 Welcome to The Verge Live, I'm your host Ross Miller, Senior Editor for The Verge. Just minutes ago, Samsung wrapped up its Galaxy S4 launch event, and as always, we are here to provide a minute-by-minute detailed analysis breakdown of that event and all the news. But first, here's the Galaxy S4. Hey guys, it's David at The Verge, and this is the Samsung Galaxy S4, it's a brand new flagship phone from Samsung. So the first thing you notice is that it's not actually that different from the Galaxy S3. It has kind of the same design ID, the same even feel in your hand, it's a little slimmer, a little lighter, but basically the same kind of feel. There are a bunch of things that are different though, the screen is bigger, it's a 5-inch, 1080p Super AMOLED display, and it has a pentile pixel layout which we don't love, but the screen looks great, and it's super high res and really shouldn't cause any problems. It's also more powerful than ever, it has the Exynos 5 processor, and either comes with that or a Qualcomm chip depending on the region you're in. It comes with 16, 32, or 64 gigs of internal storage, plus a microSD slot, and it's coming with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, which is the latest version of Android, and not a lot of phones launch with that, which is pretty exciting. Samsung's trying to do a lot of crazy software things, and they really need power to pull it off. So one of the big things Samsung talked about is the camera. There's a 13 megapixel camera on the back of the phone, and a 2 megapixel camera on the front, and that allows them to do a lot of different things. One is this dual shot mode, where you can actually see the front and rear cameras at the same time. And they brought some of the Galaxy camera modes to this device as well, so it's definitely their most powerful camera ever, we'll have to test it out more to see how it actually does. There's all kinds of wild software stuff on this phone, and you can see just from all the things you have to enable or disable that there's a lot going on here. One of the big things is called Air Gesture, and basically what it lets you do is swipe through photos or scroll in your web browser without ever actually touching the phone. So you can just scroll right through all your photos without having to touch, and you can do the same in a web browser, or you can scroll through your tabs, and it's kind of a gimmicky thing but it does seem to work relatively well, and it's cool if your hands are dirty or wet or what have you. There's also Air View, which I think is even cooler. So in the browser, without actually touching the screen, you just sort of hover over it, and then you can pick what you want to see. And even Flipboard has done some things with it so that you can hover over it and see stories within a particular section without ever actually having to touch it. One of the biggest things, and sort of the most surprising from Samsung, is S Health. They love putting S in front of things, and they're basically trying to replace Fitbit and the FuelBand and all these different things. So there's a pedometer and a temperature and humidity gauge inside this phone, and it'll actually track your steps as you walk, or it'll track your heart rate via a device that works with Bluetooth, or it'll track the temperature and humidity, and it'll tell you all these things about kind of how you're doing over time. You can see, you know, we're in kind of an ugly hotel room, so the surroundings are poor, and you can track the food that you're eating, and all this different stuff. So it's all built into here, and they're selling some add-on accessories as well, and it's just a pretty clever thing. It seems like something that should have been built into your phone forever ago, and it's going to be interesting to see how this works. There's also Group Play. Samsung loves doing things that involve lots of their different phones, and in Group Play, you can set music or photos or documents or what have you to all of the different phones at the same time, and it'll sync music so you can listen as a group. And again, we've seen a lot of these features on Samsung devices before, and they're kind of gimmicky, and we don't necessarily use them a lot, but they're relatively clever features. So there's also an IR blaster inside the device, which lets you use this to control your TV in your whole home theater, and they use some of the same technology they've used before. They're using Peel's TV Guide, so you can see kind of what's on TV and flip through and use it to actually control your set-top box, and there's on-demand content and all this stuff that you can watch on your phone and then push straight to your TV. It's kind of approximating AirPlay plus a bunch of extra TV Guide functionality, and it's pretty cool on other devices and is a smart thing to have here. So that's really it. This phone's going to be out on all four major U.S. carriers in the second quarter of this year. It's going to be on some regional carriers and be all over the world. There's no word on pricing yet except to say that it's going to be a very premium phone. And this is definitely Samsung's flagship device going forward, and that is the Samsung Galaxy S4. Joining me now is Chris Ziegler. Basically he ran point for the entire Verge news staff today. Chris, how are you doing? Besides the fact that I need a beer and a cigarette and a nap, I'm doing quite all right. How about you, Russ? You've got 10 minutes, you can do all that. Doing just fine. I just want to get your reaction to the event. You basically watched it streaming like I did. I did? I thought you did. Did you just watch the live blog? No, no, I did. I did. That was a statement, not a question. Oh, fine, fine. Well, so what's your reaction to the event? Well I think that this phone is basically what we expected given the leaks and the teases leading up to the event. It was a very iterative device. In fact, you know the site right now, we have a great editorial slash report up from our own Vlad Savov on the fact that this is very much emulating Apple's well-known TikTok strategy of releases where they do a major redesign followed by a minor update. I think that's what the 4 is compared to the 3. The 3 was a major shift from the 2, but the 4 is basically the 3S and that's exactly what Vlad calls it. The Galaxy S3S. Well, it doesn't roll off the tongue. I want to go over some of the specs though. So it's a 5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED, is that correct? That's right. Okay. It's also got a Samsung Exynos 5 or a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro. Why the difference? Well, I don't know if you remember, but last year we saw, and really two years ago as well, we saw similar things where in North America they'd release usually a Qualcomm chip and then internationally they'd release a different chip either from Nvidia or Samsung, both with HTC and with Samsung. And the reason for that is that Qualcomm, well, we don't know with this phone specifically, but typically the reason has been that when a chip maker releases a new chip and that chip maker is not named Qualcomm, they need to do some work to integrate Qualcomm's LTE modems or other companies' LTE modems that frankly isn't done yet. But Qualcomm has already done that work with S4 Pro. So they release those devices since they need LTE, LTE is basically a requirement on all carriers in the US now. So they have to use a Qualcomm chip in the US and then internationally they use whatever chip they want. But Samsung is one of the biggest chip makers in the industry. Why haven't they figured this out yet? I think it's that they're taking a worldview. I mean, they kind of have to, we've long heard that carriers favor Qualcomm modems in the US anyway. And it was only recently that Nvidia released an LTE integrated Tegra chip. And I think that Samsung is kind of in the same boat where they figure that they can attack everywhere except North America with their chip. They can sort of hobble along. And I shouldn't even say hobble along. The S4 Pro is a really good chip. It's just not a Samsung chip. But they can release that in North America and then maybe down the road they can switch over. Notably, HTC did that last year with the One X Plus. The original One X used a Qualcomm chip in North America and a Tegra 3 elsewhere. By the time the X Plus came around, which was in fall of last year, they had figured out the LTE thing with Tegra 3. So they re-released it in North America with a Tegra 3 instead of the Qualcomm chip. So what you're basically saying is we're going to have the Galaxy S4s or the Galaxy S3s Plus. We just might. We just might. A couple of things I want to talk about. We have the, it launches with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. It's actually kind of a rarity these days. Yeah, the HTC One, which was announced, what, three weeks ago, I think? And actually I have one in my hands now, right here. This was announced with 4.1, which is kind of sad for HTC considering how long 4.2 has been out. But it's, I mean, this is an age-old complaint, right? I think since version 1.6 of Android we've been complaining about how long it takes to get upgrades. So yeah, the fact that Samsung was able to release this on 4.2 is good. And I think that it's probably telling that they are a little tighter with Google than HTC is. Not to say they're super tight. I think it's widely understood at this point that Samsung is kind of trying to create its own ecosystem outside of the Google-blessed Android proper. But still, I think that they have a better relationship with Google. And they have access to those updates pretty early on. If you remember, I think it was at I.O. last year, Google talked about how they were offering these Android updates to major OEMs early, these close partners early. I think that Samsung is one of those partners. Is it just Samsung then? I mean, clearly they have a leg up on this than everyone else. No LG phone, no Sony phone, no HTC phone. They've all pretty much announced major devices recently. Samsung's the only one that's gotten 4.2.2 at launch, though. I think that speaks to Samsung's size and the fact that Google is completely unable to ignore what Samsung is doing, just like Apple is. We've seen Apple go on a trash-talking spree the past 24 hours. They've been shopping Phil Schiller around to different news outlets. And so I think that's just the reality. Samsung is large enough. They have enough scale so that they have those advantages. And it wouldn't surprise me if they had access to 4.2 before anyone else outside Google. I really wouldn't be surprised at all. That makes sense. I do want to talk about the Apple thing, though. You did mention that they've been shopping Phil Schiller around. He's made a lot of great statements lately, great being biting. It's always fun to watch corporations fight each other. But I do want to ask, we haven't heard any of the famous Apple rumors come up. Usually when there's a big announcement, we see hints of a new iPhone, a new iPad, even a watch, for example. We haven't heard anything like that. Right. And I think we have a report on that up on our front page right now. You can check it out. But basically, I think what it comes down to is that Apple is in this weird part of their product cycle where they literally don't have anything that they could have leaked to take the spotlight off of the Galaxy S4. They may have been able to say something about the iPad or leak something to the journal, for instance. But that's still kind of not germane to what today's announcement was, obviously. And I think the next iPhone is still far enough out so that it isn't solidified enough so that they can leak something that would garner enough interest, generate enough buzz to really pull eyeballs away from the Galaxy S4. So the alternative was to shop Phil Schiller around and have him say really mean things about Android and about Samsung. And that's exactly what happened. Right. It just seems weird. They're almost like on the defensive. They're not actually hinting at new products. They're just going out against the competition. This is not the style we're used to, I guess. Right. Yeah. It's a very, very blatant recognition that Samsung has become too large and too powerful for Apple to just go about their business and ignore them. And you're right. It does kind of look like a sign of weakness. I always go back to Google's Maps event. I think it was last May, maybe, where they called every journalist in the world out to Mountain View around the same time that Apple was doing their own version of Maps. Google called everyone out to Mountain View for a Maps event where they announced literally nothing. They just basically wanted to call everybody out to say, hey, check out Google Maps. And everybody perceived it as this huge sign of weakness and sign of fear from Google over what Apple could do with Maps. And of course, that fear ended up being completely unfounded. But that's what it smelled like to me when I first saw Schiller make those comments to the journal last night. Right. Now, I do want to ask you one thing. You've been doing big reports on wearables. You seem to be the expert on this, basically, on the verge about that. Are you wearing a watch right now? You're wearing a watch right now. I've got my Nike Fuel band, which is pretty much kind of a dumb phone equivalent of that. I do want to ask, though, Samsung is not seeming to go after the phone market. They have this kind of Health S-band thing, spand, whatever you want to call it. That's basically all we're seeing. Do you think Samsung's going to hit that field, or why are they avoiding it? I think that given Samsung's philosophy, the way Samsung does business, it's inevitable that they will eventually – if the smartwatch field picks up enough steam, I think it's inevitable that they will come to market with one. Actually, interestingly, I don't have the name of it, but it's probably seven or eight years ago, they did a GSM watch that you could actually buy. It was a real thing. It wasn't compatible with U.S. bands. But the point being, Samsung is not a complete stranger to the idea of a smart wearable. I think we could definitely see them return to that. Certainly if Apple comes out with an iWatch, as they're widely expected to at this point, Samsung will definitely come out with one like six to 12 months later. Basically an S-watch. A swatch. A swatch. They can't call it a swatch. That's the one time they can't use S. They can't. Chris, I'm going to let you go in a second. Just one last question. We're now seeing basically all the big companies come out with their flagships, the Xperia Z, the HTC One, the Galaxy S4. Which is the one to get right now? Or when they all come out at least? We saw our Xperia Z and our One reviews go up this week. I think that the Z has some pretty serious shortcomings that prevent us from giving it our seal of approval, particularly in software. Sony is not known for its software chops in Android. I think that the Z is no exception, unfortunately. The One, having played with it for the past 24 hours here, I have to agree with David's assessment that the hardware is incredible. It might be the best looking and feeling phone ever. That's saying something considering that I have an iPhone 5 sitting right next to me and I've played with basically every phone made in the past decade. So I think that you could feel very good about buying a One in the next few weeks. The only reason that I can see to choose a Galaxy S4 over the One is that, A, the Galaxy S4 is probably going to ultimately be available on more carriers than the One just because of Samsung's reach and pull with carriers. And two, if you're just completely obsessed with bells and whistles, the Galaxy S4 is going to win on that count, just like the Galaxy S3 did. Tonight we saw so many weird and wacky features get introduced into the platform, like the air gestures and all this ridiculousness. So if that really draws you in, that's something that HTC just can't win on. But if you're looking for the best feeling and looking phone on the market, I think it's going to be the One. All right, Chris, thank you very much. Thank you. All right. So we're going to go to the show now. Actually right here, special magic right here. David Pierce. I just appeared out of the floor. Out of complete nothingness. It's a remarkable talent I have. It's pretty awesome, I got to say. Samsung taught me how with the Galaxy S4. Oh, is this the S-apparition? S-apparition. S-apparition. David, thanks for joining us. Thanks for running right back after what a weird, I wish I could be censored kind of show right now. It was a scene. It really was. I don't even know how to describe it. It was, so we had this Qualcomm event at CES, which just veered into this almost like surreal territory. This didn't quite get there, but it was. It was pretty close. It was, it was close. It really was. I mean, we were watching from the stream, and it's just, it was insane the amount of like Broadway bravado. I think it's not even like Broadway. It was like these kind of off-Broadway hackneyed, I mean, I don't want to say they're hackneyed actors, but they're definitely really getting into it. It seemed like, so we were, as we were walking back, Jordan, our video producer said, he was like, they must have just come up in casting and been like, you know what we need is a Neil Patrick Harris character. So they found like the best Neil Patrick Harris impersonator they could find for, you know, $75 and then got him. And he got up there, and it was just, it was the strangest, I don't know, they like, they showed up the phone, and it was a pretty normal presentation. Right. And then they were like, all right, that took 20 minutes. Let's put on a play. I actually. Because we're in Radio City Music Hall. I actually kind of panicked. I thought they were ending after 30 minutes. Like, okay, they announced the phone. They got some of the key details out of the way. And they're saying thank you and goodbye. And the guy's walking off. But no. Which honestly would have been awesome. It would have been great. Like, as somebody who has sat through way too many two and a half hour long events, if they had just gone in, then like, here's a phone, see you later. I would have, like, I would have stood up and cheered. It would have been amazing. But this is like, this is borderline hubris on Samsung's part. They've gotten, they've had so much success, like, with these outlandish commercials and ad campaigns and some of the events too. I mean, hubris is Samsung's thing. It's how they separate themselves. I mean, they don't care. Shubris. They don't care if you make a better phone than they do. They're going to sell so many more of them because their commercials are better. And even if they're not better, there's so many more of them that eventually you're just going to be beaten into submission and you're going to buy a Samsung phone. All right, now let's actually, let's talk about that. So they're going to sell these phones no matter what. And it's arguably, they didn't really try to do much different this time around. No, so I mean, it's, on the one hand, I kind of forgive them for that because why would they change things? Like, this phone, the Galaxy S3 sold like crazy. And people love it and it's become, it's the only phone I would say I see as many of, like, out in the world in New York City as I do the iPhone. Right. And it used to be the iPhone and then you'd be like, oh, that's a Kindle Fire. Or like, you'd debate what phone it was. And now it's, the Galaxy S3 is on that level. So I have a confession to make. I used to commute from the L train and I would see a dude, even recently, I would see him carry the Blackberry tablet. Bold. He's using it. He's not bold. Not ready to be bold yet. No, but so I think, on the one hand, Samsung feels like they got it right in a lot of ways. And I think they did get it right in a lot of ways. But they also, Samsung's whole thing is like, let's have things that Apple can't do or doesn't do. And if you look at their commercials, all of their marketing is, it's not about their hardware necessarily. It's not about LTE. And like, all these things are, they have kind of league average to above average stuff. And then they just pile on these features that they're like, look at this nifty thing that the iPhone can't do. And like this phone, the Galaxy S4, it gives great demo. Like it's, it gives great demo. That's the quote you're going to use. Yeah, it does. And like they go through and they're like, look, I just did this with my hand and it went through my pictures. And eventually you're like, yeah, that's actually kind of cool. I could see how I'd use that. And like, I don't know if you would or not, but this phone, like on a store shelf as the guy in the Verizon store walks you around is going to seem super compelling. Right. So like, I'm going to, I want to talk about all this stuff you saw at the hands on demo, but first we've got the Galaxy S3 here. We've got the Galaxy Note 2. So basically the S4 is just somewhere in the middle. It's not even really. It's basically the same size as the Galaxy S3. They shrunk the bezels a little bit. So the phone is, the screen is bigger, but the space around it is a little smaller. So basically just same size. It's yeah. And it's a little, it's a tiny bit taller, but it's actually lighter and thinner. So it like to hold it, like if I held both in my hands and close my eyes, it would legitimately be difficult to tell which is which. Because it's not actually, that's not a bad size. No, it's really not. It's good to hear. And it was, I was, I was really impressed. Like we saw some of the leaks. The phone looks enormous and they must've had like a four year old holding this phone because it looked gigantic. Right. But as it is, it's, it's really no harder to use. Like all these phones are difficult to use in one hand, but it's really, it doesn't feel as big as a phone like the Xperia Z feels. It's pretty well suited for a size like this. I've also got the HTC One with me here too, which is about, you know, it's about the same size. How would you compare this? You actually reviewed this phone as well. So I like this phone a lot. And on the hardware front, there's just no comparison. The One is, is aluminum and put together and has this kind of fit and finish that the Galaxy S4 just doesn't. And Samsung doesn't care. Like they've, they've, honestly they've made it abundantly clear that they don't care. They're like, our hardware is good enough and everybody has dinged them for having plasticky backs and they keep making, like they don't care. Right. But their bet is that most people don't care and sales kind of seem to bear that out. Like most people want a phone with a big screen and a nice screen that like has these cool features and runs the apps that I want. And this real choosing between like really nice hardware and pretty good hardware doesn't seem to factor in for that many people. But you're mostly just talking about the industrial side. The internals seem pretty good and the camera seems great. So one thing Samsung is great at is, is building these like bleeding edge phones. And the S4 is very much that. It has, it either has a Samsung processor or a Qualcomm processor depending on where you are. And either one is really powerful. It comes with two gigs of RAM and like Samsung doesn't skimp on the power in its phones. And like we've seen a little bit of even sort of pre-production software but was just blistering fast and they have this camera thing that shows the front and back camera at the same time and you can take pictures and video. And it's super responsive. It works perfectly. And I want to ask you that. It always puts a little stamp of your face on it? So there are a bunch of different templates. One is like the postage stamp. Others make it look like you're like on a Safari. There's all these different ways you can do it to kind of embed. It's just basically different frames around that. What is the other use case or scenario for this? I have no idea. And this is the thing. Like honestly the impression I get from this event is that Samsung has this great list of features. Right? And you look and you run down the list and you're like these are all cool things. I want all of these. And some of them you may end up using but most of them are things that you're like, huh, this is nifty and then basically forget exists. And I remember a long time ago I was meeting with somebody from Sony and they were telling me about the difference between buying behavior and using behavior. And their point was that people buy phones for a certain set of reasons and like them for a totally different set of reasons. And so for them, I forget what it was in their particular case, but they were talking about like people walk in and they're like, oh, this has more megapixels on the camera. I'll buy that because it has more megapixels. And like that ultimately makes no practical difference in their life. And Samsung has just nailed that game. Right? So they have all these things where like the gestures, you do it and you're like, that seems cool. And then another phone doesn't do it and you're like, oh, that's a shame it doesn't do it. And like you get to a dozen of those over the course of using these two different phones and you're like, well, what can the iPhone do? And whether or not those actually add up to something you'll use in real life, I don't know. I think some of them are cool. Like I actually, I kind of get the gesture thing a little bit. Let's actually get into that a little bit because I watched the hands on. Obviously I just saw this weird event. I'm still not 100% sure how that works or how actually effective it is. So well, so there are four different kind of weird interaction things that Samsung's done. There's smart pause and smart scroll, I think they're called, which basically are designed to they follow your eyes. And if you're watching the phone and if I'm watching a movie and then I look away, it's designed to pause the movie. And then when I come back, it'll play the movie again. And that seems to work, but I actually think is sort of useless because a lot of like it would be annoying if I'm like sitting on a train and I look up and then my movie pauses and then I have to come back and wait a second for it to pick up. I just, I don't want that. The scrolling is designed to basically follow your eyes and move the page with your eyes so you can read comfortably. Okay, that sounds really cool. So like, does it actually work like when you're looking at the top of the screen, does it scroll up when you're like in the middle, does it stay focused? So I have to kind of give Samsung the benefit of the doubt. So I saw a model this morning that just straight up didn't work. Okay. So I did this really funny thing where I would look, I would read down the bottom and then I would wait and I would wait and I'd still be looking down at the bottom and then it would just snap to the bottom of the page and be like, that's not what I wanted. And then I would have to scroll back up. So better question. Can you turn that off? But then Dan Seifert, who was also at the event with us, went and did it and looked at it and said it worked great. So I'll give Samsung the benefit of the doubt here and say they pulled it off. So then there's gestures, which let you do things like you can scroll a web page just by going like this or you can scroll through photos by swiping left to right. And stuff like that I get for, you know, they said something about it during one of their scenes at the event and they were like, oh, my nails are wet or my hands are dirty. And like honestly, I kind of get that. I have a lot of times where like, you know, people talk about how we use our phones and tablets for cooking in the kitchen. It's like my hands are dirty and I can just go like that. Like that's pretty cool. Like for some of it depends on how far away it is though. Like that's what I'm kind of curious about because for the hover stuff, it was like, yeah, you have to finger right on it. Like that's no, but the hovering or the gestures rather you you can be like a foot away. It's a pretty comfortable distance like between you and where you're holding the phone and you just swipe over it. Is it just using the cameras like the camera always looking at you? It seems to be. Okay. There there. Yeah, the front facing camera is like Samsung's favorite thing to harness to do cool stuff. And I guess you need to make apps that actually use this stuff or is like is this something that's actually built on the system level to know? So it's Samsung's not clear on a lot of that stuff, which is difficult because a lot of the cool features that they have, even going back to some of their older devices where they have like the split screen stuff where you can see two apps at once, which is that's even still here. They didn't mention it at all. And I don't think so because they want to keep the note as kind of this productivity device and between the note two and the note eight and now the note 10.1 those are kind of the get stuff done devices. And these are more sort of normal in line with other flagship devices. I don't know. A five inch phone just clearly you can't do anything done on it. It's tiny. Basically not even a screen. Like you can't. I can't see anything. Okay. So all in all though, you've played with it. What was your feel? Is it the best phone out there to get for an Android device? I mean obviously we haven't reviewed it. But it is coming out Q2. It's the phone to say don't buy anything yet. Wait for us. Do you feel like that's the safe thing to do? Well so on the one hand I think we actually have a really interesting competition for the first time in a pretty long time because it looks like the HTC One is going to come out on all these different carriers. So Samsung's biggest advantage was that they got to this point where people just walked into a store and were like I want a Galaxy phone. And that was just what there was to buy because every carrier had it. You knew what was going on. And it became like the de facto Android phone. And HTC can kind of get into that because they're on all these carriers. And HTC if they can market the device right and get some real momentum they can do it. But I think we're also at this kind of exciting place where all of these phones are good. Like the Xperia Z for all its weaknesses is a good powerful fast phone that you can also like throw in the toilet and it's fine. That's a true story. The One has great hardware but has some issues with the camera. Samsung has typically done a much better job with the camera and they're really focused on it again this time. Which if they pull it off could be a huge differentiator. It's like the Lumia 920 and really the iPhone 5 are the only two cameras in my mind that are great as smartphone cameras. And if the Galaxy S4 can get in there that's a big win for them because they become kind of the one Android phone with a great camera. If they can pull that off. And just for the shameless plug we did just do like the best smartphone cameras out right now. And Michael Shane agreed with me. And Michael Shane agreed with you. One of our best photographers on staff. It was the Lumia 920 or the iPhone. We did it on top shelf which you can see every Thursday. No but I think the Galaxy S4 is probably going to remain the de facto Android phone. And it's because Samsung has done a lot of really good things. They've done a lot of things right. And they've done some really smart UI things that make the phone easier to use and more understandable in a way that HTC hasn't and Sony hasn't. And I think you're going to see this on shelves everywhere. They're going to market it like crazy. And I think people are going to start buying this and I'm going to end up seeing it basically on the subway just like the Galaxy S3. And then I'm going to look and be like is that the Galaxy S3 or is that the S4? And no one will know. And that's where we'll be. All right then. Great, great. Well, I think I can do this flip side. I literally keep looking at that thinking it's the Galaxy S4 and I'm like how did we get one? And then it's not. It's the S3. I do like this form factor though. That's the thing. But we have this great advantage of like we get to see all these phones side by side and be like this is pretty. But then people are going to pick that up because that's going to be the first phone that the guy at the Verizon store recommends to you because everybody else bought it. And you're going to be like oh this feels nice and works well and I'm going to buy it. Right. Actually I'm going to say random tangent because I was going through I was looking for all these phones and all the different variations of Samsung Galaxy S2 which back then you forgot. You forget I forgot at least. They were just different by the carrier. Yeah there were like 140 million different Galaxy S2 phones. And then there was like the Blaze which was also a Galaxy S2 and then there was like a Galaxy S2 3 and then like the 4G. It was it was well played on the Samsung part. That reminds me I actually wanted to talk about Vlad's editorial that just went up. The Galaxy S3s. Do you think it's fair? I mean it's yeah I really do. I think it's the it's the tick tock strategy that Apple has really pioneered and pulled off and they made it work where people are on two year upgrade cycles. And it's just it's just kind of in a way dumb at this point to continue to reinvent the wheel every year. Like we're going to run out of things to do and we're going to you're going to lose your customers every time. You're going to make people feel like they have this incredibly outdated phone but they can't buy it because their contract's not up. And they've so Samsung has adopted the same strategy and I think that is what this phone is. It's it's faster. It has a bigger screen. It has you know some new tricks and software but fundamentally it's it's the same idea. It's the same idea the same features like it's it's going to feel like the same phone. So if I have a Galaxy S3 I don't have particular you know upgrade envy right now but if I have a Galaxy S2 suddenly it's a no brainer. No I do want I do want to talk about it. So it seems like Apple and Samsung are the only ones right now who can do this kind of what they call a tick tock formula. Tick being the 4, tock being the 4S. Why not? Is HTC also trying to find its first tick? If this is a hit will we see the 1S like in a year from now or something like that? Well not the 1S. Hold that. No I mean I think what Samsung did which is what Apple did is really corner this market. I mean we've heard Google say they're worried about how much Samsung has cornered the Android market and like it's impossible to underestimate or to overestimate rather how significant Samsung's brand is in that world. And it used to be years ago that people would walk into a store and they'd either buy an iPhone or a droid right. So Motorola had the droid and they dominated that for a long time and it's now it's a Galaxy instead of a droid. People buy those phones now and it gives Samsung this leeway to say like there's a good chance you already own a Samsung phone. Whether it was a Galaxy S2 which they flooded the market with a million things two years ago or a 3 from a few months ago. The 4 is coming out now. It's like Samsung has this giant market share and they can they can make a case for all the different features. It feels like they're coming out with stuff over every every other manufacturer especially the iPhone. So they're going to try and woo you away like one device at a time. Right. All right. Well David thank you so much. My pleasure. When are we getting one? I stole 400 of them. So the reviews are tomorrow. I'm actually wanted now in the state of New York. No no. So hopefully we'll get the reviews soon. It's in Q2. Right. So the premium price. It's going to start being out. It's going to be out in April 1st around the world. But they haven't made any specific US announcements. It'll be on all four carriers plus some of the regional carriers. And it'll be yeah they called it a premium Samsung price. So it'll be you know one hundred ninety nine dollars unlocked. They're not doing a three hundred dollar phone anymore. They might. I'd be I'd be shocked. But yeah and it's it's going to be this spring and basically don't buy a Galaxy S3 until then. All right David thank you so much. My pleasure. We're going to cut to really quickly. We've got some highlights from the event. Oh dear. So sorry. Stay tuned. Enjoy that and we'll be back with Nila Patel. Ladies and gentlemen the Samsung Galaxy S4. I'm sorry honey. I'll get the Galaxy S4 after the presentation. Yeah. On the other hand Patrick does have an S4 so he can take amazing shots of his son Jeremy as he gets ready for his first tap dance recital. You're up next honey. Boy am I nervous. Oh you're going to do just fine. I want to get some backstage footage. Now if you're like me you have 800 pictures of your mom and like two of your dad because dad always took the pictures. Our family videos look like a movie about a single mother. Well all that's about to change. What if I'm watching a movie then switch to playing a game? No problem. And what if I'm reading an email and then play a game and then watch a video? Adapt, display, adjust. What if the video is about a five-legged cat? Doesn't matter what it's about. I have another album of Anna in the market. I have another album of Anna at the Falls. I'm sensing a theme. Yeah dude they're all pictures of Brazil. Okay. Oh being able to see all of his photos as soon as he takes them makes it easier having Jeff away. Being able to use my car makes it easier for him to be away. I love these pictures of Brazil. Where do you see Brazil? Behind Anna. What about the life of a New York actor? May I have my car please? Now I don't know where I'm going. I'm totally lost. That's okay. With the new Galaxy S4 you don't need a navigation system. It's all installed right there on the device. You're killing me. I found it. Here let's listen. Do you remember how we danced to this at my sweet 16? Oh I hope I remember. Are you ready for the next Galaxy? Well here it is. Whatever you're doing now, whatever you think you just experienced. I can't watch. I was there. Can't watch anymore. I saw the strangest happens in person and it changed me I have to say. You seem less bitter. Let me tell you something important about this event. It was actually really good. What? It was really good. You mean the first 30 minutes was really good and then you fell asleep. The whole thing was great and this is why. This phone is like a laundry list of features. This endless parade of stuff and all of it is really esoteric and weird. Ultimately every single feature in this phone is esoteric and weird. It's a camera that can take 100 photos in 4 seconds. That doesn't mean anything to people. But saying we're going to do a skit with actors to show it off is successful. It's not what we want to see because it's super cheesy and lame but for the thousands of people in that theater it was entertaining and demonstrated the features of the product. Let me run down a list of the weirdest stuff that you and I have done together since we started working years ago. We've seen Zool. Samsung's crazy little guy with ears. We've seen three Howard Stringer keynotes at least which is Cirque du Soleil, which is Elvis Presley's first years. But here's the difference with that stuff. So all that stuff that's just showmanship. So Dan Sing Zool has no connection to the product. All of the... He's in the product. He is the product. I mean that's Samsung invites you to their CS keynote and like the kid from Billy Elliot dances and he's the future. I forget it really was a kid from Billy Elliot. That was not what they did today. They grew up a little bit today. They talked about the phone the whole time. And there was no abstract BS about digital humanism. There was no inspired by nature. There were no blooping sounds. It was here are the features of our phone and here's the way that we have chosen to demonstrate those features. So this is total like though this be madness there's method in it. There's no beeple. There's no born mobile. This is just use our fucking phone. Right. Exactly. So that's the way they chose. Okay. So that's fine. So at the outset I would like to note that it was a gigantic improvement for Samsung. All right. Fine. It was entertaining. Like entertaining in maybe all the wrong ways but very very entertaining. But the thing is okay fine we've crossed the barrier. Now we're talking about the product. We're using the products features. The skits and the things they did to showcase the product was so silly and so like out of touch with reality. Like at the beginning they're like they showed a family and the kid was like I have a play. Oh dad your phone isn't good enough to take a photo of my play. Now what kind of like rank consumerism are you like you're like oh you should get a new phone because otherwise your kids life will suck. I kind of wonder if that is what kids are like now. I don't know. Maybe. I don't talk to kids on a regular basis or really ever. But they may be like that. They may be like look you've got the iPhone 5. That's pass. I mean probably. That's probably what kids today are like and all of you should be ashamed of yourselves. I'm just going to leave it like that. Just like still frame. You should be ashamed of yourself. No no. I mean it was just silly. It was over the top. Why was there an orchestra? At the beginning the orchestra came up out of the bottom and then it went away and then at the end they're like Ellen thank you to our orchestra. The orchestra came back. At least. Like why are you paying for an orchestra? At least there was no celebrity like cameos. There was no new creative director. There are two plot holes. Okay. There are two plot holes. Major. We have continuity issues. Major plot holes. Okay. Okay. So there's Will Chase who's an emcee. Don't know who he is. He's an actor. Very sarcastic. Then there's Ryan Biden. We know. We know for years. I love Ryan. Ryan's great. He's a buddy of mine. He's great. Used to be Blackberry. Well RIM. Then Black whatever it's called now. Yeah. RIMberry. Now it's at Samsung. He's great. So they were doing their little schtick and then all these other actors come out and at some point a woman named Vivian appeared and everyone talked about Vivian like they knew her. This is like the black glove woman. Black gloves and she was like just there to like say mean things to Will Chase. Whoever he was. She was your Broadway vamp stereotype. Yeah. She sounded like a friend rusher. Then she like played with the phone and then she just left and I was like who is Vivian? Why was she so important for two minutes and where is she now? You didn't like Lost did you? Then she came back and her name was Sheila. Very meta. Very strange. They're like hey Vivian and she's like no no I'm Sheila now. Very odd. Then and I think this is the most important and the most to me personally troubling. Okay. At one point they demonstrated S voice driving or whatever it's called. S voice drive. And to hammer home the fact that this was meant to be used in a car they brought out a sideways Mini Cooper. Which was a. Oh I remember that. I think we have a shot. We have a shot of the sideways Mini Cooper. But they bring it out. Bring it out. What? They brought it out on stage for the rest of the presentation and no one attempted to get in it or drive it sideways. It didn't do a loopty loop. It just was sideways. Like that was Samsung's contribution. No. Mini Cooper's contribution. What does that tell me except like do not use Samsung's driving because you'll end up sideways in a car. I don't know. It was very troubling. That's very weird. Very very weird. You're just using hand gestures and you just hit the wheel. But it was but this all this like over the top like it worked like a. I don't know how else to explain this. For the first time it was shocking and weird. They had a hunky guy come on stage and take his shirt off and a gaggle of women tittered and as they looked away from their phones to look at the hunky guy the video paused. Like all this like crazy stuff. At one point they're like why would you ever want to use this feature where you can like just wave at your phone instead of touching it. Why and they had one of the women go because my nails are wet which is like don't do that. And then another one was like because I don't want to put down the drink and like drunkenly staggered around stage. Just crazy but effective. But relatable use case scenarios. Relatable crazy. All right. Samsung. Also here's the real tagline of the phone. Are you ready for this. I'm ready. Samsung. This is true. I'm not kidding. All right. I mentioned live like several times Samsung Galaxy S4 life companion life and they had it on on slides like huge letters life companion. No irony no like it's like they. Oh that's right because they had the little kid with the box going I like companion or something like that. No that'd be weird. That would be very weird. But I swear. But Samsung's newest product. Child following around. It's child. No I just don't know. I honestly I don't. I'm so overwhelmed. I'm talking too fast. I know my notes. I'm higher pitched. And it's just because the emotions that I felt during this event. For you. I've always wanted this. The emotions that I felt during this event were so varied. I felt sad. I felt a great deal of embarrassment. I felt joy. At one point a man named Jeff just talked about taking pictures of a girl he met in Brazil named Ana. And he talked about that for I would say five to six minutes. Right. He took a lot of photos. There's actually two things from the from the thing I kind of want to talk to you about. First off is S translate. Speaking of weird gags. Yeah. Well so here's the thing about S translate. It's already in Android. Right. Google translate has these features. But so Google translate is like you have to be connected. I wasn't sure. I wasn't clear. So S translate just has canned it has canned stuff in it. Okay. So it does all that stuff in the back end. But if you're like in France and you're like taking to a bathroom like you can push a button the phone will say it in French. Okay. So it's just it's all built in. So it's some offline caching. That's actually really smart. I will give them the credit for that. Well it's just like it just sounds built in. I don't know how much it's doing. Okay maybe if it is going to the internet well then it's the exact same thing. Right. So it doesn't suggest it was going to be an offline of some sort. No. So the offline is like it has this database of phrases. Right. Just the stocks. Yeah. Yeah. And you can like push the button and like it'll help you. Where is the nearest Apple Store? Yeah. Yes it won't do that. Probably not do that. That stuff is interesting. I mean I will say that the number of and this is actually feedback I got a lot on Twitter which was a lot of this stuff is in Android already. Right. It's all over the place Android. Like these aren't features that Samsung needs to promote in this way. It will rebuild in some other way. This is very head on competitive with what Google is doing. But if you do any small tweaks they can put an S in front of it and that's theirs. Sweeks. Sweeks. But I mean look at like this like and actually the one thing that this has in common unfortunately with Samsung is crazy new video formats because there now must exist something between a still and a video. Oh yeah. Something with audio. It's a Zoe. It's a was it a camera photo? Yeah. Or a cinema photo. So Samsung's camera stuff you know there is very little like overt sharing at the event. Right. So the camera's got all the sharing. So when they took out the guy photobombing because they take a hundred photos in four minutes or four seconds when they did the drama shot. It's called drama shot. Just forgive me for saying that. Is it was it just burst mode or something? Yeah. So they do this crazy burst mode and then they can composite. So if you're running across the room and I like burst mode photo you it'll like composite four of you like running. So that's cool stuff. But it's weird because it's like what you're saying. The idea of like just taking a photo is gone. It is dead to the smartphone industry. Now we're going to do other weirder shit with photos and I'm just going to drop the S bomb on the air. S bomb. S bomb. What he really said was S hit. This is an S hit. Yeah exactly. You know here's the thing. So here's the one right. And actually can you give me the GS3. Sure. Because in all reality the GS4 looks just like this. It's a little. It's like 0.02 wider or something. So very very small slight visual differences. The sides are squared off more. It feels only slightly different to hold in your hand. But I will tell you that this phone this piece of hardware is so much nicer to have in your hand because it's made of metal. It has it's just the H21 is a really nice phone. This phone still feels like a piece of plastic. And the GS4 still feels like a piece of plastic. And what's interesting to me and Vlad put up a piece today like noting this is that Samsung has this enormous marketing budget. They spent all of this money to put on this event. It's something like 400 million dollars to launch this phone. Right. I heard that number from lots of people. They have so much money anyway. They have so much money. They're spending money like crazy. Orchestra literally they bought an orchestra and then hid it under the stage. And they would raise and lower it every now and then to remind you that they had spent money on orchestra and then the orchestra would go away. Like that's ridiculous. And I think what they're doing is they have so many features are adding so many features and this event was all about features. Right. Here's how this phone will slice up some piece of your life that may or may not be recognizable to anybody who has a normal life and will show you how a phone feature will like solve this problem that may or may not exist. ACC is like we made a little bit better camera and it has a flip board. But it is a much better design. I'll give them that. But the hardware is better. I think ultimately it might be a better phone. Like I haven't played with GS4 for more than 10 seconds. Fair enough. We're actually we're gearing up toward the end but there is something I want to ask about before just a quick tangent. The IR blaster. Watch on. They mentioned it. I don't feel like they talked a lot about it on stage but they did make a point of it early on. Well so this is like a weird trend in phones. Right. And it's that your cell phone will be the remote control for your television. The one has one too. The IR blaster is built into the power button. I think the Note 2 does too. The Note 2 has one? I didn't know that. The GS4 has an IR blaster built into the top as well. Right. It might be in the power button as well. And they have these apps right. They type in your zip code. It tells you what's on your cable provider and it changes the channel for you. And that's great. But it's so like super useless. I mean an IR blaster is like literally a six cent part. You can get one for zero money. They can put it in a phone for zero money. And cool. You can call Peel and they'll give you a version of their app to run on your phone. It's neat but it's not useful. I don't think people are actually going to use these phones as remotes. And that's what's weird to me because there seems to be a lot of, at least a lot of time and money going into making the software to try to simplify this very complicated system of cable operators with different channels and trying to use these multiple set top boxes. That's all done. That's not hard. You can call TV Guide and they'll sell you the data. You can call Peel. They'll give you the data. They already have the app. What's hard is, and this is the problem Samsung should be solving, is they make TVs too. Their phones don't actually talk to their TVs. Sony's phones don't actually talk to their TVs. Sony's Xperia Z tablet has an IR blaster in it. It runs the Peel app. These things aren't actually talking to televisions. They are doing the same dumb thing that every universal remote has ever tried to do. And that's why people don't love universal remotes. They're doing the same dumb thing that every iPhone accessory with an IR blaster has ever tried to do. And that's why those never took off. And it's a little bit more interesting because the phones are really small and thin and they've integrated the piece right into here. But ultimately it's having an IR blaster isn't going to fix your experience. And it never has. So what is going to? There is that kind of dream of not having a remote, walking to a room and going, okay, this is my TV remote now. Or something. Is that a dream? I would like to not have a remote. You know what I use now? The Wii U gamepad. But you're a huge nerd. Yeah, but I can find that. Or I can go to... Because it's enormous. You're a huge nerd who loses things. Well, it's kind of a cop out. It's kind of a cop out. Look, that's great. And I think that you can argue about the future of television. That's all you want. I don't think design or interface or technology is a problem. I think literally talking to a television or cable box is a problem. And the only way to do it right now is an IR blaster. And as long as that's true, this dumb, dumb technology from the 60s is still in our living rooms, none of these things are going to solve the problem. Fair enough. But I can rant about IR blasters all day and night. Anyway, that's just one of many features. Obviously, Samsung S4 has the air scrolling, the eye tracking. In case your nails are wet. Yeah, of course. Or you look at a hunky guy. But it's still, like I said, the hardware is the same. It's still the same looking TouchWiz. And Samsung has knocked Apple before for looking like the exact same OS. So at one point, and again, I'm very fond of Ryan Budd. Okay. At one point he was like, it's so much more alive than ever before. And then he demonstrated that they changed the menu bars. No longer black. It's translucent. Right. I mean, it's just TouchWiz is like a silly thing. It is a silly, dumb, gimmicky, ridden thing. Right? And you can definitely knock Apple because the iOS home screen is boring and the weather, it's always 73 degrees and sunny. But there must exist some happy state between iOS being boring and this being a circus. And they are just going full circus with this phone. I guarantee you it will. Very full circus. And it's louder than ever and they probably swear at you if you try to turn them off. Maybe that happy thing is called stock Android. Just an idea that I have. Speaking of that, so we've now seen the S4, which is not out yet. They've seen one, the Xperia Z, which are out. LG's got a number of flagships every now and then. They'll just pop something else out. They did one. Optimus G Pro. Optimus G Pro. But the 4, advertised in Times Square right now. So everyone's gotten their flagship Android devices. Obviously Apple's probably going to do something in the next few months. So yeah, the 5S Plus. Are we gearing up for like, is S4 the phone to get for Android or should we start looking to the next Google whatever? It's weird because they sell so many more iPhones than S4s. Just tons more. But if you are in New York and you ride the subway, you see S3s everywhere. I think if you have an S3, there's no reason to get an S4. I think if you have a previous flagship Android device, you probably won't want one. I think if you're among the millions of people of a Galaxy S2, that's probably the place to go. If you have an iPhone, I don't know the answer. I don't. I mean, they're wildly different experiences. What are you using right now? What is your so-called daily driver? I have a Nexus 4 and I have an iPhone. Okay, what are you using more? I use the iPhone more because it has LTE. I mean, that's the reality of it. With the Nexus 4 and LTE, things would change very dramatically. But the S4 has 4.2.2 with TouchWiz, though, but it has LTE, or will have LTE. Yeah, but TouchWiz is not an attractive thing. And I believe they're saying in S4.2.2, Google IOs are right around the corner. We don't know what's going to happen. So they're going to fall behind again. And TouchWiz is becoming a different operating system. It's funny that you say they're going to fall behind because the only phone that's going to have whatever next Google Android operating system is, is going to be the Google device that no one buys. There's a real divide between Google's Android and Samsung's Android. Because Google doesn't have Air View or Smart Pause or any of this stuff. And I think it's unfair to Samsung's efforts, actually. It's unfair to their efforts to say that these features are tacked on to Android now. These features are integrated with the phone. So if you buy the S4, you're going to get these features as part of your core experience. And they're not in Android, but there's just a huge gulf between the two companies now. And I think Andy Rubin, he just left Google. But a few weeks ago, he was pushing. He left Android. He left Android. He's still somewhere. He's in a basement. He's rattling around. Moonshots. Moonshots. That's what he said. Larry Page was like, we want more moonshots. You're out, Andy. And go to Google X and do whatever you do. Anyway, look, he was at NWC or wherever. And he said to The Wall Street Journal, Samsung is a real threat to Android. And I think that was a rare admission of the truth, which is Google's platform is no longer being driven by Google. And I think if you buy an HTC One, what you're getting is some other, yet another version of Android that isn't as competitive, that doesn't have the resources invested, that doesn't have the user base of Samsung's version of Android, and doesn't have Google driving forward its version of Android. And I think that is probably not a realization for the ordinary consumer. I think that's a realization if you're deeply into tech. One more wild horse question that we have to wrap up. The Dark Horse and all this. What's going on with Motorola? That's, I don't know. They certainly can't. Look, even if you got Google money, you don't have Google money to get Samsung weird. S weird. S weird. S weird. Because this event and this launch and this marketing, they are spending money. That event was, it was over the top, like crazy. And super weird. S weird. And very few companies can just get S weird. And nothing's gonna top that. Not anytime soon. Look, maybe Motorola, maybe Google and Motorola will combine to produce some crazy Chrome OS Android hybrid phone with a flexible display that can drive your car for you, that has stock Android and LTE. That's... And you can wear it on your head. There's a lot of stuff you can do to compete with the S4. I don't think the S4 is a pinnacle phone. I think it has, it's a pentile display, but it appears to look very nice. I think it has... You're so bitter about pentile. I don't like them. They look too green to me. But whatever. It's going to be the Android phone that other people have. That is something to be reckoned with. And for Motorola or Google to get there, they have to market the hell out of the phone. They're gonna have to spend money trying to sell the phone, and Google historically has not been good at that. Fair enough. All right. Let's close out the show. Neil, I thank you so much. I'm Chris Power. I have Chris Power. Chris Power. Hey, Chris Powers. I want to thank everyone. Chris Ziegler, who is zpower on Twitter. Neil, of course, is reckless. David is pierced David. Just swap them around. I'm Onur Roscoe, no E. Of course, you can catch all the Samsung news and more, lots more, on theverge.com. Next week, we'll be back with an actual Verge cast with a full studio. We'll have Top Shelf on Thursday, 90 Seconds of Verge every single day. And right now, I'm gonna go pass out. Fall down. Fall down. S weird. S sleep. S weird. I don't know what you're gonna do. Let's go get a spirit.