Pod Insights The Vergecast Ford F-150 Lightning review, stress-testing earbuds, and a Galaxy foldable Q&A About this episode 02:33 - The Verge's David Pierce brings in deputy editor Dan Seifert, reviewer Allison Johnson, and managing editor Alex Cranz to answer Vergecast Hotline questions about Samsung's new Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4.
24:18 - Chris Welch returns to the show for more earbuds voice call testing, this time on the NYC ferry with the new Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro and the Google Pixel Buds Pro.
41:18 - Nilay Patel shares his experience reviewing the Ford F-150 Lightning, and the troubles with its touchscreen control panel.
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Transcript 14,291 words · 20 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:05 David Pierce? Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Loud Engine Sounds. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am currently sitting in my basement, playing Mario Tennis on my Nintendo Switch on my television, which doesn't sound like a big deal, but is actually a very big deal to me. You might have heard me complaining on the show a couple of weeks ago about all of Nintendo's stupid proprietary docks and cables for the Switch, and a bunch of you reached out to recommend that I buy one product, the Genki... Janki? I don't know. It's G-E-N-K-I, and the product is called the Convert Dock. I bought one, it works perfectly, and I'm very grateful to everyone who recommended. Anyway, we have a great show for you today. We're going to talk about Samsung, we're going to answer a bunch of your questions about Samsung's new phones, the future of flip phones, and what it's like to be a Green Bubble.
0:49 David Pierce? We're also going to continue our testing of wireless earbuds to see if we have a new best choice for voice calls and Zoom meetings. And Neelai Patel is going to come on and tell us about all of his adventures with the Ford F-150 Lightning. All that's coming in just a sec. I just have to win this tournament real quick. Fun fact about me, I'm not good at most video games, but I'm really good at Mario Tennis. If you ever want to play, get at me. This is The Vergecast. See you in a second.
1:20 Speaker 01 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.
2:05 Speaker 01 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.
2:51 David Pierce? Welcome back. Last week, as you probably already know, if you've listened to this show, Samsung held yet another Unpacked event and launched a bunch of new stuff.
2:59 Speaker 02 We wanted you to be able to imagine something different, an entirely new way to think about your smartphone.
3:05 David Pierce? There's the Galaxy Z Fold 4, which folds together like a hot dog bun. And then there's the Z Flip 4, which flips closed like a hamburger bun, plus some headphones and watches and all sorts of other stuff. It's a lot to sort through. So we asked you to send in whatever questions you had about the phones in particular to our Vergecast hotline, which, the number, don't forget, is 866-VERGE-11. Call us, ask us all your questions. In this case, we got some great ones. Thanks again to everyone who called in. It's super fun hearing from you. Please keep calling. To answer all of your questions about Samsung, which were weird and all over the place, I brought in a panel of Verge experts. Deputy Editor Dan Seifert. Hello. Reviewer Allison Johnson.
3:45 Speaker 03 Hello.
3:46 David Pierce? And Managing Editor Alex Cranz. Hello. I think we're going to get through a bunch of questions because a lot of people have a lot of thoughts about Samsung. Let's start. I think our first question is from Leo.
3:56 Speaker 04 Hi, David and Verge Crew. This is Leo calling from beautiful West Michigan. I'm one of those mini iPhone, mini, or other compact phone fans. There are dozens of us out there who like small phones. Currently rocking a way-too-big P6, and I'm wondering, is the Z Flip 4 finally what I'm looking for in a small Android phone? I really miss my Sony Xperia Z3 Compact, and I don't know if I want to switch to the iPhone. So I'd love to hear your thoughts about size, and if not Z4 Flip, what are my options out there for small phones? And do you hear any rumblings of anything coming down the pike? Thanks.
4:30 David Pierce? Okay, first of all, "I really miss my Sony Xperia Z3 Compact" is a sentence you will only hear on The Vergecast. So congratulations to all of us. But also, I really like this idea because it had never really clicked for me that like, maybe this new run of flip phones is like the small smartphones we were promised. I think this is very interesting theory. Dan, you're making a face. Why are you making a face?
4:50 Speaker 05 Uh, I hate to pour cold water on that, but it's what I do. As someone who's used a folding flip phone, I'm here to tell you that they are small when they're closed and fit in your pocket very nice. So if that's what you want from a small phone, is like to fit in more places easier, whether it's your pocket, or purse, or a bag, or whatever, yes, they do that. But when I think of a small phone, I think of, I can use this easily in one hand. And that is where they do not work well, because it takes two hands to open up the flip every single time, unless you want to like jam your thumb under there and gouge the screen as you do it. Don't recommend doing that with your $1,000 phone. And then when you open it, it's a 6.8-inch screen. It's a big phone.
5:34 Speaker 05 So it's not like it's like easily reachable with one hand, like to scroll down from the top, or reach across with your thumb, or anything like that. It becomes a big phone. So in my mind, no, these do not solve the small phone desire because they are not easily used by one hand. But I think Allison probably has a suggestion for you.
5:55 Speaker 03 I sure do.
5:56 David Pierce? Let's hear it.
5:57 Speaker 03 Now, this is the little kind of, I guess, dark horse of 2022, the Asus Zenfone 9. I have used it. I haven't fully reviewed it yet because a couple of things have come up, but it's a little one. It's a compact, is like a truly compact Android flagship. It's got top of the line processor, really interesting camera system where the stabilization like moves the whole camera around. There's just a lot of cool stuff about it. It's like IP68, there's a headphone jack. I hold it in my hand and I'm just like, this just feels right.
6:34 David Pierce? We established on this show very recently, Alison, that 6.1 inches is the correct size for a smaller smartphone. Does the Zenfone pass the test?
6:44 Speaker 03 So here's the asterisk on that. 6.1 inches is my like, I concede that not everybody wants a small phone. Like, I want a small phone. Everybody else seems to want a giant phone. So I think like 6.1 inches is where we can all kind of like agree, and that's okay. I review a lot of Android phones, so as my team has pointed out, my perception on what a small phone is has been skewed. I took the Pixel 6A out of the box. I was like, look, a tiny phone. And everybody quickly corrected me that it was not tiny. So yeah, I think I'm an unreliable narrator here. I like a small phone. I'm desensitized to giant phones.
7:26 David Pierce? So it seems to me like the true answer for Leo here is like, if what you want in a small phone is that it is like smaller and will fit in your pockets more easily, congratulations, the flip phone is great. If what you want is like an actually small phone that you can hold in your hand, either buy the Zenfone or just get over it and come live in the large phone world in which we unfortunately all exist.
7:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
7:45 David Pierce? Which I feel like is the right answer. Like, if you want a small phone, just stop wanting a small phone. Feels like the correct way to live your life going forward.
7:52 Speaker 03 I don't know if that's how I would put it. Yeah. Look at the Zenfone 9. It's lovely.
7:59 David Pierce? I like it. Okay, so next up, we have another call about screen size, actually, from, I believe, a caller from Aurora, Illinois.
8:07 Speaker 06 Hey, I have a question about folding phones and video aspect ratios. If you're watching YouTube at a standard like 16 by 9, how much bigger is that video actually getting when you go from the outside screen on like a Samsung folding phone to the inside screen? It seems like a lot of that would just be extra letterboxing and then just like marginally bigger video itself. Alright, thanks. Have a great day.
8:32 David Pierce? I believe I am the person on this podcast currently who has used folding phones the least. So you all tell me. I think this is a perfectly fair question, though. Like, what, if you're just looking at a 16:9 video on this, you know, giant ass internal display of the fold, what are you really getting?
8:49 Speaker 05 You do get a bigger video picture. And yes, you do get black bars above and below it, especially if you turn the phone into landscape mode and you're fullscreen that YouTube video. The open fold phone is roughly a 4 by 3 aspect ratio. You know, there's, it's not exact, but it's close enough. So, so you will get black bars above and below it. However, within those black bars, you still get a large video. Like, I can put a Pixel 6 Pro above the video and it's like the same size. So you, when you fullscreen it, you are getting like a big, big phone size video when you're playing it. What's interesting about it, though, is if you don't fullscreen it, then you get like all this extra UI that you don't get on normal phones because it behaves like a tablet UI. So
9:34 Speaker 05 you get the right rail of suggested videos, you get your descriptions, your comments and things like that. So like, it depends on like where you want to use this extra space that you have, but you can make more use of it than if you just had a standard, a slab smartphone with a giant screen on it.
9:50 Alex Cranz? Also, 16 by 9 is like a very popular aspect ratio. It's hugely popular on YouTube, etc. But it's not the only one. All of TV up until what, like the mid 2000s was in 4 by 3. Some movies were in 4 by 3. Like you've got even narrower aspect ratios like 1.85 and 2.39 and all of these super cinematic ones. So like, there's a lot of different types of screens. And I think we saw like Microsoft even saying 4 by 3 is actually a really good display size because it's going to give you all of those different ones feeling kind of nice.
10:25 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think the best way to think about it is like, if you've ever watched video on an iPad, it's going to be a very similar experience to that. You're going to have black bars above and below it. Those will change in size depending what aspect ratio it is. But this is very much like having an iPad mini that folds in half. And so all of the, you know, compromises that you get with that, but all the benefits that you get too.
10:46 David Pierce? Okay, Alison, what have you found in, in testing the Z Fold 4 so far? Are you like a full screener or do you do the like big phone size video plus all the interface around it?
10:55 Speaker 03 It's kind of dependent on like how I want to be sitting. Like sometimes you want to lay down and not hold your phone. So I think that's the like, I've used this phone more for is like, it is a truly small screen experience, having it on like the cover screen. But you can prop that up and play video. You can have it open in the L shape and watch a teeny tiny video that way, which kind of stinks, but you don't have to use your hands.
11:25 David Pierce? Somewhere someone on Samsung's marketing team is so happy. The amount of time they have spent being like, look, you can put this thing on a table, fold it into the L shape and watch videos. And I guess it's good. Like, who knew? It was worth it.
11:37 Speaker 03 I like propped it up like a book, I guess, where it's like open. And I had a, I had TikTok playing on one side, which that even kind of works. So many different things you can do with it.
11:48 David Pierce? So you open it up, you go split screen, TikTok on one side, Reels on the other side, and just infinite doom scrolling forever.
11:55 Speaker 03 Fight, the two of you, fight it out.
11:59 David Pierce? That was helpful. Thank you all. Let's move on to the next one. A lot of people have questions about screen size, which I guess is fair. This is what folding phones are all about. Our next question comes from Kevin.
12:08 Speaker 08 Hey, GurgCast. What is a computer? My name is Kevin. And my question is with the Z43, there are already issues with things like the Google Feed and YouTube, the YouTube apps basically having side column unless you were turned into what I guess essentially a landscape mode. So now that they've made the screen shorter on the Z44, doesn't that mean that that landscape real estate has been made smaller? Like, are those apps going to populate properly? They already had issues. Yeah, let me know. Thanks.
12:35 David Pierce? Allison, I really want to know what you've seen so far because I think this is a thing Samsung has been tinkering with over the last few years with like how apps should render at different screen sizes and when you open the phone versus when you turn the phone versus when it's closed. Like, has Samsung figured out how apps are supposed to look on all these screens yet?
12:53 Speaker 03 I mean, I think they've gotten pretty close. To me, like, the difference is, you know, with the phone closed, using the cover screen, does it feel like a normal phone? Does it feel just super thin and weird and claustrophobic? It's all right. Like, it's good enough. I don't think the screen size difference is big enough to make any kind of big difference in how much video, you know, and how things render or like how much content you can get on the screen. It's just a matter of like, is it a little more comfortable to use? And for me, it's been the first day of using it, I was like, I feel like I'm aiming at these really tiny, you know, keys on the keyboard. But I got used to it after about a day.
13:36 Speaker 03 And I think it's, it's like 90% there to where it's a big enough screen that you feel comfortable being like, yes, this is my phone.
13:44 David Pierce? Does it feel less like a TV remote now? Because that was always my issue with the early folds was that when they were closed, it felt like you were holding this like impossibly long TV remote.
13:54 Speaker 03 It's still a little remote-ish.
13:56 David Pierce? Okay.
13:56 Speaker 03 Almost there, but you you still get that vibe.
13:59 David Pierce? And Dan, Android is supposed to solve this at some point, right? Like, isn't Android 12L going to be the magic thing that fixes everything for us?
14:05 Speaker 05 The Fold 4 does run 12L, or it's based on Android 12L with Samsung's optimizations on top of it. So it does have that. What 12L really does, though, is really kind of hard to say. We've only seen 12L on a big tablet and then this Fold 4. So we haven't seen it on a lot of places yet. Mostly what you see it on in the Fold 4 is the little taskbar at the bottom. Where on the Fold 3 or the earlier models, you had like a taskbar you could like swipe in from the side of the phone to launch apps from. Now it's going to be at the bottom, similar to how macOS and Windows work and things like that. And I think that like, there are a couple of things that Samsung does to help you decide how you want the screen to render apps.
14:49 Speaker 05 Like you can go into settings and adjust the screen zoom. So you can say, give me less zoom, so I fit more stuff on the screen. Or give me bigger zoom, so I got bigger icons and it's easier to read and stuff like that. And that will impact how certain apps render, because that will adjust whether an app says, oh, I'm displayed on a tablet and I'm going to show my tablet interface. Or, oh, I'm displayed on a phone and I'm just going to be a big phone interface. So that can like tweak things a little bit. I think that the difference between the Fold 3 and the Fold 4 is really not that significant. Even though like on a spec sheet, the aspect ratio is slightly different and the screen size measure is slightly different. The difference in practice is not that huge. So like, an app is likely going to display exactly the same on the Fold 4 as it did on the Fold 3.
15:32 Speaker 05 And we kind of like did a little bit of comparisons. We know that YouTube definitely does, like it's the exact same way on the Fold 3 and the Fold 4. So there's like, you know, some tweaks you can make to it and things like that. And it's really going to very depend on what apps that you are really into. Famously, the one app that really does not like foldable phones is, shocker, Instagram. And the way that it opens on the inside screens is it opens in a, essentially a Letterboxd format. So Samsung has like built software to to handle Instagram. So you can see Instagram. Without it like zooming in and cropping out everything really horribly. But like that was Samsung fixing it because Android does not really fix it.
16:12 David Pierce? So before we move on, the thing I have to know is how zoomed in is your phone? Dan, for anyone who is not familiar with Dan Seifert, uses bigger font on his computer than almost anyone else I know. So I just feel like I just need to know, like, are we, are we a right in the middle guy? Are we a zoom all the way in guy? Like, where are we at?
16:27 Speaker 05 I was tinkering with it today, actually, because of course I also tinker. I've got the zoom set all the way to the plus and then I make the font smaller. I tried it the other way so that I could have like more space, but just make the font bigger. And that made like the interface elements all weird.
16:44 David Pierce? So like big UI, small text.
16:46 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think it's actually the default UI size because there's two, at least on the fold three, there are two settings. There's default and then more space. And so I've got it set on default and then I just take the font back one notch so that I can fit more stuff in the screen.
17:00 David Pierce? All right.
17:00 Speaker 05 And then just hold it closer to my face, I guess.
17:03 David Pierce? Just ramp up the prescription on your glasses, just real quick. All right, let's move on. So next up, we have a question from Justin.
17:11 Speaker 09 Hey, David, it's Justin, J Mitch in your Twitter DMs. I wanted to know if the new Z Flip 4 has USB-C display port out or USB HDMI over USB-C? So that I could do Dex or just mirror my Android phone to my AR headset so that I can watch movies in bed without bothering my wife. That is my dream setup, small foldable device that I can put in my pocket and then plug into a huge display. None of the other flips had it and I was waiting to see if they would announce it and they didn't say anything at the event. And I can't find any information on this anywhere, so I would appreciate an answer to this question. Thanks, man.
17:49 Speaker 05 To address Justin's question, we can confirm that the Flip 4 does not support Samsung Dex. And we are very certain that it does not support video out over USB-C. But we'll be testing that in the future, so stay tuned. But T L D R, I would not expect it to do what you're hoping it to do, unfortunately.
18:08 David Pierce? Any idea why not? Samsung has made this big deal about Dex for so long. This is an odd line to pick to not.
18:15 Speaker 05 So this is pure speculation here, but I think that when you are running like video out over USB C on a phone, and if you're running a desktop environment like Dex or things like that, it's very taxing on the phone's processor and it's taxing on the thermal system. And the one thing with the flip phones is that they do not have as good thermal management as the larger devices or the other devices. And so they will throttle their processor faster than say a fold will or an S22 Ultra will. And I know, I think PC Mag did some side by side benchmark comparisons with temperatures and everything like that. And they noticed that the flip four was throttling faster than the fold four did. So that would be my guess is it's a performance management system thing, limitation or whatever. But it'd be like, I think his idea is really cool.
19:00 Speaker 05 And like, it'd be like a really cool idea if it did work.
19:04 David Pierce? Just to confirm really quickly, the fold does support Dex, right? And all the other HDMI out stuff?
19:10 Speaker 05 That's correct. Yep. Yeah. So the fold is like the full computer in your pocket dealio. But unfortunately, the flip it does not.
19:17 David Pierce? Justin, when you figure this out, report back. We want to know. All right. We have one more question before we go here. It is slightly different, but we're going to answer it anyway. This is from Gordon.
19:26 Speaker 10 This is Gordon. Thanks, guys. I have not received a text back from the last two women to give me their phone number. Obviously, I'm an Android user. Is it time for me to just give up on the fight for independent text messaging platforms and buy into an iPhone? I wish I could say I'm not this desperate, but I am definitely desperate enough to pay $3,000 to migrate my entire digital life. Thanks.
19:53 Alex Cranz? I got this.
19:54 David Pierce? Okay, Alex, go.
19:55 Alex Cranz? Hey, Gordon, I hate to tell you this, but it is the green bubbles. I confirmed this.
20:02 David Pierce? Wow.
20:02 Alex Cranz? Not with Gordon specifically. I had a friend and he was, he was having trouble. He had at least two women say to him, it's your green bubbles. I don't want them in my life. It could be the green bubbles. It could be a wide variety of things going on. Are you looking at the green bubbles on your phone more than you are talking to the woman across from you? That could be part of the problem. But no, I think it's okay to migrate because iOS is superior in the United States and will help you a lot more than than Android will. But I think also, if you love your Android phone, and a lot of people do, at least like one person on The Vergecast loves their Android phone. If you love your Android phone, keep it.
20:45 Alex Cranz? Because out there, somewhere is a woman who loves her Android phone. And when you text her and you pop up that green bubble and you're like, oh, here it goes. Here's another one. She's going to reject me because of this green bubble. She's going to go, oh, my God, there's another one like me. And that's like a love connection right there for you. So like, honestly, I think you should keep it. Don't change your devices to try to get with a girl. Just focus on being really awesome and cool, which it sounds like you are. And keep holding out for that green bubble girl because I swear she's out there somewhere.
21:17 David Pierce? I just can't believe that we let you get through a whole thing after you said, as everybody knows, iOS is just better than Android in the US. That's just like a thing you said. And we're just cool with that, apparently?
21:28 Alex Cranz? I'm out here speaking the truth, David. I'm just speaking truth to power. And the power is Android? I don't know what's going on.
21:35 David Pierce? Listen, I'm a blue bubble and my wife is a green bubble. And we mostly get along okay.
21:40 Alex Cranz? Aww. That's inspiring.
21:43 David Pierce? But here's what I wonder is, is the correct answer to just give them some other, like, should you give them your Instagram handle? Should you just be like, oh, no, I use Signal? And then they'll be like, oh, wow, such great personal data policies? And then fall in love with you even harder? Like, is there a better answer than your cell phone number out there that we can give?
22:02 Alex Cranz? Like, I only use Signal because I care about your privacy and mine.
22:06 David Pierce? Yeah, exactly. Our love is end-to-end encrypted. It's like, done, lock it down.
22:10 Alex Cranz? End-to-end decryption. Woo!
22:12 David Pierce? All right, Gordon, let us know how it goes. We're all rooting for you. Dan, Alex, Allison, thank you all, appreciate it. Thank you. We are going to take a break and then we will be back to continue our testing of earbud microphones because I just need to know if I bought the right headphones. We'll be right back.
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23:36 David Pierce? Welcome back. A couple of months ago, on this show, I found myself with a question. Which wireless earbuds should I buy to use for phone calls, Zoom meetings, and all the voice dictation and chattering with Siri I do all day? We talk a lot about sound quality with headphones, but I really just wanted to know about microphones. So I sent Verge reviewer Chris Welch, who is a good sport, to a coffee shop to test out a bunch of different wireless earbuds to see how they sound specifically for voice calls.
24:05 Speaker 12 It's outdoor seating. There are several people out here. There's music playing overhead. Someone's like, Paul, show up next to me. So.
24:11 David Pierce? The pretty clear winners of that test were the Apple AirPods Pro and the Sony LinkBuds, which both had the clearest detail in the voice and took out a lot of background noise. I actually ended up buying a pair of LinkBuds after that test, and I have to say I love them so far, but I'm always looking for something better. And since that test, two new earbuds have come out. There's the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, which came out at that Unpacked event last week, and the Google Pixel Buds Pro. So now, obviously, we have to put those new earbuds to the test along with the winners of the last round to see who is the current champion. But we wanted to up the ante with the test this time, so we actually put Chris on a boat. Like I said, he's a good sport. The New York City Ferry, to be exact, which is a very noisy and chaotic part of the city.
24:55 David Pierce? It has engines, waves, people talking, helicopters, wind. It should be terrible for headphones. So let's see how this goes. Chris Welch, hello. Hello. It's good to be back. Tell me where you are right now. Your location and setup is deeply hilarious to me at this moment, which we forced you to do, and I'm sorry. So tell us where you are. We are down at the Wall Street Ferry, waiting to get on a boat.
25:18 Speaker 13 I want to come up with a new way of testing earbuds that's not the everyday, just out on the street, stress test. So we thought we'd go on the water on a nice day. It's finally pleasant out in New York again. There's a helicopter overhead, so we've got all sorts of things happening here.
25:31 David Pierce? Yeah, we came out of the coffee shop test being like, okay, this was good, but they all did relatively well. My big takeaway was like, great job, earbuds. So it was like, okay, we need to, like, let's break these things and see how we do. Okay, so which earbuds are we using right now? How are we doing?
25:45 Speaker 12 Right now, these are the AirPods Pro, the standard bear for the iPhone at least. And usually pretty good company, pretty good.
25:53 David Pierce? There's more sort of low-level rumble than we had the last time, where it like, it sounds like somebody is sort of breathing into the headphone. Okay, so this is not great noise cancellation of the announcements there. I was much more impressed at the coffee shop. This is rough times.
26:08 Speaker 12 Okay. We're getting on the boat.
26:12 David Pierce? All right, it's boat time.
26:23 Speaker 12 The guy at the ferry just said hello. He wants to work at the Verge. We got a fan here, so it's good.
26:30 David Pierce? We didn't even plant that. That was amazing. While we're still here, let's switch to, let's do the link buds real fast.
26:39 Speaker 12 Now we're on the link buds. Hopefully they sound as much. We do sound lovely.
26:44 David Pierce? This sounds like I can hear the noise cancellation happening all the time.
26:49 Speaker 12 I can hear you pretty clearly. And these are open earbuds, so I also hear everything else.
26:54 David Pierce? I went back and forth on the open ear thing a lot, and I would assume that as you get it like onto the ferry, you're not going to be able to hear me at all when we try to do this.
27:02 Speaker 12 Yeah, so we'll see how the engine roar treats these.
27:05 David Pierce? Your voice sounds better than you did on the AirPods, but it's slightly less pleasant just because it's like there's clearly way more processing going on.
27:13 Speaker 12 It's more gated.
27:14 David Pierce? Whereas I think the AirPods do a, they do an okay job of kind of splitting the difference. That's why I'm curious to hear on the ferry, how hard these things go and what it ends up sounding like. But just in terms of like raw background noise, I'm getting much less from you now than I was with the AirPods, which is interesting.
27:28 Speaker 12 Good job, Sony. I think you're doing good on.
27:31 David Pierce? All right, do you think you can switch one more time before you get on the ferry? How much time do we have?
27:34 Speaker 12 Sure, we can give it a go. Should we do the Galaxy buds next or the Pixel buds?
27:37 David Pierce? Let's do the Galaxy. They're the newest ones.
27:40 Speaker 14 These are the brand new Galaxy Buds 2 Pro. Just announced at the event alongside the Fold 4 and Flip 4. $230, I believe. And so far, I'm a fan of the sound quality. This is my first real call test, so we're putting them through the wringer.
27:58 David Pierce? You sound bad.
27:59 Speaker 14 Yeah.
28:00 David Pierce? Like, I can hear you, I can understand everything you're saying, but it sounds like you're sort of yelling at me like through a pillow, if that makes sense.
28:07 Speaker 14 Okay.
28:08 David Pierce? But I can hear everything you're saying, and the noise cancellation is really good. I'm hardly hearing any background noise at all. You just don't sound very good.
28:14 Speaker 14 Yeah, there are people shouting, there's a guy on a bike riding around. There's a lot of background noise, so if you're not hearing any of that, that's good. But the pillow thing is less than ideal.
28:22 David Pierce? I will say this is the worst one of the three we've tested so far.
28:25 Speaker 14 Okay.
28:26 David Pierce? But it's still, it's again, it's kind of like where we were the last time. It's like, it works. I wouldn't recommend like calling the President of the United States from these headphones in this situation, but like, it's, it's fine. We're, it'll do the job.
28:38 Speaker 14 Okay, well, we're getting aboard the boat right now, so it's time to change the scenery and the sound and see how we make out.
28:51 David Pierce? All right, we are now aboard the ferry. And like, I can tell it got noisier, but it's like, it's not particularly painful for me to listen to still.
28:58 Speaker 14 Yeah, that's impressive, because in real life here, like, we're right next to the engine, and it's just quite intense. So, uh, I can hear you still, but it's definitely just a constant roar. So if you're not hearing that too badly, then all right, champ, so. I'm not sure how often people work from a ferry boat, but we're not here for that reason. We're here to just show what these things are capable of.
29:18 David Pierce? And I feel like it's like, even if you don't want to work from the ferry, like, I had this literally yesterday, I was on Amtrak on the way home, and I had like a three and a half hour thing, and it's like, it's another one of those where it's like, sometimes it's very loud because there's announcements and people are talking, and sometimes it's like relatively quiet and just sort of going. And so I feel like knowing that it'll at least be okay, even when the noise is really bad, actually is very useful for me.
29:40 Speaker 14 Right.
29:41 David Pierce? Okay, so before the ferry leaves and stuff gets crazy, even crazier, let's switch to the Pixel Buds Pro and get, get our last quick test here. You are on the Google Pixel Buds Pro.
29:51 Speaker 15 Yes.
29:52 David Pierce? How do you like these in general? We haven't talked about this on this show yet.
29:54 Speaker 15 Yeah, I'm a fan. They've got multi-point, so you can pair them to two devices at once, which the AirPods and Samsungs and even the Sonys of the world cannot do. So that's a nice little thing. I've had a few calls indoors, you know, very basic stuff. I haven't had many complaints, but how do they sound on a boat?
30:11 David Pierce? I would put these kind of right in line with the AirPods, actually. I'm definitely getting that sort of baseline, sort of white, noisy hum, but not in any particularly unpleasant way. And your voice sounds pretty normal. So I think it's trying to sort of split that middle ground, too, of like, not over processing, but also not getting all of the noise out as a result.
30:34 Speaker 15 Right. Okay, that's pretty good then, considering, you know. Google, their last few year, but the Pixel Buds 2 in particular, were pretty terrible. So these have like none of the issues and the dropouts that those had. So I've been very happy about that. Sound quality is great. We're gonna have spatial audio later this year with the head tracking, all that stuff. Yeah, they're definitely Google's best try at it yet.
30:53 David Pierce? Yeah, I'm kind of impressed. The only thing that is annoying me is there is this one band of high pitched audio that's coming through. And when you're not talking, it kicks in even harder. So it's like, it seems to be trying to figure out how to find your voice and not getting it quite right. But then when you're not talking, it's noise cancellation is really good. Apple was kind of pulling everything out, but like a sort of subtle white noise. This is definitely, there's like a little bit of a screeching happening. It's like the train car on the railroad tracks noise a little bit.
31:22 Speaker 15 Interesting how like these companies tunes their algorithms, you know, to pick out certain frequencies. So I guess it comes down to preference or what have you. But at least you can hear me pretty well.
31:31 David Pierce? Yeah, can you hear me okay? How are you, how am I doing?
31:34 Speaker 15 I'm here, everybody, fine. We're gonna stay on the boat and keep going to our next destination on the ferry.
31:38 David Pierce? Wait, is the ferry moving?
31:39 Speaker 15 Oh yeah, the ferry's been moving, yeah.
31:41 David Pierce? Wow, I didn't even hear the ferry start to move. I expected a big horn or something.
31:46 Speaker 15 It's got a big engine behind us, you know, but none of that's coming through on the AirBuds, so pretty good.
31:51 David Pierce? While we're here, why don't we go back and do the other two? Well, let's get the AirPods and the Sonys, so we have all four sitting at this table.
31:59 Speaker 12 We're back on the AirPods Pro. We're still ducked, so we don't have movement sounds, but still pretty loud. We're at the same table we were at before when the Pixel buds were super quiet when I was not talking, as I'm saying. So Apple might let through a bit more noise.
32:12 David Pierce? I kind of can't believe I'm saying this. The Pixel buds sounded better. You can very much tell that Apple is obsessed with making your voice still sound like your voice. You sound the most like you on these. But as a result, I'm definitely hearing more background noise. I can hear the people talking as they walk behind you in a way that the Pixel buds would not. I'm still getting that same high pitched whine, so I think it's even with Google on that front. But Google is definitely more aggressive than Apple on this front, but it seems like almost as natural. I'm kind of impressed with the Pixel buds here.
32:45 Speaker 12 Interesting. Not what I expected. These AirPods are known for one, and we'll see what happens with the rumored AirPods Pro 2, I think, that might come around this fall. Because we've been out for a while. It's time for something new in Apple, I think. And I think we're getting close to it. Should we do the LinkBuds now?
32:59 David Pierce? Yeah, let's switch to the LinkBuds.
33:02 Speaker 12 We're back to Sony's LinkBuds, so I can hear everything around me. I can still hear you, but I can imagine if we go up top on the boat, it's going to get very, very dire very quick. So for now, I can still make you out.
33:13 David Pierce? Chris, I have really disappointing news.
33:15 Speaker 12 What?
33:16 David Pierce? These are not as good. The Pixel buds might be the best one so far, which I would not have bet at all would be the case. But it's still that same thing. It's trying really, really hard to process, and I can hear it happening. And so everything is coming up and then coming down, and then coming up and then coming down, and everything is a little topsy-turvy. You sound more pleasant to me on both the AirPods and the Pixel buds.
33:41 Speaker 12 Wow, fascinating. Because these were far and away the champion of the coffee shop setting, but here they seem to be struggling with all the factors around.
33:51 David Pierce? All right. Well, while you're still moving, let's go back to the Galaxy buds and see if they can come out of last place in this test.
33:58 Speaker 12 Yes, the brand new Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, Buds Pro 2, whichever you prefer. Yeah, like I was saying before, the Samsung's best sounding earbuds yet. By far, the noise cancellation is great, almost at Sony's level, maybe just just shy.
34:10 David Pierce? The noise cancellation on here is pretty good. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm not getting a ton of background noise, but you sound by a mile the worst of the four we've been testing here. It's very muffled and like you're talking to me through a wall of mud.
34:26 Speaker 12 Not sure if that's like mic placement or what they did differently, but yeah, it's not great to hear. Spending $230 on earbuds, you don't want to hear that you sound like you're talking through mud.
34:37 David Pierce? Let's do one last test. We're going to throw out the Link Buds and we're going to throw out the Galaxy Buds and we're going to take the AirPods and the Pixel Buds Pro up to the top of the ferry where things are going to get even crazier and that's where we're going to do our, our final test here.
34:49 Speaker 12 It's going to be windy, it's going to be noisy, it's going to be a very big test for this, uh, let's see who wins.
35:02 David Pierce? All right, we're on a moving ferry, just went under the bridge.
35:05 Speaker 12 Beautiful day here in New York. It's very wistful, palacious.
35:11 Speaker 12 It's a nice day. We're on, we're on top of the ferry, a lot of folks around talking. It's a full, it's a full gang up here, so worst case scenario for any set of earbuds, sort of being on a plane.
35:24 David Pierce? This is pretty bad. I caught about 80% of that, I would say. Apple's doing a good job here of making it like, I suspect if it was just unprocessed audio, this would be like unlistenable and I would have to take my headphones off. So it's cancelling out most of it, but unfortunately that also includes your voice. So I think we have officially reached the do not make phone calls on top of the ferry portion of the proceedings here.
35:44 Speaker 12 Don't make phone calls. We have to do, we've got to project really loud and yell, just freak out the other ferry passengers.
35:52 David Pierce? Listen, the last time we did this, we scared everybody out of a coffee shop. So I think the least we can do is scare everybody off the ferry today.
35:58 Speaker 12 Shall we switch to the possible new winners with the Buds Pro?
36:02 David Pierce? Let's do it. I have high hopes. Let's see what happens.
36:08 David Pierce? All right, PixelBuds stress test.
36:10 Speaker 15 These are the PixelBuds Pro atop a ferry in New York City. We are about to dock though, so it's not quite a fair comparison versus... I mean, the engine's on, you know, but we're not at full speed right now.
36:23 David Pierce? You sound substantially better than you did on the AirPods. I think we, I think we might need to do this test when, when we're fully moving again. Cause it's, this is usable.
36:32 Speaker 15 Right.
36:32 David Pierce? Whereas the AirPods were like, I would just hang up on you until you'd call me later. But yeah, this is, this is too good to be true. I think we're, we're gonna have to wait till you're back out on the, on the open sea for this one.
36:41 Speaker 15 Okay.
36:47 David Pierce? All right, looks like we're moving again.
36:48 Speaker 15 We are at speed once again.
36:50 David Pierce? This is better than the AirPods. I cannot believe this.
36:53 Speaker 15 Better than the AirPods? Okay. I'm coming through, like no words are getting cut off, nothing, you're not losing me at all.
36:59 David Pierce? The AirPods were definitely clipping you occasionally. It was like, I could get all of your sentences, but it was, it was, you were kind of coming and going. But this seems like it's, it's pretty clean.
37:09 Speaker 15 That's impressive.
37:10 David Pierce? Turn and face your head directly into the wind. Let's make this as hard as possible.
37:14 Speaker 15 Okay. Facing into the wind, speaking to you at a fairly normal volume for a ferry. Uh, I can hear the wind in the earbuds, so is that coming through?
37:24 David Pierce? I can hear you fine. This is insane.
37:29 David Pierce? I kind of can't believe it. That worked. Like we could have a call like this and I don't think I would ever be like, Chris, are you on the top of a ferry calling me?
37:36 Speaker 15 Well, props where they're due, Google.
37:38 David Pierce? Like I would guess right now that you're like walking down the street and there's like a breeze, right? Like, but that's, that's what it sounds like. It definitely doesn't sound like you're on top of a very loud ferry.
37:48 Speaker 15 There is a breeze all right. Yeah, this is impressive. I mean, I can hear you fine, obviously. Uh, the, the active noise cancellation is pretty good. You get some wind noise with all your buds that have that effect, but uh, by and large, we might've found our favorite new pick for ferry earbuds or, you know, any kind of like extreme circumstances. Didn't expect the PixelBuds Pro to come out on top today.
38:10 David Pierce? All right. Well, this is, we've, we've learned something here. I'm now looking sadly at my LinkBuds S and I'm like, do I, did I make the right decision in buying you? I'm gonna, I'm gonna go look at Amazon for a while and just, just see how I feel.
38:21 Speaker 15 Okay. Well, we gotta find our way home now, back to the office, but this has been fun.
38:26 David Pierce? Well, thank you. Go back to quieter places and we'll, we'll, we'll hang again soon.
38:30 Speaker 15 All right, sir. See you soon.
38:35 David Pierce? We're gonna take a break and then we're gonna talk about pickup trucks. Neelai Patel just finished reviewing the Ford F-150 Lightning, and I don't know anything about pickup trucks, but he tells me it's a big deal. We'll be right back.
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40:10 David Pierce? Welcome back. So I should confess this right up front. I am not a truck guy, not even a little bit. But I'm fascinated by the Ford F-150 Lightning anyway, because this is Ford trying to take its most iconic vehicle, maybe the most iconic vehicle that anybody makes, into the electric truck of the future. And I think whether Ford can pull that off might say a lot about the whole car industry's attempt to go electric. Neelai Patel spent a bunch of time over the last several weeks racing around upstate New York in a Lightning, hanging out at Home Depot parking Lots because apparently that's what you do when you're a pickup truck guy. And he wrote a review for The Verge about all of it. It's up now. I'll put the link in the show notes. And what surprised me most about it was that the Ford F-150 Lightning is a truck.
40:55 David Pierce? Yes, but it's also basically just a really big tablet on wheels. And I love talking about tablets. So I told Neelai that he had to come tell us about this Ford tablet, whether touchscreens are the future of cars and whether Ford's software design can match its pickup prowess. Hi, Neelai.
41:11 Nilay Patel? Hey, buddy.
41:12 David Pierce? So you're a truck guy.
41:13 Nilay Patel? One of the more surprising developments in my entire life.
41:16 David Pierce? Have you always been a truck guy? Like, when, when did Neelai Patel truck guy become a thing?
41:20 Nilay Patel? Well, I've always enjoyed a truck.
41:22 David Pierce? Okay.
41:22 Nilay Patel? Like, you grew up in Wisconsin. There were trucks around. I've always thought trucks were neat. The idea that I would own a pickup truck and then consider purchasing a second pickup truck, that's pandemic. That's just pure pandemic outcome.
41:33 David Pierce? Yeah, I mean, pre-pandemic Neelai was much more interested in like, an unnecessarily fast BMW than a second pickup truck.
41:40 Nilay Patel? City cars and now like country cars. Yeah, but it's good.
41:44 David Pierce? Okay, so the reason I bring this up is we're going to mostly talk about the F-150 Lightning as like a gadget, because I think that's how you mostly think about it. That's how you mostly reviewed it. So we're going to talk mostly about that. But like, real quick before we do, put this thing in like, future of cars context for me. Cause I don't, all I know is that Ford sells a lot of F-150s and it would be good if they were electric, I guess. Like, this thing seems to matter a lot. Tell me why.
42:08 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I think that's the basics. So pickup trucks are the most popular vehicles in America. The F-150 in particular is the most popular vehicle in America for like 45 years running.
42:18 David Pierce? Wow.
42:18 Nilay Patel? And that's not a consumer number. That's a vehicles in America number. That is contractors, that is delivery people, that is fleets. Like, people buy F-150s for their businesses, huge companies buy hundreds of F-150s at a time. So the most popular vehicle in America, they obviously are huge. They've gotten incredibly big over time. If you look at an F-150 from the 90s, they look teeny, they're little baby cars.
42:44 David Pierce? Yeah.
42:45 Nilay Patel? They're heavy. They have big engines. They To have a lot of emissions from the big engines. So if you can electrify that, and in particular electrify it not for consumers, but for that huge number of commercial customers that don't often drive more than 300 miles in a day, right? So they can come home and they can charge back at their depots. That's what Ford calls it. You've like made a huge impact on emissions. There's just an opportunity here to electrify a lot of cars at once because you're aiming kind of at the biggest part of the market.
43:14 David Pierce? Okay. So if I'm Ford then, I would basically try to make the F-150 Lightning as much exactly the same as the F-150 that has been the best selling car in America for 45 years as possible. Like change as little as you possibly can and like, hope nobody notices seems like a very good business strategy in that sense. And to some extent, that that almost seems like what Ford did here, like almost, but not quite.
43:36 Nilay Patel? It's an F-150. And my joke is like Ford literally did not redesign the wheel. It's the F-150 steering wheel, F-150 seats, F-150 body panels, F-150 windshield wipers, F-150 everywhere. Then some minor tweaks, the taillights and headlight have the little LED surrounds. The interior is like, depending on your view of the touchscreen, a little bit nicer than the Platinum F-150 because it's just been redesigned a little bit. And obviously it has that drivetrain and it can, it can just go real fast in a way that very few F-150s can go real fast.
44:07 David Pierce? That's fair. The headlights thing, there are very few things in the world that drive Anna, my wife, as crazy as like non-standard headlights and taillights. And every time we drive at night, she's like, this should be regulated. All headlights and taillights should have to be the same. And the thing the Mustang does where it like the lights sort of tick outward drives her absolutely insane. So I'm sure the F-150 Lightning is going to do the same thing.
44:28 Nilay Patel? So one thing that's true across car design is everybody wants the cool LED headlights. They're like really thin, look really neat. And they don't make enough light. So if you actually look at where the real headlights are in cars, they're all over the place in places. They're like hidden. So it looks like the cool lights are the lights, but then the real lights are like hidden somewhere.
44:44 David Pierce? There's just somebody shining a flashlight behind it.
44:48 David Pierce? Okay, all right. So the software is the thing, right? And it's like, everybody seems to have decided that Tesla's idea of like, what if we just put a giant ass portrait mode screen in the middle of the car is the correct idea? And before we even get into the specifics of it, are we sure that's the right idea? Like, I'm just, I like buttons. Buttons are so good. Give me like dials and the F-150 you have, if I'm remembering right from seeing your video, is like, big landscape screen and then a bunch of buttons at the bottom. And I'm like, that is a future I can get behind.
45:16 Nilay Patel? So my F-150 is a generation behind.
45:18 David Pierce? Okay.
45:19 Nilay Patel? So it's not the new F-150s. The new F-150s have a 12-inch landscape screen, climate control buttons underneath it. I have the older model, which is a smaller, tinier screen that really is just like for the radio, and then buttons everywhere, like festooned with buttons. And I'm in love with the buttons. Give me more buttons. I'll take the buttons. The thing you're talking about, cars as computers, it's not, the infotainment screen is like the smallest piece of that puzzle. So like, a normal car from early 2000s was actually like 19 computers. And those computers are all built by various suppliers. And the job of the carmaker was to like, buy those computers and integrate them. And they would integrate them using like, a pretty slow networking standard called like Canvas, or like, whatever it is.
46:03 Nilay Patel? The big Tesla innovation is like, what if the car was one computer?
46:08 David Pierce? Sure.
46:08 Nilay Patel? Or what if we designed all those computers and we networked all with like Ethernet? And like, you talk to car people and they're like, single twisted pair Ethernet is the biggest revolution in automotive. And you're like, what? Ethernet? You're talking about Ethernet? Right, but it's real that like, being able to send more data faster, more reliably around a car and control all the software, the pieces, like you'd need an interconnect for that. So Ford isn't all the way there. Like Rivian is like, is an all Ethernet networked vehicle. They've written every line of code in that car. It's the future in that way. The same way Tesla's the future. The Lightning is, again, right in the middle. Like, they have a drivetrain that's new, they want to do over-the-year updates and be able to update the software all across the car.
46:51 Nilay Patel? Still lots of supplier components, again, because you've got a bunch of F-150 stuff. Lots of supplier components flowing through it. And the thing that is expressed to you is like, oh, it has a big vertical touchscreen.
47:01 David Pierce? Fair.
47:02 Nilay Patel? So it's like, the touchscreen is like the last piece of the puzzle when you talk about the car as a computer. What they're really talking about is previously, we, we basically like lightly connected a bunch of individual computer-like modules and now we're, the whole car is one big computer.
47:18 David Pierce? Which I guess is like, I keep having to remind myself like that counts as a large innovation. It's like, well, in everything else, we did this a really long time ago.
47:25 Nilay Patel? Yeah. And like, if you really, the car companies, traditional car, they're all in this, like, their executives all use the business language. Like, we're on this journey of transformation. And what they mean is, we had no idea how to write a line of code before.
47:38 David Pierce? Right.
47:38 Nilay Patel? And now we, that's all we do. Like, to the exclusion of, we know how to make wheels. Like, they can buy wheels. They're like, actually, what will differentiate the cars is the software engineering in the cars. But they never had to, um, there's a story about like VW, they launched this massive program to write all stuff in their cars. And it was like, this like 10 year failure, because they're just not good at it. In a way that a clean sheet company like a Tesla or Rivian or Lucid or whatever, they start by hiring the software engineers.
48:05 David Pierce? I feel like, given that this touchscreen is like the thing, we're going to treat this thing like a classic, like Verge smartphone review. So I went back to like 2012 and I found all the categories of our smartphone review and they fit, they fit hilariously well into the construct of, of this car. So, uh, the first one is the hardware, which is just like the, the thing itself. Like, is this a good screen? Do we like, do we like the touch? Does how, what's the hand feel like?
48:30 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it's slow. It's a really fast truck with a really slow screen. I have this line that I've been sneaking into reviews for years. Uh, it got cut out of the video because I said it like in a very frustrated way, which is that life is too short for slow computers. And the F-150 Lightning is like the ultimate example of life being too short for slow computers. Like, it's slow. The truck is fast. Like, at any moment, you can crack a huge grin by just going fast in this truck.
48:59 David Pierce? Yeah.
48:59 Nilay Patel? One of the fastest production trucks ever made. I got into a race with a Corvette, held my own again, like a brand new Corvette Stingray. Held my own in a pickup truck. That's cool. Like, that's really fun. Then you're like, I need to do anything. I need to turn on the seat heaters. And you're like, I hate it. So there's just this big discrepancy in like when you're like the hardware, like the truck is a beautiful truck, the front is cool, but the actual like hardware of the screen, the screen is nice, it's you know, retina display, it's thick in a way that all automotive screens appear to be needlessly thick. If you look at how it's designed, it's actually a little, it appears to be off center because the sensor for Blue Cruise is like next to the screen. So like they've just like rejiggered the F-150 interior. Everything about it seems too nice. It's just slow.
49:41 David Pierce? Yeah. Describe slow to me because there's like, I pull down on a menu and it the sort of old Android thing where it would like lag ever so slightly behind your finger. That's like one version of slow. Then there's the version of slow where it's like I press a button and seven seconds later, something happens. Where on that spectrum does the F-150? Because I would also think this is literally like, slow touchscreens are like literal life and death in a car like this. Like it's, it's pretty high stakes time to like make things happen when you press buttons. Like how, how slow is slow here?
50:11 Nilay Patel? It's both of those things, but sporadically.
50:13 David Pierce? Oh, even better. It's unreliably slow.
50:16 Nilay Patel? I think the touch latency part is connected to this overall slowness. So there are many times when you like swipe on the screen to like swipe through the cards at the bottom. And you're like, this isn't keeping up with me. But it's not that the touchscreen is like not registering your touch events. It's that the thing is slow and it's not, nothing's happening. So like in a smartphone, it would be like, does it have 120 hertz touch sensitivity response or whatever? And it's like, maybe it does, but the computer is so slow, it doesn't know what to do. So like, is a touchscreen, it is slow sometimes, but I think that is mostly related to sometimes you touch it and it just needs a beat, right? Like I want to switch from the radio to the map since like what we're going to do. Okay, we're going to take the radio away and I'll be blank for a minute. And then let's go ahead
51:00 Nilay Patel? and fill in the map window. And then, uh, where are we? All right, let's get, let's pull down the data for your location and then like draw on them. And it's like, all this is just happening. Whereas, you know, on a smartphone, you swipe between apps and it's instant. And there are cars that are instant now. And this one is just slow.
51:17 David Pierce? And this is, I'm skipping ahead to the software section of the review now, but you described this well, and I still can't figure it out. This is like Ford software, but it's kind of Android, but it's going to be even more Android over time?
51:29 Nilay Patel? So it's not Android at all right now?
51:31 David Pierce? Oh, okay.
51:31 Nilay Patel? So right now Ford's main software is called Sync and Sync has this like long tortured history. They first built it with Microsoft on Windows CE. This is like ancient Sync. Then they kicked Microsoft to the curb. They've rebuilt it on proprietary stuff. I think there's some QNIX in there, like now Ford owns it. Then they've updated it now to Sync 4. That's Sync 4 is in most of their cars. The Mustang Mach-E and the Lightning have Sync 4A, which is just portrait Sync. It has like some portrait features, I guess you could call it, like it's got those little widgets. And then what is the big move is they're going to toss all of that out. They've signed this huge deal with Google. They're going to rebuild all of Sync on Android using Android Automotive and with Google Services.
52:15 David Pierce? Oh, this is gas that we've been talking about. Google Automotive Services, gas.
52:19 Nilay Patel? It's coming. So this was a big deal. It took years in the making. Farley, just CEO Jim Farley just signed this deal with Google. They're very excited about it. They hired Doug Field from Tesla and Apple to run all of Ford's EV stuff and he's going to be in charge of all this software too. The problem is none of that's coming out forever, like in terms of Lightning. The new cars at the end of 2023 will have this new version of Android Sync. But the Lightning probably won't get it.
52:45 David Pierce? Why?
52:46 Nilay Patel? Until there's a new generation of the Lightning. That's just my understanding. And I think even inside of Ford, this is somewhat confusing. So I talked to Jim Farley when the Lightning first started shipping and I said, what's going on with Android? And he said, yeah, you know, second half of this generation. Then I got a call from someone who would know and they said, you need to change like the electrical systems of the car to support the new software. So like, maybe there'll be like a mid-cycle refresh, but I don't think the Lightning or Mach-E in this form are going to get it. All that is to say, like you're using the software and you're like, man, this would be great if they would update the software, but all of their software engineering energy is pointed at the new platform. And so there's supposed to be some big update for this version of Sync coming.
53:28 Nilay Patel? Don't buy anything based on the promise of software updates, I think is always our advice. And this is like a pretty good example of that advice because you know that there's a dead end here.
53:37 David Pierce? Okay, slowness aside, it seems like car UI is very much like an unsolved problem. And we've talked a lot about like CarPlay's plans to take over the universe on this podcast, which I continue to think are fascinating and potentially insane. But just watching your video, it's like Ford has a lot of ideas about like side scrolling menus that don't strike me as like the way that I would like to interact with my car.
54:02 Nilay Patel? Okay, there are hours of me ranting about this software to make it into the video. Let me, I'll give you one example. First of all, nothing is labeled. There's oceans of pixels in this car. And like oceans, it has more pixels than almost any car I've ever been in.
54:16 David Pierce? It's like a 15 and a half inch screen or something, right? It's huge.
54:19 Nilay Patel? It's a 15 and a half inch screen and it's like a 10 inch instrument cluster. And like a lot of it, to your point from before, is like they're just simulating a Ford F-150 from 1985. Like there's like lots of those like old school icons in the instrument cluster. And it's just like, I don't know, is that's a picture of an engine? Like, sure, like, I don't, I know what that means. Like, here's the letter C next to a thermometer. Like, you know, if you're a car person, like you know what these means, but like they made those icons because they, all they had was like LEDs and they had to ship them to 100 countries or whatever. It's like dudes, you've got pixels, just like write out engine temperature, like whatever it is. So like, there's just like an infinity amount of that going on, which is even more frustrating when you see the size of the screen. Like the instrument cluster is basically empty.
55:04 Nilay Patel? It's rarely full of information. It's a huge screen. Then you've got the center screen, the big one, and like the top row of it has icons in it that are just as inscrutable as like the Android status bar.
55:17 David Pierce? Oh, God.
55:18 Nilay Patel? Like there is one in it that, you know, that little like asterisk sign that you see on the side of an ambulance? So the entire time I had this car, there's that symbol with a line through it. And I was like, is it just telling me I'm not an ambulance? But like you can't tap on it. It doesn't tell you what it is. And I like finally like, what is this? And it all it means is that 911 assist is off. So if you get an accident, the car will not call 911. Totally useful piece of information to know, I suppose, putting it permanently on the screen without any way to tell you what is going on when you have a 15 and a half inch touchscreen is ridiculous.
55:54 David Pierce? You could write out 911 assist is off without trying very hard. Like that's a thing screens do.
55:59 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it's, it's right there. Then there's like two different connectivity icons, one for your phone, one for the internal LTE radio. When you've got your phone on the wireless charging pad, there's just a picture of another little icon of a phone up there. And so like, it just for all the world feels like your phone is disconnecting from the head unit, when really it's just rattling around the wireless charging pad. Why? And then you like click, you would never know this to change any of the settings of the truck, you have to click a picture of the truck. Like there's a picture of the truck in the upper left hand corner. And you're like, yeah, it's the truck. And you would never know that almost all of the settings are buried in the picture of the truck. So you click on the picture of the truck. This is why they cut it out of the video. I just want to be clear. I just did this fucking hour to a camera. It drops down a menu and
56:42 Nilay Patel? the menu is divided into two sections. One is labeled settings and one is labeled controls. And who God knows the difference between these things. And then you like go into the controls and there's like little buttons and you can click between them. And then all of the buttons in those are labeled settings. And it's just like, what is happening? Like, did anybody look at this and like, pay attention to what words we're using? Because we seem to be using all the words interchangeably as though they're a taxonomy of, and like, this is how we would review a phone. Like if we were reviewing a new operating system, we would go into this in extraordinary detail and be like, the settings, the new version of Windows have been moved from here to here, like. You know, Apple changed window management on the iPad and we'd like, as we have, we would like
57:27 Nilay Patel? hammer away at scrolling your mouse to the bottom right, this open stage manager. And we don't do that with cars.
57:33 David Pierce? Right.
57:34 Nilay Patel? And I, I'm just looking at this car. I'm like, if anyone did this to this car seriously, you would just throw it out and start over.
57:40 David Pierce? The way you're describing it makes it sound like they hired a bunch of people who had like deliberately never looked at a screen before. And they were like, let's just start this from scratch. Like, we know, we have just decided as a society, like what a settings menu looks like. And like, should it be the gear icon? Maybe not, but it doesn't matter. And we all know that's what it means. And it's like, we just don't need new ideas about how to get to settings menus. Like, we're good on that front. Let's fix other things.
58:03 Nilay Patel? Yeah. At almost no point does this thing trade on your knowledge of how computers work.
58:07 David Pierce? Which is crazy because that's, again, it's like, this is the moment to, if you're ever going to do the like skew morphic nonsense, that's just like, let's help everybody understand it as quickly as possible. This feels like the time.
58:17 Nilay Patel? Yeah. But and then on the flip side, they've got all these like old school weird unlabeled icons like in the instrument cluster, right? So like the part where you're like simulating the old F150. And then on the other hand, you're like, what if we try to invent settings taxonomy from scratch? It's like, you're not, you gotta do one or the other all the way. And like, in this case, I, I just think Ford is a little trapped between two worlds. And they've got this like gigantic Android refresh coming where presumably because they're working with Google. Well, I mean, it's not like Android status bars. So like a bastion of clarity, but presumably they've got some people who are versed in user interfaces and like helping them along the way. So it just, that part of it to me is like, I think I say in the video, it's caught between two worlds.
59:00 Nilay Patel? It's, it's held back. It's held back because it's not going far enough, I think, in either direction.
59:05 David Pierce? That's fair. Do you figure it out eventually? Like, it's, it's like, part of this makes me think that like the best case scenario here is it's kind of like getting into somebody else's car where you like reach where the volume knob is. And actually that's the temperature knob, but like after a little while, you sort of get the muscle memory back and you figure it out. Like, did that happen with the lightning?
59:23 Nilay Patel? Yeah. You know, I end the video by saying, if I could find one to buy for a reasonable price, because dealers are working on like crazy and they're hard to buy, I would trade in my gas truck. Right. Like the, the part where I don't have to pay for gas for a truck that gets 16 to the gallon on a good day. And it's faster than my truck and it's like fun to have and the front is useful. Yeah, I would just try, if I could get one, I would buy one.
59:43 David Pierce? But that's a like, that's a in spite of the software.
59:46 Nilay Patel? In spite of the software, right? It's not like a deal breaker. It's if you are the sort of person who pays attention and values good software. This is going to drive you bonkers every day, but it's survivable, which I think is like where the car industry has been for a long time. The thing you're describing is, is it eventually just ignorable?
1:00:06 David Pierce? Yeah.
1:00:07 Nilay Patel? And the answer is yes, to some extent, like you're not going to dive into the settings of any car every day and like mess with it. The thing that is not ignorable is the touchscreen climate controls, which are just the worst. And they're the worst in every car and they should be illegal. And here you're like, I want to turn on the seat heaters. And you're just stabbing at an unresponsive touchscreen and that's the worst. Or you're like, I want to turn on the, I want to change the vents and you have to like, open a full screen menu with a render of the car that is split into three zones. And like light up the zones and you're like, my mom's car in the eighties had this solved. Like, why are we redoing this? And then you look at the gas F-150s and they've got hardware buttons and you're like, I could have, this was fine.
1:00:50 David Pierce? Yep. It should either be a dial that goes up and down or an up button and a down button. Those are the two answers and those are the only two answers.
1:00:58 Nilay Patel? So like, there's a part of it that's totally ignorable. Like, yes, you'll be occasionally annoyed because you have to use the built in maps to plot a charging route. Slow but survivable and I used it. Yes, you'll be occasionally annoyed because wanting to change the radio station while you're in the map requires an awful lot of clicks. Fine, it's annoying. The climate controls are like, I hate this, like almost a deal breaker. Not quite, because like really they just want you to set a temperature in it auto, which I think a lot of people quietly do. So maybe not the worst depending on who you are, but for me, I was like, I hate, I hate all of this.
1:01:30 David Pierce? Okay, fair enough. All right, last thing on the Verge review checklist before I let you go is cameras. And this is another one that fits oddly well in your experience of the F-150 laying. Tell me about the cameras on this car.
1:01:42 Nilay Patel? My favorite thing about new cars is the cameras are getting really good. And they're like super high resolution. So this is no exception. Super high resolution cameras, really nice touchscreen. Like the cameras on my old F-150 are like garbage, like VGA, tiny, low res touchscreen. It's like, I think I'm gonna hit another car. I don't know, maybe, who knows? This thing has like all the cameras all over the place. You get the top down 360 view. You can look at the front and big screen, all high res. There's a little, they're doing all kinds of weird camera warping tricks to give you all these views. So there's a little distortion at the edges, but like it's me who notices these things. Not like our video people are like, what are you talking about? And I was like, look at the distortion. The thing that kills me at the cameras, so again, on my truck, there's a hardware button above the screen.
1:02:27 Nilay Patel? You push the button, it pops you into the cameras. You just do whatever you want. You push the button again, you change the views. Amazingly simple, amazingly efficient, super useful. This thing is like three taps into the cameras. When you put it in reverse, it obviously automatically opens the cameras. But any other place, you gotta like tap your way into the cameras.
1:02:44 David Pierce? Do you have to like hit the truck and then like front truck, front left truck, camera?
1:02:48 Nilay Patel? Yeah, no, see, I think, yes, I think you hit the truck and you gotta like open the cameras. And you got the cameras on the screen. Then you've got, you've got a landscape view at the top and then a 360 view of the truck below it in like a T shape.
1:02:59 David Pierce? Okay.
1:02:59 Nilay Patel? Great. Then there's a little menu button in that bottom part. And you click on the menu and that gives you all the views. So so far like annoying, but not the end of the world. Like maybe too many clicks, lots of touchscreens, but big screen, high res cameras.
1:03:12 David Pierce? Sure.
1:03:12 Nilay Patel? So you're like, maybe this trade off is worth it. Then you're like, you've got it open, the menu to switch cameras, you pick a camera. Then for some reason that menu will just close itself. All by itself, all the time. So you're like, wait, there's so much room on this display. Why was this a menu to begin with? And then why does that menu hide? What to what end is this menu hiding itself? Because it's not covering anything up. Yeah, it could show you so many cameras. It could. Yeah, it could show you all the cameras all the time. You could open a camera and still have controls to see the other cameras. And it's just shit like that. That just drives me bonkers. It's like, this truck is so smart with Blue Cruiser can happily drive itself down a bunch of major highways. Incredible technology, like best driver assist I've used. And it's on a
1:03:55 Nilay Patel? mainstream truck. Very cool. And you're like, I just want to look at the rear camera. And it's like, no, we're going to close that on you. Not at this time, sir. All of that just needs to like, just an interface designer needs to go through this thing and do the things that interface designers use. Here are the things that people use most often. We're going to promote those to the top of the interface. So you can get to them quickly. Here's the things. Here's the user pathways through all the rest of the stuff. We're just going to organize that into a coherent system. And we're taking all the garbage and we're just like hide it in the back of settings. Dot app. And everyone will be fine with that. And instead, it's just like, what if it was a maze? With no destination. It's like, I need you to stop it. What if you explore your truck through a VR render of your truck?
1:04:39 Nilay Patel? You know that thing you do when you get a new gadget, and you like play with the settings? Like, usually I find that to be just a delight. Like, I'm gonna mess with this setting and I'll come back to it with this. Yes, still a delight. Extremely fun new gadget. Many, many settings. But I, in the back of my mind, there's always the fear, I will never see this screen again. I have no idea how I got here. And I have no idea how to get back. And then the worst case scenario, you literally cannot get home at the end. And that's just, that's where you are. Yeah, I mean, there's that. Well, that's like the charging thing, right? Like, you've got to find chargers that can charge the thing fast. And all of that happens in Ford's maps. Because Apple's maps and Google's maps have no idea of where chargers are. Interesting.
1:05:20 Nilay Patel? And like where the fast chargers are. And Ford has that information. So, you know, one note I was anticipating about CarPlay and Android Auto is like, everyone in every car view is like, you can just use CarPlay and Android Auto. Yep. It's like, no, actually, if you drive an EV, you can't. Right? Because you spend an awful lot of your time on trips plotting out your charging stops and Ford's system for that is better because it's tied to the actual range of the car. So the car knows how much battery it has left.
1:05:45 David Pierce? Sure.
1:05:45 Nilay Patel? And it's just sort of plotting you a route. And Ford also knows where the fast chargers are because it runs the charging network in a way that Apple and Google do not. So every part of this is like, oh, you gotta use their software again, huh? You thought you could escape it? You thought you're gonna use CarPlay? Cool guy? No, thank you.
1:05:59 David Pierce? So all this and you're still the coolest guy in the Home Depot parking lot? And you still want to buy one?
1:06:03 Nilay Patel? Old guys were wandering up to me, just saying, congratulations. I've never had that happen with a review product before. I was like, it's not mine. They're like, take good care of it. I was like, again, we have to give it back. And he's like, congratulations one more time. That's like a reverence around this trip. Because one thing that is true of EVs is people know they're fast.
1:06:21 David Pierce? Yeah.
1:06:21 Nilay Patel? So when you've got the fastest car in the parking lot, like all of the trepidation, like they'd ask me the range, they'd be like, is it fast, though? And I'd be like, it's so fast. Ford's got a hit. I think some of it will be fine. The software piece, if they really want to make that turn into being the tech company that it seems very clear they want to do, that is a long road.
1:06:39 David Pierce? All right. Well, good luck buying one. I know it's been a journey. So Godspeed.
1:06:43 Nilay Patel? Yeah, we haven't even talked about that, but these things are being marked up like $50,000. So we'll see if anyone has one. They want to flip to me, just let me know. We'll negotiate.
1:06:51 David Pierce? All right. Neel is off to keep calling dealers about buying a Lightning and we've got to go too. That's it for the Vergecast this week. Thank you so much for listening. As always, there is tons more coverage about everything we talked about at theverge.com. And you can also follow all of us on Twitter. Neelai is reckless, Chris is Chris Welch, Alex is Alex H. Krantz, Allison is Allison Joe one, Dan is DC Seifert, and I'm Pierce. This show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Norrie Donovan is our executive producer and Brooke Minter is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you have thoughts, feedback, feelings, paella recipes, or ideas about headphones, you can always email vergecast at theverge.com. Alex, Neelai and I will be back on Friday to talk about crazy
1:07:34 David Pierce? looking monitors, John Deere hackers, Android 13, and a whole bunch of other stuff. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.
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