The Switch 2 Is Coming…Eventually

This week, Marques, Andrew, and David start it off with some Nintendo Switch 2 updates before diving into a new killer Oppo phone that really impressed Marques. Then they talk about new CMF products that are being teased as well as the push into free TV that Google is making. Of course, we wrap it all up with trivia. Enjoy! Links: BBC - Tariff list Gizmodo - Hall Effect Joy-cons MKBHD - Oppo video Becca's Light Phone III video Android Authority - Google TV free button Music provided by Epidemic Sound Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Socials: Waveform: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi1 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts 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 you 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 episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:45David Imel?

  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,

• 1:26David Imel?

  and more time actually shipping. Learn more at jira.com. That's J-I-R-A dot com.

• 1:32David Imel?

  It was rumors. It was rumors, but they do have a startup that they're working on together, I believe officially.

• 1:36David Imel?

  Is this just money laundering?

• 1:39David Imel?

  That's the question of the year, my friends.

• 1:41Andrew Manganelli?

  Another soundbite. Perfect.

• 1:48David Imel?

  What is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to the Nintendo Switch 2 Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Nintendo Switch.

• 1:54David Imel?

  I'm Nintendo Switch 2.

• 1:56Andrew Manganelli?

  And I'm Andrew. It rhymed. I had to keep doing it.

• 1:59David Imel?

  Yeah, that's true. It did. Sorry. I'm Marquez. And...

• 2:03David Imel?

  And that's Andrew.

• 2:04Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm still Andrew.

• 2:07David Imel?

  We have, we have some Nintendo Switch, uh, updates. Obviously, this is a fast-moving environment where lots of things change and we're recording us a day earlier than usual. So yeah, things may change, but we have updates on that.

• 2:18David Imel?

  Things will change.

• 2:19David Imel?

  They will change. They will definitely change.

• 2:20David Imel?

  We will be wrong. I apologize.

• 2:22David Imel?

  But also, uh, nothing CMF phone, uh, some Google TV streaming updates and an Oppo Find X8 Ultra first look. Kind of a surprise sleeper. It's a good, it's a good phone. Uh, but first, don't forget to subscribe. We haven't asked you guys to subscribe in a while, but I feel like a lot of people watch the podcast and then they don't have to subscribe because YouTube just serves them the next episode every time it goes up.

• 2:43David Imel?

  That's true.

• 2:44David Imel?

  But if you look down below the video and check and realize you haven't subscribed yet, this is your chance to get that shiny fun animation and hit the subscribe button.

• 2:51Speaker 04

  Now you'll never have to say that again because I'm going to turn it into a button that I press randomly throughout the episode.

• 2:56David Imel?

  Also, if you subscribe and the number goes up, I will be happier.

• 3:00Andrew Manganelli?

  It does make us happy.

• 3:02David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 3:02Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 3:02David Imel?

  Like pretty directly.

• 3:03Andrew Manganelli?

  Can confirm.

• 3:04David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 3:04David Imel?

  Yes. Your parasocial relationship with us. You could actually influence your parasocial relationship with us.

• 3:10David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 3:10David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 3:11David Imel?

  Um, okay. So speaking of Switch 2, the, the situation around pre-orders with it is, is a thing that's rapidly evolving and interesting. And that's what we were talking about. As of right now, the preorder is delayed in the US. It's still set to launch on June 5th, but pre-orders are now going to be pushed back a bit, potentially to still start shipping immediately. Uh, and that's because tariffs, lots of fun things happening with, uh, the state of the economy. We figured we might as well at least acknowledge tariffs and what they are.

• 3:44Speaker 04

  We have to.

• 3:44David Imel?

  And what that means because I think during this entire calendar year and probably beyond, we're going to have many more conversations about the price of the gadgets that we're talking about and how they are affected by tariffs and many other things with the environment. So here's what a tariff is, at least how I understand it. And then we can go straight to the prices of things. A tariff is a specific lever that can be pulled by a politician that will essentially be a tax on a good that is imported into the country. So for the United States, for example, lots of things that we buy are manufactured outside of the United States. And so if you're a politician here and you want to encourage more US manufacturing, or

• 4:28David Imel?

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

• 4:55David Imel?

  Extremely.

• 4:56David Imel?

  Building manufacturing facilities in the US is very complicated.

• 4:58David Imel?

  Nah, you pretty much nailed it. Extremely complicated.

• 5:00David Imel?

  There's a lot more to it than that, but that's basically what is happening in the world of electronics, where now, if you look at, say, the iPhone, you might have seen some articles about the iPhone's price potentially going up.

• 5:10David Imel?

  It won't be $3,000, by the way.

• 5:13David Imel?

  But...

• 5:14David Imel?

  That is fear mongering.

• 5:15David Imel?

  Yeah, but the idea is lots of parts and assembly happen overseas, and so lots of those things will cost more. And since there is no readily available US equivalent manufacturing, the only choice is the price will have to go up, or maybe they eat into their margins, et cetera, et cetera. So the Switch 2 is affected by this. I think the headline that I saw is that the price of the Switch 2 as it exists does not account for tariffs.

• 5:43David Imel?

  Correct.

• 5:44David Imel?

  But we don't expect the price to change.

• 5:45David Imel?

  We're not sure yet. I think that the reason that... So Doug Bowser, the CEO of Nintendo of America.

• 5:50David Imel?

  Incredible name.

• 5:51David Imel?

  I know.

• 5:52Andrew Manganelli?

  It does not have anything to do.

• 5:54David Imel?

  No, it does not.

• 5:55Andrew Manganelli?

  It's just pure coincidence.

• 5:56David Imel?

  And it is pure coincidence.

• 5:57Andrew Manganelli?

  And it's like, my name is Adam Podcast, so...

• 6:01David Imel?

  It's kind of like a bad coincidence because he's the villain.

• 6:05David Imel?

  It's like Tiger Woods being a golfer. Like, you don't want to be in the...

• 6:08David Imel?

  Woods in golf, but like his name is Woods. Like there's lots of great last names.

• 6:12Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:12David Imel?

  But good opposite.

• 6:13Andrew Manganelli?

  There's a disc golf for the first name Eagle and in golf scoring, it's great, but I feel like that's a lot of pressure.

• 6:19David Imel?

  That's true.

• 6:19Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 6:20David Imel?

  Eagle gets an eagle. Anyway, Bowser is a villain, but also the CEO who is maybe the villain, but probably not. I don't know. I have no opinion on Doug Bowser, the CEO. Regardless, he went on, uh, on a bunch of podcasts, stuff and some interviews. And he basically said, the price of the Switch two that is $450 is what we thought it was worth. That did not account for tariffs.

• 6:44Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 6:44David Imel?

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

• 7:01Andrew Manganelli?

  And the timeline of this is April 2nd, the announcement happens, right?

• 7:07David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 7:07Andrew Manganelli?

  They announced the price.

• 7:08David Imel?

  The tariffs.

• 7:09Andrew Manganelli?

  That night is when we see the numbers.

• 7:11David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 7:11Andrew Manganelli?

  Of tariffs. And then within that week, we got the delay for the April 9th US pre-orders.

• 7:17David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 7:17Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 7:17David Imel?

  It was within two days. I think it was in two days from then. So the problem is that, uh, a lot of the regions where Nintendo manufactures the Switch are being hit very, very hard with tariffs. Uh, they manufacture a lot of them in Vietnam and also in China. Vietnam's getting hit with like a very large, uh, 46% tariff. China's getting hit with a 34% tariff.

• 7:41Andrew Manganelli?

  At the time of recording.

• 7:42David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 7:42Andrew Manganelli?

  These are at the time of recording.

• 7:44David Imel?

  Because, because, uh, later in the episode, we'll talk about TikTok.

• 7:50David Imel?

  That sort of changed things and then they pull out of a TikTok deal and that made the government say, maybe we'll add an additional 50% to China. So Nintendo really doesn't know what they can do right now.

• 8:01Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 8:02David Imel?

  Nintendo is just in this very nebulous space where they're like, we literally have no, cause they don't, they, they might lose a ton of money on the Switch two, if they sell it for that price.

• 8:11Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 8:11David Imel?

  Uh, Doug Bowser had also mentioned in this interview that I watched, I believe with CNBC, that they already have a lot of Switch twos in the United States. So luckily, it seems like they probably could release it at the normal price. But the problem would be, once they start running out more in the United States, that could be a problem and they don't want to like, release a bunch at 450 and then increase the price later. So it's just, it's forever changing and by the time this comes out on Friday, yeah, we might have more information. So.

• 8:41Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, it's like the first reaction we saw because of the timing, right? In the tech world, it feels like the first, it's not a price change yet. Yeah, but it's a direct reaction to what happened because of the timing. And we don't really know what that's gonna be.

• 8:57David Imel?

  Yeah, we were talking about this before, like if you're like, this is gonna happen way more during the year. Lots of gadgets are gonna come out and we'll have to, I think we're gonna have to speculate about if tariffs were included in pricing.

• 9:09David Imel?

  He said they were not.

• 9:11David Imel?

  He in this, yeah, but in the future, now that like, we know there's some volatility here, like, I don't know. I think in general, we never hear like, from the company about why they chose a price for something.

• 9:23David Imel?

  Right.

• 9:23David Imel?

  So there are lots of economic conditions and suppliers and margins and things that they keep in mind when setting a price for something. And this tariff stuff is another one of those variables. But we never hear from the company about why they picked the price. So I think that's gonna continue to be true. I don't imagine any company is gonna go, here's our new price. It's higher because of tariffs. I don't think they're gonna be able to say that because they never want to change their price. They just want to hopefully predict the future enough to factor in enough margin to be okay if the tariffs change.

• 9:58David Imel?

  I feel like they could say that because they are not the government of the country.

• 10:02David Imel?

  I thought about that, like, it kind of takes it off your shoulders. But then, if tariffs go away, you're expected to lower the price.

• 10:08David Imel?

  That's also true.

• 10:09Andrew Manganelli?

  And that will never happen.

• 10:11David Imel?

  Yeah. Do that.

• 10:12David Imel?

  Yeah, that's pretty much what happened with, yeah, and I'm not gonna get into it. Okay, so anyway, uh, yeah, well, speaking of the price of things and them not saying generally why they picked the price they did. In the same interview that I watched, uh, they asked why Mario Kart was $80. So this is something. That we didn't cover, actually, I think last week I was like $60 game because we didn't know. A lot of these games are now $80 Mario Kart World is $80. The new Donkey Kong game is gonna be $70. And the interviewer asked, why is this game $80 and Donkey Kong $70? How are you thinking about this? And Doug said, it depends on the value of the game and how much value we think the user is going to get out of the game.

• 10:56David Imel?

  Hmm, translation. I think we can get away with charging this much.

• 11:01David Imel?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that they know that Mario Kart is like the console seller and it's gonna be a pack in game. So it's 50, I mean, it's $50 extra for Mario Kart if you buy the bundle. So it does seem like there's going to be, there's been a lot of controversy around these game prices.

• 11:17Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, well, he called it variable pricing and that games with like extra depth and replayability would be more expensive. And that they'll judge it game by game, which I can guarantee you whatever Zelda game comes out next will be $80.

• 11:33David Imel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:34Andrew Manganelli?

  They also, so one thing we did do an insert in last week because there was this story that came out about digital games being $80 and then a physical copy being $90. It seems like no one knows where that came from and it seems like I don't think there's gonna be a price difference between physical. But we also want to talk about the difference in what physical games are now.

• 11:55David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 11:56Andrew Manganelli?

  Because they're not really what they used to be.

• 11:58David Imel?

  Physical games.

• 11:59Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, so physical cards is still kind of up in the air because some games, the physical card isn't the physical card that we all know. It's actually like digital key. So when you plug it into your Switch, it actually downloads the game online. And then in order to play the game, the key or cartridge must be put in the Switch.

• 12:20David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 12:21Andrew Manganelli?

  There's, this is weird. It's different. There are some benefits to it though that I didn't account for and there's definitely some drawbacks to this. I think the obvious drawback is

• 12:35Andrew Manganelli?

  What do we own anymore? Um, this is not a physical thing anymore. If I want to play my Switch 2 in 15 years when the servers are offline.

• 12:42David Imel?

  This is the thing, I see your face, Marquez, and I see why you're like, I don't understand what this matters. Uh, in 15 to 20 years, 30 years, when Nintendo decides to turn these servers off, all of a sudden, you can't sell this, you can't like, give this to someone and have them put it in a Switch 2.

• 12:57David Imel?

  Okay, I have a couple of logical questions then. So you're buying a cartridge, which is a key that you plug into the Switch and then you download. Does that mean some of the game is on the cartridge or none of it and you still download the entire game?

• 13:10Andrew Manganelli?

  The ones where it's just the key, it's not on the cartridge.

• 13:14David Imel?

  So you have, you put the key card in the Switch and then download the entire game?

• 13:18Andrew Manganelli?

  Yes.

• 13:18David Imel?

  And then is that a one-time download? So then you don't have to be online, you can plug in the key and play?

• 13:23Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, cause it's downloaded.

• 13:26David Imel?

  Okay, and then, so transferring it, if I wanted to unplug that key and plug it into a different, like I get a new Switch.

• 13:34David Imel?

  That it wouldn't work if the servers were down.

• 13:36Andrew Manganelli?

  If the servers are down, but what's interesting about this is if you, let's say you buy NBA 2K, cause that's a game you would buy, um, and you're like, done playing it, or your friend wants to play it. You can give them that key, they'll have to download the game, but now they can play it for a while. Or you can sell your cards, like if you play a game, finish it, you can sell the game on Facebook Marketplace, where if you only do the digital download, you can't do that, cause it's connected to your account.

• 14:04Speaker 04

  But then Marquez can no longer play.

• 14:06Andrew Manganelli?

  But you can't play it anymore.

• 14:07Speaker 04

  Even though it's downloaded to your device, because you don't have the cartridge.

• 14:10David Imel?

  Because I don't have the cartridge. So it acts exactly like a physical key then?

• 14:15David Imel?

  Yes, unless.

• 14:16David Imel?

  Like a physical game.

• 14:17David Imel?

  Far in the future.

• 14:18David Imel?

  Until, yeah, until someday, maybe they shut everything down.

• 14:21Andrew Manganelli?

  The other super niche thing would be like, if you're on a road trip or on an airplane, and David's got the new Zelda game and he's not playing it, I'm like, oh yo, can I play that? And I grab it, I'm offline.

• 14:31David Imel?

  So offline install is the hit.

• 14:33Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, that, that part sucks.

• 14:34David Imel?

  That makes sense.

• 14:35Andrew Manganelli?

  And it just takes memory away from your internal storage.

• 14:40Andrew Manganelli?

  Because it's the regular, fully-developed card, you're not taking away

• 14:45David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Andrew Manganelli?

  Storage on your, which it's more storage, but I'm sure everyone will hit that storage.

• 14:50David Imel?

  Yeah, I've read that they did this because there are some games that are just too big for the storage of the cartridge and they wanted to allow more third parties that had bigger hardcore games with more assets to fit on there, especially because it's higher fidelity, it's a much faster processor and console, like PC games are like huge now.

• 15:08David Imel?

  This is part of my speculation because I have a Switch 1 and Switch 1 games were small enough that I could fit a few games on the local memory before needing an external card and my biggest game was 16 gigs and now we're seeing like Switch 2 with high resolution and more textures and bigger assets is probably going to be like 64 gigs plus for a single game, so I could see that actually happening.

• 15:29David Imel?

  Great point.

• 15:30David Imel?

  Thank you. I thought about it for a while.

• 15:34Andrew Manganelli?

  Nice. Those, I think those are the bigger updates, but we also have like 10 quick-hit updates that also came out. Do you want to go through them with me, David?

• 15:45David Imel?

  Yeah, let's do it. Rapid fire. Okay, so remember the pack-in game, Switch 2, what is it called? Switch 2?

• 15:53Andrew Manganelli?

  The Switch tutorial?

• 15:54David Imel?

  It's the tutorial game.

• 15:56Andrew Manganelli?

  It's the manual.

• 15:58David Imel?

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

• 16:17Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 16:17David Imel?

  What?

• 16:18Andrew Manganelli?

  Stupid. We also found out most of the upgrade packs to upgrade things from Switch 1 to Switch 2 additions are 10 bucks.

• 16:25David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 16:26David Imel?

  I can't decide if that's worth or not yet because I haven't seen a Switch 1 game and Switch 2 game on the same Switch 2 to decide if there's a big enough difference.

• 16:33David Imel?

  It's also not always about fidelity. Like, the Legend of Zelda games, they are mostly fidelity and then you get this app where you can do other stuff in the app and there's, you know, whatever.

• 16:45Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh wait, I have a stupid question about this.

• 16:46David Imel?

  What?

• 16:47Andrew Manganelli?

  The update thing?

• 16:48David Imel?

  That is free, though, I believe.

• 16:50Andrew Manganelli?

  Does that mean that I can't play my original game if I have it?

• 16:54David Imel?

  No, you can. You can. It's just that it's lower resolution.

• 16:59Andrew Manganelli?

  That's fine.

• 16:59David Imel?

  Yeah, so it depends. So, so the Zelda game is mostly about fidelity. You're paying $10 to make it more pretty, which is kind of ridiculous. I don't know. The Kirby game that's being updated, they're adding an additional, like, big level to it. So they did add content to it, so it's DLC, so that's arguably valuable.

• 17:19Andrew Manganelli?

  Sure.

• 17:20David Imel?

  It's different on every game, which is just confusing. Like, there's so many things about this launch that are like, "Oh, in this case, it's this, but in this case, it's this." And there's just no through line for anything regarding pricing, regarding like what the updates do, regarding any of this.

• 17:36Andrew Manganelli?

  That's why we're doing like a half an hour update an episode later.

• 17:39David Imel?

  Give them a break. They only had eight years to work on it.

• 17:43David Imel?

  The new Joy-Cons are not Hall Effect Joy-Cons. We were really hoping they would be because that would have fixed all the drift issues. They said that they re-engineered them from the ground up, and I am imagining that Nintendo definitely knows that the drift was a problem. Whether or not they cared because they could just sell new Joy-Cons for $60, I'm not sure. These now cost $80. So, you know, I don't know, but we'll see.

• 18:08Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay. Okay, so it says, "The port on the top cannot transfer data, only charge the console."

• 18:13David Imel?

  Yeah, so they added an additional USB-C port to the console, which I was extremely excited about, specifically for charging to be fair. But apparently people were excited because they were like, "Oh, people could just make new docks that can make the Switch go in sideways, and it will take up less horizontal space, and it could be interesting." But no, it doesn't output video, so it can only charge it from that.

• 18:32Andrew Manganelli?

  But the camera still connects to it, though, correct? So it can...

• 18:35David Imel?

  I have not seen that yet.

• 18:37Andrew Manganelli?

  They show it in all the videos. In the launch.

• 18:40David Imel?

  In the launch, they showed that.

• 18:41David Imel?

  So it does transfer data?

• 18:42David Imel?

  I guess it does.

• 18:43David Imel?

  But I guess it doesn't do dock data or...

• 18:47David Imel?

  I guess it doesn't do like...

• 18:48Andrew Manganelli?

  You can't dock it from the top.

• 18:49David Imel?

  You can't do video output.

• 18:50David Imel?

  Only video in.

• 18:51David Imel?

  Video in.

• 18:52David Imel?

  Interesting.

• 18:53David Imel?

  Which seems like a thing that they did on purpose.

• 18:56David Imel?

  Wow.

• 18:56David Imel?

  But anyway.

• 18:57Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay.

• 18:57David Imel?

  Okay.

• 18:58Andrew Manganelli?

  Cool.

• 19:00Andrew Manganelli?

  Did you see this?

• 19:01David Imel?

  Yeah, yeah. Wait, what?

• 19:03Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, read it. I know, it's so funny. I didn't want to say it this morning.

• 19:07David Imel?

  Okay, um, you probably saw that there is the Switch camera that's coming out that's in the shape of a piranha plant.

• 19:13Andrew Manganelli?

  Awesome.

• 19:14David Imel?

  Uh, it only does 480p versus the Nintendo Edition camera that does 1080p.

• 19:21Andrew Manganelli?

  Yep, so that really sick piranha plant camera, it's like, I think actually what's cool about it is the plant is USB-C, so I'm assuming you can plug it into the Switch by itself, or it has the little stands that's like the tunnel.

• 19:33David Imel?

  480?

• 19:34Andrew Manganelli?

  But it's 480 and not 1080, like the normal camera.

• 19:37David Imel?

  Nostalgia must eventually come to an end.

• 19:40Andrew Manganelli?

  I bet people will buy that camera, put it next to their Switch, and then also buy the real camera to have 1080.

• 19:46David Imel?

  Okay, but also, I did read you can use any USB-C webcam as well.

• 19:50Andrew Manganelli?

  Really?

• 19:51David Imel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:52Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay.

• 19:52David Imel?

  That's awesome. Yeah, so, everything about this is like, wow, yay, wow, oh, yay, oh. It's everything, it's everything.

• 20:03Andrew Manganelli?

  They did, Nintendo did respond about the choppy playback for shared screens that we saw, and I appreciated their honesty in the sense of them, they basically said like, listen, we'd much rather the majority of resources go to gaming, like, not only does it help with the games that are being played, but like, more games are gonna come out in the future, and they're gonna be more resource intensive, so let's just make sure we're using the minimal amount for the actual game shares, or not game share, the like, gameplay footage, social aspect of it, which I agree with, that's more of a social thing, it's to kind of see what's going on.

• 20:37David Imel?

  I do think like, they showed some scenes where they were watching another person play the game and sort of helping them go through it. I think what they should do is whatever is the primary screen, they should devote most of the bandwidth.

• 20:47Andrew Manganelli?

  I think that's fair.

• 20:48David Imel?

  Yeah, but they didn't do that, which was weird, so.

• 20:51Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, I wanted to say one more thing, which is just, I found this really interesting, but... Uh, so like the old Joy-Con bumper, when you split the Joy-Cons, the old bumper was like literally the worst thing in the world. It was like really rattly and you could put it on backwards and get it stuck and it sucked. The new Joy-Con, it still has a bumper because it wants to add the wrist strap. But since they made the buttons so much better, it actually now, the buttons still like press through the new bumper. And it's just this really simple, like, I think there's a small hook on the bottom of it, but Mark has some footage, we can put it on the the video here. I don't think we included it in the first impressions.

• 21:32David Imel?

  Okay.

• 21:32Andrew Manganelli?

  I thought that was awesome, though.

• 21:33David Imel?

  It was better. And it also puts like little tiny mousepad feet on it. So when you do the mouse thing, that's also on the bumper.

• 21:39Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, you probably can't do the mouse without that.

• 21:41David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Andrew Manganelli?

  Cause it wouldn't really be as flat of a surface.

• 21:44David Imel?

  It creates a flat bottom for it. Yeah.

• 21:45Andrew Manganelli?

  Cool.

• 21:46David Imel?

  So, yeah.

• 21:46David Imel?

  I have a bit of a hot take. This is also stolen from David Pearce on the Vergecast. Basically, I, I think that this, this console was developed during COVID. Because everything about it is like, the social features are such a core part of it, the camera, the cutouts, the like, trying to make it feel like you're more in a room. Like, Switch one, all of the advertising was like teens hanging out on a roof, playing Switch together.

• 22:13David Imel?

  Yeah, I think that, I've said this about a lot of phones in the past, but it's also probably true of this. The second generation of a product is always the most interesting because it teaches you everything that company learned from the first generation. So like when we, we got the first generation Apple Watch or the first generation iPad, they kind of thought it would be one thing and then they saw, they put it out into the world, they saw how people use it and they went, ah, okay. We can capitalize and make things for this exact group of people. So obviously the first Switch came out in, I think, 2017, pre-COVID, and they saw, they had a lot of ideas about how people, people would use it. Now, they have the data and they've seen how people have used it and COVID happened during that time. So now, a lot of the Switch use is probably different from what they imagined in those first ads.

• 22:58David Imel?

  And they are adjusting to the usage numbers.

• 23:00David Imel?

  Or they had three years of development during COVID where they thought this is what we should prioritize.

• 23:05Andrew Manganelli?

  I think it's a good point. To because so many people saw that and they're like, why is anyone excited? We've had Discord forever, but I don't compare this to Discord. I compare this specifically to being on Zoom calls with friends, playing Mario Kart.

• 23:17David Imel?

  Like, which people do.

• 23:18Andrew Manganelli?

  It's a lot different. I get to see my friends, which is different than Discord. I mean, you can do that and you can share screens with Discord's way more of just voice. So this is voice and seeing it's so much more casual.

• 23:29David Imel?

  It's And don't get me wrong, like, I am super glad they added these features regardless. But the battery life is also notably worse than the OLED model. They, I think the quoted battery life was two and a half to six hours. Whereas the OLED, there was the OLED model was like four and a half to eight or something like that. So I don't know. I mean, playing it handheld, obviously it's better, better with the bigger screen. That's cool.

• 23:53David Imel?

  I kind of wonder like the percentage, like it is a switch. It, the whole point is to be able to use it handheld or in a dock. I kind of wonder like what fraction of people have a switch mostly docked versus mostly handheld.

• 24:03David Imel?

  I play almost exclusively handheld. So that's

• 24:06David Imel?

  Same.

• 24:06David Imel?

  Yeah, I travel with it. I, I use it.

• 24:08David Imel?

  That's the only thing I use it for.

• 24:10David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Andrew Manganelli?

  I think if you're doing it in the like social camera scenario, though, you're probably playing it docked.

• 24:14David Imel?

  Yes.

• 24:15Andrew Manganelli?

  Exactly. You probably need the camera setup on something.

• 24:17David Imel?

  Makes me believe that most people use a switch docked. If I only watch.

• 24:22David Imel?

  Or at least they did through 2020 through 2023. Maybe that's, I don't know. It's interesting. So, yeah. I think that is all we have so far for Switch updates.

• 24:33David Imel?

  Breaking news, Switch 2 canceled.

• 24:36David Imel?

  Wow.

• 24:37David Imel?

  This is the Switch 2 podcast after all, so we will be back with your rapid fire updates every week until June 5th. Obviously, that's just how this is going to go.

• 24:43David Imel?

  And probably after.

• 24:44Andrew Manganelli?

  And probably after. We still won't have it then.

• 24:46David Imel?

  Yeah. But yeah, I think that's a perfect place to take a quick break. We got much more to talk about. And so trivia.

• 24:58David Imel?

  All right. This one's a little bit of a

• 25:00David Imel?

  Where's the whiteboards?

• 25:00David Imel?

  Little, little explaining. So let me, let me get into it. So earlier we mentioned Doug Bowser.

• 25:06Speaker 04

  Uh, whose name is an example of this hypothesis called nominative determinism.

• 25:13David Imel?

  Wait, wait, wait. His name?

• 25:15Speaker 04

  His name, Doug Bowser.

• 25:15David Imel?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, sorry.

• 25:17Speaker 04

  Which is a, it's a hypothesis, sociological hypothesis, that people choose careers that fit well with their name.

• 25:23David Imel?

  Oh, wow.

• 25:24Speaker 04

  Obviously, not proven or disproven, but these names that fit well are called aptronyms. Um, Doug Bowser, according to Wikipedia, is actually an inap- inaptronym, because he's the villain of the Mario thing. But I have before me four

• 25:40David Imel?

  Hmm.

• 25:40Speaker 04

  aptronyms.

• 25:42David Imel?

  Hmm.

• 25:42Speaker 04

  And I need you to tell me which one I made up.

• 25:46David Imel?

  I can already tell this is probably your favorite question you created.

• 25:49Speaker 04

  Are you ready?

• 25:50David Imel?

  Yes.

• 25:51David Imel?

  I love this.

• 25:51Speaker 04

  All right. Number one, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Zurich University, Jules Angst.

• 25:59David Imel?

  Hmm.

• 26:01Speaker 04

  B, American Ornithologist and Program Manager for Feather Identification in the Division of Birds at the National Museum of Natural History, Carla Dove.

• 26:11David Imel?

  Yo.

• 26:12Speaker 04

  C, 1984 Olympic Gold Medalist Swimmer, Jeff Float. D, Current Host of the Show The View, Sonny Hostin.

• 26:27Speaker 04

  Or E, These Are All Real, Baby.

• 26:30David Imel?

  Wow.

• 26:31David Imel?

  Wow.

• 26:32David Imel?

  When I was, when I took drum lessons in, in high school, my drum teacher was named John Bassa, like bass drum, B-A-S-S.

• 26:39David Imel?

  There's so many good examples of this.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I pulled these best ones from a ginormous list.

• 26:46David Imel?

  Really?

• 26:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. This, this really does happen. I mean,

• 26:49David Imel?

  Usain Bolt is probably the top of the list.

• 26:51David Imel?

  Yeah, Usain Bolt.

• 26:53Speaker 04

  I found a composer named David W. Music.

• 26:55David Imel?

  No.

• 26:55David Imel?

  No way.

• 26:57David Imel?

  That's too easy. That's too easy.

• 26:59David Imel?

  Wow. Wow.

• 27:01David Imel?

  Yeah, okay. I, I will be thinking, I don't know any of those people you named, so I,

• 27:05Speaker 04

  Wait, wait, I'm sorry. This one is real. It's not part of it. But one of the guys who worked on the Transcontinental Railroad as an engineer, and this is not a joke, was named George Francis Train.

• 27:16David Imel?

  Perfect.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  Perfect.

• 27:19David Imel?

  Well, I, yeah, I don't, I'm gonna have to think about those. I hope, I hope they're all real secretly. Answers will be at the end like usual. We'll be right back.

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• 29:34David Imel?

  All right, welcome back. I'm holding a Nintendo Switch 2. And by Nintendo Switch 2, I mean an Oppo Find X8 Ultra.

• 29:43Speaker 07

  What's the difference?

• 29:44David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 29:45David Imel?

  Audio listeners really just got excited.

• 29:47David Imel?

  Yeah, sorry for the jumpscare audio listeners. No, this is a, so this phone came out, or was announced this week. I dropped my, by the time the podcast goes out, my first impressions video of this phone is also out. But it kind of came out of left field because we've had the X8 series going for a while and the X8 Pro is already a really good phone. This phone comes out, I didn't really have plans for it. It shows up, the spec sheet blows my mind. Unbelievable spec sheet. From top to bottom, literally the best available spec.

• 30:15David Imel?

  Android phone.

• 30:15David Imel?

  Other than, I think, refresh rate, because it has 120 Hz LTP. Maybe it could have been the 165 Hz from the ROG phone. But everything else about it, Snapdragon 8 Elite, 6100mAh silicon carbon battery, great haptics, IP68, IP69, a terabyte of storage, 16 gigs of RAM. Like, you name a stat, it's got it. 1440p, super bright. And then the camera sensors, which are kind of the main draw of these phones. 1-inch type sensor for the primary camera.

• 30:45David Imel?

  Wow.

• 30:45David Imel?

  50 megapixels. And then it has a 3X camera, which is an absolutely massive sensor and is basically the same size as the primary camera on a lot of phones. Then there is a 6X telephoto, there's an ultra wide, there's a chroma sensor for white balance. It is loaded.

• 31:01David Imel?

  This camera is ungodly good.

• 31:03David Imel?

  It is loaded.

• 31:04David Imel?

  This is possibly the best phone camera.

• 31:06Speaker 04

  Marques, is this everything that you mentioned that every phone is going to have this year?

• 31:10David Imel?

  So the big hits, yes. It hits all the three, the big three of phones having the thing that we thought they were going to have this year. One, Snapdragon 8 Elite. Two, really, really bright display. Three, silicon carbon battery. It has all of those. And it has, like, maxed out everything else. Oh, that picture you just took is...

• 31:26David Imel?

  Fire.

• 31:27David Imel?

  That's tough. That's a tough look for me. But it's really impressive. And I think, so I, I ended up like making a video on it, not expecting to until we got it in the hand, but I'm impressed.

• 31:40Andrew Manganelli?

  Can I ask the least interesting question possible?

• 31:42David Imel?

  Yes.

• 31:43Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay, I've seen this with a couple of other phones and I, I remember bringing it up when we were fact checking a video once, but why are phones now saying like it's IP 68 and IP 69?

• 31:53David Imel?

  I don't know. Cause I, I thought it was pretty intuitive that if a phone would pass IP 68, then it would also pass everything below it, but technically they don't have to test everything below it. So if you pay for the IP 68 and the IP 69 test, maybe you feel obligated to say both.

• 32:11Andrew Manganelli?

  Both of them.

• 32:12David Imel?

  But I, you know, yeah, IP 69 is not just submersion, but like high pressure, high or low temperature water jets, it'll survive that too.

• 32:21David Imel?

  Something I want to note here, um, they copied camera control.

• 32:25David Imel?

  They, okay, it's a, it's a whole section in this video.

• 32:28David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 32:30David Imel?

  And maybe I haven't said it on the podcast before, but Oppo with Color OS is so shameless about copying many, many things from the iPhone, from Dynamic Island to open a settings app and tell me that's not just the iPhone settings.

• 32:45David Imel?

  But Dynamic Island is so good though.

• 32:46David Imel?

  The Dynamic Island, they've copied, live activities, they've copied.

• 32:50David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 32:50David Imel?

  Hit that, see that button on the side on the top left of the phone?

• 32:53David Imel?

  Okay.

• 32:54David Imel?

  Hold that down. It's, it's exactly the action button from the iPhone.

• 32:57David Imel?

  And it has the, yeah, the dynamic.

• 32:59David Imel?

  And the little action button thing. Now on the right side of the phone, you see that little flat area.

• 33:03David Imel?

  Camera control.

• 33:04David Imel?

  It's literally camera control. So if you open the camera and slide your finger along that area or, uh, yeah, double tap opens the camera, slide up and down, it zooms in and out. They've copied camera control.

• 33:12David Imel?

  It literally looks the same.

• 33:14Andrew Manganelli?

  You folded it.

• 33:15David Imel?

  Oh my God.

• 33:16David Imel?

  Yeah. So yeah, they've obviously taken a lot of inspiration, the settings app, the, the settings for that action button, or I mean, quick button.

• 33:23David Imel?

  Right.

• 33:23David Imel?

  It looks exactly the same as the iPhone. I ended up kind of remembering that obviously all the, all their markets that aren't the US where people just buy the phone based on whatever has the best specs and seems like the best value. It kind of works for them to just, just embrace the other features of other phones that work well. And if you have all the features, then people are more likely to buy your thing. Like if I like Dynamic Island on the iPhone. Okay, now here's another phone with Dynamic Island.

• 33:52David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 33:52David Imel?

  You know?

• 33:53David Imel?

  Something I want to note about the camera, usually when you zoom in like a ton, what happens is it looks really soft and then you click the shutter button and then a few seconds of processing goes by and then it looks really over sharpened just because they want to like bring out all the detail. But on this phone, even when you use like an insane like 30x, it looks soft, you take the photo, wait a couple of seconds, and then it just looks like a normal photo.

• 34:17David Imel?

  Looks sharp.

• 34:17David Imel?

  Like it looks good, it doesn't look over sharpened, it doesn't, it looks amazing.

• 34:21David Imel?

  I think the telephotos are great on this camera.

• 34:23David Imel?

  That's insane.

• 34:24Andrew Manganelli?

  You did Rich at, from like across the entire office and then it starts like haloing pretty hard.

• 34:29David Imel?

  Yeah, so it, it is tough to tackle like tough lighting conditions at 50x zoom, but on like a, like a sky, a skyline or whatever, trying to zoom in on some buildings, like it does a fantastic job, anything that's sitting still, it does a great job. I followed Zuri around, it does a good job of like freezing actions, Zuri's the dog that's over there sleeping in the corner of the podcast room right now, but it did a good job with that. Uh, I'm just, yeah, I, the thing about it, okay, so I've only had it for a few days, I assume the battery life is going to be just fine since it has a 6,100 milliampere battery. It also has 100 watt fast charging, 50 watt wireless charging, reverse wireless charging.

• 35:08David Imel?

  Does it have Chi 2?

• 35:10David Imel?

  It does not have magnets in it, unfortunately.

• 35:12Andrew Manganelli?

  Chi 2 is fake, as far as it's.

• 35:14David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 35:15Andrew Manganelli?

  We don't get Chi 2, we only get Chi 2 ready.

• 35:17David Imel?

  Yeah, just the Motorola Skyline or whatever.

• 35:20David Imel?

  Yeah, but everything else about this phone is basically peak 2025 smartphone. The bar has been set now.

• 35:27David Imel?

  That's crazy.

• 35:28David Imel?

  This is how good it gets.

• 35:29David Imel?

  That's unbelievable.

• 35:30David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 35:31David Imel?

  I might have to get one.

• 35:33Andrew Manganelli?

  And speaking of something almost as good, you also got to try the Lightphone 3 out, right?

• 35:37David Imel?

  The Lightphone, uh, do I want to bring it in here just to, I, I'm gonna, I'm working on a video about this Lightphone. Okay. And minimal phones, we talked about it briefly on the last episode. I respect it. I understand it. There is obviously some desire for it. But the Light Phone 3, if you preorder, costs $600. And if you don't preorder, costs $800.

• 36:04David Imel?

  Yikes.

• 36:05David Imel?

  I don't understand that value proposition.

• 36:08David Imel?

  Wow, that's a lot.

• 36:10David Imel?

  If the entire point of the phone is to be less of a phone.

• 36:13David Imel?

  Right.

• 36:13David Imel?

  How do you charge more than a lot of phones?

• 36:17David Imel?

  How much does this cost? Do we know?

• 36:19David Imel?

  This phone, I don't have a price actually for it yet, but I'm gonna guess it's around $900 to $1,200. Like, it's a flagship. The X8 Pro costs about $800.

• 36:29David Imel?

  Okay.

• 36:29David Imel?

  This is not coming to the US, by the way, but that's about how much it'd cost. So that's, uh, yeah, I'm trying to square like what they're doing with the Light Phone because it is so expensive.

• 36:39David Imel?

  Yeah. We got a few minimal phones in recently. We got the Light Phone. There's also the minimal phone that came in. And I think for some people, um, like Becca Fersace just made a video on the Light Phone 3 and she did a really good job on that. So you should go watch that. I think it can work for some people, but she had a lot of frustrations as well. So it's one of those things where it's like, in order to live the life you want to live, you gotta have some trade-offs.

• 37:04David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 37:05David Imel?

  So.

• 37:05Andrew Manganelli?

  Tim, I think, and I'm not 100% sure about this, maybe Becca said in her video, I didn't get a chance to watch it, but Tim was trying to bring it home to use it for a little bit and can't transfer any of his text messages over to it. Is that only because he's using iMessage or is it just like?

• 37:19David Imel?

  I haven't been able to do that either.

• 37:20Andrew Manganelli?

  He was trying to find some stuff and like, it still has SMS messaging, but you can't transfer your previous SMS messages over to it.

• 37:28David Imel?

  There's a portal. There's an online portal that you can log into and like add and remove different apps and things that I can, not even really apps, they call them functions. Um, but it, yeah, it's, it's very limited.

• 37:39David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 37:39David Imel?

  And intentionally so.

• 37:41David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 37:41David Imel?

  So.

• 37:42David Imel?

  All right.

• 37:43David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 37:43Speaker 07

  Before we move on, I think I have a loose answer as to how a device and why a device might be rated both IP68 and IP69. It turns out, while you would think that the difference between 8 and 9 is just harder, better, faster, stronger, drier.

• 38:02Speaker 07

  It turns out they're actually

• 38:03David Imel?

  Different materials.

• 38:04Speaker 07

  International Standards Code Society, whatever, actually prescribes two different kinds of tests. IP68 refers to a submersion survivability capability, whatever. So when you test for, when you give it the IP68 rating, you're literally submerging the device. The IP69 rating demands that the device be subjected to what is akin to an industrial cleaning environment, where they actually blast the device with high pressure, high temperature water.

• 38:31David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 38:31Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh.

• 38:32Speaker 07

  So they are two different modes of survivability when it comes to water. I really hope that's right. I was just reading

• 38:39David Imel?

  No, that's right.

• 38:40Speaker 07

  Standards codes and trying to make the best sense of it. But it does seem like actually it sort of describes two separate.

• 38:46David Imel?

  Okay. I'll reference one of our most hated videos because I did go to see one of

• 38:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 38:50David Imel?

  One of the like water, the durability testing from the Apple labs. But yeah, the IP68 test is literally just put the phone underwater and like close the tank. But the thing that they do to simulate depth, because they don't have a 10 foot depth, is they just close it, seal it and add pressure. And so IP68 does include some amount of pressure. IP69 is just way more pressure with those jets that they're hitting the phone with.

• 39:14Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, because five and six are jets of water, not submerging, which is under the submersion of seven and eight. And then nine is close range, high temperature water jets.

• 39:25David Imel?

  Yeah, I think when you say jets, it's they're like sprinkling water on the phone.

• 39:28Speaker 07

  These make it, what I was You made it sound like for real IP69, you need real jets. And then they also specify it needs to hit all sides of the phone for at least three minutes.

• 39:39David Imel?

  Wow.

• 39:39Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 39:40David Imel?

  All right. So if you are going to dishwasher your phone.

• 39:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's basically what it is.

• 39:47Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, so we can try, we can put that phone in the dishwasher?

• 39:49David Imel?

  For three minutes.

• 39:50Speaker 07

  We could try it.

• 39:51David Imel?

  Yeah. Or a laundry or whatever. I mean, I don't know. If you put your phone through an entire laundry cycle, I don't think you expect it to survive. But there's a higher chance that it could if it is IP69.

• 40:05Speaker 07

  Did you

• 40:05David Imel?

  Rated.

• 40:06Speaker 07

  That this tweet came back, this is relevant, I promise. They resurfaced in the form of screenshot and I feel the need to share it. I have it pulled up right now. It's oven has a window, microwave too. You can see all the way through a blender, but the dishwasher, oh no, you could never see in there. They refuse to let us see what's going on in there.

• 40:26David Imel?

  That is a great point.

• 40:28David Imel?

  It's a good point. Maybe it's just because it's mostly ugly.

• 40:31Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, that's.

• 40:31David Imel?

  I did watch a video a long time ago of someone put a GoPro in a dishwasher.

• 40:35Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 40:35David Imel?

  I've seen what happens in a dishwasher, but how come no one's done like a dishwasher with a window? Maybe because it looks dirty.

• 40:41David Imel?

  Yeah, it looks bad. It makes your house look worse.

• 40:43Andrew Manganelli?

  Anyway.

• 40:44David Imel?

  Um, breaking news.

• 40:45Andrew Manganelli?

  Breaking news.

• 40:46David Imel?

  Uh, the Switch 2 is also delayed in Canada. The preorder is delayed in Canada as well as the United States.

• 40:54David Imel?

  It is literally breaking. Top of my timeline.

• 40:55David Imel?

  Breaking. So, anyway, we will continue with the Switch 2 podcast, talking about other things.

• 41:02David Imel?

  Things evolve, guys.

• 41:02David Imel?

  But there may be multiple breaking news stories about the Switch 2 during this episode. Uh, other interesting phone tidbits, which we haven't really had a lot of phone stuff in a while. Nothing sub-brand, uh, okay, I'm gonna go through this. Nothing is a budget phone brand, right? Okay.

• 41:20David Imel?

  Technically.

• 41:20David Imel?

  They have a budget phone, the A series. Um, they also launched a budget sub-brand.

• 41:26Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:27David Imel?

  Yeah, CMF, right? Um, now the budget brand's budget sub-brand just is launching a pro phone. So I'm not really sure where this puts everything.

• 41:39David Imel?

  Me neither.

• 41:40David Imel?

  But you know, so CMF is making the CMF Phone 2 Pro. They kind of showed a few little animated things related to it. It's going to have three cameras on it. So it'll, I guess, have a telephoto and a wide.

• 41:54David Imel?

  Is that all that pro means anymore? Cause I kind of feel like that's all it means anymore.

• 41:59David Imel?

  Often.

• 42:00Andrew Manganelli?

  Cause there's, oh my god, I can't even keep up. There's the Nothing phone and then there's the Budget Nothing phone, which is the A.

• 42:07David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Andrew Manganelli?

  But then there's also the Budget.

• 42:08David Imel?

  Pro as well.

• 42:08Andrew Manganelli?

  Then there's the A Pro that just came out. Yeah.

• 42:12David Imel?

  Yeah, there's like budget companies bud- pro-budget phone.

• 42:16Andrew Manganelli?

  And now this is the budget company's budget company.

• 42:18David Imel?

  Budget sub-company.

• 42:19Andrew Manganelli?

  Budget pro-phone.

• 42:20David Imel?

  Pro-phone.

• 42:22David Imel?

  Yeah. Uh, the only thing these pro-phones all have in common is they all have triple cameras. From the iPhone 16 Pro all the way down to the Nothing 3A Pro and all the way down to the CMF Phone Pro. All that pro means is we have a regular camera, an ultrasonic camera, and a telephoto camera.

• 42:39David Imel?

  But they did tease that it's going to have a new finish. They said a new finish textured tactile comma different period.

• 42:49David Imel?

  Which is cool. Like, I wanna see that, but again, it's like.

• 42:52Speaker 04

  For metal.

• 42:53Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 42:53David Imel?

  Well, yeah, well, my question becomes then the whole point of the CMF on one was that it had that 3D printed, like you could 3D print your own backs for it.

• 43:03Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, rip the plastic back off.

• 43:04David Imel?

  That's what was sick about it. So like, if they're just making a metal or like a glass phone, then isn't it just?

• 43:10Andrew Manganelli?

  It still has the screw here.

• 43:11David Imel?

  It still has the screw. So.

• 43:14Andrew Manganelli?

  Although that screw doesn't look like it takes that back off. This one specifically is inside its own little, like you can see the back.

• 43:21David Imel?

  Remember the screw was not to take the back off.

• 43:23Andrew Manganelli?

  This, this one wasn't.

• 43:24David Imel?

  It was to just add accessories.

• 43:25Andrew Manganelli?

  That was like for landed accessories and stuff, right? But wasn't there also another one that?

• 43:29David Imel?

  Took the back off.

• 43:30Andrew Manganelli?

  That was the dial.

• 43:32David Imel?

  Yes.

• 43:32Andrew Manganelli?

  Right?

• 43:32David Imel?

  And you unscrew it and take the back off.

• 43:34Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay.

• 43:34David Imel?

  Apparently they're going to announce this on Monday, the 28th of April. So that's in a couple of weeks.

• 43:40Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay.

• 43:40David Imel?

  But they're teasing it early. They're also releasing three new sets of earbuds. The CMF buds two, the two A and the two plus. Shocker. Okay. So, so, okay. Budget brand releases a budget, even budget or sub brand, which releases a budget set of earbuds, a normal, whatever that means because of the budget sub brand, and then a pro set of budget earbuds. Cool.

• 44:10Andrew Manganelli?

  Plus a plus.

• 44:10David Imel?

  I can't, I can't keep this.

• 44:13Andrew Manganelli?

  Is this all just there to make us realize that the term budget means basically nothing or a million different things to everybody? And that it is basically a curse to even say that word in any tech video possible.

• 44:27David Imel?

  Pro and max and like, yeah.

• 44:31David Imel?

  I guess the, the strategy which we've seen before is we want to offer a product at every possible price tier in increments of 10 that someone might buy a product at. Samsung's been at this forever. They have the A series, they have the Galaxy series, they have the Galaxy S, they have the Galaxy Z, Z, whatever. Like there's a bunch of different series and versions. And so they end up having a thousand phones. And if you pick a price point, they've got a phone for you. And I guess that's kind of what this company is doing. But instead of everything being a nothing phone, there's the nothing series and then. There's the Nothing A series and there's the CMF series and there's the CMF Pro and CMF A. Like they'll, they'll get every price point sooner or later.

• 45:10David Imel?

  It's just that Carl Pay always follows the exact same like trajectory, which is like, launch a company that has really good specs for the price. Launch a pro version of that that's more expensive and then be like, but we hear you. So we're going to launch an affordable version. And then they make the pro version of the affordable version. And then they're like, you know what? This isn't even affordable anymore. Here's a sub brand. It's just.

• 45:34David Imel?

  I also think, can't wait till he reacts to this on the Nothing channel. I also think what you realize when you are a young or small smartphone competitor is that the price points that you compete at also determine how competitive it is. And at the 800 to a thousand dollar price point, it is super hyper ultra competitive, like Samsung Galaxy S versus iPhone versus Vivo versus Oppo. Like these companies are pouring so much into bleeding edge phones. And if you're just starting up, you can't like get the suppliers and get the price down to actually compete there. So they, they're kind of forced into starting at, we're going to have a lower priced phone and try to compete there instead.

• 46:15David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 46:15David Imel?

  And they'll compete there with, you know, fancy software or some interesting new design or whatever. But I think you, you, it takes a long time and a lot of volume to get up to, okay, now we're going to compete with like the Snapdragon 8 Elite, like big dog $900 phones.

• 46:31David Imel?

  And it also makes people very angry when your whole thing was like, we do this cheaper and better.

• 46:36David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 46:37David Imel?

  So.

• 46:37David Imel?

  Definitely.

• 46:38Andrew Manganelli?

  I have a pitch for budget phone naming schemes.

• 46:41David Imel?

  Okay.

• 46:41Andrew Manganelli?

  Let's just, the number is the price. The Nothing Phone 349.

• 46:47David Imel?

  That's.

• 46:48Andrew Manganelli?

  That's so much easier.

• 46:49David Imel?

  We have a sale.

• 46:52David Imel?

  You have to launch a new.

• 46:53Andrew Manganelli?

  Variable pricing, Doug Bowser.

• 46:56David Imel?

  I think you could pull that off.

• 46:57Andrew Manganelli?

  That's my new company.

• 46:59David Imel?

  Very fun. Okay. Uh, last story before we take another break. This is so stupid. Okay. Uh, you may have heard that Sam Altman and Johnny Ive were working on a product together. Uh, this happened quite a while ago.

• 47:14Andrew Manganelli?

  So happy I don't know about this.

• 47:16David Imel?

  Oh, really? Okay. This was like a year ago that the rumors around this started.

• 47:19Andrew Manganelli?

  I was just gonna say it's rumors.

• 47:20David Imel?

  It's, it was rumors, it was rumors, but they do have a startup that they're working on together, I believe officially.

• 47:25David Imel?

  Is this just money laundering?

• 47:28David Imel?

  That's the question of the year, my friend.

• 47:29Andrew Manganelli?

  Another soundbite. Perfect.

• 47:31David Imel?

  Uh, yeah. So, report, uh, Sam Altman and Johnny Ive startup might be sold to OpenAI for 500 billion plus dollars.

• 47:41David Imel?

  500 billion dollars? What do they?

• 47:45David Imel?

  So, okay.

• 47:45David Imel?

  I don't know about this.

• 47:46Andrew Manganelli?

  500 million.

• 47:47David Imel?

  Oh, sorry, did I say billion?

• 47:49David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 47:50Andrew Manganelli?

  No, Mark has said billion. This one right here says 500 million. 500 million.

• 47:54David Imel?

  In the doc I wrote billion, I was wrong.

• 47:56Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay.

• 47:56David Imel?

  I should have, yeah, okay.

• 47:58David Imel?

  That makes a little more, okay.

• 47:59David Imel?

  Sam Altman and Johnny Ive startup may be sold to OpenAI for 500 million plus dollars.

• 48:06David Imel?

  What? Um, so I've nev- I don't know what the startup does, but 500 million dollars?

• 48:11David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 48:11David Imel?

  Imploys they do something.

• 48:13David Imel?

  Well, implies.

• 48:15David Imel?

  What do they do?

• 48:16David Imel?

  Okay, well, so, very big, you know, XAI purchases X-energy here. Uh, they have reportedly been working on a phone-like product without a screen.

• 48:26David Imel?

  I've heard this.

• 48:27David Imel?

  Which we have heard many times before.

• 48:30David Imel?

  Go on.

• 48:31David Imel?

  Uh, it could be a little bit different considering.

• 48:33Andrew Manganelli?

  No, don't do that.

• 48:34David Imel?

  Yes, it could be a little bit different considering, you know, OpenAI actually has a working voice mode model that is good. It's not like the human AI pen or the rabbit. Um, as for it actually being like agentic and taking action for you, I'm not sure about that. Uh, they are also reportedly working on AI-enabled household devices, which is also kind of interesting. I was thinking about this yesterday and I'm like, well, surprisingly, Google has not added Gemini to any of its Google Home products.

• 49:04David Imel?

  Yeah, I feel like they have to do that this year.

• 49:07David Imel?

  Siri is nowhere to be found. Alexa Plus was announced and it was supposed to already be out in early access and yet I have not heard of anyone having it.

• 49:16David Imel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:17David Imel?

  So, weirdly enough, there is this gap in the market for like home-enabled smart AI devices that are gen- um, generative, that nobody is doing yet.

• 49:28David Imel?

  Hmm.

• 49:28David Imel?

  But of course, you know, this isn't available yet, but, you know, I don't know. So, yeah, I don't know. It's, uh, I could see there being something there and OpenAI does have a lot of cachet right now. But it's just sort of.

• 49:45Andrew Manganelli?

  I wish I had Sam Altman's superpower to just like raise infinite money.

• 49:49David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 49:49Andrew Manganelli?

  He just like gets money.

• 49:51Speaker 07

  Bro is so good at getting money, he can literally pay himself and get Microsoft to be the person that gives him the money to pay himself.

• 49:59David Imel?

  Yeah, like he's acquiring his own company for 500 billion dollars.

• 50:03Speaker 07

  Daddy Satya's money.

• 50:05David Imel?

  With Satya's money.

• 50:06David Imel?

  It's like, this is the most, um, uh, Silicon Valley bubble thing I've seen in a long time. Here's what, I watch a lot of Shark Tank. I don't know if you guys watch Shark Tank? Have you ever watched a good amount of Shark Tank? You know how there's at the beginning of every pitch, they're like, hi, my name is blank. And I would like to offer you a shark, the opportunity to buy 10% of my company for a hundred thousand dollars. Here's what I do. And then they go through the pitch and then they get to the end of the pitch and then Mr. Wonderful goes, "Well, with this valuation, you must have a lot of sales, my friend. Why are you worth a million dollars?" And then they have to justify themselves.

• 50:38Andrew Manganelli?

  It's easier when.

• 50:40David Imel?

  I'm trying to put this on Shark Tank of Sam Altman going, "Hi, my name is Sam, and I'd like to offer you the opportunity for a hundred million dollars to buy 20% of my company. And here's what we do." And then Mr. Wonderful goes, "Wow, a 500 million dollar valuation? You must have amazing sales." And then they go, "No, we actually don't have any products or sales or anything happening yet, but we just got this good idea and there's a spot in the market that seems like it's open right now. And Google and Apple and Amazon haven't done it yet, so we have a chance."

• 51:11Andrew Manganelli?

  You know what they have? Johnny Ive. Well, but, but this Shark Tank is Sam Altman comes out and says, "I have this. What would you like to see?" And then the camera turns and Sam Altman's sitting at the Shark Tank chair and says, "You got, I'm in, I'm all in."

• 51:27David Imel?

  That's exactly what this is.

• 51:29Speaker 04

  That's literally what this is.

• 51:31Andrew Manganelli?

  And then, and then he goes, but why does everyone hate me?

• 51:36David Imel?

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

• 51:50Speaker 04

  I'm sorry, or congratulations.

• 51:53David Imel?

  I'm not reading all that.

• 51:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:54David Imel?

  Yeah. All right. Well, we'll, we'll have a little bit more to talk about after the break. Tik Tok, getting banned, maybe, or maybe not. And also some streaming stuff. But before that, trivia.

• 52:03Speaker 04

  Trivia, dude. So we spoke about the Oppo Find X8 Ultra. We're gonna just keep adding words to the

• 52:13David Imel?

  Plus.

• 52:14Speaker 04

  end of phones. Plus.

• 52:15David Imel?

  Budget.

• 52:16Speaker 04

  But their first phone ever had a much better name. The A103, AKA The Smiley Face. There's multiple choice. Why was it called that? A, the phone itself had a smiley face on the back.

• 52:31David Imel?

  That's cool.

• 52:31Speaker 04

  B, the person who designed it, Tony Chen, is nicknamed Smiley, so it was in his honor. C, it was originally only sold in a store that translates to Smiley Shop. So it was a partnership. Or D, none of these are true.

• 52:45Andrew Manganelli?

  The first ever phone or the first?

• 52:48Speaker 04

  Their first ever.

• 52:49Andrew Manganelli?

  Oppo's first.

• 52:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, Oppo's first phone. Yeah.

• 52:53David Imel?

  What about it was the first phone in China to be able to?

• 52:59Speaker 07

  Alexander Graham Bell, like, I've invented the first phone. It's called the Smiley Face.

• 53:05David Imel?

  I would call it that.

• 53:07David Imel?

  Okay.

• 53:09Andrew Manganelli?

  All right.

• 53:10David Imel?

  Emoji. It has, it could did the, it could do emoji.

• 53:14Speaker 07

  This is, we're so good at podcasts.

• 53:15David Imel?

  That's my guess.

• 53:16David Imel?

  We'll be right back.

• 53:17Andrew Manganelli?

  Great segue.

• 53:33David Imel?

  Support for the show comes from Jira by Atlassian. So AI is only as useful as the context it has to work from. But when that context is scattered across tools like threads and DMs, that means your team and your AI agents end up flying kind of blind. That's the problem Jira solves. What's the goal tied to your project? What got decided last week in Slack? Atlassian's teamwork graph pulls all of 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.

• 54:18David Imel?

  That's J-I-R-A dot com.

• 54:21Speaker 06

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• 55:06Speaker 06

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• 55:42David Imel?

  All right, welcome back.

• 55:44David Imel?

  That's how I feel right now, because TikTok is on the clock once again. Yeah, we made an episode called TikTok on the clock when it was banned and then delayed and then banned again. And then there was a clock where it took 75 days for it to be banned unless a deal was reached. That 75 days was set to be up this weekend and reportedly-

• 56:06Speaker 04

  Well, last weekend, at the time of the listener viewing this.

• 56:09David Imel?

  Oh, right.

• 56:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, April 5th, which was three days ago.

• 56:14David Imel?

  True, okay. And reportedly, there was a deal that was going to be reached. And then the tariffs happened on April 2nd. And apparently, China was like, we're not gonna do this. We're not gonna sell the company unless, in the US, unless you pull back on the tariffs. And then they didn't, and then now they're fighting again. And so then, an executive order has been put in place that extends the sale for another 75 days. So, you know-

• 56:53David Imel?

  It'll keep scrolling, I guess.

• 56:54David Imel?

  We're in, it's Schrödinger's TikTok.

• 56:57Andrew Manganelli?

  TikTok has nine lives.

• 56:58David Imel?

  Honestly?

• 56:59Andrew Manganelli?

  Probably on like life's five or six by now.

• 57:02David Imel?

  Three by now, so if you thought TikTok was potentially gonna be gone this last weekend, it's now not. And you can keep living your life, but I just wanted to let you guys know.

• 57:12Andrew Manganelli?

  I still haven't re-downloaded it, very proud of myself.

• 57:14Speaker 04

  Me neither.

• 57:15David Imel?

  I still have never downloaded it.

• 57:17Andrew Manganelli?

  But reels suck, because it's just the Costco guys all the time, and then I get off reels.

• 57:20Speaker 04

  I see the TikTok things four months later on.

• 57:23David Imel?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, your reels are just curated to you.

• 57:29David Imel?

  So, if it's just the Costco guys, it's just-

• 57:32David Imel?

  It's your fault?

• 57:33David Imel?

  They think you want to watch.

• 57:34Andrew Manganelli?

  They did just come out with a new song. It's terrible, even for their Sanders.

• 57:38David Imel?

  Ironically, I've never downloaded TikTok, but the day before it got banned the first time, I was tempted. Because I was like-

• 57:45Andrew Manganelli?

  Watching it spiral was fun. That like 24 hours was hilarious.

• 57:51Speaker 04

  Before it got banned, that 24 hours was like peak TikTok.

• 57:54Andrew Manganelli?

  It felt like what would happen if we all knew the world was gonna end in like a week? And we all want needed to do that like last thing before the world ends?

• 58:01David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 58:01Andrew Manganelli?

  But anyways.

• 58:02David Imel?

  I remember it got banned on some people's phones when I got the message. And I had a friend in another room who was still scrolling. He was like, I gotta keep scrolling.

• 58:09Speaker 04

  Give me my dopamine.

• 58:12David Imel?

  Uh, anyways, okay, small, another little small story. Google TV streaming devices are going to be required to have a free TV or live TV button on them. Uh, if you guys have never heard of things like Pluto TV, it is basically free TV that is being streamed. And what they do is they put ads in it. And you may have heard of this model before because it was cable. So, uh, now Google is getting into that game because things like Pluto TV have gotten very popular. Where basically you can just like watch all of these shows. There's channels and you don't get to decide what you watch. And it's just like the past, except now it's being streamed over the internet.

• 58:48Andrew Manganelli?

  Pluto legal?

• 58:50Speaker 04

  Pluto's TV?

• 58:51Andrew Manganelli?

  I always thought it was not legal.

• 58:54Speaker 04

  No, Samsung, Samsung.

• 58:55Andrew Manganelli?

  I think of something else.

• 58:56Speaker 04

  You're thinking of Plex.

• 58:57David Imel?

  You're thinking Plex.

• 58:59Andrew Manganelli?

  Well, I think there's another like, anyways.

• 59:00David Imel?

  Samsung also has a Samsung TV experience where it's the same thing.

• 59:05Andrew Manganelli?

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

• 59:19Speaker 04

  Built in Samsung UI and stuff on your Samsung TV?

• 59:23Andrew Manganelli?

  I do too.

• 59:23Speaker 04

  You crazy people, why?

• 59:25David Imel?

  What would you do instead?

• 59:26Speaker 04

  Oh, you're just like a Google TV. There's Google TV, there's Chrome cat, there's like a million ways to bypass that.

• 59:31David Imel?

  This is all built in for free. I didn't have to buy a hundred dollar box. It's, yeah, it's fine. I mean, the YouTube app is a YouTube app, kind of no matter where you are.

• 59:38Andrew Manganelli?

  Uh, the Samsung TV app's not great, but the worst thing is that the room, sorry, we have derailed this conversation. And we can bring it back. But my remote disconnects eight times a week and sometimes takes 20 minutes to connect.

• 59:49David Imel?

  I miss infrared.

• 59:50Speaker 04

  Switch to LG, bro.

• 59:52Speaker 07

  Come to the light side.

• 59:53David Imel?

  Actually, I have an LG TV and a Samsung TV and I personally strongly prefer the Samsung UI.

• 1:00:00Speaker 07

  Oh.

• 1:00:01Andrew Manganelli?

  Wait, is there an infrared? Sorry. This has really been bothering me lately. Is there an infrared Samsung remote? Because I want to drive my head through the wall every

• 1:00:08Speaker 07

  Not just as the LG remote infrared.

• 1:00:11Andrew Manganelli?

  I don't care. I don't have an LG TV. I'm asking a different question.

• 1:00:15Speaker 07

  Built into this glorious infrared remote is universal backwards compatibility. So any other stereo device that you have in your house, you can sync with your remote.

• 1:00:25David Imel?

  Yeah, that's fire as hell.

• 1:00:26Andrew Manganelli?

  Does that work on my Samsung TV?

• 1:00:28Speaker 07

  It works on my 1980s stereo receiver. Like it's back for compatible like decades.

• 1:00:33David Imel?

  Yes.

• 1:00:34Andrew Manganelli?

  It does?

• 1:00:34David Imel?

  I'm pretty sure my Samsung TV remote is also infrared.

• 1:00:38Andrew Manganelli?

  One more minute. Every time it just goes like, it'll turn the TV on and off, but I can't control any of the like left, right, volume, anything. Select the UI and then it's like, press these two buttons. And I have, you hold it and it goes, can't connect, can't connect, can't connect, can't connect. And you just do it over and over and over till you give up, or it connects 45 times later. Samsung.

• 1:00:59David Imel?

  That can't be infrared then.

• 1:01:00Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah. Jeez, no, it shows a Bluetooth symbol when it connects.

• 1:01:04Speaker 07

  Gross.

• 1:01:04Andrew Manganelli?

  It's awful. It's the dumbest, it's the dumbest thing I've ever

• 1:01:08Speaker 07

  Did you know that life could be good?

• 1:01:12Andrew Manganelli?

  Hey, listen, if you want to gift me an LG TV.

• 1:01:15David Imel?

  The LG C1 OLED is reportedly extremely good and has been around for a long time.

• 1:01:21Speaker 07

  The LG QNED displays rock.

• 1:01:24David Imel?

  QNED.

• 1:01:24Speaker 07

  QNED.

• 1:01:25David Imel?

  It gives you an LG remote.

• 1:01:30Andrew Manganelli?

  I can bring us back, David. I have a question for you.

• 1:01:31David Imel?

  Okay.

• 1:01:32Andrew Manganelli?

  This is, can I reassign that button to a Pluto TV?

• 1:01:35David Imel?

  No.

• 1:01:36Andrew Manganelli?

  It has to be the Google TV.

• 1:01:37David Imel?

  I believe, I believe so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:39Andrew Manganelli?

  So they're like launching their own thing.

• 1:01:41David Imel?

  Yeah, I mean, so the Google TV remotes already have built in buttons for like Netflix and Hulu and, and Amazon. Yeah, it's, it's like because these companies pay the makers of the devices to like put these buttons on it so they can make money to quickly access it. It is very, in my, it's very e-wasty to like create a hardcoded button that goes to a service that may get merged with another service next month.

• 1:02:07David Imel?

  Generally that happens, but you know, that's what happens. So anyway, I don't know. Google is really leaning into this because I think they're finding out that it's a big cash cow for them. I have a anchored Nebula projector that has Google TV on it. And every time I open the Google TV UI, they have started prominently putting the free TV stuff like really big on the home screen.

• 1:02:30Speaker 07

  Do you mean Android TV OS or Google TV?

• 1:02:33David Imel?

  It's Google TV, which is, which is, yeah, it's a platform, Google TV.

• 1:02:38Speaker 07

  I thought it was called, oh.

• 1:02:39David Imel?

  No, it used to be called Android TV, is now Google TV.

• 1:02:42David Imel?

  This is different from Chromecast.

• 1:02:44David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:45Speaker 07

  Yeah, Chromecast is just.

• 1:02:46David Imel?

  Chromecast.

• 1:02:47Speaker 07

  Is like AirPlay but for Google.

• 1:02:48David Imel?

  Well.

• 1:02:49David Imel?

  Well, there was Chromecast TV.

• 1:02:50David Imel?

  But there's Chromecast product which runs a UI. There was Chromecast with Google TV.

• 1:02:54David Imel?

  The most Google conversation.

• 1:02:56David Imel?

  Which they did sunset, they no longer sell the Chromecast with Google TV, now they only sell the box. They sunset the actual Chromecast thing like a month ago.

• 1:03:03David Imel?

  That's what I still have.

• 1:03:04David Imel?

  Yeah, it was great. It was awesome.

• 1:03:07David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07David Imel?

  Um, okay.

• 1:03:09David Imel?

  I'm glad I still have that. It's like, actually, it's actually pretty good.

• 1:03:12David Imel?

  It is very good.

• 1:03:13David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14David Imel?

  No, and it had a nice texture. Anyway, that texture doesn't matter because it's in the back of your TV. But regardless, uh, it is interesting to see Google like asserting a lot of like dominance here. Because they are now forcing manufacturers that use Google TV to have a big free TV button. They did not say how big or where it needs to be on the remote. But the product that is being sold from Walmart, the Google TV box from Walmart, the remote now has a very giant free TV blue button in the center.

• 1:03:48David Imel?

  Full width.

• 1:03:48David Imel?

  Full width.

• 1:03:49David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:49David Imel?

  Of the remote. So, you know, and you know what? I kind of, I kind of like the free TV stuff. I think that this is maybe a hot take. But because we have so much choice now, a lot of people, you know, that's why I like the Spotify like, uh, radio stations and like all this stuff. It is kind of nice to just drop content on your life and not worry about it because there's like too much choice sometimes. And so I think a lot of people like that, you know, just being able to go on free TV and be like, oh, the Star Trek channel is playing. We'll just watch whatever episode it feeds me, you know?

• 1:04:25Speaker 07

  I wonder who you could be talking about.

• 1:04:28David Imel?

  That was my life in 2020 when Michael Fisher forced me to watch a lot of Star. It was good, it was good. But, uh, yeah, I don't know. I think that that is a growing market. We also saw that literal TV that they were giving you to you for free.

• 1:04:40David Imel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:41David Imel?

  From the company that made the free TV service.

• 1:04:43Speaker 07

  And the Super Bowl this year.

• 1:04:45David Imel?

  Was what on free?

• 1:04:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, on Pluto or one of those.

• 1:04:48David Imel?

  It was on Tivo or.

• 1:04:49Speaker 07

  I watched it on I watched it on one of the free ones.

• 1:04:53David Imel?

  I think it was on Tivo, Tivo.

• 1:04:54Andrew Manganelli?

  But you didn't watch it, you were on a plane.

• 1:04:56David Imel?

  Tubi.

• 1:04:56Speaker 07

  No, I got I landed like right before the halftime show. So I caught like I logged on like.

• 1:05:03David Imel?

  Dude, it was literally on Hubu.

• 1:05:05Speaker 07

  Dude, you didn't catch it on Hemi?

• 1:05:07David Imel?

  I Googled is Pluto TV legit? And the top comment says it's illegal. You're going to jail.

• 1:05:15David Imel?

  Is that a Reddit comment?

• 1:05:17Speaker 07

  We do need to give them credit for having a fifth letter.

• 1:05:21David Imel?

  What Pluto?

• 1:05:22Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23David Imel?

  Yeah, but that was they were early, though. They've been around for a while.

• 1:05:26Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05:27Andrew Manganelli?

  OG.

• 1:05:28David Imel?

  I thought they were demoted. They were from the solar system.

• 1:05:32Andrew Manganelli?

  Pluto, yeah, it's still a planet. Oh, Paramount owns them?

• 1:05:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think there's something to be said about ever since Napster, all these companies realized that they can't be caught with their pants down. And anytime there's something not profitable that seems like it could disrupt, that'll just get acquired instantly by one of these companies.

• 1:05:49David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:49Speaker 07

  Like Hulu was owned by NBC since like the really early days of that company.

• 1:05:54David Imel?

  Wasn't that like a plot from NBC?

• 1:05:57Speaker 07

  Like.

• 1:05:58David Imel?

  Like they got together. Well, not like nebula, well, kind of nebulous that I got together with some other streaming, the other companies. And they were like, streaming is coming. So let's like make this new company that doesn't look like it's us, but it will be us secretly.

• 1:06:12Speaker 07

  I don't know, maybe future bonus episode.

• 1:06:15David Imel?

  Yeah, maybe.

• 1:06:16Speaker 07

  But, uh, but yeah, no, Pluto is just Paramount. Even though it's so weird, actually, they're like, you can pay for Paramount Plus or you can.

• 1:06:24David Imel?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:06:25Andrew Manganelli?

  Now Disney owns Hulu.

• 1:06:27David Imel?

  Oh, right.

• 1:06:27Andrew Manganelli?

  So.

• 1:06:28David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:28Andrew Manganelli?

  Because they're in the bundle with ESPN and now there's Peacock streaming, which is NBC, but this does say. Who cares?

• 1:06:37David Imel?

  Yeah. Phoebe owns.

• 1:06:40David Imel?

  I also wanted to know really quickly, last night I was using my projector and in a very, in a very funny series of events, uh, I was scrolling through YouTube videos. And when I would hover over one YouTube video, the screen would like flash and then all the colors would invert. And I was like, what? It was only one YouTube video when it would start autoplaying. And then I started watching that video on my phone and I realized it was an HDR video. So my Google TV, and I don't know if this is like all Google TV platforms. Mine seems to be different because it literally does not have a speed changing thing, which really bothers me.

• 1:07:19David Imel?

  But yeah, I just thought it was very funny that Google TV's YouTube could not handle HDR when they push it. So autoplay HDR.

• 1:07:28Speaker 07

  I, I think one more thing about Google's official free TV thing.

• 1:07:32David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:33Speaker 07

  Is that I, I don't exactly know a lot about the, the inner workings of Pluto or whatever, or the other free TV stream.

• 1:07:40David Imel?

  Ads.

• 1:07:41Speaker 07

  Well, ads, but you know, one thing that's kind of interesting about IPTV is the ability to serve ads. Like obviously in traditional TV, you have to do all this work to predict who's going to be watching at any given moment. And then you sell that information to advertise or give that information to advertisers who are like, we'll probably hit our market demographics with this show. Whereas with something like Google that has information on every consumer that has ever lived and ever will be born. They might be able to squeeze a lot more juice out of this thing.

• 1:08:12David Imel?

  Yes.

• 1:08:12Speaker 07

  Another company.

• 1:08:13David Imel?

  Yes. Because when I was during like 2020, 2021, when Fisher was having me watch a lot of Star Trek. And also we were watching this old house, which was very nice. The advertising that was playing was like New York state advertising.

• 1:08:27Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:08:27David Imel?

  So it was definitely localized.

• 1:08:29Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:08:29David Imel?

  So that did used to be a problem where they couldn't target you before. Now they can target you so they could probably make more money. And so they're taking an old business model and they're like, but we're using data.

• 1:08:39Speaker 07

  We're only like a few tokens away from ads being LLM generated on the fly. Like, like picture, you're like watching a basketball game and then it goes and it's like, yo, Marquez.

• 1:08:52David Imel?

  I actually think you're not even exaggerating.

• 1:08:54Speaker 07

  I don't think you're exaggerating.

• 1:08:56Speaker 04

  It kind of is already, isn't it? Like, certain ads will only show on the court if you're in certain areas.

• 1:09:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:03Speaker 04

  That's not the actual stadium.

• 1:09:04David Imel?

  But it's not tailored to you.

• 1:09:05Speaker 07

  Yeah, like, yeah, like, a man walks on screen and is like, "Adam, it's been a while since you bid to Disneyland. You wanna go?"

• 1:09:13Andrew Manganelli?

  Adam, you have about a $1,000 switch, too.

• 1:09:17David Imel?

  It's only $9.99.

• 1:09:18Andrew Manganelli?

  I didn't realize Pluto TV is like a bunch of channels that's not regular cable. It's like the Fail Army channel and Cat's 24/7. And there's a couple like NBC News and stuff, but then there's also The Onion. And so, that makes more, the Monster Cat.

• 1:09:34David Imel?

  At least like the Samsung one has regular channels. Yeah.

• 1:09:39Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm, every time it comes on, I'm like, "Go away, please. Oh, wait, my remote's broken."

• 1:09:45David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:45Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay.

• 1:09:46David Imel?

  I don't know.

• 1:09:47Speaker 07

  All right. I think that we should go to trivia. Yeah, let's wrap this up.

• 1:09:52David Imel?

  You know, our viewers say they love it best when we make no sense.

• 1:09:55Speaker 07

  All right, guys. I have four hilarious names. Are they all real? Is one of them fake? If so, which one? Hit it, Adam. We have Professor of Psychiatry, Jules Angst. Ornithologist and Program Manager for Feather Identification at the National Museum of Natural History, Carla Dove. 1984 Olympic Gold Medalist Swimmer, Jeff Float. And current host of The View, Sonny Hostin. And again, I will, and there is a "all of these are real" E option. I'm so bad at reading multiple choices.

• 1:10:33David Imel?

  No, that was great.

• 1:10:35Speaker 07

  Well, I didn't get the letters. All right. One at a time, folks.

• 1:10:39David Imel?

  Well, we all put different answers.

• 1:10:40Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:10:40David Imel?

  I put A.

• 1:10:42Speaker 07

  A. Unfortunately, Jules Angst is real.

• 1:10:45David Imel?

  Dang.

• 1:10:46Andrew Manganelli?

  I put Sonny Hostin.

• 1:10:47Speaker 07

  Sonny Hostin is real and the host of The View.

• 1:10:50David Imel?

  You should have made that one the fake one because we definitely would just don't watch.

• 1:10:53Speaker 07

  I couldn't have made it fake because it's real.

• 1:10:56David Imel?

  I put J. Float is fake.

• 1:10:59Speaker 07

  Jeff Float is also real. These are all real names.

• 1:11:03Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, he's all real.

• 1:11:04Speaker 07

  These are all real. I like how no one doubted Carla Dove. You were like, I can, I can.

• 1:11:08David Imel?

  Yeah, it was a really long title, and I think that made it seem more real.

• 1:11:12David Imel?

  Carla Dove's my cousin.

• 1:11:13Speaker 04

  Quick update on the score, especially since no one got anything right just now. Marquez with 16, Andrew with 7, David 10 points ahead from Andrew with 17.

• 1:11:26Andrew Manganelli?

  That's not how you do things.

• 1:11:30Speaker 04

  David with 2.1 Andrews at 17.

• 1:11:34David Imel?

  2.1? Isn't it just 2?

• 1:11:35Speaker 04

  Well, that would be 14. Yeah, so like, what is it, 2.2?

• 1:11:38David Imel?

  Sorry. Yeah, I think in base 10, that's why.

• 1:11:41Speaker 04

  There you go. Okay, so.

• 1:11:45Speaker 04

  The Oppo A103 was nicknamed the smiley face. Why? Is it because A, the phone itself had a smiley face on the back? B, the person who designed it was nicknamed Smiley, so it was in his honor? C, the original store that it was sold in was translated to Smiley Shop, so it was a partnership? Or D, none of these are true? What do you guys think?

• 1:12:09Andrew Manganelli?

  My marker's pretty screwed, but uh.

• 1:12:12David Imel?

  So it goes from all of these are true to none of these are true.

• 1:12:15Speaker 04

  Exactly. All right.

• 1:12:16David Imel?

  Both better not be the answer.

• 1:12:19Speaker 04

  Who wants to go first?

• 1:12:20Andrew Manganelli?

  Something? Well, these two have the same.

• 1:12:23David Imel?

  Marquez and I put A. Yes!

• 1:12:30Speaker 04

  It had a smiley face on the back. Andrew, what did you say?

• 1:12:36Andrew Manganelli?

  Thanks for listening to the Waveform Podcast. Waveform is produced by Adam, Alina, and Ellis Irvin. We're a partner with the Vox Media Podcast Network, and the intro music was created by Vane Sil.

• 1:12:45Speaker 04

  Whoops.

• 1:12:46David Imel?

  Emoji phone.

• 1:12:47Andrew Manganelli?

  Like and subscribe.

• 1:12:48David Imel?

  Like and subscribe.

• 1:12:49Andrew Manganelli?

  See you next week.

• 1:12:50David Imel?

  Bye.

• 1:13:05David Imel?

  Tariffs.

• 1:13:06Speaker 06

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• 1:13:43Speaker 06

  Support for today's episode comes from Delta, official airline of the National Women's Soccer League. Traveling is basically magic. It creates opportunities, it fosters understanding, it expands horizons, it connects people and communities to each other and to their own potential. Those are the values that drive Delta. With up to 5,500 daily Delta and Delta Connection flights to more than 300 destinations on six continents, Delta is committed to helping you explore your world. Whatever gives you the travel bug, Delta is here to help you get there. Visit delta.com for more info. Delta, wherever the journey takes you.