot of ways, and that was worth talking about.

• 1:45:26David Imel?

  Well, speaking of Tesla, really quick, sort of.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Where are we in the segment already? This link is still here. Wait, are we talking about this?

• 1:45:34David Imel?

  Have you seen this?

• 1:45:35Speaker 01

  I watched this clip.

• 1:45:35Andrew Manganelli?

  You watched this clip?

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  I can't tell. Do we know anything else about this clip?

• 1:45:39David Imel?

  We know what happens. Yes.

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  Okay, so where is this from?

• 1:45:41David Imel?

  I'm gonna explain something to you. Okay, so we all know the Tesla Optimus robot, right? We all know that they're remote-controlled.

• 1:45:48Andrew Manganelli?

  We do. Elon says it's not.

• 1:45:49David Imel?

  Not everybody thinks like that.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  Well, you have to phrase it like, this one is remote-controlled.

• 1:45:54David Imel?

  It's pretty clear.

• 1:45:55Speaker 03

  If you leave the cookies out on Christmas Eve.

• 1:45:59David Imel?

  So there's this incredible clip of a Tesla Optimus robot who had been serving people water bottles. And, you know, I've been serving them, you know, autonomously, not. And then, at one point, the robot just picks its hands up.

• 1:46:17David Imel?

  Takes off an invisible headset and then just falls backwards.

• 1:46:21Andrew Manganelli?

  And like just minorly bumps the table, gets frustrated and then

• 1:46:26David Imel?

  So beautiful.

• 1:46:26Andrew Manganelli?

  Like at first I'm like, oh, that's so funny. It takes his headset off, but then it just like freezes and just fall like comedically falls backwards through a like curtain.

• 1:46:35Speaker 03

  Guys, guys, guys, but have you tried version 14 yet?

• 1:46:38David Imel?

  Oh, yeah, true.

• 1:46:39Speaker 03

  Tell me, have you tried?

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  This clip is outdated as long as version 14 exists.

• 1:46:43David Imel?

  The, the best part about this is that this event was called the Tesla autonomy visualized event.

• 1:46:48Speaker 01

  Oh, that's where it came from?

• 1:46:49David Imel?

  This was not autonomous.

• 1:46:51Speaker 01

  It's not autonomous.

• 1:46:53Andrew Manganelli?

  That got the person who was wearing the headset so frustrated.

• 1:46:58Speaker 01

  Somebody picked up a water bottle for themselves. They're like, I'm out, I'm out.

• 1:47:02Andrew Manganelli?

  One of the water bottles like explodes. Watch right here when it falls down.

• 1:47:08Speaker 01

  This is brutal.

• 1:47:09David Imel?

  He hits it so hard.

• 1:47:09Speaker 01

  This is a tough clip.

• 1:47:10David Imel?

  Yeah, it's beautiful.

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  You know, this will make the headlines, but none of this successful autonomy of the robot will make headlines, guys.

• 1:47:16David Imel?

  All right. So last thing before we go to trivia, a few weeks ago, I had mentioned that Fairphone was going to finally start selling stuff in the U.S. They were going to sell the Fairphone six in the U.S. And they were going to sell the new, the all new Fairbuds XL, which are headphones that, you know, they're, it's confusing when they Fairbuds, they're their XL, but they're not buds. They're actually.

• 1:47:36Speaker 01

  There's also no regular Fairbuds.

• 1:47:38David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:39Speaker 01

  So there's just the XL.

• 1:47:41David Imel?

  Yeah. So anyway, um, I talked about that. And the funny thing about that is that there are, there's this thing called an embargo.

• 1:47:49Andrew Manganelli?

  Wait, there are Fairbuds?

• 1:47:50David Imel?

  Oh.

• 1:47:50Andrew Manganelli?

  Uh, I was like, I'm pretty sure there's Fairbuds.

• 1:47:52David Imel?

  Okay, good, good, good. A week or so ago, um, Fairphone posted a teaser on their Instagram. So do me a favor, click on the link that I put in the show notes.

• 1:48:04David Imel?

  Uh, the Instagram link.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:48:06David Imel?

  Okay. So describe what this video is that they posted.

• 1:48:10Andrew Manganelli?

  Someone pulling up a box and then it says, stay tuned.

• 1:48:13David Imel?

  So what is on the box?

• 1:48:16Andrew Manganelli?

  Braille.

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  A QR code and some braille.

• 1:48:18David Imel?

  Can you scan that QR code?

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  Can I? Let's try.

• 1:48:21David Imel?

  Marques, can you describe where it brought you?

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  It takes me to YouTube video that just says, introducing the improved Fairbuds XL. And it's a 45 second video of

• 1:48:29David Imel?

  Wait, what?

• 1:48:30Speaker 01

  The headphones.

• 1:48:30David Imel?

  No, they changed it. Oh.

• 1:48:33Speaker 03

  Mine takes me there too.

• 1:48:34David Imel?

  Okay, so up until they had literally announced this today, it took you to the YouTube, the waveform episode where I accidentally broke embargo.

• 1:48:45Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:48:45David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:47Speaker 01

  Wow, that's hilarious. That's.

• 1:48:49Speaker 03

  Are you serious?

• 1:48:50David Imel?

  They emailed me about it.

• 1:48:51Speaker 04

  That's so good.

• 1:48:52David Imel?

  They emailed me, they're like, hey David, and then wink, and then they showed the frame, and then I went to it and I was like, oh my god.

• 1:48:58Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:48:59David Imel?

  And in the comments of that post, people say, where does the cure could go? And then someone says, a YouTube podcast?

• 1:49:07David Imel?

  Anyway.

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 1:49:08David Imel?

  These are officially.

• 1:49:09Speaker 01

  Was that Megan Fox?

• 1:49:10David Imel?

  No, Megan Fox was Bieber.

• 1:49:12Speaker 04

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 1:49:14David Imel?

  Shout out to Megan. Uh, anyway, their.

• 1:49:17Speaker 03

  Transformers was lit.

• 1:49:18David Imel?

  Their new headphones, they sent them to me, they're, they're much better than the first Fairbuds XL. Um, they have this plush material on them. I forgot to bring them today. I really wish I had brought them.

• 1:49:27Speaker 01

  Oh, I brought mine.

• 1:49:28David Imel?

  You have them?

• 1:49:29Speaker 01

  I have them, but I didn't.

• 1:49:30David Imel?

  Oh.

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  I, it's too late.

• 1:49:34Speaker 04

  Describe them.

• 1:49:35David Imel?

  Alright, they, they have this sort of a knit, like 3D knit kinda material, which is like much higher quality. Uh, you can replace pretty much every aspect of them. The cool thing is that if you had the Fairbuds XL from the last generation, you can actually just buy the new drivers from the new Fairbuds XL. And put them in the old Fairbuds XL. So I think that's awesome. One thing is, they sent me both colors, there's a really nice green one, and then there's a black one. And the joystick on the one, the green one, was broken when I got it, which sucks.

• 1:50:03Speaker 04

  Can you replace it?

• 1:50:04David Imel?

  I don't know.

• 1:50:06Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:50:06Speaker 01

  Good question.

• 1:50:07Speaker 03

  In theory, you should be able to, right?

• 1:50:09David Imel?

  Maybe.

• 1:50:10Speaker 04

  I would think.

• 1:50:10Speaker 01

  Isn't that like the whole thing?

• 1:50:11David Imel?

  Or maybe the whole can. It's like a lot of it. Yeah, it's a lot of it. Uh, anyway, yeah, they're gonna be sold in the US, uh, just like the phones. So Fairphone is like really making a US play now, finally.

• 1:50:23Speaker 01

  $2.29 for these headphones.

• 1:50:24David Imel?

  $2.29.

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  US, uh, through Amazon?

• 1:50:26David Imel?

  US. I think they sounded pretty good. Um, I think you're, you're mostly buying the sustainable, like, better, you know, better.

• 1:50:36David Imel?

  Diamond, blood diamond mine stuff.

• 1:50:38Speaker 01

  I think this is a good category for them. Like, the phone, obviously, is hard because you try to miniaturize everything, and then the headphone is like a little thicker, and that's fine. But like, I imagine they can match all the specs of normal headphones. They aren't like super cramped for space. Like, they can have a 40-hour battery life, and ANC, and microphones everywhere, and all the stuff that you expect out of headphones, and make them comfortable, and make them

• 1:51:00David Imel?

  Repairable, yeah.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  And not really sacrifice. So I think that's a good, that's a successful new category.

• 1:51:06David Imel?

  I think that they sounded way better than the other ones. They, they fold really well. The other ones were just too stiff, and like, they had like this leather, I don't know. It's, it's a lot better now, so.

• 1:51:15Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 1:51:16David Imel?

  Anyway, those are officially out. Um, I apologize.

• 1:51:21Andrew Manganelli?

  To absolutely no one.

• 1:51:22David Imel?

  To absolutely.

• 1:51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny that they lean into it. It's like, kinda when, I've told the Samsung story before on this, SSDs.

• 1:51:29Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:30David Imel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:51:30Speaker 01

  It's kinda reminds me of that. Uh, I did a "What's in my bag?" video, like, many years ago, back when I was about to go to CES, and I had a Samsung X5 SSD in my dr- and, and I've been using it for like weeks, and I was like, "This thing is awesome. I definitely need to shout it out." And I shouted it out, and then I was, as I was adding links to the description for all the stuff in my bag, I couldn't find a link for it, so I just went, "Ow, oh, well." And then I got a email from them after the video published, saying, "We're really glad you like the drive. Uh, embargo's tomorrow." So, just, I'll have a link for you when you want to add that to the description.

• 1:52:01David Imel?

  The funny thing, too, is that that SSD was like, went on to become like, one of the best SSDs for the next like five years, and they discontinued it, and there wasn't anything better than it for another like few years.

• 1:52:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was awesome.

• 1:52:14David Imel?

  Yeah, they were selling like second-hand.

• 1:52:18Speaker 01

  Which is crazy for a Samsung SSD.

• 1:52:20David Imel?

  I know.

• 1:52:21Speaker 01

  But anyway, but anyway.

• 1:52:22Speaker 03

  You don't ever be discontinued.

• 1:52:24David Imel?

  Trivia!

• 1:52:26Speaker 01

  Good answer.

• 1:52:26David Imel?

  Until this podcast crumbles.

• 1:52:28Andrew Manganelli?

  You haven't seen my 2026 plans yet?

• 1:52:30Speaker 03

  Oh, my god.

• 1:52:32David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:32Speaker 04

  No more trivia.

• 1:52:34Speaker 03

  What was the name of the canceled Google ARXR project?

• 1:52:47David Imel?

  Damn it!

• 1:52:55David Imel?

  I don't have the right answer, but I do have a good answer.

• 1:52:57Speaker 03

  I'll give you a hint. No, I won't.

• 1:52:59David Imel?

  Wait.

• 1:53:00Andrew Manganelli?

  Sounds like we all need the hint.

• 1:53:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, this one's a little difficult. I-

• 1:53:05David Imel?

  How much time do we have?

• 1:53:06Speaker 01

  That's the hint.

• 1:53:06Speaker 03

  I wanted to ask a different question, but I realized I spoiled it by putting the answer in memes, because I got an email from some PR agent this week about asking me to come check out a product that they claimed was the world's smartest toilet.

• 1:53:24David Imel?

  We made a joke about that.

• 1:53:24Speaker 01

  Let's go to Japan.

• 1:53:26Speaker 03

  This one was genius, bro.

• 1:53:28David Imel?

  I want the wrapped from that toilet.

• 1:53:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:32Speaker 03

  No, but that was what made it so smart, is it would like analyze your pee and make-

• 1:53:35David Imel?

  Stop, stop.

• 1:53:36Speaker 03

  Make health recommendations. And then also if you-

• 1:53:38Andrew Manganelli?

  Sell your data?

• 1:53:39Speaker 03

  If you bought it for old people and no one used it for 12 hours, it would notify your loved ones, which actually is kinda cool.

• 1:53:46David Imel?

  I mean, I don't use my bathroom for 12 hours.

• 1:53:48Speaker 03

  Okay, we're not gonna get into that. We're not gonna-

• 1:53:52Speaker 03

  Do you want the hint?

• 1:53:53David Imel?

  Yeah, no.

• 1:53:53Andrew Manganelli?

  Well, we can't change it, can we?

• 1:53:55David Imel?

  I'm willing to change it.

• 1:53:56Speaker 03

  I really bungled this one, guys. Alright, flip 'em.

• 1:54:00David Imel?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:54:01Speaker 03

  Okay, alright, who wants to go first?

• 1:54:02David Imel?

  I'm wrong, I'll just say. I wrote Google Beam, because it can beam you to a new location.

• 1:54:07Speaker 03

  I think that is a thing, but it's not this thing.

• 1:54:09David Imel?

  No, it was in Android 4.

• 1:54:11Andrew Manganelli?

  I wrote Google Project Boo-Hun.

• 1:54:16Speaker 04

  It's not Halloween anymore.

• 1:54:17David Imel?

  I said Project Glass.

• 1:54:21Andrew Manganelli?

  What an idiot.

• 1:54:21David Imel?

  Wait, I should've said Air. Was it Air?

• 1:54:24Speaker 03

  The answer was Project Iris. Project-

• 1:54:27Andrew Manganelli?

  That makes way too much sense for a Google Project name.

• 1:54:31Speaker 03

  I know, right?

• 1:54:32David Imel?

  That's why I got cancelled.

• 1:54:32Speaker 03

  Alright, yeah.

• 1:54:33Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:34Speaker 04

  Score time. Marquez has 10, Andrew with 13.

• 1:54:38David Imel?

  I feel like I've had 10 for like a month.

• 1:54:39Speaker 04

  I know, it's been a minute. David with 9. Alright, here's your chance. This is it. You guys can all get a point. Why don't you meet me in the meadow? With the new Android XR stuff, they introduced a new toolkit called Jetpack Compose What? And because we didn't have enough time for Ellis to give you a hint, I will give you guys a hint.

• 1:54:59David Imel?

  Oh, same.

• 1:55:00Speaker 04

  It rhymes with shimmer.

• 1:55:08Speaker 03

  Jetpack Joyride.

• 1:55:11David Imel?

  That doesn't ride with the shimmer.

• 1:55:13Speaker 03

  Jetpack.

• 1:55:14Andrew Manganelli?

  Joy rider.

• 1:55:15Speaker 03

  Joy rider. Jetpack Veritas.

• 1:55:19Andrew Manganelli?

  It'd be really funny if it was just shimmer.

• 1:55:24Speaker 01

  That would actually be hilarious. That would feel really dumb.

• 1:55:27Andrew Manganelli?

  Flip 'em and read.

• 1:55:28Speaker 03

  Flip 'em and read. What do we got?

• 1:55:35David Imel?

  Marques, what did you write?

• 1:55:41Speaker 01

  Jetpack composed Dimmer.

• 1:55:45Andrew Manganelli?

  Dinner.

• 1:55:46David Imel?

  Andrew, what did you write?

• 1:55:47Andrew Manganelli?

  I wrote Glimmer.

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  David? I wrote Glimmer.

• 1:55:49David Imel?

  Correct.

• 1:55:54David Imel?

  We're finally tied, Marques. Don't you like being tied with me?

• 1:55:56Speaker 01

  I've had 10 points since 2022. It's been so long since I got a point.

• 1:56:02David Imel?

  We're in the same club now.

• 1:56:04Speaker 01

  10-point club. Carry the one. We're all carrying the one. That's good.

• 1:56:06David Imel?

  10-point club. Remember that? When you say it by accident.

• 1:56:12Speaker 01

  We learned something new. That's the point of trivia. We either get it right or we learn something new. And today I learned two new facts, so.

• 1:56:17David Imel?

  I thought the point of trivia was to win.

• 1:56:20Speaker 01

  It's about the friends you make along the way. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. I assume you've already subscribed, so thanks to getting us to 500,000 subscribers. This is a huge year for Waveform. We still got more coming up. We got regularly scheduled episodes. We got bonus episodes. December don't stop. So I guess we call it Texember.

• 1:56:34Andrew Manganelli?

  No, we don't.

• 1:56:35Speaker 01

  Catch you next one.

• 1:56:36Andrew Manganelli?

  We don't say that.

• 1:56:36Speaker 01

  See you later. Bye.

• 1:56:37Andrew Manganelli?

  Bye.

• 1:56:38David Imel?

  Some people say.

• 1:56:40Andrew Manganelli?

  Waveform is produced by Adam and Alina Ellis-Rivern. We're partnered with the Vox Media Podcast Network. And our outro music was created by Vane Sil.

• 1:56:44David Imel?

  Bingo.

• 1:56:55Andrew Manganelli?

  They spent hundreds of hours and sleepless nights prompting this.