The Android Tablet Problem

(upbeat music) - So in the wake of
probably the biggest update to iPad OS in its entire history, I've also been testing
this amazing Android tablet and it's kind of reminded
me that now, more than ever, these things kind of have a problem and I just wanted to get all
of my thoughts into one video. Now the reason I bring up the iPad is because it actually has a
version of the same problem, which is we have smartphones
and we have computers. And so very few people
actually need a device in between a phone and a computer. And this could be addressed
if maybe there was something special that you could do on a tablet that you can't do on a phone
and can't do on a computer. But that is really niche. So take the Apple version of this, right? Obviously the iPhone is extremely popular. Most developers make their apps for the phone because it's easy. One version of the app,
millions of customers. And so there are very few, actually good, dedicated iPad apps, like built from the
ground up for the iPad. Now of course it's not zero. There are some really cool ones. I love Pixelmator for iPad for example. Procreate is amazing and there are a few others that
are really dialed iPad apps but that is a minority. Many, many iPad apps are are just gently scaled up iPhone apps, and they're fine at this point. And many others are
literally just iPhone apps with no changes made at all with just the little 2x button to the side to make 'em bigger. It's actually been a
running joke on this channel how long there has been
no iPad app for Instagram, which like, think about that. It's 2025 and this is the absolute best
this trillion dollar company with tens of thousands of
employees is willing to do. It's actually making headlines now that Meta has actually made
a WhatsApp app for iPad that they might also make
an Instagram app for iPad. Either way, the point is, even on the most popular
tablet in the world, most of the apps that
work on it are just fine and a tiny fraction of them
are really, really good. So that's why so many reviews
of the highest end Pro iPads for years have kind of all
been along the same lines, which is like this hardware is amazing, the chip is incredibly powerful, again, the screen is so nice but I can't actually do anything special over a base iPad or even an iPhone because iPad OS is still iPad OS and the app situation is still
exactly what it was before. You can go back and watch
even my own iPad Pro reviews. That's what I was saying,
I was not the only one. And now this new iPad OS 26
does feel like a game changer, but we'll get to that in a separate video, subscribe to see that. But the point is, the
value that you can get out of an iPad has always felt limited. It felt capped. But you clicked on an Android video. So this here is the newest
and latest and greatest, best Android tablet that I have used. It's ridiculously good,
this is the OnePlus Pad 3, and every possible thing you could want out of a high-end Android
tablet, this thing's got it. Crazy powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite chip paired with 12 or 16 gigs of RAM and up to half a terabyte of storage. It's super fast, ultra responsive and it has a 13.2 inch, 144 hertz display. These bezels are, you know, pretty thin and even all the way around,
it hides the selfie camera. It's a 7:5 aspect ratio, so it's a little taller
than a 16:9 widescreen, and it's a super sharp
315 pixels per inch. It's almost 3.4k tall. The whole thing is also just
under six millimeters thin. So it's visually just as impressive as any other piece of thin, powerful tech. And yet somehow, inside this, they've packed a 12,140
milliamp hour battery. And this battery is so awesome. This thing just lasts and lasts forever. Just for context, the last
two OnePlus pads both had around a 90 500 milliamp hour battery and they had pretty good battery life. The large 13 inch M4 iPad Pro has about a 10,000 milliamp hour battery. This is 12,000. So it just lasts and lasts
for hours and hours of use, plus has been optimized for some particularly
impressive standby time, which is actually important for tablets 'cause you know how they sometimes go a while without being used and then you go to pick
it up again and it's dead, which is annoying. So their stat is if you charge it to 100% and then turn it off, then two years later turn it back on, it will still have power,
which is ridiculous and maybe also a little bit of proof of the Android tablet problem. But my stat is I put this
in my backpack with 85% after using it for a bit and then the next day, 24 hours later, took it out of my
backpack to use it again. 84%. So that's without any sort
of battery saver features or anything like that. And the cherry on top is it
fast charges at 80 watts, and it still somehow has room for some of the best speakers
I've heard in any tablet, including iPad Pros. It's actually eight speakers in total, quad woofers and quad tweeters. They get really loud with
very little distortion. Kind of seems to bend physics a little bit that so much sound can
come out of this thing. And this whole thing, the price, 699, which is sick and that includes the 80
watt charger in the box. So great screen, great chip,
great battery, great speakers. It's got cameras, one on
the back, one on the front, who cares? But this whole tablet is a great deal and yet, who's gonna buy one? Because the exact same problem I talked about earlier is still true. Like most people have a phone and then for bigger tasks, a computer. So the tablet has to do
something that both a phone and a computer can't do. Now I realize we are
in the the bubble here of tech YouTube videos. So there will be people in
the comments of this video who are like, "Oh this is, finally, this is the exact tablet
I was waiting for. I can finally play this specific game on a bigger screen at 60 fps." Totally that's valid. But if you think about the typical person who's maybe using a tablet for, you know, some web browsing, some
light YouTube watching or Netflix or whatever
and some work stuff, a couple of Zoom calls here and there, clearly this can do all that, but it's also definitely overkill. So this is an amazing, super powerful, kind of beautiful razor-thin
tablet that slots into a bag and can go anywhere with you and last forever and has great speakers. It's the whole package. And yet it kind of doesn't stand a chance to sell a whole lot and become mainstream. And that is the Android
tablet problem in a nutshell. It's basically that no matter how great an Android tablet is,
it will be incredibly niche. I think it's actually kind of amazing how narrow I've seen the use case become for these tablets for
the past couple of years. Like I feel like 90% of the
iPads I've seen since 2020 have been either at a point
of sale system in a store where they like flip it around and ask you how much you wanna tip, or in the hands of a child
who is just about to cry and now it's playing
"CoComelon" at full blast. So in the Android world, you know, I don't know if there's a
solution to this problem. Obviously this has been
the double-edged sword of Android for a while. There's all the upside of all the huge variety of choices you have, of hardware, of aspect ratios, of foldables, flippables,
tri-folds, it's all sweet. But that also means that
no single one of them is easy to recommend to
large groups of people and that the experience across all of them is not gonna be as consistent. Okay, so I think now that the casuals have probably tuned out at
this point in the video and the true tech nerds are still here. For those of you considering actually buying this OnePlus Pad 3, I got a few more things
that you might wanna know. So this display, like I said,
it's huge and it's sharp and it's 144 hertz, which is awesome, but it's not AMOLED
like those Galaxy Tabs. Those Samsung tablets
which are more expensive, definitely do have nicer looking screens. So if you're in it for the media, you're gonna want to go AMOLED but this is still a nice, fast LCD. And then also, Oxygen OS here, just like on the phones,
there's a lot of great features. They've just added their AI stuff here, but there's also a lot of
copying iOS left and right still. I think it's hilarious that they continue doing the Dynamic Island bit even though there's no
camera cutout on the tablet. But hey, they've also gone the extra mile with all the accessories. There is a stylus, there
is a keyboard dock, there is a magnetic folio case. You can look at it as copying, but it's also kind of
just feels like offering as many equivalents as possible. So it makes the pain of switching from an iPad and a stylus
and a keyboard dock as minimal as possible. The battery life is awesome, but if you use this tablet like I do, which is high brightness most of the time and a lot of high energy stuff, or if you game a lot, you can
still run through it in a day, seven or eight hours of screen on time is what you should expect. But its superpower really
is the standby time. But anyway, I just wanna leave this video by closing out with a
question for you guys. If you have a tablet, I just wanna know what you use it for. What do you use your tablet for? And if you don't have one, what would you use a
tablet for if you got one? I kind of suspect a lot
of the answers below are going to be like single use things. Things that the tablets
we like to check out are very overpowered for. But yeah, it's cool. We can acknowledge that these are super awesome pieces of tech, but that also most people probably won't need to be buying them. Thanks for watching.
(chilled music) Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.


WWDC 2025 Impressions: Liquid Glass!

(logo whirs and thuds)
(gentle music) - All right, so today was
Apple's big software event for 2025 WWDC. And it was a really, it was actually a really interesting one. I was kind of wondering how this would go 'cause in this landscape of AI, AI, AI, everyone's talking about
Gemini and GPT everywhere where it feels like Apple
is being left behind. They could kind of go one of two ways. They could either double
down on Apple Intelligence and just lean right in. Like, everything's fine.
Everything's going to plan. Or they could shelf some of that stuff but show a whole bunch of other stuff and hope that that's good enough. So, now, we've seen the keynote and I've gotten to try a lot
of these software features and think about them a lot, and they definitely did the second thing. Don't get me wrong. There's much more other stuff than AI versus what like Google was doing earlier. But I do think that that other stuff was actually kind of a lot. And so maybe you can leave a comment below if you agree with me after
you subscribe of course. But this is everything you
need to know about WWDC 2025. So, first of all, they always
talk about all of their OSS, all their platforms this year, and they are now all unified
in their version number just to keep it simple. So instead of having iOS
19, iPadOS 19, tvOS 19, macOS 16, watchOS 12, and visionOS 3, they're now just doing
version 26 for everything. Kinda the same thing Samsung just did with their phones in 2020, how they match the year even
though it's a year ahead. Cool. Easy. And everything is getting this
fresh glassy coat of paint over everything to be unified as well. So it's more obvious in some
places that I'll show you and less noticeable in some others. But in general they're
calling this liquid glass and they're treating
basically every window, every dialogue box,
every icon, every sidebar that they possibly can as
like a piece of physical glass that's mostly transparent
to the things below it. Even the lock screen clock and some texts, some fonts
are clear and transparent. So, we might as well
start here with iOS 26 because this is the biggest one. All of the icons are slightly updated. The lock screen clock is
just as big glassy clear time that adapts to the size
of what's behind it. Once you unlock the iPhone,
overall like zoomed out, it doesn't look that different. It's slightly different. But they also kept showing
this clear home screen setup where all of the widgets
and icons are all clear. This is a new option, and I
don't know about this one. I mean, it is new and you
can do that if you want to or never turn it on if you don't want to. But I just think it's a little much. And readability might be kind of tough. But beyond the liquid glass thing, there are also some new features. Like they redesigned the camera app. Really for the first
time in a decade plus, it's now gonna be super simplified to just photo and video
buttons and the shutter, and then there's a whole
bunch of hidden UI. So you have to swipe to
reveal the additional modes. And those still work
the way they did before, but then also the frames per second and resolution settings
are also super hidden. You have to know to hit that little button up there on the corner to
change to 30 or 60 FPS, which is a really
interesting choice there. I mean, especially on an iPhone where you kind of have
to assume Apple knows which things people
click most of the time. This kind of implies
that nobody ever changes a lot of these things. The swipe up to reveal
a lot of those settings, most people will never see that. But hey, you're watching
this video so now you know that the live photos
setting toggle is there under that swipe. So good for you. (chuckles) There's also a new FaceTime
app with a new landing page to quickly hit up your main contacts. And then also the phone app
is updated to bring voicemail and missed calls and contacts
all into one unified place, kind of like that. And they've also matched or copied, you could say it however
you want, matched or copied, but they've matched two of
my favorite pixel features from the dialer from the phone app, which is Call Screening and Hold For Me. Those are the pixel feature names. So now, in iOS 26 there's a feature that can automatically
screen unknown numbers and it'll answer the call for you and then transcribe
whatever the person says before trying to ring you and showing you who's
calling, which is interesting because the pixel would let me choose that for every single call manually. But then also the Hold Assist
feature is a no-brainer, just waits on hold for you
while you do other things. And when it's time to come
back, it rings you again. Both super useful. And there's also a
couple iMessage features, like you can do native polls
inside of iMessage now. Typing indicators in
group chats will show you which person is typing, which is sweet. And you can add pictures as backgrounds for each of your iMessage chats. None of this is
groundbreaking or unheard of, but it is nice that
they're finally adding it. And then I would say the
most AI-focused thing here is translate, and I feel
like there's, like, a storm of, like, a video idea brewing where I might have to make an entire essay about how this is the
year of live translation. It's just happening all at once now. But yeah, in short, Apple
added live translation to FaceTime, to Messages and the Phone app and it works basically as you'd expect with the on-device AI models. If you turn it on during a phone call, you can hear a person
speak in their own language and then it gets translated
and read in your language. And then if you wanna speak
back it gets translated again and read back in another
voice to that person. It's a little laggy but
it gets the job done. There's also a little
bit more stuff in Maps, and in Apple Music, and a new games app. I plan on breaking all of this down in a dedicated best new
features of iOS video. Definitely get subscribed
if you wanna see that right when it comes out. I always do this when the
public beta rolls around, so that's coming soon. But my main concern from
seeing Apple's demo videos and playing with a little
bit myself is readability. This glass aesthetic, it looks cool sometimes but it also is a little
hard to read sometimes. Like, I get that the clear and
glassy sheen is very modern and it looks like visionOS and it's fresh. But also there's a reason
that we add backgrounds to things in the video world
a lot, even if it's subtle, because it's to provide more contrast to make things easier to
see, just basic stuff. And there were so many bits of text like notifications or
menus or even UI elements that just looked kind of harder to read. Now the OS is supposed to adapt to it by giving light things, dark backgrounds and dark things, light backgrounds. But sometimes you'll have, like, a half light, half dark background and that's where things get weird. So I'm curious how this is gonna play out. Now some of the other smaller updates, watchOS 26 also got a lot
of these glassy UI elements and it's noticeable. There's big touch areas and reflections and glassy buttons galore and you can also definitely
feel that fresh coat of paint. But beyond that, I really like
the new wrist flick gesture, which is just that. So if you ever get a notification and you don't wanna do
anything with it, you know, just kind of sits on
the watch for a while, you can just flip it and it goes away. So if you're getting a notification, you don't care, flip it. You're getting a phone call. You don't wanna accept the
phone call. Dismiss it. If you've got an alarm
that's starting to ring or anything else like that, you don't want to be on your screen, just flip your wrist and it goes away. I think I'll be doing this all the time. And the other big thing is this
workout buddy, which feels, I'm gonna describe it as Spotify DJ, but for Apple Watch workouts, like it's basically a new
customizable high energy voice that talks to you at various times that it thinks you need some energy or motivation during your
workout just by telling you stuff like random stats, like your heart rate, or your mile splits, or, "Hey, this is your
third workout of the week. Great job. Keep it up." Stuff like that. Still no group
fitness challenges though. I'm gonna just keep saying that every year 'cause every year I think
they're gonna do it. And every year they don't do it, still no group fitness challenges. Then there was tvOS 26 that
also got new liquid glass. And I'll be honest with this
one, I barely notice it here, but apparently the icons are shimmering a little differently, (laughs) allegedly, but also just more content obviously, otherwise not a huge upgrade there. But then there's macOS 26
which is also called Tahoe. And this one, yeah, this one you notice. This one's got way more
very clear elements to it and some of it kind of can look cool. Others? I really don't
like as much personally. And I thought this again about
some older versions of macOS. I'm sure we'll get used to it but like the Control Center
with the super classified feels a little more cartoony buttons. I'm just not a huge fan of that. You can also do clear widgets, clear doc. And the menu bar is
completely clear at the top, which is also sweet, makes
your screen feel bigger. And so yeah, there's some
stuff to get used to here. I think I like some of it. It's just not totally,
like, winning me over yet. One really good feature now
though is Live Activities, which is already a nice
thing on the iPhone. If you have an iPhone and a Mac, it'll show up in the
little menu bar and the Mac when something was, like, happening, a delivery or a flight
information, whatever it is. You can click on it and that'll view that
convenient information from the Live Activity. And then if you wanna click on it again, you can bring up the
whole iPhone mirrored app to keep track of that Live Activity. Makes a lot of sense.
Nice continuity feature. Anyway, the Mac also
gets the new phone app so, you know, your voicemail
and everything in one place, and the Hold For Me, all those features. But the number one biggest
update I'm interested in on the Mac is actually the new Spotlight. Now some of you might
not care about Spotlight, but some of you are
productivity nerds like me 'cause you're subscribed
to a tech YouTube channel, and you might already know about this, but my favorite
productivity app on the Mac and it has been for years, every fresh new Mac I install it first, is called Raycast. And it's basically Spotlight on steroids. It lets you open apps
but also do shortcuts and do window management and find files and do even more useful things like viewing my Clipboard History. So now, Apple comes out and
shows us the new Spotlight in macOS 26 and it does
almost all of that stuff. This is what we call in the
industry getting sherlocked. Basically Apple showed a whole
bunch of really cool stuff you can do now with the new Spotlight. It's got the suite animation
which separates out things like file searches
or series shortcut searches. You can do shortcuts from
the keyboard to open actions inside of certain apps and perform them straight up
entire strings of commands without even opening an
app or touching your mouse. Real power user stuff.
Productivity nerd stuff right here. It doesn't do fully every single thing that I've done with Raycast. Like in Raycast, I can tab over and start a new search
or conversation with GPT or Gemini or a bunch of other stuff. The Spotlight doesn't do that yet, but who's to say if next year
they might add that feature or might slowly start doing all the things that Raycast does. It's an interesting step.
It's definitely better. But then, okay, visionOS, this is where all the glass came from. This is technically only the
third version of visionOS, but now it's visionOS 26. And there's some smaller
updates to this one. But I think the new widgets, even though they're kind of silly and not really that functional, I think they're awesome. I
think they're super cool. Basically, you can pin these
things to persistent locations and customize the size and depth and color of them exactly how you want. So they showed things like
clocks and weather widgets and picture frames, but
then they have these, like, really convincing location pinning plus all the reflectivity and
depth that they always have. And I just, I don't know, I thought it was super cool. I was sold. But really this is also
pinned with the fact that visionOS or the
Vision Pro will remember where you put your
windows now all the time, like through a reboot and everything, which it didn't do before. It was one of my biggest complaints. I talked about it in the
original visionOS review. So yes, it will remember
where you put your windows and where you put your widgets. The updated fidelity of the
personas also, it's inevitable. Like, we just knew they
were gonna continually get more and more photorealistic. So they showed another pretty big jump. Not sure if you're gonna
have to do another scan to get the updated persona, but
either way looks much better and less cartoon ghosty. And there's also, they added PlayStation VR2 Sense controller support, which no doubt will be much better for some of the more precise
controls in certain games. There's also a new Jupiter environment, so you're on one of Jupiter's moons with Jupiter in the sky above you. Cool. They also added native
360 video support playback for cameras from GoPro,
Insta360, and Canon. It's pretty cool. We're still hoping to see,
like, more high quality 360 content for these headsets to view. There's some on YouTube, but not a ton. But then the biggest, most
interesting update of the day by far to me was iPadOS 26. This was fascinating because, you know, every iPad Pro video for the last six years
or however long it's been has always said the same thing. It's great. It's amazing hardware. It's very powerful. But it's still an iPad, meaning it's still gonna
have lots of limitations and we never really expect Apple to add those really computer-like extra features because they make computers too. Why? They're a business. They're not gonna cannibalize
their own products. They're not gonna overlap that stuff. So there's iPads and
then there's computers. But with this update, I feel like, they use the word game changer, which they use that word all the time, but I actually feel like
this genuinely fit the bill because they added things,
multitasking, file management, things straight from the Mac. So yes, it still has the
liquid glass, of course. It has the new Phone
app, the new lock screen, all of the new icons and
widgets and all that. But then this whole new multitasking and multi-window system where
in any app you can just grab that handle in the bottom
right corner and shrink it in and make the app whatever
size you want immediately to a floating window. And then you can just start
stacking floating windows and putting them side by side and messing around with window
management very, very freely. I'm sure there's a limit
to how many windows you can have open. I got as many as four
open at the same time. But not only that, they added
this three dot window control to the corner of each window. The Stoplights that we
have straight from the Mac. So you can minimize or change the shape of any
app just like on a Mac. And on top of that, there's a new literal Mac menu bar at the top of the screen just giving you File,
Edit, View menu, Help, just stuff that you see in Mac apps. There's also a redesign cursor that seems a lot more like a Mac cursor. It's less of a floating blob that had like the Aim
Assist that we had before. Now, it's just a normal mouse. There's also a new Files app that lets you sort through
things with different ways the same way you would with
the Finder app on a Mac. There's now, like, you can
have downloads in your doc. There's all kinds of things that, I mean, as someone who's
used a Mac for years, feels exactly like a Mac. There is even an audio
input selector built in now for all media apps, which
sounds like such a small thing, but do you know how hard it's been to change your microphone
input source on an iPad for all of these years? It's like they're choosing
now to add it. Great. Also background activities. So if you're exporting something from Final Cut Pro for iPad, you can close the Final Cut
Pro app and do other things and the export will
continue in the background just like a computer. So yeah, as a computer
user, I'm fascinated. This moves the iPad, especially like the
most powerful iPad Pro. Way further on the spectrum of compelling laptop
alternatives for certain people. It certainly doesn't do
everything obviously. It still doesn't have
multiple profile support. There are some basics that
we're still gonna be missing, but I never thought that
they would go this far. And it definitely feels like
in lieu of some other AI stuff, they took a lot of wishlist things that people have been
talking about with the iPads and gave 'em to us. But speaking of that, I
mean the real question is, were all of those features
enough to, you know, tide us over to distract us from the lack of AI stuff? I looked at the transcript. And if the transcript
that I have is accurate, they said the word Siri two times in that entire 90-minute keynote. So that clearly wasn't a big focus. And to me it just feels
like Apple's AI strength, if they have one, is really much more in how well integrated their features are. It's not gonna be how good the AI is. It's just how plugged in
they are to their ecosystem. Like, a lot of features
they showed us do use AI, but they aren't necessarily branded as AI or Apple Intelligence all the time. And then also some of this
Apple Intelligence stuff is slowly taking steps forward, including them making their
own foundational models available for developers to have access to those on device models and build more AI
features into their apps. Now, are those gonna be the
best models in the world? No, probably not. At least not right now. But they are on device and
local and can be used offline and it will probably be the fastest since they don't have to go
to the internet and back. So you can probably expect many more apps to have little AI
features built into them, whether it's just
summarizations here and there, or shortening things that
were longer, things like that. Now, as for the big LLM Siri upgrade that we kind of in the background
knew was taking too long, they had a statement at the
very beginning of the keynote. If you blinked, you might have missed it. But the statement was, "This work required more time
to reach our high quality bar and we look forward to
sharing more about it in the coming year." 2026. We will see. I just like that they added
the onscreen capabilities for Visual Intelligence. So it was just from the
camera feed before, but now, you know how every Android
phone has circle to search. Well, yeah, now with screenshots, the iPhone's gonna get that too. This was a fascinating WWDC.
(upbeat music) I'm very excited to dig into these betas and see what's actually
good, what's new about 'em. Stay tuned for those videos. But let me know in the
comments what you think. Thanks for watching. Catch you guys the next one. Peace. (upbeat music)


One Plus 13S Review: What's the S For?

Hi. [Music] [Music] The S stands for stronger, smarter, and subscribe, which is incredible because you guys just got 20 million subscribers onto this channel. So, that's amazing. Thank you. No, but it it stands for small. Small phones died with the Xen Phone 10, the legend. That was the last under 6 in screen size flagship phone, and they're not coming back. So now it's time to redefine basically what a small flagship phone is. And it seems like the new bar we've set is 6.3 in. So if a screen size of a flagship phone is under 6.3 in, then that's one of the smallest flagship phones. So iPhone 16 is a 6.1 in screen. Galaxy S25 is a 6.2 in screen. Xiaomi 15 is right around 6.3. And this new phone, this OnePlus 13S, is one of the best small flagship phones out there at 6.3 in. And if you're willing to accept that that is the new bar, then this is kind of like the Xen Phone 10 reincarnated except for 2025. Now, my asterisk is this phone is not coming to the US. So, if you're here, that's kind of a bummer cuz I really like this phone, but it's not going to have all the bands required to be great in the US. But, I got my hands on it anyway. And there's basically three things you need to know. The first one is obvious. It has full flagship specs on paper. Snapdragon 8 Elite, 12 gigs of fast RAM, and up to a half TB of UFS 4.0 storage. And this display up front is 6.3 in. Like I said, extremely small and even bezels all the way around and really easy on the eyes. Almost 1440p resolution, still 120 Hz LTPO and up to 1600 nits or all the way down to 1.1 nits with PWM dimming. So, they've cut down the size, but not really any other qualities of the screen. And even beyond the on paper specs, this feels like a flagship phone, too. It's compact, but this is a rock solid phone. Also, really clicky buttons. And then, of course, this nice satin glass on the back, and it is very up to speed on the flat front and back aesthetic that is trendy with 2025 smartphones, which I also happen to be a fan of. And then with this relatively normal looking camera square on the back, if this phone was like 20% bigger, it would basically look and feel exactly like any other normal flagship, but thanks to its dimensions, it's a little bit lighter, a little bit more reachable, and a little more comfortable in every way. But also, they have done the OnePlus thing and that either means nothing to you or you hear that and you wse a little bit because you've watched these videos for a while and you remember that doing the OnePlus thing means number one, they didn't add wireless charging to this phone. And number two, the camera is, I would just say, not going to be the reason why you buy this phone. But here's the battery situation here. And this one is so interesting to me. The battery is the strongest part of the OnePlus 13S. Inside, this thing has a 5,850 mAh battery, which is incredible. Just for context, 4,000 mAh, 5,000 mAh, 5850. I mean, that's incredible. This phone has easy 2-day battery life with normal use. Like I said, Zen Phone reincarnated type stuff. And I'm using my phone at a high brightness, high refresh rate, everything on endless battery here. And then the cherry on top is it's also 80 watt fast charging. So you can always plug in for a few minutes every couple of days and be good to go again. So yeah, there's no wireless charging and that's an easy ding. But this is absolutely the perfect use case for a silicon carbon battery. It lets us break physics a little bit and make the phone smaller but still have a massive flagship size capacity. Is what I would say if this was a silicon carbon battery, but it's not. All of the specs I just said are true. 5,850 mAh, 80 watt charging, two day battery life, not silicon carbon. When I first saw the spec sheet for this phone, I literally assumed it was silicon carbon because this is a tiny phone. It's impossible, right? It can't be a regular lithium ion battery, but it's not. And that was kind of shocking. I kind of can't believe it's not. But then the second cherry on top for this phone is the version they're selling in China is going to swap out the 32 megapixel selfie camera for a 16 megapixel smaller camera and does have a silicon carbon battery because of the different priorities in that market. So that version is a 6,260 milliamp battery. Wow. I cannot imagine how good the battery life of that phone is going to be. Either way, the battery is a huge highlight of this phone. It's pretty sick. Now, the cameras, as I mentioned, not so much. I mean, they're fine. You've heard this about OnePlus phones in the past. They're passible. They're just not going to be the reason you buy this phone. This is the same sensor as the ROG Phone 9 and the Moto Edge 50, just to give you an idea. And they chose to pair that main camera with a 2x telephoto for some reason instead of an ultrawide or a better zoom. But you can immediately get much more out of an S25 with its triple cameras, for example, or even others with a dual camera where one of them is an ultrawide. But the third and final thing you should know about this phone is that OnePlus's AI has arrived on it. Uh, and I've been testing it for a little while. It's one of those things that again, you can easily dive all the way into it or totally ignore it and not use any of it. I tend to not use a lot of this stuff, but of course they want to make it as easy as possible to dive right in because they've replaced the usual beloved alert slider with a single button here. And you can see where this is going. This is a customizable button called the plus key. And sure enough, just like the iPhone's action button, they've built a special very dark UI that they've stapled into their settings app for customizing exactly how you want this button to behave. And the default is saving whatever you're doing to the mind space, which is this AI organized memory bank for all your screenshots and taking action on them and pulling information out of them later. Pretty damn similar to the nothing phones essential space. I've talked about this before. Cool concept. Like every once in a while, it's that really cool useful thing. Like someone sends you a text with a screenshot of a concert poster and then you can like save it and get the information later. is nice, but it also doesn't work anywhere outside of this phone. So, it doesn't sync anywhere. I can't triage this on a bigger screen on my laptop or something like that. So, it breaks my number one rule of organizational software of not being multiplatform. But, there's also other little stuff like there's an AI editor in the photos app now that will unblur moving objects and erase reflections and glass or erase background objects. Pretty classic stuff that we've seen. And there's a translate app that does live audio translations for multilingual conversations. Nothing like mind-blowing or groundbreaking that we haven't already seen on other phones before. Uh but it is nice that OnePlus at least has this stuff built in now instead of relying on Google for it. Um this is also coming via a software update to the OnePlus 13. Although that phone still has a slider instead of the button, so you have to access it with a three-finger swipe up instead. I'd take the slider. Now, some other little things I noticed while dailying this phone should come with the context of the price. So, here is that price. It's pretty good. 650 bucks roughly equivalent in the US. Again, feeling like the Xen phone reincarnated, but I did notice things like the fingerprint reader under the display being optical instead of the faster ultrasonic fingerprint sensors. Not a huge deal, but makes sense at this price point. I also found the lack of doubletapping the power button for camera kind of weird on this phone. I feel like 99 out of every hundred Android phones that crosses my plate automatically has double click for camera turned on or at least lets me easily turn it on. But unless I'm missing something, this is like the one out of a hundred that doesn't. Uh but you can I guess remap the plus key to be the camera quick launch if you want to do that instead. But then speaking of the plus key, that animation, I mean, do I do I really have to say it? I mean, we all know they just Okay, as long as we're on the same page. Also, sweet new feature that I discovered on this phone, but that's probably more useful on bigger phones. This icon pull down gesture in Oxygen OS 15. This is so smart. It basically just takes all of your clickable icons on your home screen and just drags them down to the corner to make them reachable with a single swipe. It is so clever. I love it. But overall, moral of the story is the benchmark for compact or small flagship phones has moved up basically over 6 in now. But if you want the one with the best battery life, there's no question this is it. Um, super smooth software, super fast charging, and it has the AI features built in now, which is great. If it's a camera you're after, this probably isn't the one. If you live in the US, sorry, probably can't really get one here, or if you do, it'll be kind of a pain. Speaking of a pain, does your dad's back hurt? Is he always constantly misplacing things? Does his wallet look like this? Your dad may be suffering from something called dad wallet. We've all seen it. A massive wallet that's probably older than you, filled with who knows what. Listen, it's time to upgrade him for Father's Day, and Ridge has it covered. Ridge has wallets for all sorts of dads. There's hard wallets, soft wallets, even some with his favorite sports team. So, there's so many colors and material options to choose from. I can kind of already hear him saying, "That's sharp." when he opens it for the first time. And the best part, he'll never misplace it again with Ridge's new tracker card. Just slide it into the wallet and you can always find it with your iPhone. But also, I know our audience and I know the analytics. And I'm fairly confident that a lot of you watching this video are also dads. So, you know what? Get something for yourself, too. Treat yourself at the Ridge Father's Day sale going on now. Stuff's up to 40% off. So, it's at ridge.com/mkbhd or the link below. Thanks for watching. Catch you in the next one. Peace.


Nintendo Switch 2 Unboxing \u0026 First Gameplay!

(lively electronic music)
(logo boinging) (logo whizzes) (box thuds) - All right, it's finally here. Nintendo sent this box
over, and inside this box (knife tapping) is our Nintendo Switch 2. It's our $449 Nintendo Switch 2. Actually, there's a bunch
of stuff in this box. There is a Nintendo Switch 2, plus the "Mario Kart
World" bundle, that's $499. There's also a Switch 2
camera in here, which is $55. There is also a Switch 2 Pro
Controller, which is $85. And there's a physical
copy of "Mario Kart World," which would be $80 if you got one, which we'll need to play today because the digital copy
doesn't work until tomorrow. So, kind of a pricey box,
but let's just jump in. (knife scraping) With none other than our
Ridge MKBHD knife, of course. (knife scraping) Oh, and also, by the way, you've noticed I have over here a Switch
1 and a Switch 1 OLED because I've gotten to
compare, like, back and forth between seeing one and seeing the other. But I wanna look at
them next to each other. So let's jump in.
(packing paper rustling) Here's the Switch 2 Pro Controller. (packing paper rustling) Switch 2. "Mario Kart World," there it is. (packing paper rustling) Switch 2 camera. And, of course, a little
bit of extra information. They always give us a little
PDF so we know what's going on. But that's it. (box thuds)
So, of course, first, we should get into the console itself. That's all anyone's
really here for, anyway. So there you go. That's the box you're gonna see in stores and Best Buy and everything. There they are, right on
top, the big new Joy-Cons. (packaging rustling) And then, of course, the
console itself right here. Looks a little bigger every time I see it. Nice, big 7.9-inch screen, thin bezels, pretty sleek. There you go. USB-C port on top. Got those pins on the side. We'll talk more about those in a second. But, yeah, that's the console right there. But what else comes in this box here? HDMI cable. Nice. And then, of course, your two
attachments for the Joy-Cons and the wrist straps. And that's it for here. This is a wall plug. (packaging rustling) Single USB-C port on that. USB Type-C cable. So that's your charger right here. Here's your little hub
to attach both Joy-Cons. Last but not least, the
dock with the fans in it that does 4K out to the
TV with this new shape. I think first thing I wanna do
is just attach the Joy-Cons. That's the thing that I miss when I first got to see
those magnetic Joy-Cons. (Joy-Con clunking) It's just so satisfying. This little mechanism
here that pops a Joy-Con off the Switch. (Joy-Con clunking) It attaches super, super well. But if you just press it a little, it detaches just like that,
and then you just pull. So that's nice. I kind of wonder how
durable these pins are, if they're gonna break. I've been told they have a
little bit of give on purpose so that if you do knock up against it or drop it or something,
it won't instantly break. (Joy-Con clunking) Now, these here are the little bumpers because you might actually
end up using these a little bit more often, at least if the games
support the new feature where the Joy-Cons can be used as a mouse. These little things, they're
also made of plastic. A little bit of give to them, but they're still pretty sturdy. And they attach to the
Joy-Cons themselves. So if I throw this bumper
on here, just like that, hooks on the bottom. (bumper clicks) And there you go. So there's your Joy-Cons as mice and also with the bumpers on if you wanted to handhold your controller. Everybody's used to this experience. But I have some other unboxings to get to, so I'm gonna do these too. Let's do the camera first. So some of you may remember
Nintendo's Connect event where they showed this new camera. Basically, while you're doing gameplay, you hit this new C button,
and it opens this share menu. And it's supposed to be this
much more social console where you can share your
gameplay with other people at the same time or even share
a video feed of your face, which is overlaid over your gameplay, to someone else who's
playing at the same time. Could be cool. I don't even know if... You might be able to livestream that feed. I'm not exactly sure if you wanna do that. But this is that tiny little camera. And yep, it's just as tiny and cute as I remember. And then another USB
Type-C cable for that. There's this little bezel around the front that lets you manually,
physically open and close it. You got that? That's nice. So we got our Pro Controller here, which is gonna be sick for some games. I don't know if I'm gonna use
this for "Mario Kart World," but here is your $85 Pro Controller. (packaging rustling) USB Type-C cable to USB
Type-A on the other end. (packaging rustling) Oh, it's kind of heavy. It's got some weight to it
that I didn't actually expect. Everything else is
obviously mostly plastic, and so is this controller. But it does have this,
like, central weight where I'm sure battery
and haptics all are. So, okay, Switch 2. I'm gonna put these Joy-Cons back on and fire it up for the first time. (Joy-Cons clunking) That's so much faster than before. Also, the dock here is nice 'cause you can just ideally (Switch 2 thudding) pop it in. (Switch 2 rattles) There's a little bit of
wiggle, a little bit of give. It's not too bad. This is the Switch 1 dock, which didn't really have any give at all. So I'm a little surprised
to see so much wiggle. I think it's about time to
start playing some games. Power button. Oh, yeah. (light gentle music) (Switch 2 chimes) (puffs) Speakers are bigger. It's crisp. "English?" Yes. "The Americas?" Yes. "Accept the agreement?" Yes. Okay, about to download update data. I heard about this day-one update. You can continue setting it
up while the update downloads? Sure. (Switch 2 beeps) What time zone am I in? Okay. (Switch 2 clicking) New York. Last thing I wanna do is just get a look at this physical game because the cartridge
slot is still at the top. Where's my Ridge knife? So if I were to in the future maybe not get the bundle at launch but get the physical
"Mario Kart World" game, (packaging rustling) this is what one of those nice cartridges is gonna look like. All right. (game case clicks) (laughs) So much plastic! This is a massive package for this tiny little cartridge right here. But this is the game. Those are your pins. (Switch 2 pipping) (light gentle music) There we go. MKBHD is logged in. Very nice. "More users can be added if the system will be
used by other people." Good to know. To parents and guardians,
set up your controls. It's, like, don't have any cards to add, but I would if I did. And then to set up the... Oh, complete. Hit home. Great. First look at the home
screen on the Switch 2. (bright lively music) (Switch 2 chiming) So I could obviously jump
in and download an app or game right now, but I think the move is (cartridge clunking) straight to "Mario Kart World." Nice. (Switch 2 chimes) Software update's available. It'll download now. But I'd like to start
the software, please. It's me. Sorry, I should say,
(clears throat) it's a-me. (upbeat bluesy music) This new bigger screen- - "Mario Kart World!" - [Marques] 7.9-inch
display looks way better. 120 hertz looks so much better. Turn the speakers down. (upbeat pop-rock music)
(kart engine whirring) - [Mario] Yahoo! - Sorry, I'm getting carried away. What I should be doing is comparing it to the other Switches. So I'm gonna do that real quick just because we actually
have them all side by side. So this is the Switch 1. This is my Switch 1. It's also a ColorWare Switch 1, so that's why it looks a little different. It's got the paint all over
the Joy-Cons and the back, (chuckles) and it looks super sweet. But this is the old kickstand, and this is the old Switch 1 size. This is the new Switch,
the new Switch kickstand, and the new Switch size. The thickness is roughly the same, but obviously, much bigger screen, much better-looking screen,
higher refresh rate, more storage, the whole deal. Obvious upgrade. But this is David's Switch OLED, which they did upgrade
some other things on. Obviously, it's an OLED display, but it also has this full-width kickstand. See, this is the difference
that we're talking about. This is the Switch OLED on the
bottom, Switch 2 on the top. And this has happened so many times in, like, even the smartphone
world and the tablet world, where we say, "Oh, you know, we're nerds, really pixel-peeping, we really wanna see a higher-fidelity, better-looking display."
But at the end of the day, most people just want a bigger screen, and that's what the
Switch 2 is delivering. We also fully expect, if
we're being reasonable, there's probably gonna be a Switch 2 OLED at some point in the next,
like, two years or something. So I wouldn't be shocked
when that shows up and that's even more expensive, but that's a bigger OLED display that's also 120 hertz and looks amazing. And they might even do some other things that upgrade the console. Like they weren't afraid
of a new kickstand design and some other things for Switch OLED. But, yeah. Oh, God. I didn't actually
think this through. (groovy upbeat music)
(kart engine whirring) (? Block chiming) (kart tires screeching) That is fun. Yeah, these Joy-Cons are so
much better than the old ones. Here, I'll just show you. Since we have them, we can actually do the direct comparison. You had to pull the little
pin in, slot it up like that. And first of all, it's larger,
which does make a difference. It's a little more ergonomic. But then also every
single button is bigger. The joystick is bigger. I saw that there was a pre-installed screen protector on the Switch, and it's true. I can see it. I'm gonna get a macro shot of it so you can see what I'm seeing. But they say, don't remove it. And now that I've seen the
instructions, okay, I won't. But if you wanna install one
on top of it, that's cool, too. Like, dbrand has a Prism screen protector you can install on top of this one, and that will hold it and
protect whatever's underneath. Now one of the big
Switch 2 talking points, which I mentioned in that last video, was that game that
essentially acts as a tutorial to learn about your Switch
doesn't come with it. It's not free, and it's not here. But there are some
built-in tutorial things, like how to use mouse controls. If I pop one of these off, select next, and follow
the onscreen guides, put the bumper on. (bumper clicking) (Switch 2 clicks) Oh, there it is. Shows up immediately. So I
don't know if you can see that, but I am using this as a controller. And then I'm also able
to scroll inside windows, which is kind of nice. Then, of course, I can
select, select, select, using that top button. So it works pretty well. I think there's gonna be a couple of games that do immediately
support this out the box, but it's probably not something a lot of them are expecting to use. Like, I did that wheelchair soccer game when I was doing the demo when
I first tried the Switch 2, and it worked pretty well. But yeah, we'll see what
other games end up using that. So, for those wondering what the rest of the home screen stuff looks like, 'cause this is also something
we haven't seen yet, looks pretty familiar. You've got your picture up at the top 'cause that's your account, and I'm sure I'll blur my
friend code so nobody spams me. But then, of course, your games. And then, underneath, GameChat's in there, settings are in here. I can go to... Let's see, can I change
my display refresh rate? TV resolution is automatic,
but up to 4K, which is great. (Switch 2 clicking) So it doesn't look like I can
decide to go down to 60 hertz. This is for just TV. (kart engine whirring)
(chaotic upbeat music) Yeah, I feel like these new Joy-Cons are almost as much of an upgrade
as the new screen. (laughs) Just having these huge new buttons, the whole Joy-Con being bigger, ergonomically it's better,
the haptics are better. I should probably drop
the sound a little bit. But, yeah, it is much better to game on an individual Joy-Con
with the new ones. So, if you're thinking about Switch 2: "Is that really that much of an upgrade? Is it that different to game on it?" It's gonna feel different because of the Joy-Cons
just as much as the screen. So here is all three Switches all lined up next to each other: Switch 1 OG. Switch OLED, new kickstand, OLED screen. Switch 2. Obviously, the biggest difference
is just that it's bigger. I mean, this is my first impression: The bigger Joy-Cons make
such a big difference. So most people are gonna
enjoy bigger Joy-Cons and bigger screen. We also are expecting
an OLED version later. I'm gonna get to much more
detail in the full review. But also, if you're
considering getting a Switch 2, you're probably also thinking
about getting a case, in which case you should
consider the Killswitch by channel sponsor dbrand. Okay, so this is the Killswitch case. Also, it looks like dbrand
left a note, which says, "We know there's a lot of features, but they're all pretty important. Think you can try to fit
them in the end-roll?" I'll try. So this is the case. It's got this super rigid
travel cover, crush-proof. You can just toss this thing
around, which is great. But then with this little
bungee, which is kind of sick, you take the cover off, and inside you'll notice
there are 10 slots, magnetic holders for your games. Just take the games with you. But then even once
you've got the cover off, it's still protected, and you have full access to
the kickstand, which is sick. You can still fully remove the Joy-Cons, unlike a lot of other cases. And the Joy-Cons have this
ergonomic back on them as well, which is kind of killer. So now the Joy-Con's bigger
and more comfortable to hold, kind of like a real mouse in the hand, you can still put the bumpers
on and use it as a mouse. That's nice.
(Joy-Con clunks) So then for docking, dbrand includes a dock
adapter with every Killswitch. (adapter clunking) Pops in like that. So all you gotta do is
place your Killswitch on the front tray, and they are connected,
and now they're docked. Full 4K60 passthrough. And the dock fan still
cools the dock normally. And I haven't even
touched on the durability, the build quality, the materials. This thing is a tank. So, yeah, if you're gonna
travel with your Switch, highly recommended. And if you wanna grab one for $35 off, I'll have a link down
below in the description. That's it. Thanks for watching
this first impressions. Let me know what you wanna
see in the full review, what games I should play first of all, which experiences I
should use GameShare with, using the camera, using
the Pro Controller with, 'cause I wanna be pretty thorough. But this is a first look at the
newest console for Nintendo. Thanks for watching. Get subscribed to see that
stuff. Catch you in the next one. Peace. (groovy hip-hop music)


Galaxy S25 Edge and the Thin Phone Problem

This is a pencil. It's 7.7 mm thick. This is the S25 Ultra. It's 8.2 mm thick. And this this is the S25 Edge. It's just 5.8 mm thick. We got to talk about these ultra thin foams. Okay, so the obvious take is nobody asked for this. Like these ultra thin phones look cool or whatever. They make for a snazzy commercial, but what we really want is thicker phones that have less camera bump but way more battery. The universal thing that everyone wants is more battery, not thinner phones. Facts. This is true. And I I could just end this video right here. But I figured, what if we actually gave it a shot? What if I actually daily drove a phone whose biggest feature is how thin it is? So, I did. Now, the thing that won't shock you is that the rest of this phone is very familiar. From the front, it's literally a Galaxy S25 Plus. Same size, 6.7 in display, 1440p, 120 Hz, plenty bright, it's beautiful. It's got this ultrasonic fingerprint reader, still super fast. And then all of the same software. So, it has the newly updated 1 UI7 that I also just got on my Ultra. and mostly like the vertically scrolling app drawer is nice. Uh the new extra swipes to get to quick settings is kind of annoying, but pro tip, if you go to notification panel settings and then switch them from separate to together, it no longer requires extra swipes to get to quick settings. They're supposed to be quick after all. But there's also, of course, the iOS copycat stuff, too. Maybe you've seen the obvious dynamic island clone on other phones before. Apparently, Samsung is not immune to it. But there's three main things that are actually new about using this phone, which is the cameras, the battery, and the thinness and lightness, which you'll see what I mean. So, they've managed to actually stuff the same main camera as the S25 Ultra in this phone, which is kind of crazy. Great camera, 200 megapixel sensor that bends down to 12 megapixel shots by default. It makes these nice, sharp images in a big variety of scenes. It's great. But then unlike the rest of the S25 lineup, there are no telephoto cameras on this phone. Now, on one hand, I can argue it makes logical sense, like there's less room inside the phone here, and often a 2x digital zoom from a good sensor is actually better than a 2x optical zoom from a crappy small sensor. But yeah, you are definitely missing out on the further zoom performance here, which might not seem like much, but every once in a while, having some far zoom does come in very handy. I was just at my cousin's graduation and I think every single human there was zoomed as far in as their phone could physically go. And so then a phone with a telephoto feels obvious. But instead the second camera here is an ultrawide. Not the same ultrawide as the ultra phone though. This is a smaller 12 megapixel sensor. I found it to still be very solid though. Doesn't have any big weaknesses or vignetting or softness issues like I found on some of the iPhones ultrawides. And it does macros as well. What you're probably wondering more about though is the battery. And yep, there's no way around it. It's definitely worse. This is a huge S25 plus-siz screen with a smaller battery than the regular S25. So, yeah, you notice it. It's 3,900 mAh, which is enough to be fine. And you can end the day with a bit of battery life left on a light day. And there's a whole ton of people that live most of their daily lives with very predictable charging opportunities. Like you might be like me and have a wireless charger at your desk at work in front of you all the time. You might charge during your driving commute. Maybe you're always around an outlet when you're at home. So it's manageable. But you got to think if it's already 25% worse than the S25 Plus as a starting point, then you already know when this phone gets old, it's going to be even worse. I'm sure someone will do a scientific test and and get exact values out of this, but I think in general, if you are expecting six hours of screen on time out of an A+ flagship phone all day, convenient, then expect closer to 4 and a half to five out of this, not as hot. But all the sacrifice, of course, was made in the name of thinness and lightness because that pesky graphite and copper that gives you incredible all day battery life is also so thick and heavy. And if only you could just get rid of some of it, then you could have this stunningly thin piece of metal. And let me tell you, it is really thin and light. It's kind of crazy. I'm so sorry to say, but there are there are a couple devices that have come out in the past couple years that are genuinely impressively thin and light, and they feel just kind of like this amazingly thin sheet of metal that happens to have a screen on it. Like the Galaxy Tab Ultra was one of those. Uh, the new iPad Pro was another one of those from this past year. And this phone is another one of those. Like, it's one of those things where, okay, yeah, it looks a little thinner on video. Whoop-dedoo. Snazzy commercial. Great. I put it up next to another phone. It makes it look thick. Cool. It could do that. But then you hold it and start using it, and that is the exact moment that it starts being impressive. Like I've showed this phone now to a whole bunch of people in this studio and out there in the real world and you know looking at it even they'd be oh yeah you know it looks kind of thin but then I'd hand it to them and then then they'd be super impressed when they actually hold the thing. Now will that feeling go away after a couple of months of using this phone? Yeah, maybe a little bit. Uh will this feel totally pointless to some people once they put a case on the phone? I think for some people yes. Honestly, this phone with a case on it, though, is still thinner than any regular phone with a case on it. But then, will this phone have durability issues like a certain other thin phone in the past? Well, I I feel like if you're Samsung, there's no way you didn't consider that. And so, this phone has Gorilla Glass, ceramic, too, and titanium for the frame. And so, I feel like there's no chance they repeat the bending in pocket mistakes of the past. But only time will tell, I guess. I just can't get over the fact that it's it's holding the phone in person that has sold way more people than any video or photo comparison ever could, which I understand probably is extremely ironic considering I'm telling you this through a video and I can't hand you the phone, but you're just going to have to trust me on this one. Also, this here is one of the last phones Samsung used the Edge name on. This is my Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. And they call these older phones edge because they curved the display glass over the left and right edges, giving it a kind of a bezelless waterfall effect since screen to body ratio was like a huge deal at the time. And it also happened to make the rails of the phone that you actually hold extremely thin, which was a kind of a unique feeling at the time. And this new Edge phone, again, because of how thin it is, is actually a unique feel in the hand. And I do think it will actually win some people over with the clear obvious trade-off being less battery and some serious table wobble with no case. Now, I can't talk about the S25 Edge without also talking about the elephant in the room, which is the rumor of future ultra thin phones, including the alleged iPhone 17 Air coming later this year. And my thoughts about these are really just revolving around one thing, which is battery. Shocker. See, earlier this year, I reviewed the OnePlus 13. And I talked about some of the big things we expect to see in smartphones in 2025. One of which is a reall life battery advancement, which we don't see very often. This one is silicon carbon battery tech. Essentially, it allows you to have higher battery density and faster charging, which means you can do one of two things. You can either make phones that are the same size that have much much better battery or you can unlock this new ultra thin phone form factor and have roughly the same battery as before. The OnePlus 13 did the first thing. It had a 6,000 mAh battery in the size of the normal flagship and it was amazing. It had 7 hour plus screen on time. It was great. This S25 Edge jumps on the ultra thin thing, but it is not a silicon carbon battery. Uh, so there's some speculation why maybe Samsung couldn't source enough of this new battery tech to ship the number of phones that they were planning to with this model. Or maybe they're just a little bit apprehensive about taking risks in the battery departments after getting burned in the past. Totally fair. Either way, they jumped on the ultra thin thing, but battery life suffered. So, what about the rumored iPhone 17 Air? Well, word on the street is that phone also won't use a silicon carbon battery, possibly for a lot of the same reasons. The rumors I'm reading now are pointing towards like a 2,800 mAh battery, which even in iPhone land is just so much worse than the rest of their lineup. And that is going to be fascinating to see how they present that and how they justify that. Either way, look, I think I think ultra thin phones can work with silicon carbon battery tech. I think something like this with like a 4500 to 5,000 mAh battery would be amazing. Ultra thin phone lasts all day. Great. And then they can also make a regular size phone with a super long battery life. And then people can pick between the two. I just saw Realme made a concept phone that's a totally normal 8 1/2 mm thick, but with a crazy 10,000 mAh battery and 320 watt fast charging, which would be incredible. Now, yes, it is a concept phone, so it's not real. It's more of a demonstration of the advancements of silicon carbon battery tech. But that's the stuff that we're hoping is on the horizon. Maybe S26 Edge will get there. Thanks for watching. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace. Never. Ever.


Top 5 Android 16 Features: Big Visuals!

[Music] The dessert names may be gone, but the Android updates, well, they keep coming. I've been running the Android 16 beta on my Pixel 9 Pro for the past couple days now. Now, if you've been paying attention to these updates over the years to Android, you've noticed the trend now is less and less like major overhauls and more, you know, little subtle tweaks and refinements, little things here and there. And this latest update is almost almost purely aesthetic, especially in this first beta. Matter of fact, there aren't really any any big new capabilities in this build of Android 16. It's more just that it's it's just it's built different. It it just acts a little different. It looks a little different. It feels a little different. And I like it. You know, they started down this path a few years ago with material design and then material u and then now of course Google has to name everything. So, this latest version is called Material 3 Expressive, but it actually makes sense because everything here is a little brighter, a little more playful, and just a little bit more expressive. Kind of like real physical objects. So, let's just jump right in. I'm going to give you a tour of this fresh coat of paint that you'll probably only ever get on your phone if you also have a Google Pixel. Uh, either way, these are my top five favorite new things in Android 16. So, number five is lock screen customization. You know, they they say we unlock our phones a h 100 times a day, so we might as well like what we see when we get there. And Android 16 has a slightly different lock screen picker than 15. You still get there the same way by long pressing lock screen and then hitting customize down there. But then in here, it's just a little more neatly organized. First of all, I like this animation here to reveal the wallpaper selector. That's nice. They didn't have to do that. But from there, then there's the new clock customization. And with this one, all the way on the left here, you have this slider to pretty drastically change the font thickness from this bold one all the way to razor thin if you're into that. But then also, you choose for your notifications on the lock screen if you want them to either be the full list with everything or a compact view. The compact view is just going to show the little icons underneath the time, but the full view just shows every single thing from every notification. And then you can still of course change your shortcuts for the left side and the right side. Just everything here. It's not like new capabilities. It's just more neatly organized to help you dial in the perfect lock screen for you. So, that's a nice little update there. So, then number four, recent apps. Now, normally the multitasking menu of recent apps on your phone is not the most exciting thing in the world, but I'm putting this as my number four here for two main reasons. Actually, I'm going to throw in three. The first is that they added this drop-down to every app. And if you click that, it gives you more actions for things you might want to do. And split screen is in there. So before you, you know, you had to know to hit the app icon at the top and then find that. I think most people didn't know about that hidden UI. So exposing this to the not so hidden is good. And then two is the physics. And this one's more subtle, but part of a bigger theme with Android 16 here, which is playful and reactive physics that makes these windows and pieces of UI feel like physical objects. So you can see when I'm dragging the window around, the ones next to it also move a little bit. And then when you finally release it, then the neighboring windows bounce in. Again, it's subtle, but it's all good stuff. And also, shout out to 95 Google. They made a video showing the same beta, but on a Pixel Pro Fold. And there's even more fun animations with the dock at the bottom and free form floating windows as well. It kind of makes me want to daily drive a Pixel 9 Pro Fold again. It's all good stuff. But then number three, I just decided to throw in at the end is just the you can't feel it, but the haptics as you're scrolling through these is obviously you can't like tell through the screen, but it's like a like a every every one has a little hitch point. It's kind of nice. I like it. But anyway, okay, number three, customizing the launcher. Now, again, it's going to be subtle with this one, so I'm going to hit you with a side by side to hopefully, you know, better show you the difference between 15 and 16. But right off the bat, the non- removable at a glance widget, which is still non- removable, uh, but it's at least a little bit smaller now in that top left corner. It's a little bit of a slimmer, trimmer font, and also made room for an entire new row of icons on the home screen. So, there's new grid sizes available as well. But then wallpaper customization. So, hey, if you know me, you know I like wallpapers. No, no shame to that. So, select a new wallpaper in Android 16. And at the bottom, you'll see an effect button that shows up. And if you hit that, it brings up this whole customizer just to add effects to your background. So the shape one is pretty straightforward. It basically creates a window into your background image behind a solid color which is picked from the colors in your picture. So it kind of matches and you can flip through all these shapes and colors and just kind of mess around and it's kind of cool. It creates a unique look with the cutout. But then there's also weather, which literally adds live weather effects over your wallpaper. So if I hit fog and then hit next and select everything, basically the next time I unlock my phone, there's a bunch of fog that appears floating across my lock screen and then I unlock and it's still there and it takes a few seconds and then kind of burns away. The the fog parts away. It's kind of random, but all right. There's also rain, which as you can see just rains full screen like that weather app in iOS used to do, or maybe it still does. Uh, there's also snow, which has given me PTSD of this past winter, but you can do that. And there's even sun, which warms up and glows with some moving lens flare across the home screen. And this this slider at the bottom, you can drag it all the way left or right to add more or less of this effect. And apparently you could even mirror the weather at your current location if you wanted to. Anyway, last but not least is cinematic. So the first time you try this, you actually have to download a cinematic model from the internet. But once you check that box on a wallpaper, it just adds some subtle 3D motion to your photo. So on like a more abstract wallpaper, it doesn't do much. But if you have a picture of a kid, a person, or a pet, then it kind of does this thing where it tries to separate it from the background. You know, like the classic freshman year Adobe After Effects project where you make a video out of a photo. Anyway, I assume AI is doing this, but yeah, it's fine. It kind of brings it to life a little bit. But that brings me to number two, new physics. And it kind of sounds cheesy at first, but it kind of this is this is more in the expressive thing. Like it it actually feels like they consciously went through Android and tried to make sure more things feel like physical objects. So, lots of menus that were previously flat are now, it seems, more intentionally separated. So, you can tell that they're all touch targets and separate items. The multitasking windows, like I mentioned earlier, they have a little bit of bounce to them and they engage slightly with the windows around them, like they have gravity. And even in notifications, I think this is where it's the most obvious, like when you go to swipe to dismiss a notification, you can feel that it's it's not just removing that one notification and sliding it out. you're like unsticking it from the notifications around it. And the the haptics that go along with all of this that you feel is a nice bonus, too. So, it really feels like you can tell the exact point that it breaks the like rubber band physics and lets you pull the notification out from the rest and swipe it away. It's really well done. I think it's the best expression of this Material 3 style in this whole phone. It's completely unnecessary. It doesn't add It's not a feature that adds functionality. It's just it's just feels nice. But anyway, this brings me to my number one favorite new thing in this Android 16 beta, and I I think it's probably everyone's favorite number one thing, which is the quick settings. The quick settings and notification panel. So, I've always been a fan of Android over iOS specifically because of these quick settings, and this update levels it up again. First of all, on the surface, you can see when you pull down, the background is this glassy transparent overlay instead of solid like Android 15 was. I kind of love it. And then there's a big new brightness slider at the top. And then these buttons up here are fun. They kind of they slightly change shape actually from round to more boxy when they're toggled. Honestly, not really sure why it does that, but it does. And then when you hit that edit button, this is where you can jump in and go crazy. So any one of these toggles can be shrunken down into half size and then you can rearrange them and move them around however you want and do your own thing. So you can combine some bigger targets like flashlight with some smaller ones that you maybe don't use as often. And I'm just loving the customization here. And it's funny if you ever slip up and do anything you regret or move something and you don't like it anymore, you can just hit that big undo button in the corner. Very nice. And I'm dead serious. Like this is one of my favorite things about Android is the quick settings and notifications. And this update is it feels like someone really thought a lot about it and considered it. Especially even like this is a subtle thing, but the Bluetooth button here. If you touch the larger whole button, it brings up the Bluetooth menu. But if you just hit the little logo on the side, that's just a toggle to turn Bluetooth on and off. And once you know that, once you get used to it, that's smart. Like that's nice. I want I want to have my phone dialed in exactly how I want and that's convenient. So that is my top five. But you know what? As a bonus, since this really is a fresh coat of paint, here are all the other little interesting things that I noticed are overhauled in this Android 16 beta. The bottom buttons in notifications are bigger. Like the clear all button is huge. And then they also added a notification history button to the left. That's nice. And notification settings stays to the right. The status bar icons are also slightly redesigned, including slipping the battery indicator to sideways. So, it used to be vertical, but this one is a little bigger and they put the numbers inside the battery icon and so I think it's a little bit more readable. Other phones do this already, but now it's in stock Android, too. The app drawer is technically a slightly transparent overlay as well now instead of an opaque full screen app drawer. So, interesting because we know Apple's going to start doing this glassy stuff, too. And then the whole settings app is aesthetically updated, but also very much reorganized, especially inside of each section, which is mostly for the better and very much appreciated. And then the new volume slider matches the new brightness slider. So it's the same size as before, but it just has this very clear bar now at the top where the current volume level is. And that's the same throughout everything when you jump in that full volume pane, which now that I'm thinking about it, I feel like, shouldn't this also be glassy instead of opaque as well? I don't know, maybe in the next beta. But yeah, speaking of the next beta, I expect there to be more coming. This is beta 1. I was excited to get my hands on it. It just came out a couple days ago, but there are more in the way of actual features as well in Android 16. Things like uh glancible, like ongoing notifications. So, very similar to what iOS launched for ongoing activities. Android is going to have a version of that too here. And also a new Find Hub, which is very similar to the Find My app on the iPhone. It's going to combine all your contacts and items that you keep track of the location of in one single place. But yeah, as of right now, I've been totally fine and pretty stable testing this beta 1 other than Android Auto not working. Uh, but yeah, I'm looking forward to more. But this is my top five. And make sure you share this with other people who want to see the top five in Android 16 as well. And get subscribed for more stuff coming. Thanks for watching. Catch you in the next one. Peace.


Why Apple, Samsung and Google Need Each Other

[Music] Apple and Samsung hate each other, but they also need each other in a real way. So, I was looking at this random YouTube short the other day. It was comparing like the S25 Ultra to the iPhone 16 Pro, and one of the top comments reminded me, most people don't actually realize that Samsung makes the displays for the iPhone. So, yeah, Samsung, who has their own line of smartphones with high-end OLED displays, makes the high-end OLED displays of their rival, the iPhone, and this is at the top of my list of fascinating company relationships where the economics more than outweigh the public rivalry. Now, the high-end OLED iPhones typically have several suppliers. You know, sometimes LG chips in a little bit, sometimes some others, but it's mostly Samsung because they're the one display company that can reliably supply these high-quality screens at a massive scale with the quality that's up to Apple standards for the iPhone. Now, it's funny if you were hearing this for the first time and you were thinking if you were Samsung and Apple came up to you and they're like, "Hey, we're back. We want to buy a 100 million new OLEDs for our brand new iPhone Air, whatever, and it's got to have this amazing high brightness and perfect color calibration." If you were Samsung, what if you just said, "No, yeah, we we won't sell you the screens." Then suddenly Apple has a supply chain crisis on their hands and they have to use worse quality displays and suddenly Samsung screens are way better. So, everyone buys Samsung phones and then Samsung wins, right? But it's not that simple. And that's really entirely just because of the economics. Samsung makes so much money selling displays millions and millions of screens to Apple for the iPhone. And so the theoretical amount more Samsung phones they could sell if they like sabotage the iPhone displays would just not nearly make up for the amount of money they lose if they don't have Apple as a customer anymore. Fun fact, Samsung came out with the Galaxy S8 in 2017. But you know what they made even more money from than the Galaxy S8? The iPhone 10. Because they sold so many hundreds of millions of iPhone 10 displays to Apple that it actually made them more money as a company. Apple needed roughly 180 to 200 million OLED panels for the iPhone 10. So, of course, they keep doing it despite being competitors for the exact same customer. This dynamic has been real for a number of years now, but there are rumors it may eventually come to an end. If Apple were to say switch to microLEDD displays for a new iPhone and have to find a new supplier, that could be tough for Samsung. kind of the same way that when Apple switched to their own design chips for Macs and stopped using off-the-shelf Intel chips, that was tough for Intel. But for now, money talks. But here's another partnership that has surprised some people. Apple and Google. And this is one that's been in the news a bit lately because the power of defaults is very, very powerful in the tech world. Like people, most average people don't really change their default. They don't even know how to change the default. So on a super popular mass market product like the iPhone, any third-party services that get chosen as a default automatically inherit millions of users and they kind of set the tone for that experience for all those people. It's very powerful. Think about chat GPT being plugged into Apple intelligence or even back in the day when YouTube was an included app on that iPod touch and the old iPhone. Remember that? Am I getting old? Anyway, you know how when you open up Safari on the iPhone, you got that bar at the bottom that says search or enter website and so if you start typing a search query, Google search suggestions automatically start popping up. And then you hit go and it takes you to a Google search page. That's some pretty powerful real estate for Google. That could have theoretically been a Bing or Yahoo search. It turns out Google has been paying Apple 20 billion dollar every year to stay the default search engine in Safari on the iPhone just for that $20 billion. And because it's one of the most it's one of the most popular phones in the world and there's millions and millions of searches going through all of those searches are now Google searches because they paid to be the default. And that's a partnership both companies have been willingly participating in for years because it's a no-brainer for both of them. For Apple, well, I mean, that's a pretty easy one. You just get a free $20 billion every year to keep it the way it is. People expect Google Search. Great. For Google, well, that helps them secure their spot as number one by not allowing others to be the default there. And people aren't really changing the defaults very often. So, that's millions and millions of searches for them. But this could all soon be getting thrown away because in the US Justice Department's trial against Google, they've argued that, you know, this is anti-competitive behavior. This is monopolistic behavior. Apple and Google's net profits last year were both around hundred billion, which is, I mean, ridiculously huge numbers. But think about that. $20 billion of that just came right off the top for Google and added right to the bottom line for Apple just to be the default for search and Safari. that those are huge percentages. Now, both companies in court are, you know, downplaying how big of a deal this is. And I think both would happily keep these agreements in place since it's such a win-win. I I think about this a lot. What if they just stopped? What if that payment stopped? And I think there are basically three distinct things that could happen here. One, which I think is the most likely, is nothing changes. Like they just continue to have Google as the default search anyway. And it's fine because when you go to search something in Safari, you you probably meant to Google it. I think it would be kind of weird if it suddenly was Bing or Yahoo search every time. I guess technically they could immediately change it. Okay, the money's gone. Google's not paying to be the default anymore. Maybe it could jump straight to like chat GPT or something like that. They have been working with OpenAI. Maybe that becomes an expanded part of their partnership. Although then maybe again it's kind of illegal. But three, and maybe this is the most interesting one, there's a contingent of people who believe that Apple could deploy their own search product in place of Google's their own Apple search engine. And enough of those people work for Google that that's actually the reason why Google struck this deal in the first place is because they believed that Apple making their own search engine would be such a big threat to Google that they needed to do this. So they called it code red. They saw that searches from Apple devices at the time accounted for over half of Google's search business and they couldn't afford to lose that if Apple made their own search product. They could take half of their business. But yeah, obviously this is still developing, but it is fascinating that Google search actually has decently real competition now. I know I've been using ChachiPT a lot lately and I've been talking a lot also on the waveform podcast about how I've been using Gemini on my phone a lot lately and getting real value out of it. So for knowledge searches and for things that are a little bit more in-depth, yeah, I do that over a Google search kind of every single time. But for now, yeah, money still talks. So then one more that's been fascinating me a lot recently, Google and Samsung. So, Samsung makes smartphones, obviously, like we've talked about, Samsung Galaxies, Google also makes their own smartphones, the Pixel lineup of phones. Now, besides the already obvious fact that the Samsung phones run Android, which is made by Google, there's also this really weird trend lately. I don't know if you've noticed this, but I'll be watching a Google event and they'll be demonstrating a new Android feature, but they'll use a Samsung device instead of their own Pixel devices. Have you seen this? I always figured as long as Google has their own devices, surely they'd use them at every opportunity for all their own events. It's perfect promo. And yet, here they are 9 minutes into the 2024 made by Google event when they're doing a demo of a new Gemini conversational feature on a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. This is 15 minutes before unveiling their own new Pixel phone on the same stage in that event. Just earlier this week on a Preio live stream, they did it again. 10 minutes in, they start a Gemini live chat demo and they do the whole thing on a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. And they called it out by name and everything. And that's before waiting until the end of the event to do a little product showcase talking about how many other Android phones are awesome that exist, including their own Pixel 9a. What gives? What are they doing? So, this one's a little less cut and dry than just one of them is paying the other, therefore you see the appearance, but in a very real way. Again, they need each other. They're they're very intertwined. So, we'll see this all the time. New Android features will debut on Samsung phones right alongside Pixel phones. Remember circle to search? The debut of that feature was on the Samsung Galaxy S24 at the exact same time as Google's own Pixel 8. And Google also announced where OS 3 with a Samsung partnership. There are often little features that get announced from Google that start with a little window of exclusivity on a Samsung phone or even sometimes it's Samsung that announces them. So, it's very clear that they have a some sort of working partnership. And so, I think Samsung needs Google because, you know, obviously Google Android, it's the spine, it's the backbone of what they're building off of. It's the Play Store. It's the Google services. They've built a very powerful money-making product around a Google core. But Google needs Samsung because Samsung smartphones are the representation of Android phones for way way more people. In North America alone, Samsung has something like five times the market share of Pixel phones. Pixel phones are a couple percent, but they're growing. But, you know, most of the world knows that this is how you get Android in your pocket. And so, this is the conduit for distributing Google services throughout the world. Now, that's not to say there's no money exchanged. Of course, there still is. Court documents always reveal the truth of what's happening. And sure enough, Google started paying Samsung quote enormous sums for Samsung to pre-install Gemini on the S25s, among other things. Money still talks, but yeah, all these things are worth keeping an eye on in 2025. Just some thoughts I had that I would share to sort of keep in the back of your head. Thanks for watching. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.


Sony WH-1000XM6 Review: Back on the Throne!

(relaxed music) - 'Kay, so Sony is back with their new flagship wireless
noise-canceling headphones with the super easy to remember name. You know the ones. These are the Sony WH-1000XM6s. Easier way to think of it, most people just call these
the XM6 or the Mark 6s, which is exciting because the Mark 5s from last year actually left some room for improvement. They improved some things, but they also made some things worse, which was weird because the
Sony noise-canceling headphones were pretty much king
of the hill for so long, they didn't have a ton of
reason to change a whole lot. Thankfully though, the newest generation updates a lot of the stuff that the Mark 5s fell short on, so that's really good to see. It's exciting that there is a new design, new sound, a new case, but also a new price. We'll get there. So, straight from the top, I still love this super
clean, simple design. They kept what was good about the Mark 5s. They are very, very lightweight. The vegan leather earpads are super soft. The headband is incredibly flexible. These are just some of the
most comfortable headphones to wear for a long period of time, which is what you want from these. If you wear them for a
long time for traveling or for a commute or something like that, they are still awesome. But if you remember the last generation, maybe you're a subscriber and you've watched all these videos, wink, wink, then you remember that they
made this huge downgrade to travel specifically because they didn't fold at all, ever, so they had this huge case that was more annoying to travel with. So, first thing I was happy
to see is the Mark 6s are back to being able to fold up again, so they have a new, significantly smaller
case designed around them that fits some cables as well, and bonus, the case
doesn't zipper anymore. It just closes with magnets
at this buckle on the side and it is way faster to open and close than everyone else's zipper cases. I'm actually not sure how we
haven't seen this more often because this case is pretty much perfect. I have a feeling it's about
to be copied a whole lot in a whole bunch of places, 'cause wouldn't change a thing. Also, another thing that
Mark 5s weirdly didn't do was when you're wearing
'em around your neck was just to be able to
rotate them flat like this. For some reason, they took
that away in the Mark 5s, and now they're back. Simple thing, but thank you. So, overall design-wise,
I feel like these are back to being up near the top of the best travel-ready
noise canceling headphones. It also comes with a four-foot
right-angle headphone cable, and one of those tiny USB-C
to USB-A cables for charging and they just fit in this
little pocket over here in the corner of the case like this. It's great. Feels durable. No notes. And then they changed the
buttons and microphones around the outside of the
headphones just slightly, so the right side is still
just the USB Type-C port, and then on the left
next to the audio jack, they've made the power button much bigger, which doesn't seem like
much of a big deal, but that now lets you distinguish better between the power button and the noise cancellation button while you're not able to see them. Now, speaking of noise cancellation, they made a bunch of
behind-the-scenes changes to these headphones that sound like they could
make a big improvement. So, there are 12 microphones on these instead of eight from the last generation, there's also a significantly more powerful Sony QN3 chip inside that should be able to
do much more processing, and they also said that they've
trained these headphones on 500 million voice samples using AI to be able to better
distinguish human voices from environmental noise. So, this is the last
generation of headphones and how the built in microphone sounds to someone I'm on a call with. Eight microphones. You know, some noise from air conditioners and general room tones,
but nothing too crazy. And so now here is the Mark 6. So, they added two more beamforming
microphones to the front for hearing my voice better, but what I really think most of these microphones are better for is noise cancellation and transparency. So, how do they sound? Well, I've been listening
to these headphones for the past two weeks or so. I've taken a few flights, I've worn 'em around the studio, at home, all kinds of different environments, and they sound better. These are actually all-new
drivers versus the last gen, so there's a lot going on here, but to be specific, they
are excellent quality sound with great range. Punchy lows and a lot of bass and then a lot of detail and clarity all the way through the mids and the highs and they are still really,
really insanely good at canceling out white noise. Now, if we wanna get even more granular, I did a bunch of back-to-back listening with these Mark 6s and
the last generation, and there are certain tracks where you really feel
the difference a lot. Basically, the Mark 6s have
a much stronger low end, especially in the
sub-bass and lowest bass, and the Mark 5s started to feel a little spiky in the
midrange where the vocals are and were a little bit
weaker in the low end, so in the tracks that have a really
important bass or sub-bass, pop, electro, hip hop, stuff like that, that's when in these,
they're really appreciated. And then the Mark 6 also has even stronger noise cancellation than the already GOATed Mark 5s, but the real highlight for me is actually the transparency mode, which feels way more
natural and clear sounding. So, if you're wearing these headphones and do want voices to come through or just wanna hear your environment more for whatever reason, people might talk to you
through these headphones, the transparency mode, or what Sony calls ambient sound mode, went from feeling a
little muddy and unclear to literally up there
with AirPods Max levels of crystal clear and
natural, which is awesome. Now, not only are these headphones new, but Sony's also refreshed their app. The Sony Headphones Connect app is now just called Sound Connect, but it still does most of the same stuff. There's still literally
20 different levels of ambient sound. There's still custom EQs that
you can easily flip between, and this is also where
you can turn on or off any of the other convenience features. Now, this one new one
that I found interesting is listening mode. So, you can listen to
your audio like normal in standard mode, or you can flip it to
background music mode, which does an incredibly good job of making it sound like the music is coming from a small
set of tinny speakers, like, 20 feet away, like, as if you're in a cafe somewhere, which, you know, you might be into that. There's even actually three modes. So, cafe, living room, or my room, each of which just shrinks the size of the virtual room a bit, and then there's also cinema mode, which does this upmixing from stereo to a 360-degree immersive sound mix of whatever you're listening to, kinda like a movie theater. It's also a very dramatic
V-shaped sound too. I could picture someone
maybe in their home office or a cubicle or something like that listening to these all day and wanting to feel like
it's a less fatiguing, further away sound, and then you'd put cafe
mode on and it works. It's surprising how well it works. And maybe then you flip to cinema mode for watching certain YouTube
videos or something like that. There's also still the EQ stuff. The point is you can make
these headphones sound exactly the way you want them to. The sound is really strong. The noise cancellation is excellent. They're extremely comfortable to wear for long periods of time. They fold up into a smaller case. The battery life is the
same 30 hours as last year. My only downsides are
literally that your ears can get a little sweaty
without any ventilation after a couple hours and the touch pad controls on the side are still finicky like
they are every year, but clearly these have a lot
of great things going for them. So then the price. $449. These are even more pricey now, and the Mark 5s were already super premium at 400 bucks when they launched, and now they've dropped
down into the $350 range. These are launching at $450, maybe partially to account for tariffs, maybe partially because they think they're that much better now, but that is really expensive, and I was thinking about it for a while, and I actually still
think they are worth it, and I basically landed on that because this whole category of all these other premium noise-canceling headphones options is filled with other things that still try to beat these and don't and make these still feel like
a deal, if that makes sense. Also, especially for Android people. Like, the Bose QuietComfort
Ultras are $429. These are better. The Sonos headphones launched at $450 and have dropped a little
bit, but these are better. JBL has a $400 option. This absolutely smokes those. This smokes the Beat Studios. AirPods Max are still somehow $550. You could argue though for
the Apple ecosystem people that maybe that's worth it, but these Sonys still have
multi-device connectivity and can combine an Apple
device and a non-Apple device, which is sick. So, my take is if you're
still just looking for the flat out best headphones
to fly with, to work with, to commute with, that you gotta have the most comfort, the best noise cancellation, I mean, that's just how much they cost. These are back on the throne. So, there you have it. Sony's WH-1000XM6. Thanks for watching. Catch you in the next one. Peace. (relaxed music)