Galaxy Note 9 and Apple's market cap milestone

Samsung has taken the curtains off the Galaxy Note 9, and Apple has hit $1 trillion in its valuation. That's right, 1 trillion, $1 trillion. Yes, that's all coming up and more on the CNET UK podcast episode 542, for Saturday, the 11th of August. [MUSIC] Hello, and welcome to the show. And joining me this week is a Drew Stearne. Hi Drew. Hi, Andy. You're feeling great, aren't you? Amazing. Absolutely Fully healthy. Not full of cold and flu? Not in the slightest. You're feeling good? Your voice doesn't sound [UNKNOWN] up. You're not gonna be sneezing and I'm living my best life. That's good. I'm glad that you've waited til we have the hottest summer in a long time to have a cold. Yeah, but it's a common misconception that a cold is actually related to temperature. All right, Captain I Know About The body, the human body. Unrelated issues. I'm now gonna wipe my nose. Totally unrelated issues. It's fine. I mean I can, would it help if I wiped mine too in sympathy? Then at least it's both of us. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend using this though. No, I might use something else, usually my shirt sleeve or my jeans or something. Yeah. And so I'm basically- I might use your [UNKNOWN] in a minute, this is gonna be quite saturated. It's gonna be soaked. We are gonna kick off, we're talking about the Galaxy Note 9. And we talked about this quite a lot in the last podcast. You weren't on it, but trust me that we did. But this week Samsung has actually officially taken the curtains off. Now I say this week, the podcast is going out on Saturday, which is you all be actually seeing it. The launch event is on the Thursday, but we're recording this on a Wednesday morning. So officially, right now, it hasn't come out. So you the listener/watcher know more about this than we do. Well no, we don't know more, we've had our briefings with Samsung. So we know about the phone, we will usually hear about these things in advance so we can prepare our content to go live. At the point where it becomes official, pretty much how the entire industry works. So we're gonna covertly talk about the stuff we're not allowed to now, even though- We are gonna be talking about everything about the phone now but it's fine because as I say, this will be on Saturday and it will be out to the public and all that then. So as a little behind the scene [CROSSTALK] It's like streaking in your bedroom [LAUGH] It's exactly. [LAUGH] Like streaking in your bedroom which I do all the time. And I broadcast it because I'm odd. Anyway, I mean we could be talking on this I'm putting this out now because been its been one of those launches where it's been leaked all over the place. In fact, Samsung itself leaked its own phone through this whole advertising spread about the phone showing it, called the Galaxy Note 9. So even before it was announced we know that it's called the Note 9. We know that it looks basically identical to the previous note which We expect it anyway, not a lot of, not a lot of big changes there which we'll come on to. So, there's really no surprises, for this, even before we had the launch, there were no surprises, which is pretty typical of a lot of phones but for it to come, like, for a big high profile leak from Samsung, themselves is a little bit. Silly, I don't quite know what happens there, but I'm gonna talk you through some of the major specs of the phone, Drew, and I'm gonna see if any of these excite you. I can see you have got an iPhone over there. I do, yeah. Although, it looks like an iPhone- 7. 7, need an upgrade. So the Note 9 is gonna have a 6.4 inch You're just going to let that, you're going to let that one slide. My little jab at your phone. Yeah. All right, that's fine. You are ill, normally you would have hit back with no, let me tell you why it's still great but- No, honestly, I don't care and, [LAUGH] Now, my phone is as up to date as I need it to be, and the hardware differences are not enough for me to make the jump, and as long as the iOS is up to date, I'm all good. Well, you know what? That's actually the point that we're gonna come onto, but I'm gonna take you through some of these. Specs. 6.4" screen, 2560X1440 resolutions out. A big screen, high resolution, as you'd expect from the Note series. It's got a dual rear camera, both have got optimal image stabilization, and it's got the dual-aperture main camera that we've seen on the Galaxy S9 Which is kind of, I've used it and it's fine. It doesn't make a huge difference in low light. Kind of that point is always it's kind of low light master of photography. It's among the better cameras for low light. The best is still the Huawei P20 Pro. That thing I took out and I'm genuinely astounded of what that phone can do in low light if that's your thing. You still need to be looking at Huawei for this. It's got an eight megapixel front camera, a big 4,000 milliamp battery, which has got the safety checks so it doesn't explode. Milliamp hour battery. Milliamp an hour battery. It's not Dragon 845, so tops back all round, huge amount of storage, and RAM, fingerprint reader on the back and it's IP68 water and dust resistance including the Spen and it also has a head phone jack which is good Samsung has stuck with sticking with the head phone jack on the S9, whereas most of it's Android rivals and of course Apple, have ditched that jack. Some interesting things with it's got water combination of water and carbon fibre cooling, Within the phone which is pretty neat. Okay. And that's largely for- Water cooling. Water cooling, apparently. Now, unless I'm sort of getting this wrong, this maybe one of those things that kind of after we have the launch, people are gonna be coming to me like, what are you talking about? This complex is not what it is. But as I understand it right now, as of the point of recording There is a sort of water and carbon fiber cooling system within the phone to cool it for very intense things. (ie., gaming) Do they refer to it as water cooling or liquid cooling? Well at the moment I've got the word water. Now presumably liquid of some kind but I don't know what liquid is because I know obviously when you have like When you have liquid cooled desktop PC's it's typically not water, it's a type of cool [UNKNOWN] similar to what you'd have in a car, also in. Water doesn't actually transmit heat very well, so Water cooled engines on a car for example require radiator. Yeah. The radiator actually faciliates the heat evaporating and the water just transports it. If you're actually in a limited size like that, I would imagine. With no fans. With no fans, I imagine that they're using a Some kind of gel or liquid. Yeah. That can move it away. Yeah. But you do require movement of that liquid for it to make sense. Which indicates a pump. Past. Yeah pumps and stuff so. I'd like to hear more about this. Yeah, I'd like to know more. At the moment, unfortunately as we said, we are recording this early so it's gonna It means that there are some of these details that I don't have a lot more information on. But that is interesting and it's really designed for keeping it cool for really intense things, which includes gaming. And which is important for this phone because this is gonna be the first Android phone which will have Fortnite launching on it now. Fortnite, Drew you probably are aware of, is the world's most popular game at the moment, it's an absolute sensation. There are it is insanely popular, the Big Battle Royal game and so far that hasn't been an Android I believe it is on iOS as player known Battle Ground, but it's gonna be launching exclusively with some of Samsung's most recent phones including the S9, I believe and the Note 9 of course. Exclusively from the 9th of August, which means it's out now. So if you do have a Galaxy S9, S9+, S8 and S7 do go and have a look in the Samsung game store because I believe that is where you'll find Fortnight. So that's kinda neat that they've sort of done this tie in to try and get a little bit of excitement around it. But I am You're right, I'm very interested in how this cooling system works. Yeah. And whether it actually does work because I think that is one of the issues they had with the battery on the Notes 7. Is that it basically it tried to charge to quickly and expanded and got to hot. There are all kinda different reasons why they gave for it, so I think maybe this is part of that. That you can really kind of Ramp up that power, cuz often in gaming PCs, you will have water cooling in order to do what's called overclocking of your processor, where it puts out more power than it's normally supposed to. But in doing so, it gets extremely hot, so you need to really, really, really cool it. By using liquid and lots and lots of fans and sometimes use box of ice, but I don't know if you're kind of weird. [LAUGH] So some other cool features whcih we talked about lst time that we've now got confirmed, the s pen that's a little stylus that comes in the note. Does is not also a bluetooth compatible and it's You can actually use it for various things, including you can control PowerPoint slides if you're using your Note professionally. Cuz again, Samsung are really targeting this phone as a very high-end professional tool. So there was lots of talk about its compatibility with [BLANK_AUDIO] Well, this, with controlling PowerPoint, and the whole Dex system where you can plug this phone into an HDMI monitor and use it as a fully fledged desktop PC if you want to. You can also use the S Pen to use your camera. So if you wanna set your camera up on a tripod or use it for taking a selfie, you can click the pen and use that to take the photo, which could be kinda neat. I mean, for me, that's probably not something I would use very often, if at all. It's not a dissimilar function to how I can use My Apple watch to take a photo using my iPhone is I want to put my iPhone on a tripod but. I've never use. No I don't think I've ever used it. I think I used it once when I. The only time I used it was actually to see the image on my watch when I was using my phone to record Video of me on a phone mount inside a car. So I was pointing it at me, but because of the angle when I was mounting the phone, I couldn't see how it was framed. I couldn't see whether I was in shot or not. So basically I used the screen on my watch to see, he's off. [SOUND] Sorry. I used the screen on my watch to see how it was being framed, so I could do it that way. But obviously you can't do that with the S-pen, you can just use it To take pictures. So, whether that is important or not, I don't know, but what I kind of want to get from you, and even from me is, do you think this is in any way exciting? This phone in general. Honestly, I think that this is a bit [UNKNOWN] Aiming of purpose cuz on the one side they're saying, I knew you got this still pending. Can you use as your advancing your PowerPoint presentation. I plug it in to initiate my models and so on, that really big business meeting that you've got coming up. Yeah. This will plug in seamlessly, and it will look cool, and you'll feel cool. Yeah. [UNKNOWN] Also Fortnite. Yeah, also- [LAUGH] Which is a completely different audience. Assumedly it's for those business people who have got out of that big business, need to go and take an emergency poo. [LAUGH] And then wanna spend- Why did you have to factor that in? Maybe just wanted to go off and relax somewhere. No, I needed to go and do a poo. I'm just- Is that where you play? PUBG and- [INAUDIBLE] [LAUGH] Siri is chimiing in. My watch has been listening too. If you look at that, it's been listening- [LAUGH] To everything I've just said, including, go and have an emergency poop. [LAUGH] Okay, thank you Apple Watch. I don't think that Siri is going to have a very unbiased opinion about the Note. No, I think it may say, no, have you considered the iPhone? Yeah. No, my only thought on that is if you had a big business meeting, then mayber you're really nervous and kind of everything is up in the air. And you probably don't feel like having one before the meeting. Yeah. Because you're too nervous. But then afterwards everything is just kind of flooding out. And that is when you'd want to sit down for a good 45 minutes and play Fortnight. So maybe there is. That's more of a snapshot into your mentality than it is an actual campaign for promoting this. I like to think that I am the every man, Drew. And. Fair enough. If I would do that then surely lots of other people would. So that's, but I completely agree with you. That is the case, but then it's not just the note that's getting Fortnite's exclusively, it is the other Samsung phones. No, but you're talking about having an advanced cooling system specifically designed to cope with things like gaming. It could also be fair, unfair, and like. CAD applications and things like that, which people do use on the [UNKNOWN]. And that's kind of one of the benefits from the style, is that you can sort of do quite advanced things, If you're on building sites and you need to sort of use these quite demanding applications, that you can do that. And again, would take up a lot of processing power. And particularly if you are using the Note as a Desktop PC plugged in using for desk system. You've got a mouse and keyboard attached and you are doing sometimes quite demanding work on that because the apps that you can get now off your phone are desktop class and so you kind of got a need to have. Yeah. Desktop class processing and therefore cooling. So, I think it's going to be interesting to see what you can use this phone for But the thing that I think is going to be difficult for Samsung with this phone is that it looks identical to the previous one, everything which is not necessarily bad because the last phone was good looking and stuff but there's been no physical change. And that was the case with the S9 Looking the same as the S8. And sales of the S9 have been, Samsung themselves have described them as slow. And, in fact, Samsung has lost quite a significant market share in the mobile world because of those slow sales. People just haven't been that interested. And analysts have been saying that that is The reason [INAUDIBLE] that excites about this phone is because there is no major upgrade. There's no reason to for people who've got the S8 and even the S7 to be thinking, okay I'm gonna upgrade and get this new phone. There's no visual change to be excited about. Yeah, the camera with this dual aperture thing was Pretty much the main upgrade and even that isn't that big a deal. Yeah, they have the slow motion camera, but there are other phones that have got that, including Sony's phone, which even has high resolution. So, there's no big, exciting feature for people to latch onto and to think that is now the phone I want to get. And- Well, isn't that the same how Apple's done it in alternate years, where we've had the model and then the S, where it's very superficial if any changes to the exterior whatsoever. And it's alternate years where you see a big design leap forward. It does tend to be, that's right, and Samsung has Sorry, and Apple have been sort of criticized on some years for repeating design language too often and therefore it not seem like an interesting thing. But analysts have, and this is analysts speaking, not just me, they do often see Apple as It's own beast within the industry in that it is one of those companies that can kind of churn out minor upgrades to something and it will still sell extremely well. The iPhone X has sold extremely well despite it's very high price. And other companies have tried to put high prices on phones and they haven't. They've been criticized very widely for being too expensive and the arguments of well Apple's phones are expensive, doesn't really work because Apple can do that, and that is what the market has shown. So it's the argument from these analysts and from the market generally has really well been that well actually Samsung can't really get away with kind of repeating the same thing Too many years in a row. One year and then the next, fine, but the Note hasn't really seen a big change, and it's largely just, here's some new tech. Great tech, and this tech is all the best tech you can pretty much get in a phone. Yeah. But there's not one thing that's making anyone go, yes, that is the interesting thing I want. That's That's the thing that's going to make me. I don't think using your S pen to be able to move through PowerPoint slides is a compelling reason. It's a novelty you'll only use once maybe. No, it's not an exciting feature. If you are a professional who does PowerPoint presentations, I guarantee you, you've already got that down. You've got your work phone that you like to use, and you're gonna stick to it. You're not gonna change it just because you've got a new phone, because you don't wanna go into that first meeting using it for the first time. Yeah. You'd have to take it home and practice, and why change it if you've already got something you could rely on? Yeah. So it is [UNKNOWN] Absolutely. And it is a bit. And I also suspect that some of those people, maybe something in their research and they know people do want this. But I don't know really how many people are doing PowerPoints directly from their phone. Powerpoint since 2007 anyway. They are great. They are, yeah. But it is interesting to see kind of how something is playing the no and it's gonna be very interesting to see what it does with the next S phone, S ten, whatever it goes for. Which we expect to be around the February time, because it was this week or last week that. Apple hit evaluation of a trillion dollars, so Apple's just going- [UNKNOWN], how many zeros in a trillion? 12. You. It's right here and I counted them. I counted them before we came on because I was gonna- It's usually a question that trumps people because you go how many zeros in a trillion, you go, Yeah, it's 12 it's a ridiculous number. it's a million millions yeah it's absolutely bunks amount of money. But basically what happens is Apple stock here $207.50 a share and it had. 4,829,926,000 shares. So, each of those shares have to hit $210 to be worth a trillion dollars overall which did happen. Close on Thursday, the last Thursday's trading session closed at $207.39, which makes it the first US public company to hit that level, which is a big deal. Tim Cook said in a memo to Apple employees, he called the valuation a significant milestone, but added that it wasn't the most important measure of the company's success. Financial returns are simply the result of Apple's innovations, putting our products and customers first, and always staying true to our values. And he went on to talk about Steve, saying that Steve founded Apple on the belief that the power of human creativity can solve even the biggest challenges. And that the people who crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. Which is quite nice. Which Steve is he talking about? Steve Jobs. There is two Steves who started Apple. I'm assuming he meant Steve Jobs. I think we can all assume he meant Steve Jobs. [LAUGH] He may well have said Steve Jobs. I'm being yes I'm pretty sure he did too. So that's interesting that Apple has its success with the iPhone X being so expensive and it's expected to announce three new iPhones this September. We'll have the possibility of a considerably larger version of the iPhone Phone x, and another version of the- Copy of iPad. [LAUGH] Yes, a copy of iPad, and another that's significantly less expensive, so. They've tried that before though, has that ever really worked. 0.5 slightly with the 5C. Yeah. The [UNKNOWN] You know? I don't know. I mean, they don't have a new 5c at the moment. So you guess it, no it didn't work. But man I saw a lot of those things not in a while. I feel that I did see a lot. They seem to sell as far as I could see from my own eye. Incredibly well. I mean Apple doesn't give that specific figures on how well things are selling, so. But the fact they didn't continue that trend of lower priced models seems to suggest that it wasn't as successful. Well, I mean they've sort of replaced it with the iPhone SE, which is the, basically it's the iPhone 5, the regular 5, the metal one, but with updated specs. And we do have And they have continued to update the iPhone SE. So, that is there. If you want an affordable iPhone you go for the SE. That's what you get. Affordable. This is it. Yeah. I mean it's affordable compared to the other ones. Certainly when compared to the iPhone ten. Then everything else is affordable. But it's also a good value, it's also the phone I tell people to go for when they say yeah I really want an iPhone. But I want a smaller one. I don't want something that's so big. Because it is still the exactly same footprint as the iPhone five. Which is now when you hold it. Feels really small. Really small. Yeah. Fours and fives now, at that time felt like, this is a good size. And they looked at that, man. Yeah. I missed the extra inch. Yeah. It's bunkers. And particularly, I mean that's the case with what's gonna be with the Note 9 cuz at 6.4 inches, I remember when the first Note launched. And how big was Galaxy Note size. The first one. You think I know this on top of my head. Yeah. For first Notes. Galaxy Note series. Blah-blah-blah. Galaxy Notes, the first one 5.3 inch. Yeah, which is smallest. Smallest. Than almost every flagship phone at the moment. Yeah. And at the time That was laughably huge. People made videos of, like, people using the public transport, holding them to their head looking like idiots. Dom Joly. Yeah, exactly, yeah. It was these massive, massive phones. And now we've got 6.4 inch phones. And that seems normal. Like we don't really bat an eyelid at this. I mean, yeah, okay fine, it's still a big phone. And so here we've got the Pixel to Excel. And that is again, it's a big phone. But it doesn't look silly anymore in the way it once did. It's weird how it trends for the lack of anything change. I mean, I remember when phones were getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller to the point where they were- Smaller basically. Yeah. Because the screens didn't have much Functionality. This was before most of them were even color anyway. They certainly weren't used for imaging or MMS's. So you could make them small, small was cool, small was functional. Yeah. And then When you start getting smartphones. Obviously Baker actually has a use, has a practicality to. Yeah, absolutely. And now it's pretty much what size do you want cuz you can dial in exactly the kind of size that you want in a phone. You can. If you want one that's that size. Yeah and even the companies if you want a particular phone they do tend to offer two versions of something. You got the S9, the S9+. iPhone, you've got 8, 8+, and then 10 if you want, Huawei P20 Pro, or P20, I think Pixel, Pixel XL. Yeah. So I think pretty much across the board, any brand you want, there is that choice, which is good. I mean, you've still got a smaller phone. You've got the 7, not the 7+. Yeah. And that's fine if that's fine for you. I've got the larger Apple Watch, the 7 iPhone, and iPad Mini, a regular iPad, an iPad Pro. I feel like I've got enough ranges of screens for my Apple devices. I didn't need the slightly larger phone to go between my iPhone and my iPad, really. You're responsible for quite a significant chunk of that $1 trillion budget then, aren't you? If you've got [LAUGH] all those things? I would hate to think how much money I've passed to the Apple Corporation over the years. Do you have the HomePod? I do not, no. So actually, cuz I did want to mention, cuz I had the HomePod when it first came out, and I've recently got a second one. Because when they updated iOS to include AirPlay 2, you can have a stereo pair. And it's amazing, it really sounds so good. Cuz the sound from the HomePod already is, considering it's the size of, I don't know, what's that? What's that size, ten inches or so, 12 inches is that? Yeah. I don't know, tall. It's not very big. It's a small speaker. It puts out one hell of a good sound. Yeah. You put it on the floor and you leave the room, it give really amazing base. How much does it cost. It's like 350 quid. And two of them takes you up to 700. 700 quid. For 700 quid, what can you get in terms of amp in speakers that you can plug into like an Amazon echoe Not that much, I wouldn't think. [CROSSTALK] You could get some pretty serious speakers and a good amp, take optical out from- Yeah, but then yeah, you're talking about, everything has got to be [UNKNOWN] and now optical LAN. You gotta get the right cables and you gotta do this and you gotta connect to this, and will it be compatible with this thing? And all that. Stuff that kinda when you have the Apple thing I just got two plugged in and then I just airplay from my phone and it puts it to both and I've got one in one corner in my living room and one in the other corner both on the floor so cuz it's hardwood floor so the bass fires into the floor, and- And your neighbor's below? No no no I'm on ground floor. My neighbor is above me noisy as hell and I hate them. Absolutely they do my head in and just wanna get that out there in case they watch. Stop it, just stop. This is very passive aggressive you could just knock on the door. I've told them. This is a whole other issue we're getting into. But, yeah the sound is great from these two speakers, and obviously you can't have the multiroom if you want, but I like having them in one room and just really solve Pumping up that sand. I mean do you not see those being some irony in spending a lot of money on high quality speakers and then streaming audio tune over bluetooth. Well there's air play and. Well there's air play but still over the wifi. It's overd cd quality. Is it the quality that you can get across yet because it's not bluetooth I guess right it air play yeah. Also I think Recent bluetooth, they are, I don't know exactly what bit rate it can put out, but it's pretty much up there with. Fine if you're talking audio file levels where you've got 200 pound a foot cabling and you're using it at mastered level, loss less quality then into a pair of 20 gram speakers, then find maybe you could tell a difference but. I think for 99% of people with home audio needs I don't think you can tell any difference. Like Bluetooth is really good. I mean you use Bluetooth headphones now. I do, yeah. In fact you use the Apple AirPods. [LAUGH] You could do, yeah. You're giving Apple more money there. And I don't like the AirPods. But only because they don't stay in my ear. That I think is the number one complaint people have about them. Because there's no variant in what size they are, they either do or they don't. And if they fit in your ear they're They're great. And if they don't, well, then they're terrible. Which is a shame because they'd be the ideal headphones for jogging cuz they're so small and light. I don't jog. Well, I don't jog, no. [LAUGH] But when I went out for even a brisk walk, which I do a lot of, they fell out. And I had, not these ones, but I had a different pair, which I won't name. But and they also didn't have a very good fit and one of them fell out and then went down a drain. So cause they're individual. They're not connected by a cable. I was really worried about that with the air pods and I was quite proud of this. I got the first batch that came to the U.K. Yeah. So before anyone else did, I got the first set cuz I go in there early. And touch wood, have never fallen out of my ears. And I've got the same pair that I've had since they first launched, what, 18 months ago? I'm [UNKNOWN] around my pockets because I use, there we go, the J Bird Freedoms Which I've talked about on the podcast before, I won't go into it. I had an older pair of [UNKNOWN], which I loved, before. Yeah, these are really, really good. I love the sound on these things. Although I have managed to tangle them hideously in my pocket. See, that already is a reason for the AirPods. But it's easy, and they just hang round my neck like that. They're so easy, so simple, so lightweight. The sound is decent, I get about five, six hours of battery life. And they charge In about half an hour, 40 minutes maybe or so. And because they are connected by the cable, they can hang around my neck. And if one falls out, it just goes here, it doesn't fall to the ground. Which I wouldn't want, if they're running I I wouldn't wanna use anything that isn't connected by a neckband to some degree. I completely agree, but I don't know whether. Whoever modeled the ears that they built the earplugs on has remarkably similar ears to me, cuz they sit Perfectly flushed on my face. They sit snug without being too tight. I mean, they were full out. But I know loads of people. You see them sometimes on the cheek where people have them almost sticking out like this. Yeah. It like rams the message inside their skull. I'm like, I spent all this money on these headphones. I'm gonna use them. I don't care if it looks silly or if it hurts. Well yu can get, the Royal companies now they offer like mouldings that you can put on them that will- That's only if they are too small for you if they are already too big to fit in your yeah the mouldings aren't gonna help you get it in your ear. No there may be these ones that have, if you have a moulding that also have like a flunged tip so that it will actually that sticks in. Yeah then now it's proud they've been designed to sit in Inside your ear essentially cuz now they're gonna be set flush out and it's gonna be weird still. That's one of those things when they rumored the update, the next one that they will have molded in-ear tips rather than just the stumbs. Yeah, but molded to whose ear? Well, maybe they'll be changeable but that doesn't sound very Apple does it? We have got a little bit off topic cuz we were talking about Apple generally. But it goes to show how many different products they put out there that all kind of tie into not only an ecosystem that people stick within but also a lifestyle that people Live up to that, it goes beyond the quality of the product, really, as more of a fashion statement than anything else. It totally is, yeah. They tap into that more than any other technology company. Absolutely, there is a certain feel that people have about sort of having the latest iPhone out in public, and using it on the tube and The iPods and the people don't have- It's the default. About the place that's [UNKNOWN]. And it's a shame because [UNKNOWN] is brilliant, it's a great, great, great phone. But, no one would really care about seeing it apart from its cool color scheme, but, If you got it in a case and no one's gonna look at that phone and go, whoo worst, that's really interesting, what have you got there? Yeah, third party shops like carriers or phone shops aren't going to have posters of that phone outside when they can have posters of the latest iPhone and the deals that go along with that. It doesn't bring boots in the door. Yeah, the S9 is the closest that you'll get to that. But even then, Samsung has as we said the sales have really slowed a bit on its phone. It's taking market share [INAUDIBLE]. And it's gonna need to do something pretty interesting cuz I think how the Note sells will be interesting to see because it hasn't really done much of an upgrade. It's his If you've got a Note 8, absolutely there's no reason to upgrade. If you've got a Note 7, send it back, cuz you should have done already. I think they have actually bricked them all now. [LAUGH] If you've got a Note 7, get out of the house, now. Yeah, run from it, just hurl it into the nearest river. You can't fly with it, you can't take it in a car. But- Just all in one feels like an offensive act. Well, I think Samsung put them out, I think they bricked them. So I think if you got them, I don't know if you can still use them. Let me know if that is different. If there's anyone listen to the podcast, Wh does still have the Note 7 and you're using it, let us know and more importantly let us know why because you could have sent it back and had a replacement but. So you don't fly as much as I do. I try not to ever fly. I fly Huge amount but, you may or may not be aware of this the paranoia about that phone on flights for so long, that is the only time I've ever heard a specific piece of hardware name checked on flight. If you have this phone, take it out. Yeah. Take it out. Do not fly. Do not fly with this phone yeah. Their not even paranoid just the concern and the bad present that got. I don't know how much of that echoes through time and how much people are just shying away from something. I'm amazed they didn't discontinue the lines name at the very least. I actually am as well but I think they handled it very well. Is..we've talked about this problem.. (inaudible) listen into detail but something did a good job of managing that situation. They were very very transparent about how widespread the problem was. They talked openly about how they were trying to combat this, how they were doing the research to find exactly what's got on because they didn't know at first. They didn't know What had happened. They were trying to contact the people who had had these fires to get their handsets to study them to see what it is that had happened. Because till they kind of break them down, do the post mortems, they can't find out what part has gone wrong. It's not like they know in advance, they don't make the phone and go yeah, it's probably going to catch fire for this reason, sod it, but we'll put it out anyway. Samsung can't afford to make those sorts of risks. So it needs to kind of work out what it is that's happened. And it turned out that it was the issue with fast charging the battery. But it handled it well, it did the recalls, it did everything that it should. And I think as a result it sort of mitigated The overall damage to something brand named and the no brand name. Yeah but the Note, the Samsung brand name is very important for them to make sure that that brand name wasn't tanted But they could've just changed the name of the line. I mean, did they still feel that they had so much good will prior to the Note 7, that keeping it was a good idea. I mean it's not even that it's that good of a name. I think the other thing is, what would be the point? Because everyone knows that whatever phone it is, it's just a replacement of the Note. And would immediately be discussed in all the media as here is the replacement to the note line that exploded. That would have lasted one cycle of we're still talking about it now even though it was two generations ago. We are but I think but a lot of the discussion probably won't be and I think maybe the next generation the Note Ten probably it won't be talked about at all because the Note Eight's been fine, the Note Nine presumably will be fine, So we'll just have to see how it goes. But we are talking about mobile a lot. Which is good, cuz it's a very mobile focused show this week. Cuz the other thing that's happened is the Android Pie. It's a new version of Android, Android version 9 Pie. Is officially rolling out to devices now. Starting, of course, with Google's own line of Pixel phones, which is why I have the Pixel 2 XL here cuz I have been trying to Update this one. At the moment, it's got so many, cuz I haven't turned this on basically since it came out, cuz we did a couple of camera tests. I didn't review this phone, so I haven't really had to use it. So it's gotta do all these other updates first. So right now, I can't say for certain whether it's on my Pixel XL, but I have this morning texted two of my friends who have Pixels, the first gen Pixels, both of whom confirmed that the update is available for them on their UK handsets. So Presumably then it has gone out, and if you do have a pixel phone in the UK or pixel 2, then do have a look. Because it will be out. But it does have a bunch of updates. Which I want to kinda talk about. Some of the more important updates on it. First thing is that it has this apparently much better adaptive battery feature, that you, that learns the after you use over time to prioritize resources for them. And so it knows that, if you, always are going in and out of Gmail and WhatsApp that those are the things that you will need to prioritize, Sort of having like push email on and all this stuff, absolutely you hardly ever use, basically will ignore them until you open them, so it's trying to really cleverly use background tasks for the processing power and therefore battery life, which is something that they have talked about before and other phones have apparently, you've similar features and Huawei has had a feature that apparently does Similar things, but none of them have really seemed to make that big a deal. Largely because, with every generation, they put in more demanding processes, more demands on the battery, so overall, if that smart software makes any difference, it's negated by more power-hungry other things. So overall, we still Have smartphones which every single one, if you use them normally, you will have to charge every night because that's just how you use a smartphone. You might get into the next morning. You may be able to sort of, if you go out on a Saturday night and stay at your mates and you don't charge your phone, you may have enough power to listen to music on your bus ride home. But then you will need to put it on charge. But that's pretty much it. I'm gonna look forward to seeing how that really works. So dynamically switching off things like background refresh on the apps that it deems that you haven't been using as much as But the whole point of something with background refresh is that it provides you It's not necessarily background refresh. Right. It's more just about how it's using, and again, we can probably talk for hours about that, if we got the technical detail on this. It's not stopping things like If you've got, you use a messaging service like Viber which maybe you've got two people you talk to on there but you only have to use WhatsApp. And so you've opened Viber once in the last month and so. It will deem that low priority. I think the idea is that you will still get push notifications if something happens, but it change the interval, like the monitoring interval- Quite possibly. I don't know how exactly it will do that, but Google will probably be able to do it a lot more, but that's the kinda the idea behind it. And things like, I don't know, maybe auto-updates, some game, I don't know. It's one of those things that we kinda need to use it a lot now it's out to really kinda get a handle on how it works and whether that makes much difference. But some other things, you've got navigation gestures. So instead of having, on Android, you have the home button and then you have a back button and you have a multitasking button. That is now just a one dot, a little pill-shaped dot. And you can swipe left to go back, you can swipe right to open your multitasking. You can swipe down or up, I think, to To go home. A little bit similar to how we've got with the iPhone 10 with no home button, so you've got to swipe to, use gestures to get around, and that will be optional if you do want to have your usual things then you can put those on. Notifications will have the ability to show images in those notification previews instead of just text or which hopefully will make your notifications that bit more useful Although that is a feature that developers will have to build into their own apps, so you may not see it straight away. And there's a proper do not disturb tool that can block calls, notifications, and even stop the screen lighting up at all while you've got it on. So if you really wanna kind of have some phone downtime, then you can do that. The software has a new look overall, generally like rounded corners in educations and quick settings panel that's changed. There's a better text selecting box that when you try and select text it will actually give a magnification box which we've had on IOS. It's finally something that we've got on them. On Android. We've also got virtual stacking of app previews when you go into multitasking wheel. Again, it's like iPhone. And various changes like the Settings menu. And we've got things like App Actions, where when you see the apps in the app tray, if there's a certain action that you always do, you will see that suggested underneath so you can automatically launch into that Actions so say it's- Composed message or- Maybe composed message or even I think one of the examples that we've written about if you want to open slack and go to a certain messaging channel straight away that you can automatically go into that channel. And new things like different new way of doing like screenshots it will automatically allow you to edit them on them on the go so, It's again, we're not talking huge upgrades. If there's no particular tool or particular thing that overhauls the interface. It's lots of just neat little tweaks. And there are Plenty, [UNKNOWN] Behind the scenes. So it reaches some of the particular ones that I've picked up but I think just makes it that bit neater to use. I already am a big fan of Android. I do use it on my second phone as well as I use my iPhone, and I think is much better these days than it was even just a couple of years ago that made some good tweaks and makes it a much nicer tool to use, it's much easier to use. Particularly Google's efforts to make stock Android very user-friendly, I think, have been great. So when I've suggested to people who, when they've asked about, okay, I've got someone who's not very tech-friendly, maybe sort of an older relative, That actually any phone that's running stock Android is often a really good one to go for. Because it is much more stripped back and easy to use. But, of course, then you still got the case where manufacturers themselves are putting quite complicated skins over the top. I think the worst one for me is still Sony. They do a lot to Android and It makes a bit clanky to used and it also means they probably, their phones probably won't get Android 9 Pie for a while because they gotta do something to work to it in order to make it roll out. Samsung often does quite a lot to but, and it was the worst offender for making their phones insanely complicated. So much bloatware. So much bloatware. So much S node, s voice, s things, all this stuff. I think it was the s, Galaxy S5, which was the worst offender for this. And we really slammed it, I slammed it in particular for just being so insanely complicated that every, you expect a tool to be here and it's not. It's hidden away in some sub menu somewhere else, and it's a nightmare to get around. Everything takes about 5 or 6 more clicks than it should do. They really kinda learned from that and made big efforts to simplify the experience, and I think they've done a good job. Not so much as dripping down to raw Android, which- By no means have they gone to raw Android. There's a lot of things that are very customizable, and they have the phone that has a lot of tools. They have all the different ways of doing it, and they've got Those particular [INAUDIBLE] line as well you've got so many other features, you've got like the note panel cuz of pulling on the right hand side of the screen with the face dots where you can automatically have favorite contact saves so you can quickly do things I guess you can appreciate the extra additions to the raw Android platform when their hardware specific and optimize the tools that the physical tools that you have at your disposal. Yeah. Rather than just bloating out with default brand based software. Yeah, absolutely. If there's gotta particular hardware thing, then the Making use of that tool, then fine. But that did not used to be the case with Samsung, they are sort of using things that are a bit more important there. But I think is interesting. I mean, you, obviously, as we talked about, you are Quite an Apple user, I'm not gonna say fanboy, cuz I think generally you are, reasonably agnostic enough I've switched back and fort in the past and it just happen untill I stuck with iOS last five. Over six years. Is what I think that would make you switch. Honestly talking about kind of the world guard and like once you're in, and you're using the corporation between hardware devices so Without even really noticing how I rely on the fact that my notes sync across my devices and that I can find every device from every other device. You have got quite a like of smart home stuff to don't you? I do. Is that linked with? So I don't use home care as much. It's kind of a loose association so I use I'll use just a built-in app. So I have about 50 Philips hue bulbs around by home. You got 50 now? Yeah, I just got a while bunch more for the garden [LAUGH]. [LAUGH] Expensive. Yeah, it's pretty pricey. And that can be controlled through my amazon echo as well. So I can give Okay. voice commands that tap in to that. So it's kind of a loose association of Do you say, echo, or no what do you say, Alexa. Alexa. We've changed it to echo. Romance mode. And then everything it sort of goes like a soft red No, I've changed it so I can say echo (inaudible) and it turns off the light That's quite handy Yeah, it just makes it feel a little bit more human So yeah, I don't, obviously, Apple don't do every kind of smart device. So they don't do a smart home doorbell so I've got that, that ties into Different devices. So, there's a couple of different smart networks that I use Sure But everything does play together relative nicely and Apple, if Apple did version of those products, I'd maybe consider them but at the moment, the, as far as my phone is concerned because that is so much Excuse me cuz that has so much tied into your day to day work, and communication, having that sync with like my photo syncing with my other iOS devices so that I can get my My photos that I take on my iPhone appear on my Mac seamlessly. I wouldn't now want to take one of my devices out of that. Sure. So for the same reason that I wouldn't consider a Windows laptop, the same reason I wouldn't at the moment consider an Android phone. I mean, and that's part of this big steel trap that you find yourself in. Yeah, absolutely. Because You're not stuck with it, but leaving it on one of those fronts would be so inconvenient. You'd have to change all your devices at once which would be prohibitively expensive. So every time you update one it seems like, yes there is a great alternative available, but even thought it might not have all the latest little features, and not the best hardware It just it would make such a big part of what I do on a day to day basis too difficult and slightly more tricky that it's just easy for me to stick in this place. Yeah, I think that's the case for a lot of people. Once you've bought one and then you buy the other. And like I've got Apple TV so I Want an Apple Watch, which I like having. I like having an Apple Watch. I don't use a lot of things, but phone notification is great. And so I don't really wanna, I can't really switch out. Yeah, I mean I have an Apple Watch as well, yeah. I have a second phone, and it's always an Android phone, and it's usually something that I'm reviewing or long-term testing. At the moment, I'm using the S9 Plus still. And so I'm making sure I'm always using Android phones, but they are my second phone. They're not the phone that I absolutely rely on all the time and I think that's probably the case for a lot of people. But definitely is something that I am interested in hearing about. And so if you do have A particular allegiance, and for a particular reason other than you've just spent a lot of money on iOS apps, then it would be good to hear about. That's another thing, of course, is that you're invested in terms of how much you spend on apps, yeah. Tons of money, yeah exactly. All the apps, I have spent hundreds and hundreds of pounds. Particularly of the games- Yeah. I'm playing on my iPad when I Spend 15 quid every time Square Enix launches a new Final Fantasy on IOS, and I immediately buy it despite the fact that I've bought it ten times on different platforms before that. Still waiting on Final Fantasy VIII, though. Still no sign, they've done VII, they've done IX, which are great games, no question. But Final Fantasy VIII is, I think, my favorite Final Fantasy game, and they still haven't brought that out. That's why I'm furious, they need to do that. Anyway, I'll listen to them. I've never played a Final Fantasy game, and that's where we end so I can go and kill Drew. Cuz he's not a nerd. You are the worst type of person. Well, that is time to wrap up. Do let us know if you have any Thoughts on any of the topics today, your thoughts on the Galaxy Note 9, whether you think that Samsung has done enough to stay ahead of the competition, and whether you think Apple's valuation of $1 trillion, if it's really earned it. I would say it has, I mean, it's got it, so it must have earned it. It has that value because people are willing to pay that money for shares. That's true, that's the only reason it has a value. Yeah, Drew, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you're up to, if you're coming up. Well, as always, we're on the car affection channels and if in fact you listened to this as a podast, I recommend that you listen to our new car affection podcast. [UNKNOWN] podcast is it? Yeah, of course, if you you're interested in the world of cars and specifically anything that's fast. Expensive, exciting, or it's just fun. Wherever you get your podcast, do a search for carfection for the love of cars podcast. Is it audio or is it video? It is audio podcast that goes out every week. Up on the iTunes picture, Google, wherever you get your podcasts from. Never have me as a guest on yours, that's fine. Nope, that's fine. I've had you on mine many times. Yep, but I would argue that I probably know more about technology than you do, [UNKNOWN]. I know how to drive cars. Yes. Sort of, I sort of know how to drive cars. Okay, well, as soon as you form an opinion about the new Milan Red hypercar at Austria or anything like that, let me know, and we'll have you as a guest. Is that a thing? Yes, it's conceptual thing. I'm picking up a, Porsche 17 came and GTS this afternoon. Yeah. So. That's a lovely car. There you go, is it? Yeah, it's very nice. It's red. Yeah. It's got black rims on it. Do you know what engine it has. It's got a full cylinder. It does, yeah. No I don't Drew. I don't know what engine its got. It's an old Boxer engine, isn't it? Yeah, if you do know a little bit more, it's actually not. Whatever. [LAUGH] It definitely is, that's definitely. They have, they put it. They specifically put that one in mine. Okay. So I'm definitely right. No but I recommend if you're interested in cars, then the Carfection: For the Love of Cars podcast is a brilliant place to go. And that is where In fact, I'm gonna be trying to record one for this Saturday. But last week's episode was a brilliant one with some conversation about tits and other birds. Of course, okay, thank you for that. I assuming you have got other videos and stuff coming out or that's been out. You just got one on the DVS. Yes there is a great one coming out by the time you are listening or watching this. The BMW i-roadster which our henry cashpool is out driving. Which is as you are we have driven the coop version together on a trip which is a BMW super car hybrid that is Great and looked amazing as a road star, which is a great feature on that, and there's a yeah, a fair few of other things on there but that would be probably the one that I've recommended to check out. Cool and then I mean, next week I will be heading off to Gamescom, the European Gaming Conference to find out what's going on there. I mean, E3 is the big deals. We're kind of keeping our Keeping our ear to the ground for some of the more exciting launches at games com, so do keep your eye on that. And following then there will be eefer, which should be an exciting time for tech launches. And then at the end of September, we'll be doing Paris Motor Show. So plenty of- Also known as the beginning of October. Beginning of October. [LAUGH] Well, the end of September is the beginning of October. We're literally going in October. [LAUGH] I was there, I thought we went, okay. We got October 1st. I need an assistant to sort out my schedules. Yes, so keep your eyes on CNET for that. You can email the podcast. With CNETUKPODCAST@CBSI. COM, you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram with @batryhq, and you can do the thing with Drew, with @drewstearne, Stearne is spelt S-T-E-A-R-N-E. Well done on spelling your name right. You've learned. It's, people, if you had to guess it, no one would guess it right. It's a weird spelling. That's probably how I'd spell it if I had to guess. Yeah, but that's because you've known me for ten years. [LAUGH] Maybe that is part of it. Thanks very much, Drew, and we will hopefully be back with an episode in two weeks time, which will probably be our pre [UNKNOWN] show. Our->> Or prefer. Prefer [UNKNOWN], I won't be here full but hopefully I can hand the reigns over to Rich and Katie who will be able to take you through everything you need to know about the upcoming tech show. And Andrew, I think it's time to end, so thank you so much for joining us and we will see you all next time. [MUSIC]