Samsung's Hardware Haul
Week of July 8-July 12, 2024
On one hand, this week was a bit of defeat: I decided to let myself off the hook for Friday’s Techsploder Podcast. COVID fallout had me feeling pretty exhausted, and by Wednesday it felt like the right call to make. On the other hand, freeing myself from that episode allowed me to bang out some serious script action. I currently have around 12 different video ideas in various stages of completion, and it feels great to be ahead of the curve. Setting the Techsploder Podcast aside for a week allowed me to get serious about writing with the intention of getting ahead of the curve. Hopefully, this means some regular video cadence outside of my usual podcast routine over the coming few months. And I have some really neat hardware being shipped my way as well, so I’m going to be BUSY very soon. Apologies for the missing Techsploder Podcast this week, but I’m telling you: It was the right move!
Samsung Unpacked 2024 - Live Coverage (Z Fold 6, Z Flip 6, Galaxy Ring, Galaxy AI)
This week, Samsung held its Summer Unpacked event in Paris with a live stream for "the rest of us." When it comes to the sheer amount of hardware, Samsung delivered the goods, though none of it was particularly groundbreaking or even unexpected. The many leaks leading up to the event made sure of that. But Samsung certainly showed its strength in coordinating a release for its next wave of top-tier hardware with all of its announced hardware shipping to customers in two weeks. Yes, some of the hardware announced shares design notes with some Apple products. But again, it’s not like these devices are on an island all their own. Everything in this space is derivative at this point, so it doesn’t really bother me THAT much.
Ron Richards and I did live-streaming coverage of the announcement on the Techsploder YouTube channel. Then, a few days ago, the video was set to private thanks to a copyright claim. Of course, what Ron and I were doing was clearly fair use as it was our commentary that transformed the Samsung livestream into something new. But setting that aside, I’ll never understand why a company like Samsung would want to delist videos that are clearly doing its marketing work for them. We brought the announcements to new eyes and we added value in commentary. But sure, go ahead and deactivate the video that helps spread your message. Good going, Samsung. Though, its almost certainly the work of a bot in this case.
Anyway, moments ago it was re-activated for public viewing (though not monetizable). Hooray!
Tech News Weekly #334 - Samsung's Galaxy Ring and Watch Ultra
If you would rather watch a recap of the event instead of the whole dang thang, check out my interview with Mikah Sargent on Tech News Weekly! We talk about every piece of hardware announced at the event, the design similarities with Apple products, and why wearing a Ring to bed to track sleep is probably way better than wearing a chonky watch to the dreamland. I always enjoy hanging with my pals at TWiT.
Android Faithful #52 - Taco Tri-Fold
It’s good to be back, baby! After being gone from Android Faithful for a full month, I jumped back in the deep end as we got to talk all about Nothing’s new CMF brand, low cost, somewhat modular, and unique looking design through and through. I hope I can score a few of these devices in the coming weeks to give the review treatment.
The biggest part of this episode is reading the tea leaves. Setting the Samsung future-telling aside (since the event haven’t the following morning), we had major spoilers about the Pixel 9, a Huawei tri-fold device (a form factor I’m not convinced has any real legs outside of being a peculiar one-up), and a whole host of OnePlus devices set to be released imminently… Like, in two days! Surely we will discuss that news on the coming week’s episode so don’t miss it!
AI Inside #25 - Tracking Local Government with LocalLens
Jeff Jarvis was out this week, so I invited Matt Post, co-creator of LocalLens on the show to talk to me about an idea that definitely hits home in the Howell household. LocalLens is a service that monitors the many different sources of information that can be found at local government meetings, town halls, and more. This kind of information can be difficult to organize, but it’s out there. In fact, in many ways, local government is the kind of government that we, the little people, have the most chance to influence with our involvement. My wife sits on a few committees here in Petaluma and I’ve witnessed firsthand just how important these decisions can be to the city at large, and it’s people like her who want to be more involved who get to help shape what happens on a local level.
LocalLens uses AI to organize all of the data from these kinds of meetings and makes it all searchable. This way, you and I don’t have to find the live stream of that one Parks and Recreation meeting that piques our interest, we can use the power of AI and its organizational prowess to find exactly what we need and when. Not only that, there are too many of these meetings for journalists to visit every single one. That coupled with the fact that there is PLENTY of actual important news to be found at these meetings makes LocalLens a powerful service for the health of democracy and the press. Definitely check out our conversation!