[00:01] that they can't make one Galaxy Fold that actually does everything well. So, this year we're getting two. We're getting this short stocky looking Galaxy Fold 8 and then also a taller bookstyle Fold 8 Ultra plus a new flip phone and
[00:15] funnily enough what I think is the surprise MVP of the entire lineup, the nextG Galaxy watches. So, let's start with the folds because I think in principle what they've done this year is pretty smart. I guess they have enough
[00:27] actually two types of people who buy a fold phone. Some people want it as a mini laptop to get more work done. The others, and I'd say I'm one of these, would want it as a mini TV. They only really care about using the big inner
[00:41] [music] display to consume content. And that is who this new wide boy ZFold 8 is for. People who just want to have fun. Samsung have squished down the cover display into this almost square, which I wouldn't say is a hugely practical shape
[00:55] for day-to-day use. You can definitely feel that most apps like [music] Tik Tok, they're not well formatted for it. Plus, kind of a stretch to reach across the thing. But the benefit of this Spongebob shaped body is that when you
[01:07] open the thing, the 7.6 in display on the inside is actually pretty normally proportioned. Unlike previous fold phones, it does feel like a tablet with a 4 to3 aspect ratio. So, they had to kill the cover screen in a way to allow
[01:22] the inner screen to thrive. And thrive, it does. This is the brightest, highest resolution screen that Samsung's ever put on one of these folds. It's got a 15% higher pixel density than the last, which was already sharp enough, and it
[01:37] know, the absolutely goated feature from Samsung's S series phones. Plus, with nextG materials, they're saying that this display uses even less power than before, and that Samsung's finally hired an ironing department to smooth out that
[01:51] crease. More on creases later, though. So, there's no two ways about it. If I wanted to watch a movie or play a game, this Fold 8 with its super high-end, now widescreen aspect ratio on the inside is a miles better experience than last
[02:04] year's Fold 7. And I guess to make it even easier to access that screen, Samsung's now created this extra little gap between the two slices. If you look fingers to get inside of the last gen fold. Now, I have just a tiny little bit
[02:19] into to be able to get some [music] leverage. And they've combined that with a few extra magnets, which as you start pulling, they assist with a slight pushing force. It's subtle stuff, but even if you can reduce the effort from
[02:33] opening the thing by 10%. Which is what I'd say they've done here, then that adds up when you've got to pry the thing apart 40 times a day. But the Fold 8 is a very weirdly positioned phone. By the way, you'd expect this to just be the
[02:47] direct successor to the Fold 7. But actually, if you make that comparison, than an upgrade. Some things have clearly improved, but really this is a slightly less expensive phone, launching at $1,900 compared to $2,000. [music]
[03:01] And there are absolutely some cutbacks that come with that. Like how this is a smaller phone than the ZFold 7. Both the inner and the outer displays do have a bit less screen area to work with. And with that, it's also a little chunkier
[03:14] with that, it's also a little chunkier at 4.5 mm when unfolded versus 4.2. So it doesn't quite have that cuttingedge foldable feeling. And most noticeably of all, one of the cameras has gone missing.
[03:27] phone. Samsung's hoping you won't zoom into that. And the remaining main and into that. And the remaining main and ultrawide are [music] good, balanced, they have upgraded the ultrawide camera to a better 50 megapixel sensor from 12.
[03:43] But then the main camera's been downgraded from Samsung's Hero 200 megapixel sensor to a pretty good 50 megapixel one. Is this the first time we've seen a phone lose 150 megapixels? You see what I mean, though? It's a
[03:56] little bit all over the place, right? It's good that you get the usual 20%ish improvement to performance with the latest Snapdragon 8 [music] Elite Gen 5, a bigger battery. Basically, the first battery upgrade ever for the Fold from
[04:08] battery upgrade ever for the Fold from 4,400 to 4,800 mAh, and faster charging, too, from 25 W to 45 W with wireless charging also getting a bump from 15 to 20. But these are very conservative changes. Really, this is just Samsung
[04:21] refreshing the fold to bring it in line with their other current devices. So, I would say there's definitely merit to this new [music] wider form factor. But I was expecting this phone to either do more or cost less. Considering that for
[04:36] this price, you could buy a top-end ultra phone and an iPad, which would give you a higherend smartphone experience and a better big screen movie experience. It just feels really hard to justify. I suspect that half the reason
[04:51] this exists is to try and get ahead of Apple's upcoming foldable. I mean, this is pretty much exactly the screen size and form factor that we're expecting Apples to be, which Samsung might have known a thing or two about since they
[05:03] are conveniently the company supplying Apple with their foldable screens. You Samsung to already have something out that offers what Apple's trying to sell you to preemptively take out some of the novelty from Apple's announcement. But
[05:17] then we've got the other type of fold user, the person who uses their inner user, the person who uses their inner display to the Zfold 8 [music] Ultra. So, this phone is dimension-wise very similar to
[05:32] the Zfold phones of your, which as you probably guessed then makes the thing pretty sloppy for content consumption, but you want to open [music] two apps at once. It's amazing because you effectively get two 6.5 in phone screens
[05:45] worth of content at the same time. But then, how much better is it than what we already had? This is the first time that Samsung's calling a Fold Ultra. So, opening mechanism with [music] the wider gap in the magnets. Nice. It's got that
[05:58] new chipset and all the same display improvements that we've just seen with bright, anti-reflective, and if anything, the screen is even more impressive here because of its 8in stature. But the only thing that really
[06:10] feels more special, particularly about the Ultra, is the [music] engineering. pretty slim phone. It's actually the slimmest Samsung Fold ever at just 4.1
[06:22] mm when it's open. Not a huge leap over the previous record of 4.2, but an great to see is that it's this thin while having an even larger battery than both the [music] Fold 7 and the Fold 8 at 5,000 mAh. That's partly because this
[06:36] year's Folds and Flip are actually the first Samsung phones ever to adopt a silicon carbon battery. These are just more energy dense than the lithium polymer [music] cells we're used to, and partly because of new materials. So,
[06:48] behind every OLED display, you'll always have some kind of film. Most brands use a polymer film. Samsung here is saying they're using a titanium one. Now, this is super thin. We're talking less than 30% of a human hair. But Samsung [music]
[07:02] saying that just this plus a second flexible titanium plate beneath it makes this display not just extremely thin, but stronger while also reducing the but stronger while also reducing the visibility of the crease. Can I tell?
[07:15] Yeah, kind of. It's still not creaseless, but they'll get there one year. maybe ninth times the charm. Besides, this titanium tech is also on the base fold 8. So, all in all, then I'm not sure there's any particular
[07:31] change here that warrants this sudden jump to ultra. I'd call this the same level of improvement that we've seen year-on-year. Anyways, it's just now the [music] price has gone up a little from $2,000 to 2,100. The ultrawide camera
[07:44] has had the same upgrade as the base fold 8 from 12 megapixel to 50, which to same camera that you'll use for macro photography. But I think the more cameras might just be the improved software processing that you get by
[07:57] having the latest chip. It made a very solid difference for Samsung's S series phones earlier this year. Seems to have had the same impact here. Things like less noise in the image and just a more balanced overall picture. There's a
[08:09] couple of other software advancements like uh now nudge. You know that feature that figures out what someone is asking for and then surfaces it up for you to be able to immediately send the one that basically didn't work when I first went
[08:22] things now. Like if someone asks you to meet up, it can pop up an option to open your calendar. Or even this little quick message that you can tap to enter if you want to confirm the logistics. If someone mentions a location, it brings
[08:35] up the ability to with one tap go to that location on Google Maps. In fact, keyboard anymore to get these nudges, which definitely paints the picture of a more intelligent background presence on these [music] new Samsung's. However, as
[08:49] soon as we tested the feature outside of the company's pre-made demo text messages, same problem all over again. Very [music] inconsistent, barely this is because the software is still pre-release. But the point is, half a
[09:02] year on, I'm still yet to see Now Nudge do anything of use in the real world. My fan cam though is sick. You feed in any kind of video that you've taken, select who in that video that you want to track, and it just follows that person
[09:14] further away, and it all works surprisingly effortlessly. It's one of could actually see myself using for when I'm trying to record myself playing bunch of Google features that Samsung
[09:28] has taken and optimized for their phones, like Gemini notebooks, which is, to be fair, cooler than I was expecting. You throw in any kind of media, could be photos or voice recordings or notes, and then this turns that into any kind of
[09:41] output like an infographic or summarized meeting notes. But yeah, ultimately this meeting notes. But yeah, ultimately this Fold 8 Ultra is really just business as usual. I think what's happening here is not Samsung's finally decided to make
[09:55] the foldable superphone of our dreams and that's why it's called the Ultra. I different folds for two different types of users. What do we call the one that's a little bit more expensive? Oh yeah. Well, Ultra, we've used that on some of
[10:09] Well, Ultra, we've used that on some of our other phones. That'll do. Time to get out of this suit because that leaves us with the Galaxy Flip 8 and the most improved Galaxy watches. So, this year's Flip phone feels like a
[10:24] very simple tidy up. It's again easier to open up while also being thinner and lighter than [music] any previous Z Flip by a decent amount. To be fair, last year's was 6.5 mm unfolded. Here it's 6.1. And the frame is supposedly 10%
[10:37] more durable, however on [music] earth that's being calculated. The chip has we're stuck with the Exynos variant here in the UK as opposed to Snapdragon. And apart from the fact that you can now also use the horizontal lock feature on
[10:53] the selfie camera, just in case you're running away from the cops, but the vlog must go on. And in flex cam or camcorder mode, Samsung say this camcorder thing moronic [music] to rotate your phone into this now
[11:06] clearly unnatural position just to pretend like it's the 80s. Both can be true, but the one big change this time [music] is what's happening on this front flex window screen. The bezels have further shrunk down, by the way,
[11:20] receding hairline I'm looking forward to. And what it's making way for is how all of a sudden you now have a dedicated home screen on your cover screen. And phone open, you can [music] now do closed. This has been a long time
[11:35] a tiny little window that could do like three things total. [music] And then bigger, the functionality ticked up with it. Until now, the front feels just like the inside. Now, this might be a bit of a hot take, but I don't know if this is
[11:51] a good thing. My favorite thing about the Z Flip phones has always been the check the time whenever. They let you see that a notification's come in whenever. But so far, when you've wanted to do really anything much more than
[12:04] that on a flip phone, you've had to truly decide, is this task important enough for me to open the phone [music] and risk a doomcrolling spiral. So, all of a sudden, making everything accessible on the cover screen actually
[12:17] negates the intentionality that first drew me to the flip. But that's just me. And they have done a pretty stellar job with this new now brief widget. The idea is they have a whole load of different pre-built live [music] infographics.
[12:31] Everything from weather stuff, the forecast, pollen count, UV index to sleep score, [music] and nutrition info. And then you can pick and mix them to keep track of on your home screen. Okay. Then we got the watches, which
[12:47] [music] yeah, I mean is usually about the time in the presentation that I too would very literally clock off. But this time around, the upgrades feel like a really strong combo of much needed intelligent hardware changes with
[13:00] making a big difference. So the base Galaxy Watch 9 now has [music] a 25% lighter watch band, which they've pulled off by creating internal air pockets inside the thing. Pretty smart idea. 20% larger battery. That's a decent jump.
[13:14] and a faster chip, the Snapdragon Wear Elite, which seems to have addressed one of the most fundamental weaknesses with Samsung watches. They don't lag anymore and apps seem to open almost instantly. Okay, so sounds solid enough. But then
[13:28] the new Watch Ultra 2 gets even more and actually deserves the Ultra name. It watch, but also with the actual body itself becoming 12% thinner than the last Ultra. The battery is instead 35% larger, they're saying this is now true
[13:43] multi-day endurance, and the display now goes up to 5,000 nits of brightness. That would make this the world's brightest smartwatch display. Probably excessive for almost all use cases. But if extreme brightness is ever going to
[13:56] be useful, it's on a watch that you might end up using in extreme up. part of Samsung's new revamped health experience. Firstly, a feature called
[14:09] wearing your watch will start to understand your baselines, [music] temperature, so that any time that you deviate from your baselines, like your going to be able to [music] tell you, "Hey man, you're probably about to get
[14:24] sick. Wrap up." Good idea. There's a new heart health score which combines all of your collected stats to give you an AI overview of how healthy your heart is and how to improve. It's not going to be lab grade accuracy, but for me at least,
[14:37] seeing that number score, I think would really drive me. And the best one I think is this new fitness index, which compares all of your key metrics against if that doesn't motivate someone to want to be better, then I don't know what
[14:51] that you can now activate Gemini on the watches with no wake words. You just lift your watch to your mouth and speak. And yes, it can actually tell the wrist to check the time and knowing when you're trying to talk. And honestly,
[15:06] speaking to your tech as opposed to proddding away at the screen is a better solution when you can. In fact, the entire script for this video, I didn't type it, I spoke it. I started using this tool from our sponsor Whisper Flow
[15:19] about two months ago and it's probably the single biggest productivity spike matter what app you're using. You just hold down one key, you speak, [music] and what you've spoken just gets written out on your laptop or phone. And unlike
[15:32] when you use bakedin dictation, this runs your speech through an AI engine words you meant to say, the right capitalization, the right grammar and spacing, and even names and specific
[15:44] getting my thoughts out like four times faster than typing and barely having to go back and fix things. It's at a point now where I'm not just whisper flowing my scripts. This is how I message people. And with the code boss, they're
[15:57] free for any of you [music] who want to try it.