 you you you you you Hello. Welcome to Circuit Breaker Live, the Verge's Gadget Show. Hello. Welcome to Circuit Breaker Live, the Verge's Gadget Show. It's a show where we play with gadgets all the time. I am Eli Patel. This is Paul Miller. Hello. We have a packed show. Dan Seifert's standing right here. I'm here. But wait for Dan. We have a packed show. I'm going to tell you all about it. Dan, we're going to talk about the DOSDS9, which is here. Dami is going to join us. We've got a bunch of new kinds of wacky musical instruments to play with. Paul, it just says you're going to teach me how to type. That's right. That's exactly what it says. Which feels insulting. It's very confusing. You've got a lot to learn, Eli. Jake and Ashley are going to do Ask Circuit Breaker. We've also got some videos to run in the middle. Very exciting. Some surprises. Segments? Segments, you might call them. Is that what those are called? Packages? The pros call them packages. We're going to listen to our IFBs through our IEMs. But first, we are going to talk about the GS9, which is, as we said last week, came out last week at Mobile World Congress in Spain. Dan did our hands-on video with the launch. Now you've got them. I got them. So I think we're on the top-down camera here, right? I want to play a game with you, the YouTube audience. I'll take this pixel out of the way. These are Galaxy S9s and Galaxy S8s. I want you to type to me in this chat that S9s are physically located. These are the small ones. These are the big ones. The pluses and the regulars. The pluses and the regulars. The S9s are on one side, and the S8s are on the other side. Just type left or right which ones you think the S9s are. Wait, they're left? You have to guess. I'm saying, if you're looking at the screen... Yeah, just type left or right. I'm looking at the top-down. Okay, they're left as are left. Paul, can you tell the difference? So you just vote in the chat here. Type left or right. Left or right. Which ones do you think the 9s are? Neil and Dan won't let me flip them. Yeah, we can't flip them because it's printed on the back. What I can see is that some of these phones have extra little icons. Like this one is like a weather, but also it looks like it's like a link. Like maybe you connect to the cloud with that button. I don't know. So I'm assuming new phone, more feature, that the ones with the icons, so therefore the two left ones are S9s. That is my current theory. I'm going to say that asking people to pick a 50-50 choice has resulted in a 50-50 split. Oh, really? Most people are saying left. Okay. That's what I... Now most people are saying right. Okay. Oh, man, this is crazy. Okay. Dan. They're saying the opposite of what I'm saying. Dan. Several people are saying... What is the truth? The truth is from this side, they look virtually identical. Dan, can you tell us? So there are minor differences. All right. So to give the answer, so Paul, I'm sorry, buddy. That was super wrong. You chose the S8s. S8s on the left. S9s were on the right. S9s are on the right. All you left voters. So, well, you didn't... I mean, like they basically do look exactly the same. There are some really minor differences at the top. You can see the S8. You can see more of the front sensors. They like blacked them out more on the S9. Samsung calls this more immersive. I call it they did a better job. See, I thought maybe like more sensors on the S9. Well, there's the same amount of sensors. That's the other thing. It's like technology-wise, they're basically the same. They're the same amount of sensors. You just can't see them as easily on the S9. They're hidden on the S9. And then the other difference, which I don't know if you can really tell from your angle anyways, but the S9 has a matte finish on the metal frame, and the S8s are glossy. So that's really the only front difference. And then the other one, I should say, also the speaker grill on the S9 is a single slot, and the S8 had this like multi-hole grill. But the S9 has stereo, right? But the S9 has stereo, which just means that it uses the earpiece speaker as a speaker in conjunction with the bottom speaker, just like the iPhone does, HTC does, a bunch of phones do that now. One of my favorite features of iPhones. It's great. Yeah, it's like the fact that Samsung didn't have this until now is kind of surprising. Like they're actually catching up. It does sound really good. One very important distinction on the back, correct? So on the back, on the smaller models, the big distinction is the movement of the fingerprint sensor was up on the camera, by the camera on the S8. It's now down below on the S9. And then on the S9 Plus, you get a second camera. So you get two cameras like you found on the Note 8 last year. Two for the price of one, you might say. Well, sure, except that you pay more for this. No? You literally pay more for the second camera. No, you're paying for the larger screen, and you get a free extra camera. Sure. So, people ask us questions in the chat about these phones. We're going to start going through them. Number one question, I've got some tweets here. This surface just hates me today. But the number one question we got was about the cameras. How they work, if they're better. Yeah, so let's take those essays away. This is garbage. What's interesting to me, and we were talking on the show last week, they now have a mechanical aperture. So this can step down from, it can close the aperture. It's wide open at 1.5, f1.5, which is brighter than any other smartphone camera I think we've seen. And then it can stop down to 2.4, which is right on the edge of the lens. So actually the way it works by default is the opposite. It starts at 2.4, and then Samsung software will open it up to 1.5 based on automatic settings. But that's a hardware thing that happens. That is a physical hardware switch. You can see, we're going to try and show you guys this on camera, but we were having a little trouble focusing this earlier. Right now it is wide open. Let me open up the camera app. Because if you go to the Pro Mode, you can alter this. So it is wide open now. Paul, let me know when you're ready. Yeah, if only I had manual focus on my camera. And I'm just toggling between them now. Put something there so I can help them focus. Yeah, Samsung, if you're listening, it's very hard to take photos with these. Glossy black. Okay, I see it. You can see it switching. Wait, which is which? That's closed? So this is closed, and now it's open. Yes. Closed, open. It's almost like a filter is dropped in. You can't actually do any of the apertures in between 1.5 and 2.4. It's one or the other. To be fair, my mechanical lenses, it's not like you can pick a range between 1.8 and 2.2. Sure you can. Well, no, but 1.5 and 2.4 is roughly a full stop in terms of light, in terms of photography. So a lot of lenses will give you third stops in between. Anyways, that's kind of tangential. The point is this gives you more options than any other phone on the market. What's this for? So Samsung says that because the f1.5 lens lets in so much more light than the 1.7 on last year's phone, sometimes when you're outside in really bright conditions, it's too much light, and so you close it down, you let less light in, you get a better exposure. Which is backwards of how most people talk about aperture. Why don't they just crank the ISO? So what most phones would do in a bright situation, what the S8 does, what the Pixel does, et cetera, they're just going to increase the shutter speed. So the shutter's open for a shorter amount of time, and you get the same exposure even in bright light. The other thing that a smaller aperture can do is give you a little bit greater depth of field or more area in focus. But with phone sensors, they're so small, you already have so much in focus already, there's really not much of a difference. So our friend Walt Mossberg tweeted at me earlier today, why do the side-by-side test photos I've seen show so little difference between the two fixed aperture settings? So part of that is the depth of field is really not that much different. And we've got a couple examples I think we can pull up. You can notice an exposure. So if you guys can see this, this is shot at f1.5. I don't remember the exact shutter or aperture off the top of my head. You can go over there and point some stuff out. So you can see this is shot at f1.5. If we could switch to the 2.4, the next photo. Now this is shot at f2.4 with the same shutter speed and the same ISO. And you can see that it's much darker because you have 2.4, lets in much less light. So it's about one stop of difference. So you held all the settings constant and just switched the aperture? Just switched the aperture for that. Okay, so if we go to the next photo. So this is at 1.5 again. This is with automatic ISO and automatic shutter speed. So what you would notice here is that this part is pretty blurred out. This is pretty blurred out in the background and things like that. But it's sharp up front. And if we go to the next photo, it's a little bit more detailed. It's like the tiniest bit. The tiniest bit. So this is shot at f2.4 with automatic ISO and automatic shutter speed. So the camera compensated for the smaller aperture by raising its ISO or sensitivity. Can we go back one photo? Yeah, let's toggle back. So what's interesting to me, so most, when you think about shooting in low light, you want that wide open aperture to let in more light. Let in more light. So you can have a fast shutter speed, it's not blurry. Exactly. Samsung is saying literally the opposite here. Well, they're saying it's bright. The mechanical aperture is to knock it down in bright light. Yeah, it's funny that they're pitching it that way. Because if you use the camera in automatic mode, it defaults to the f2.4 aperture and only opens it up when it needs to. Whereas most automatic cameras are going to open up the lens as far as they can go and only close it down when they need to, like you were saying. But the camera works a little backwards in automatic mode, which is kind of weird. And then the other thing I would say, if we can take this full screen, I just want everyone to look at this photo. It's hard, I know on YouTube there's all kinds of compression happening. But if you just look at this photo, it still, to my eye, looks like a Samsung photo. And Samsung photos, we've now done so many photo comparisons. You can just see it, they're hyper-processed, they're a little bit more crisp. They do all kinds of processing to smooth things out. The noise on this is really good. This was indoors at a coffee shop, obviously. It's not the best light in the world. But this is at f1.5 and the noise reduction is really good. That's one of the things that Samsung worked on this year is to reduce the noise. But it still, like you said, has that Samsung look. And I think a lot of that has to do with the way it processes things, the way the color is rendered mostly. And certain times that Samsung look looks great. Certain portraits look really nice with that. And other times it's different. I don't have a pixel comparison here. How is it doing with skin? One of the Samsung problems is sometimes we'll just smooth over skin. So on the rear camera, it doesn't do that as much. On the front camera, by default, it smooths your skin out. You can turn it off, but by default it's going to totally make up your face basically. So we should talk about the front cameras too. Because the back cameras are real interesting. Ruben in the chat is asking, Pixel 2 XL or Galaxy S9 regarding the front facing? So the interesting thing about the front facing camera is exactly the same as last year. It's the same 8 megapixel camera. It has autofocus. It's basically the only camera on the market that has autofocus on the front. And it does have a portrait mode, but it's not as good as the Pixel 2s or even the iPhone X in my opinion. But you can see, if we can switch to the front cameras. What am I doing? There's an AR emoji mode, man. Selfie. So by default, it will adjust your skin tone and adjust the color. I'm so too charged. Let me just add it for... And so it'll... I don't like the front camera. I really don't. It really can really butcher your skin. And then it has what they call selfie focus, which is their portrait mode on the front. So would you say overall, you've only had it for a few days, but it seems largely the same with the addition of a wide angle lens and slightly better low light performance. It's like an S8.5. I mean, it's the iPhone 6S, right? It's the iPhone 8. It's the same design. It's got the same internals with newer, more modern stuff. They added a few things that you don't have on the prior model, but it looks the same. It feels the same. If you close your eyes, it's like you're using the same phone. Vishal in the chat just pointed out... Also focused on your camera. No notch. No notch. Samsung, one of the few manufacturers this year, going with this symmetrical design... No notch and a headphone jack. And a headphone jack. So you don't need this in your... Phone to get. You can just take these and throw them to hell. Get out of here. I feel like my decision hasn't been made. Why would I get any other phone in the world if they're not going to have a headphone jack? I mean, the S8, I will say, the S7 and the S8, well, the S8 I think was prettier, minus the fingerprint sensor. I think they set a standard for phone design. Apple had to meet that with the X. They did it, notch aside. But no one else is close. Even the Pixel. This is a smaller Pixel. This isn't taking nearly as good. It's not just design, it's like the level of fit and finish are really nice too. It's a very well-polished, well-made device. This is something important to me because I do kind of want, I'm kind of looking for an Android phone. I want a smaller phone. And the Pixel 2 is notoriously bezel, forehead-inch and heavy. Big forehead size means all five of them. The metric everyone is insisting that we now use... Oh, yes. Is screen-to-body ratio. Yes. Which makes me want to die. What's your screen-to-body ratio? It's a little bit too much, my friend. Too low, it's something. So great, it's beautiful hardware. The camera is a Samsung camera. People, if you like it, you're going to love it. It's going to be an improver. If you're like me, I think the iPhone and the Pixel are just a little bit nicer. It really comes down to the look. And if you didn't like the look before, you're not going to like it now. It's like an aesthetic choice. But here's what we always say about Samsung phones. Great hardware, most features. But you stick around for Bixby. Run in the software, and it's just the same as ever. There's two web browsers, there's two email clients, there's two messaging apps, there's two assistants. Two web browsers, two app stores, two gallery apps, two email apps, two payments apps, things like that. And certain things are better than Google's. Like Samsung's internet browser, I've been saying for a while, is better. Samsung Pay is better than Android Pay. But the point is, most of them are not better, and then you have to have both. So it's a whole bunch of folder of Google apps, and a whole folder of Samsung apps. It's nice that you can corral them like that, but they're shit better. And then we've got to talk about it. Two assistants on the phone. And two assistants, right. One of which is mapped to a hardware button. There it is. There's the Bixby button. I'm a Bixby person. Okay, so this is Bixby, what is this called? This is called the Bixby Home, which is basically like Google Now. By the way, Vlad Savov, one of our great reporters, editors, said, the Bixby button is hardware bloatware. That's where he's at with Bixby. Tell us what they're trying to do. Is Bixby unimproved? So it's gotten a little bit of a facelift. It's a little nicer to look at, but who cares. And it's slightly faster, but it's still slow. And then in the camera app, Bixby Vision, they call it, where is that, has gotten a couple of new features. You can do makeup with it, which is kind of crazy. Oh yeah, I saw this. So you can do like different, oh, there I am. Oh, pretty. And then I can like buy that makeup directly from Sephora. Of course. Are you kidding me? Because why else would it exist? Wait, go back to the makeup. I want to see that. There we go. You can do different looks. Honestly, I would use this. This is great. Yeah, so there's that. You know, it's got some text things or whatever, but for the most part, it's still Bixby. It's still weird. It's still slower than Google Assistant. So let's just try this. It's voice to text is not as good. And its whole thing is that it can actually operate the phone for you. It's supposed to be able to operate the phone for you. So you can be like, turn Wi-Fi off. And it opens its settings. Oh, nice. Turn Wi-Fi on. Great. Turn Wi-Fi on. And then Dan was showing me earlier, we can just tweet from his account. Let's not do that. Open Twitter and tweet, I love Bixby. It's my favorite. That's not great. Oh, it got five experience points. It didn't do that at all. So that's like the greater pitch of Bixby is that it can go into your apps and do things. It's key to your voice, right, Dan? It has been trained on my voice. Dan, you do a tweet about how much fun you're having being on the show. All right. Here's some ideas. My good friends, Paul and Eli, they're great to hang out with. Dan. Just do the tweet. Open Twitter and tweet, I love Paul and Eli. Great. Is it ever going to get your name? Nope. Paul, enable great. Yes, it is. Everything. Oh, there you go. Wait, it just says, I love Paul, enable great. Yes. Yes. Okay. So there's a part, I was expecting to hate Bixby. There's a part of me that says it's like it can do more things. It actually controls the phone in the app. My big problem with it is that it's slower than just the phone. It's easier to open Twitter and just type that out. And here's the other problem. I'm just going to be real with everybody. Every time I hear the word Bixby, this is a high-end, beautiful, polished device, and the assistant is named Bixby, which literally makes me think of a dog wearing shoes who is a butler. It's like a clippy. It's like Samsung's clippy. It's like a joke that we've been telling on the VirgChats forever, and last week I asked people to send me pictures of a dog wearing shoes, and our producer, Creighton, literally started a Tumblr, BixbyShoes.tumblr.com, and we have a lot of fan art of Bixby. Here's, who's this one? This is, I don't have a name on this one. Here's one. This is great. Paul, here's your cheater-ass submission. Yeah, I didn't draw anything. Is that okay? It's just a really good photo. It's a good photo. This is my favorite by far. Ricky tweeted this one of me. This one looks like he opened a door that's a phone. I like the tongue. I think he's walking out of a smart Samsung refrigerator. Yeah, that's great. This one's pretty good. He's holding a tray that says stuff. And then this last one, this is great. So here's the art. This is from Cameron on Twitter, but then he showed us his process, which is a video, which the dog is part of the logo. It's a real tall dog. It's a real toss up. You tell me who should win the prize. We have a clear winner. Is it Cameron? Yeah, yeah. Not only did he do a great job, but he showed his work. He showed his work. Like I cheated. You definitely cheated. I have to say I'm more impressed with Bixby than I expected to be, but I would prefer to just turn it off. Yeah, so you can turn it off now. You can actually go into settings. You can turn off what they call Bixby Home, but you can also turn off the buttons. So now the button does nothing. But you want to remap the button. A camera or something? Natively, no. There are apps in the Play Store that you can download and will let you remap it until Samsung pushes an update and then it breaks and you have to do that whole dance again. But Samsung does not give you a native way to remap it, so it just basically becomes a fidget button. Oh, yeah. But between this and the Pixel and the fourth coming Pixel, those feel like the only Android phones playing. Everybody else is doing bad, weird notches. There's a lot of notches out there. So I'm not going to buy an Android phone with a notch. I understand why. Well, maybe I would if this wasn't so good, but this does seem to be a very good phone. It's an excellent phone. It's just loaded with Samsung software. You've got to decide if they're good or not. The other thing is that you can't rely on Samsung until you get the next version of Android anytime soon. I'm going to get this name wrong. I apologize. Johan in the chat says, is the iris scanner comparable to the S8? Is it quicker or the same? So same. They do have a new feature that they call intelligence scan, which combines iris scanning with their face scanning function and will determine which one to use based on your conditions. It's very obvious they're trying to ape face ID, but it's still slow, still kind of clumsy and awkward. But thankfully, the fingerprint scanner is easier to use. You still have the fingerprint scanner, so I'm not totally like, you know. What about Samsung's Animoji? They're real bad. Let's look at these real quick and then we've got to... So they're called AR Emoji, and that is supposedly me. Is that you? I believe it. It doesn't use any special tech. It's just using the front face and camera. So you can see the tracking is pretty bad. You look kind of sleepy. And I look very sleepy here. Let's do one of those. That's some like uncanny valley shit. Yeah, it's just creepy, and the tracking is really bad and things like that. Here's Ashley. I can be Ashley. I think Ashley's looks way better than mine. Yours looks like a real jerk. Well, I guess that's very real. It turns out. And then they've got these weird animals. I don't think they're a jerk, Dan. No, this one is, but that one is like a stoned, angry rabbit. Wait, do the weird. This one... What? What is that? I think it's a bear. I don't know. I've got yours up here. So here's what I was going to say about this. An evil cat. Compared to what Apple's doing with Animoji, which is a very restricted inside of messages, Animoji are not in the camera app on the iPhone, right? It's inside of messages. Correct. It's really hard to get out of messages. This is just in the camera app. Yeah, so I can take a picture. It's a more recorded video. I think you'll see more of this crazy machinima stuff. Yeah, it's just easier to get out of the phone. It's really annoying how... People are like creeped out by it. Locked down Animoji is. So then the other thing that it does is it creates all these reaction gifs based on... Like it creates your Animoji and then it makes a whole palette of reaction gifs. This is like bitmoji. It's basically not. I don't... It's like pure Samsung nonsense. There's a nonsense division at Samsung. Okay, Pixar's got a new movie coming out and it's about parachute sports people, right? And so a studio rushes to market and does a direct to DVD release of their fake knockoff parachute sports people movie. I call this stuff Samsung couldn't help itself. All right. I'm just so ecstatic. We're going to take a break from the S9 for a minute. At the very end of the show, Dan's going to come back. We're going to take your phone calls. Which is going to be dangerous and weird. On the S9. No. It's going to be great. You're going to do a good job. Call us with your questions at the end of the show. Dan will be back to answer those questions. I'm excited to see how that goes. Next, Paul, I am told that you ruined one of Dan's computers. I made a video about it. Here's my big fear. I don't like to do pranks on people because I don't want to be pranked. And I broke my own rule, but Dan was really chill about it. So please watch this video of mustard on the laptop is what I'm calling it. Watch this. We'll be back with that circuit breaker. Hello. I'm Paul Miller. Welcome. Okay. Dell says its new XPS 13 won't be stained by mustard or permanent marker. Guess who got a Dell XPS 13 today? Dan Seifer. And guess who has mustard? I have mustard. Dan's at lunch. Look at this beautiful laptop. Be ashamed of somebody put mustard on it. I'm so scared of shaking it. A little bit there. A little bit there. Okay. Just going to smudge it around just a little bit. I don't want to ruin the laptop. Just a little bit of mustard. Look at that. Beautiful. Dan will never know. Nobody has to tell Dan what just happened. Hmm. Just comes right off. Not even a problem. Get all the mustard. Okay. Well, that was the scariest thing I've ever done in my life. Oh, yeah. And nobody has to know. Okay? All right. I'm here with the world's bravest human, Ashley Carman. Ashley thinks I should leave the mustard on the laptop. You definitely should leave the mustard on the laptop. What if Dan hurts me? It would be funny. You would like that. Okay. Okay. So I just put the mustard on and just walk away? Yes. Okay. All right. This is how peer pressure works. You just do what other people tell you to do. Look at that. So clean. It's like I never even put mustard on it. Mustard. Oh, gosh. That's the gross. That's the grossest thing. Oh, my God. Before you sit down. It's kind of gross. Wait. How do you feel? How do you feel? I'm honestly a little grossed out. It's disgusting, right? Why? It's filthy. Do you guys think it'll stain? Here you go. This is going super well. At least it's not ketchup. Because that stinks. So put it in the del. This white texture finish on the XPS 13 is mustard proof. And now I'm regretting telling Paul that for obvious reasons. It's on the internet. Anybody can read it. How long was this mustard here? Just a few minutes. What kind of mustard are we looking at here? No, no, no, no, no, no. We need to leave this for like an hour. I got work to do. It's too bad. You're supposed to be able to leave it on for up to a week. Well, you know, in the few minutes it's been here, I see no issues. Goodbye. This is so gross. I apologize, Del. But you guys did this to yourselves. So Dan, are you not mad at me? I'm never mad at you, Paul. Aw, thanks, Dan. Do you want to have a little mustard hug? This is what true camaraderie and friendship looks like, everybody. And smells like mustard. Smells disgusting. That was beautiful content. Truly beautiful. I'm an enabler, and I feel good about it. What other laptops are we going to put mustard on? We should just put it on every laptop. That should be our test, the Virgis signature laptop test. The mustard test. Yeah, mustard test. Essential. All right. Now it's your time for the best part of the whole show, right? It's Ask Circuit Breaker. So we premiered this, what, a couple weeks ago? And now we're on our third week. We're here. Last week you asked us many questions. We picked them out. One of the questions we have is actually a demand. We'll get to it though. And we want you to keep asking us questions. So please tweet at us. You can leave comments on the YouTube video. Go for it in the chat. You can go on Instagram. We have so many places you can reach us. Just send us a message. Ask us a question. Jake and I are here. We're here to answer your questions. Preferably nicely, but, you know. Yeah. We take questions in any form. It's true. All right. So our first demand, or actually complaint, is that last week we talked about the Nintendo Switch and various accessories. We didn't end up getting to the cases. And I'm sorry about that. But I've brought a couple cases here with me today to explain to you how you should look for a Nintendo Switch case. So I own a Nintendo Switch. And I actually don't have a case. But that's just because I'm a rebel and I don't respect my gadgets and it's fine. Live Dangerous. I've carried it around without a case in my backpack and just let it kind of jostle around in this. Like, don't do that. Just don't do that. So I polled a couple of my coworkers who are way more responsible than me, particularly Creighton, who is our show producer. And he recommended this case, the Unique Hard Shell Case. I've actually taken this case to Mexico with me before. He let me borrow it during a family vacation. So thanks, Creighton. The thing to note about this case, and I think the reason Creighton chose it, is one, it has this hard shell so it's protective. Also, it has a sleeve here where you can put different game cards. And there's a pocket so you can keep a massive battery, which is what Creighton does. Or a Joy-Con or whatever else you want to keep in the pocket. I will say that while this is protective, it has lots of room, it is massive and pretty much took up my entire carry-on. So, you know, if you have space, go for it. But if you don't have space, I talked to Chris Welch, a news editor here at The Verge. And he has this case from a company called Tom Talk that's the Commuter Slim Case. It's way thinner, but it's a little hard, but definitely not as hard as the Unique one. You'll see in here there's no pockets. That's what it's missing. It does have a little game card slot here, but there's no place for you to keep a battery, really. His switch is in here right now. So, the key things I think you'll want to look for if you're looking for a case is that pocket, if it's important to you, if you think you're going to carry external batteries or something like that. Or if you plan on carrying Joy-Cons. If not, if you're just purely a Commuter, you're on the train or something like that, maybe you just want a slim case that's light and easy to carry around. So we have both options for you here. That case looks fantastic for just throwing it in your bag. Yeah, this is great. This is definitely what I would go with. That's what I would be worried about. Yeah, this is what I would go with, purely to keep your screen protected. I would never carry it. I can't keep things charged. It's like the Pelican case of Switch. It's huge. It's massive. So next we have a pair of questions about Android Go. Android Go is Google's new stripped down version of Android. It's meant for phones that are really low end, like under $100. It came out on a bunch of phones last week. And we've got a couple questions. The first is whether Go apps are available on other phones. And so part of Android Go is it's not just the operating system. It also is bundled with a whole bunch of apps that are supposed to be optimized for lower end hardware so that they'll run better. And the answer is sort of yes and no. Some of the apps are available. Some are not. The good news is that two of my favorite apps are available. The first one is Files Go. You can download this on any phone, and you really should. It's like basically the file explorer that Google should have included with Android but didn't. It recommends files for you to delete, and it just is a really easy way to look through all the images, songs, and so on on your device that you have probably forgotten about. So this is really great. The other one is called Datali. And it's not strictly a Go app, but it's going to be on some Go phones. And it's made by the same team inside Google that makes the Go apps. And this one is for tracking your data usage. It lets you quickly see how much each of your different apps are using up. It lets you lock them so you can say, I don't want Instagram to use any data right now, and it'll only work over Wi-Fi. It is really easy to use. It's another good one if you're trying to make sure that your device doesn't use up too much stuff. So the other question we had is why isn't Google just making all of its apps optimized so they run faster? And I think that's a really good question because, you know, some apps get really, really heavy. But the reason why Google hasn't done this with all of its apps is because some of the, you know, it is optimizing them, but optimize is like a really big, broad word. And so in some cases, that means stripping features out. If you try Maps Go, which you can download on any device, it's just like Google Maps, but worse. You just should not download it. But if you try Google Go, you'll find a completely different experience because it's been customized for different markets where people are just coming online and the search box looks basically as foreign as a command line. So you're going to get different experiences in different places. The only unfortunate thing is I wish that YouTube Go was available in other areas. I think that's another reason that you're not seeing these expanded. YouTube Go has some of the paid features that you find in YouTube Red. So I'm sure there's sort of a monetary thing in there, too. That's it for us. Be sure to send us more questions for next week. And now over to Dami with some musical calculators. Hello. Hey. Dami's here, everybody. She has more than musical calculators. You have like a selection of crazy new instruments. I have so many fun, wacky musical instruments I want to show you guys. I'm going to save musical calculators for last. Save the best for last. But we're going to start with the Atama tone. I think a lot of people might recognize this. This has been around since 1998, which is kind of surprising. I've never seen one of these in my life. Okay. Does this sound familiar to you now? Sounds like a nightmare. Okay. So this is created by a Japanese design firm. Is this a muscle game? Yes. He's got a little face like he's saying hello to you. But yeah, we have a picture of Mewa Denki, the Japanese design firm behind the Atama tone. And that's them right there. They're super dope, as you can see. Can you buy a full-size one? I don't think you can buy that one. But the Atama tone is available in different sizes and colors. I think they have like little keychain versions of it. So can you play a song on this? I personally cannot. You can try if you want to. But there's three, you can play it in three different pitches. So you can set it to low, mid, or high. High is like kind of a little bit obnoxious. So I'm going to set this to mid. And I'm going to hand this over to you and maybe you can play a little song for us. I know you were practicing a little bit earlier. I have to say the face on that thing, and I say this with all the love in my heart, when the mouth is closed, the face just reminds me of Dieter. I don't know why. It's like half smiling, but it's still kind of like disappointed in you. Oh, yeah, okay, I see that. Yeah. I think it's cute. Diamond in the sky. There you go. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. Just two hours of rehearsal before the show, everybody. But you are. So can you modulate the tone? You can like do vibrato with your fingers a little bit. It's horrible. Just do that. All right, take this away from me. Okay, so let's put this away. And think about the last time that somebody invented a new instrument, like straight up just invented like an analog instrument. So that's what Yamaha did last year with the Vinnova. This is like a cross between a recorder and a saxophone. And they like to market it as a casual wind instrument. As you can see on the screen there, you can just take it out to picnics like on the go. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What makes it casual? Is it easy to play or is it like low maintenance? It's like super lightweight. It's like made of plastic, I think. So it's waterproof. You put it in the rain if you want. Take it anywhere. That just looks like he's carrying a duck. Go back to that one. This one is weird because she's like, you suck at the Vinnova. This one is carrying a duck. Yeah. I don't know that you want to just roll around like that. Throw it in your purse. You never know when someone's going to ask you to play the Vinnova. Yeah. I personally, I don't know how Yamaha did offer to send someone who knew how to play. But you, Crate and our producer was like, we got it. You have to do it. Let's see. Okay. I'm going to try this. I'm so embarrassed. You got it. I will say that it does sound like me trying to play the saxophone. There we go. Whoa. Okay. So I'm going to put that down. I'm really impressed that you went for it. Okay. So I've never played the reed instrument before in my life, but yeah, this uses like a synthetic plastic reed. If you play like a clarinet or saxophone, you should be able to pick this up pretty easily. But they have a lot of- You can take it to the beach and you're back. Yeah. Just on the go. It's whatever. And people are like, is that a duck? And you're like, no. And then you whip out a Vinnova. So how much is it? This is $99, which I think is a pretty good price. It's like disposable. I don't want to necessarily call it that. Yamaha introduces the disposable saxophone. Well, like- It's lightweight. No pressure. That's amazing. But yeah, I'm really excited to get to these. These go calculators. I ordered these from AliExpress. These are my personal calculators. It's the AR7778. You can also order it on Amazon for 20 bucks. But everything's in Chinese, so I had a little bit of trouble figuring it out. Weren't you saying you found these from some YouTuber? Yes. I found this on a YouTuber called It's a Small World, and this person is like a master at it. She was playing four calculators at a time. She was playing like the Super Mario theme song. So thank you to her for being my inspiration. I think I've seen this video and it is absolutely amazing. It's amazing. So. Wow. Okay, so you can play like almost two octaves. As you can see, the time and date is here. Is it 2005 right now? Yeah. So it's a little bit behind. Maybe that's when it was made. Let's all just take, everybody close your eyes and remember January 1, 2005. But yeah. The full throat of youth. What was happening? I have no idea what I was doing. I was in high school. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, you can also use this as an alarm clock so you can wake up to the sweet sounds of a calculator. I also want to point out that every time you put in batteries, it plays this jaunty tune. Oh my. This is a really intense calculator. Is it meant to be a calculator or is it supposed to be an instrument? I think it's a little bit of both. Can you do math with it? Yeah, you can absolutely do that. This is like for accountants with dreams. They sneak into work and like, I just bring in my regular work tools in. Important note on that. Is there a headphone jack? No. Disappointing. Just, yeah. All right. So it goes on for a really long time. I will be taking your requests in the chat. You have some sheet music here? Yeah, I came with sheet music from Holy Express. It was just a bunch of numbers. No way. Yeah. It's a lot. It's a lot of songs. Any songs that you might recognize? I don't know. Maybe people who can read Chinese in the comments can tell us. But yeah, they gave us a lot of different songs. There's one with a lot of 666's. Oh, okay. That's the devil's music. Right now it's in a mode where it's just playing numbers in Chinese. Yeah. So you have to kind of play around with it. And now we're back to the songs. It's pretty good. It's like Jingle Bells. Yeah, that's kind of how I was going with it. Only I don't know how to play the calculator. But you do. Yeah, so I can play Smash Mouth. All right. All star. I've never been more excited. Oh, wait. So you've labeled this one? Yeah. So this one, I'm really trying to learn this. I labeled it with my Post-it notes. I'm going to try playing it right now. Yeah. Wow. That's great. I just want to do that one part with all the do's. Yeah. You guys are not really into tune. They're not tuned together at all. Just like grab a friend and you can. By the way, Rashad, request Sandstorm. How does that one go? It's like. Oh, shoot. Dobby just broke out Sandstorm on a calculator. All right. What's next? What's next? We got One Hotel California, which is obvious that people would ask. Oh. Wait, we got more. We got more people. Cliffs of Dover. And then Funky Town is in here. Whoa. Dobby. Dobby's too good. She's going to quit her career as a professional calculator player. I'm taking this opportunity to announce that I'm leaving my job. I'm going to become a musical calculator. I would like to tell everybody at The Verge that if you are going to quit, the way to do it is to show up on the show and announce your future career as a calculator. I'm shocked at my hidden talent. That was amazing. I can't believe you got Sandstorm. Sandstorm is incredible. Wait, how much are these? These are 10 bucks on Aliexpress? 10 bucks on Aliexpress if you're willing to wait three weeks. 20 on Amazon. And then what's the channel that you should check out to watch people freaking out on? Oh, It's a Small World on YouTube. I've seen that video. It's incredible. Also, I saw somebody do a duet with himself with this Disney covers. Oh, yeah. That was really inspiration. Yeah, Polly Vaughn's video editor is really good at playing the Vinnova. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That was incredible. Thank you so much, Dami. If you don't know, Ashley actually hosts a great podcast called Why'd You Push That Button with Kaitlin Tiffany, who's also on The Verge team. They did a first season of 10 episodes, which you can go listen to right now. Their second season started today, and we have a little trailer for it. So we're going to watch that. We're going to come back, and then Paul just keeps threatening to teach me how to type, which is something I already know how to do. Basically, the next Mavis Beacon. So watch this. We're going to come back. We're going to play some keyboards. Have you ever ghosted someone? No. So? I'm not proud of it. It's very immature of me. This is a pretty typical New York ghosting story. He was 10 minutes away on his way texting me, and he ghosted the shit out of me. I mean, yeah, it was fun. I had a nice time, but I mean, I don't know. That was really it. I wasn't really looking for a relationship or anything. This is really bad. I've ghosted a lot of people. He would text me, and then he would just keep texting me. And then at one point, I realized he was having a complete conversation with himself. We went on one date, and I thought the date went really well. So then when she ghosted, I was really confused. So I was like, OK, I don't really want a magician in my house. Boom, ghosted. I've never really let people do it to me, because I think it's a big part of my anxiety where I'm like, I always need to have an answer. Like, god damn it. So then he found me on Facebook, and then he found me on Instagram, and then he found me on LinkedIn. And then he was like, are you dead? Maybe something actually bad happened. Months into the relationship, he just dropped all ties. I've never really had a terrible date, or I've had so little respect for a person that I was just going to stop talking to them because I thought this isn't worth it. I realized I was completely incapable of telling people that I didn't want to see them again. I feel like there are tears to ghosting. First date, you're fine. Second date, I feel like maybe you can do it. Beyond that, I feel like you're in dangerous territory. I've been like minorly ghosted on before, and every time I'm just like sending them a message like, you know what, if you don't want to hang out, like that's cool. There's a lot of strategy involved. If you're wondering what to say, like I just didn't feel the spark, because that's kind of, it's not like a bad thing about them. Never gave in. Never gave in. I will not give in. Will not. Thanks. Why'd you push that button is my favorite podcast on this planet. And you must absolutely listen to it. Also, I have been a horrible ghost in the past. I'm so sorry. I just want I want you to feel like I ghosted you, but you went into this other emotional zone. No, I just didn't do the bit at all. That hit me really hard. Oh, you were ghosting me. I was trying to and then you were supposed to react. I never ghosted you. You just started apologizing to strangers. All right. What do you got here? Well, some tech bullshit. This is the tap. Tap strap. Sometimes it's called I think it's just called tap. It's a wearable. At the end of all this, we're gonna take your calls. Let's put the number on the screen. You have nine questions. Dan's gonna come back and we're gonna answer your questions from calls. What is it? 18444 emotion? Yeah, we'll see. Okay, I came up with that. This is the tap wearable keyboard. It's a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. The mouse part is not true. Yeah, but so you you tap to type. So like like this is a E I O U. There's different combinations of fingers like D M Z. So I'll do a little my current on my phone. Oops. We've already started. So this is like a little speed run. Just type in. Oh, how does this work? Is there like a virtual keyboard in front of you? Are you courting? It's chords. I'm making shapes with my hands. It's like almost like gestures a little bit, but they're taps. And so I've got to make the right hand shape. It's almost like sign language in a sense. Well, I got that one wrong. 11? That's not terrible. That's not that I'm in the double digits. Why would you want to do the very legit reason why is that like so I've got some some phones with keyboards. Remember there was a time when phones had keyboards. That's like a weird Android sidekick they made. Yeah, this is a very strange phone or Blackberry's. Remember Blackberry's. Anyways, you could feel what you were typing with a software keyboard. You can't. And so if you want to input text on your phone, you can always use your voice. But if you want a discrete way to input text mobilely. But what I'm really excited about is wearable computers like stuff like Google Glass or whatever the future holds for what we're going to actually wear on our face. And will we have discrete text input or will we always be using our voice? So this is obviously we're not going to do this joke. Fun fashion statement. I love this show. I think I was like 2008. OK, this is the twiddler keyboard. This is in a sense a very similar concept. You're making finger combinations to make the letters out of a limited set of keys. Also as a joystick for use as a mouse. And this was used by a lot of the wearable computing. I think we have a photo. Yeah. So right here. This is my personal hero, Fad Starter, who has been basically using a twiddler keyboard and a wearable computer since, I don't know, the 90s. This is Steve Mann. These are very, very, very important people. They're still working on wearable computing stuff. This is a photo from the 90s. Yes, that's very nice. I'm just looking at sort of the Birkenstock finish on the jeans over there. You know, people were saying the 90s are back. They're kind of right. This could totally be on my Instagram right now. OK, so anyways, this could be the keyboard that I've been looking for. Yeah, it's a tap keyboard. So I want you to try it out. Yeah, I'm into it. I'm going to teach you how to type. Since we've been teasing that this whole time. All right. So there you go. So you got some brass knuckles. All right, all right, all right. So you just go past the knuckle here? Yeah, all the way up here. It comes in two sizes and it's comical. You really need, this is the large and it's definitely too large for me. I'd like to announce that I will be in Avengers Infinity War. Oh, good. Good. OK, so here's a little tutorial. A-E-I-O So what you want to do is you're going to float your hand and then tap on the surface. One, two, three, four and five. OK, all right, all right. So then tap all five to proceed. There you go. OK. Why don't you come in? Put your hand right there. There you go. All right. It doesn't work perfectly. So this is one of my biggest problems with it. Now try to curve them when you tap. Curve them? Yeah. Oh, it works way better. So it's not like you're typing on a virtual keyboard. You're kind of making these gestures. But this tapping is very important. And sometimes because it's, you know, it's using motion detection to figure this out. Sometimes it doesn't quite figure it out. So I think this like learning system is amazing. And it built you like learn some of the letters at a time. It gives you mnemonics. You're doing it. How am I figuring this out already? It very quickly becomes. Here, let's let's do some new letters. You've got this one. So that's A-E-I-O-U. So let's do N-T-L-S. Basically, the more common letter is, the easier it is to do. Two fingers together. Tap fingers one and two. There's a songs. Really great songs. But the problem is really good positive reinforcement. You get it right and really good negative reinforcement. You get it wrong. But sometimes you make the correct shape. But you've just moved in some slightly incorrect way. And it can make it hard. It can make it kind of hard to learn. You got this space is all five fingers at once. It's the middle finger and ring finger. And period is a double space. Kind of like a mobile. So why would you? So this is like your. Oh, wait. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. Yeah. You getting it? Yeah. You getting it? I mean, that's annoying when it gets it wrong. It's weird how quickly that I seem to have learned this. Right. It just goes right into your brain. Yeah. So we're. Neela and I are both left handed. You can. You have to switch it with software to which hand it's going to be on. So if you learn it on the right hand, it's mirrored. So thumb is a index finger is a middle finger is I so forth. This is weird. It's weird how quickly. Well, oh, you type of words now. You're basically a typist. You can type words like lass, sass, mass. No, you can't do mass. I don't know how to do anything. I got that one. No, come on. Nailed it. All right. So how much is this thing? This is one hundred and fifty dollars. Yeah. And there's a bunch of different apps for for mobile. There's like they have games. They have this these learning apps like they've kind of reinforced both like the physical capability. And the actual typing capability. I mean, just that was weird that I figured out how to do that. You picked it up pretty quick. You ever watch me play a video game on the show? I'm usually bad at them. That was weird. Well, someone pointed out to me that in a sense, it's kind of like learning guitar chords. OK, because it is a cording keyboard in a sense. OK, I'm going to do the ultimate test. I'm going to try to type on my laptop. Yeah. And I'm also going to try to pair something on Bluetooth. We're going to get a sign that says days since last Bluetooth fail because we're at like one. Hey, hey, got it. OK, so there's a few things here. So like. These three fingers is delete. Return is kind of weird. They're enter. So I'm going to also really don't like how to type my name. So the P is kind of a weird shape. So P A U L is. So your idea is. Oops. Cool. Oh, G is a tough one. Is that what? Yep. Guy. So I've been practice for about a weekend. OK. I got on Friday. The idea here is that you wear a computer on your face and you. And I type. And you just walk up to service. Here's the thing. I'm using this hard surface. Right. On their commercial, they use it on a lot of soft surfaces like they're using it on like someone does it under a table on a knee or someone does it on his arm. So like and. Especially the more complicated letters are really hard to do on soft surfaces, which kind of almost ruins the entire point. I think about Twiddler doesn't matter what the surface is for this. You want to be able to take notes while you're just out and about hanging out. Yeah. And you can't really do it. Oh, the other thing I wanted to show you the mouse. Sure. Show me this. This is the optical sensor. See if you can see this. Yeah. OK. So this surface is what slides on the table. And it just does not work. It does not look like it's worth. So there's like how do you click? I think it's a middle finger. Oh, it's just it's just like now it's typing accidentally. There's like a right click. There's a scroll gesture. I had the inventor of this demoed it for me and he could barely use the mouse. He kept on saying it's really impressive how good mice are these days. We're as an excuse for why this is so bad, but it's really hard to use as a mouse. So that's kind of a bummer, too. OK. But I'm excited about this. Hopefully they can keep improving it with software. There'll be some software updates. Yeah. And I'm going to I'm going to keep practicing, maybe do a little bit of typing on the go. I like it. OK. Dan is back. That was cool. The tap. I'm very interested in like new input, new interface ideas. Dan is back. He just wandered over to the archives. Oh, to get the phones. And I am told we have a call. What? You want to call us. You can call eight four four four three six six eight four six. We'll take your questions. Caller on the line. Talk to us. Oh, I'm told we have to wait. We'll see. We'll see if we can use this phone technology. All right. Caller, talk to us. Oh, hi. I just had a question about the Samsung Galaxy S9 camera. Yeah. OK, so my question is how in the marketing they're talking about how the camera is like reimagined. I just wondered if that meant that the phone was actually like the camera was actually much better than most high end smartphone cameras. Or it was just like the same that the camera was just the camera hardware was just read on. What's your name, man? Paul. Paul, as you say, you call Paul. Sorry, a little fuzzy. I call I'm going to answer this one, but I'm going to tell you my gut instinct is that is just a marketing tagline. So, yeah, that's the thing with marketing. You have to understand it's all marketing. So Sam was going to Samsung's going to try and market this as heavily as it possibly can and use all the words it wants. The reality is they have done a lot of work on the camera. It's not just the new switchable lens. They do have a new sensor that is a lot of more processing on the sensor itself to do reduce noise and image artifacts and things like that. And it also does things quicker on the sensor to do that kind of processing. So it should produce better images than the S8 or last year's phones. Is it dramatically better than any other phone in the market? No. Is it better at all than any other phone? Like, is it better than Pixel 2? What would you say? It's a lot of personal preference at this point. What would you say reimagined refers to? I believe what they're referring to is the ability to switch the aperture because that is that is an entirely new thing that we have not seen on other smartphones. It's interesting. Yeah. And you get that myself, you know, like a photo and stabilization and stuff like that. Yep. These do have image stabilization on both the front and the rear cameras. So that all carries over from the S8 as well. Optical image stabilization. Yep. Yeah, I think the thing to me is having the mechanical aperture. For so long, the thing with smartphone cameras was to make them better, to make them more like DSLRs. We don't have the physical space to move light around like a DSLR. We're going to have to do this all on software and figure it out. We're going to add a lens to get a depth effect. We're going to do all this other stuff. And now we're starting to see actual physical camera features show up in these cameras. But for not the reasons that you would otherwise expect. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if it was like, you know, I really feel like the the mechanical aperture is more of a marketing tool for this. The phone looks exactly the same as last year, as we pointed out before. So Samsung needs something to market this phone with. And the mechanical aperture is. We have a question. Thank you, Cole. Appreciate the question. Thanks a lot, Cole. So, Gabriel asked in the chat, does a larger aperture work for video? Yes. OK, so you have enough for video. Yeah. I haven't really done a ton of testing with that as how much control you have, but it definitely will do it in the automatic modes. Let's see if we can do it live. Paul Kim's over here. All right. Paul Kim. Break it up. That's a great question. All right. Not one I always think of. That's not me. Just there we go. We're going to take this riveting video of the S9 Plus here. I'm going to go into manual mode. There's something with I've got the controls here, so I'm going to open it up to F1.5. I'm going to shoot some video. Now, once it's in video and recording, you can see very faintly. Let me get this on the black there. You can see it's set to F1.5, but I can't actually change that in video recording. Once I stop recording, I can switch to F2.4 and record a new clip at F2.4, but I can't switch on the fly. Victor says, does Face Unlock plus iris scanner combo work well? I think the real question is, does it work as well as Face ID in the iPhone? No, it's slow and annoying. The other thing that it does is we don't have it set up right now is that it shines a red light. On the iPhone, it does an infrared thing, and our cameras can pick that up if we put Eli's iPhone here. You can see I'm going to hide his notifications, but you can see it flashing on the camera. On the Samsung phones, it actually flashes and you can see it. It's annoying. You set that up. We have one more call from our friend, Sam Sheffer. Sammy, are you on the line? I am here. Hello. What's up, baby? How are you doing? I'm doing well. Watching the show live, I'm curious. Do you think this new aperture in smartphones thing is a trend? Or is this sort of like every smartphone now has two cameras? Is Apple's new iPhone going to have a variable aperture camera? And then a kind of a follow up is, do you think we'll ever see interchangeable lenses on smartphones? That's a lot of questions, Sam. Yeah, Sam's going for it. I don't think it's going to be a trend simply because the benefits are not manifest. It feels really like a purely marketing thing. With the dual cameras that we're seeing on a lot of phones... Wait, I disagree with you. You get better at getting the right one inside of the camera. But why would you ever switch it to f2.4? Just keep it at f1.5. Because having a wide open aperture, you do lose some detail. You lose some sharpness, right? Not in my experience. All right, fine. I mean, you're going to review this thing. Stay tuned for the review. But they keep it closed more often than not, right? They keep it closed more often than not, and I think that is to increase the depth of field. But as we saw in the examples, the difference in the depth of field is minimal at best. And also, in my experience, the difference in sharpness is imperceptible. What about the most important question that Sam asked? Interchangeable lenses? No. So here's my big worry with this thing. For real. My 6S died, not for any particular reason, except I dropped it. And the mechanical focus, well, it wasn't like it died for software, like the battery died and slowed down. It was literally the moving part in the camera that focused it, sort of grinding. And that was it, the end of the phone. Having moving parts in phones scares me, and I think we've seen this endless trend to get rid of every moving part. Instead of interchangeable lenses on cameras, I'd rather have a battery door and a replaceable battery. You're not going to get that. So I think Moment is, I know that's, you use a bunch of interchangeable lenses on your existing phone, right Sam? Yeah. Yeah, I think those companies are going to have a field day because it's specialized. I think the real race is getting more light into these sensors. So Samsung has done one thing. I think there's a reason that they had to build a mechanical aperture ring to close it down, because I think you want it closed more often than not, even though it dances, you can't see it different. But I think the real race is what Google is doing with automatic HDR. I think Apple is going to do its own tricks. Yeah, they're all doing multi-frame processing now where they capture a bunch of frames, stack them together to reduce noise, increase detail, things like that. Google pioneered that. Apple does it. Samsung does it now. They say they're doing it to a greater extent with the S9. Like you said, the real enhancements are going to be on the software, because there's a physical limit to how far you can go with the... So call it now, does the 2018 iPhone copy Samsung with this aperture thing? No. No. I would say no. I sincerely doubt it. I think Apple will find a way to mock this. They will find a way to say, we don't need to add moving parts to the phone. We can do this with our software. I mean, that's just the way... So they'll just go in with like a 1.4 lens instead and just say, ha, Samsung. Maybe, I mean, like again, like we were saying from the beginning when we were looking at comparison photos, these photos still look like Samsung photos. And I think Apple is very happy with the way its photos look. And they've been happy since the iPhone 6, right? I mean, they've been putting iPhone photos on billboards and being like, look at how great these photos are for just five years. So any incremental improvement I think is going to be tough. I think Apple's bigger challenge is the Pixel, because I think the Pixel takes better photos more often. I think iPhone can generate beautiful photos, but more consistently, I think the Pixel 2 does a better job. Thanks, Sam. Thank you, Sam. All right, guys. Just talking to you. See you, buddy. Last question. We've got to go. Max is asking, how's the battery life in the S9 and S9 Plus? So for just to lay down the specs, they are exactly the same as last year. So it's a 3,000 milliamp hour battery in the small one, 3,500 milliamp hour battery in the big one, and you can expect the exact same battery life in my experience. Is the 845 supposed to be more efficient in any ways? The 845 is supposed to be more efficient, but it's not a dramatic leap like from other processor generations. It's still the same manufacturing process, 10 nanometers, so you're not getting efficiencies there. Samsung says there's some software efficiencies and stuff. The real world experience has been that the S9 will last a day for light users. The S9 Plus will last a day for heavier users, but if you're a real heavy user, you can even kill the S9 Plus battery. Neither of them have bad battery life, neither of them have exceptional battery life. It is the typical, what they market, it lasts a day and no more. All right, we've got to wrap up. We're way over time here. This was a trial run of calls, so thank you for everyone who called in. Next week, the entire middle segment of the show is just you calling us for emotional support about your gadgets. Emotional tech support. Emotional tech support, which Paul and Ashley piloted ages ago. I'm excited. Pioneered you, Max. Keep this number in mind. If you've got a question next week on the show, call us, ask us for support. I want to call out two people. Burt, who's watching in the Philippines, thank you for watching. And Techno Info RD is watching from the Dominican Republic. Love that. Thank you guys so much for watching. We're done for today. We'll be back next week, Tuesday, 4 p.m. Eastern. You can obviously watch the show on VOD on YouTube, and there's clips on the website and everything. Next week, we'll be back. We've got a bunch of stuff, and we're going to take your calls for like 15 minutes of crazy tech. It's going to be something. They said it's going to be done. But we're going to find out if we can. All right, that's it for SoccerBaker Live! We'll see you next week.
 you
 you
 you
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 you
 Hello. Welcome to Circuit Breaker Live, the Verge's Gadget Show.
 Hello. Welcome to Circuit Breaker Live, the Verge's Gadget Show.
 It's a show where we play with gadgets all the time.
 I am Eli Patel. This is Paul Miller.
 Hello.
 We have a packed show. Dan Seifert's standing right here.
 I'm here.
 But wait for Dan. We have a packed show. I'm going to tell you all about it.
 Dan, we're going to talk about the DOSDS9, which is here.
 Dami is going to join us. We've got a bunch of new kinds of wacky musical instruments to play with.
 Paul, it just says you're going to teach me how to type.
 That's right. That's exactly what it says.
 Which feels insulting. It's very confusing.
 You've got a lot to learn, Eli.
 Jake and Ashley are going to do Ask Circuit Breaker.
 We've also got some videos to run in the middle. Very exciting. Some surprises.
 Segments?
 Segments, you might call them.
 Is that what those are called? Packages?
 The pros call them packages.
 We're going to listen to our IFBs through our IEMs.
 But first, we are going to talk about the GS9, which is, as we said last week,
 came out last week at Mobile World Congress in Spain.
 Dan did our hands-on video with the launch. Now you've got them.
 I got them.
 So I think we're on the top-down camera here, right?
 I want to play a game with you, the YouTube audience.
 I'll take this pixel out of the way.
 These are Galaxy S9s and Galaxy S8s.
 I want you to type to me in this chat that S9s are physically located.
 These are the small ones. These are the big ones.
 The pluses and the regulars.
 The pluses and the regulars. The S9s are on one side, and the S8s are on the other side.
 Just type left or right which ones you think the S9s are.
 Wait, they're left?
 You have to guess.
 I'm saying, if you're looking at the screen...
 Yeah, just type left or right.
 I'm looking at the top-down.
 Okay, they're left as are left.
 Paul, can you tell the difference?
 So you just vote in the chat here. Type left or right.
 Left or right.
 Which ones do you think the 9s are?
 Neil and Dan won't let me flip them.
 Yeah, we can't flip them because it's printed on the back.
 What I can see is that some of these phones have extra little icons.
 Like this one is like a weather, but also it looks like it's like a link.
 Like maybe you connect to the cloud with that button. I don't know.
 So I'm assuming new phone, more feature, that the ones with the icons, so therefore the two left ones are S9s.
 That is my current theory.
 I'm going to say that asking people to pick a 50-50 choice has resulted in a 50-50 split.
 Oh, really?
 Most people are saying left.
 Okay.
 That's what I... Now most people are saying right.
 Okay.
 Oh, man, this is crazy. Okay.
 Dan.
 They're saying the opposite of what I'm saying.
 Dan.
 Several people are saying...
 What is the truth?
 The truth is from this side, they look virtually identical.
 Dan, can you tell us?
 So there are minor differences.
 All right.
 So to give the answer, so Paul, I'm sorry, buddy.
 That was super wrong.
 You chose the S8s.
 S8s on the left.
 S9s were on the right.
 S9s are on the right.
 All you left voters.
 So, well, you didn't... I mean, like they basically do look exactly the same.
 There are some really minor differences at the top.
 You can see the S8.
 You can see more of the front sensors.
 They like blacked them out more on the S9.
 Samsung calls this more immersive.
 I call it they did a better job.
 See, I thought maybe like more sensors on the S9.
 Well, there's the same amount of sensors.
 That's the other thing.
 It's like technology-wise, they're basically the same.
 They're the same amount of sensors.
 You just can't see them as easily on the S9.
 They're hidden on the S9.
 And then the other difference, which I don't know if you can really tell from your angle anyways,
 but the S9 has a matte finish on the metal frame, and the S8s are glossy.
 So that's really the only front difference.
 And then the other one, I should say, also the speaker grill on the S9 is a single slot,
 and the S8 had this like multi-hole grill.
 But the S9 has stereo, right?
 But the S9 has stereo, which just means that it uses the earpiece speaker as a speaker
 in conjunction with the bottom speaker, just like the iPhone does, HTC does, a bunch of phones do that now.
 One of my favorite features of iPhones.
 It's great.
 Yeah, it's like the fact that Samsung didn't have this until now is kind of surprising.
 Like they're actually catching up.
 It does sound really good.
 One very important distinction on the back, correct?
 So on the back, on the smaller models, the big distinction is the movement of the fingerprint sensor
 was up on the camera, by the camera on the S8.
 It's now down below on the S9.
 And then on the S9 Plus, you get a second camera.
 So you get two cameras like you found on the Note 8 last year.
 Two for the price of one, you might say.
 Well, sure, except that you pay more for this.
 No?
 You literally pay more for the second camera.
 No, you're paying for the larger screen, and you get a free extra camera.
 Sure.
 So, people ask us questions in the chat about these phones.
 We're going to start going through them.
 Number one question, I've got some tweets here.
 This surface just hates me today.
 But the number one question we got was about the cameras.
 How they work, if they're better.
 Yeah, so let's take those essays away.
 This is garbage.
 What's interesting to me, and we were talking on the show last week,
 they now have a mechanical aperture.
 So this can step down from, it can close the aperture.
 It's wide open at 1.5, f1.5, which is brighter than any other smartphone camera I think we've seen.
 And then it can stop down to 2.4, which is right on the edge of the lens.
 So actually the way it works by default is the opposite.
 It starts at 2.4, and then Samsung software will open it up to 1.5 based on automatic settings.
 But that's a hardware thing that happens.
 That is a physical hardware switch.
 You can see, we're going to try and show you guys this on camera,
 but we were having a little trouble focusing this earlier.
 Right now it is wide open.
 Let me open up the camera app.
 Because if you go to the Pro Mode, you can alter this.
 So it is wide open now.
 Paul, let me know when you're ready.
 Yeah, if only I had manual focus on my camera.
 And I'm just toggling between them now.
 Put something there so I can help them focus.
 Yeah, Samsung, if you're listening, it's very hard to take photos with these.
 Glossy black.
 Okay, I see it.
 You can see it switching.
 Wait, which is which? That's closed?
 So this is closed, and now it's open.
 Yes.
 Closed, open.
 It's almost like a filter is dropped in.
 You can't actually do any of the apertures in between 1.5 and 2.4.
 It's one or the other.
 To be fair, my mechanical lenses, it's not like you can pick a range between 1.8 and 2.2.
 Sure you can. Well, no, but 1.5 and 2.4 is roughly a full stop in terms of light, in terms of photography.
 So a lot of lenses will give you third stops in between.
 Anyways, that's kind of tangential.
 The point is this gives you more options than any other phone on the market.
 What's this for?
 So Samsung says that because the f1.5 lens lets in so much more light than the 1.7 on last year's phone,
 sometimes when you're outside in really bright conditions, it's too much light,
 and so you close it down, you let less light in, you get a better exposure.
 Which is backwards of how most people talk about aperture.
 Why don't they just crank the ISO?
 So what most phones would do in a bright situation, what the S8 does, what the Pixel does, et cetera,
 they're just going to increase the shutter speed.
 So the shutter's open for a shorter amount of time, and you get the same exposure even in bright light.
 The other thing that a smaller aperture can do is give you a little bit greater depth of field or more area in focus.
 But with phone sensors, they're so small, you already have so much in focus already, there's really not much of a difference.
 So our friend Walt Mossberg tweeted at me earlier today,
 why do the side-by-side test photos I've seen show so little difference between the two fixed aperture settings?
 So part of that is the depth of field is really not that much different.
 And we've got a couple examples I think we can pull up.
 You can notice an exposure.
 So if you guys can see this, this is shot at f1.5.
 I don't remember the exact shutter or aperture off the top of my head.
 You can go over there and point some stuff out.
 So you can see this is shot at f1.5.
 If we could switch to the 2.4, the next photo.
 Now this is shot at f2.4 with the same shutter speed and the same ISO.
 And you can see that it's much darker because you have 2.4, lets in much less light.
 So it's about one stop of difference.
 So you held all the settings constant and just switched the aperture?
 Just switched the aperture for that.
 Okay, so if we go to the next photo.
 So this is at 1.5 again.
 This is with automatic ISO and automatic shutter speed.
 So what you would notice here is that this part is pretty blurred out.
 This is pretty blurred out in the background and things like that.
 But it's sharp up front.
 And if we go to the next photo, it's a little bit more detailed.
 It's like the tiniest bit.
 The tiniest bit.
 So this is shot at f2.4 with automatic ISO and automatic shutter speed.
 So the camera compensated for the smaller aperture by raising its ISO or sensitivity.
 Can we go back one photo?
 Yeah, let's toggle back.
 So what's interesting to me, so most, when you think about shooting in low light,
 you want that wide open aperture to let in more light.
 Let in more light.
 So you can have a fast shutter speed, it's not blurry.
 Exactly.
 Samsung is saying literally the opposite here.
 Well, they're saying it's bright.
 The mechanical aperture is to knock it down in bright light.
 Yeah, it's funny that they're pitching it that way.
 Because if you use the camera in automatic mode, it defaults to the f2.4 aperture
 and only opens it up when it needs to.
 Whereas most automatic cameras are going to open up the lens as far as they can go
 and only close it down when they need to, like you were saying.
 But the camera works a little backwards in automatic mode, which is kind of weird.
 And then the other thing I would say, if we can take this full screen,
 I just want everyone to look at this photo.
 It's hard, I know on YouTube there's all kinds of compression happening.
 But if you just look at this photo, it still, to my eye, looks like a Samsung photo.
 And Samsung photos, we've now done so many photo comparisons.
 You can just see it, they're hyper-processed, they're a little bit more crisp.
 They do all kinds of processing to smooth things out.
 The noise on this is really good.
 This was indoors at a coffee shop, obviously.
 It's not the best light in the world.
 But this is at f1.5 and the noise reduction is really good.
 That's one of the things that Samsung worked on this year is to reduce the noise.
 But it still, like you said, has that Samsung look.
 And I think a lot of that has to do with the way it processes things,
 the way the color is rendered mostly.
 And certain times that Samsung look looks great.
 Certain portraits look really nice with that.
 And other times it's different.
 I don't have a pixel comparison here.
 How is it doing with skin?
 One of the Samsung problems is sometimes we'll just smooth over skin.
 So on the rear camera, it doesn't do that as much.
 On the front camera, by default, it smooths your skin out.
 You can turn it off, but by default it's going to totally make up your face basically.
 So we should talk about the front cameras too.
 Because the back cameras are real interesting.
 Ruben in the chat is asking, Pixel 2 XL or Galaxy S9 regarding the front facing?
 So the interesting thing about the front facing camera is exactly the same as last year.
 It's the same 8 megapixel camera.
 It has autofocus.
 It's basically the only camera on the market that has autofocus on the front.
 And it does have a portrait mode, but it's not as good as the Pixel 2s
 or even the iPhone X in my opinion.
 But you can see, if we can switch to the front cameras.
 What am I doing?
 There's an AR emoji mode, man.
 Selfie.
 So by default, it will adjust your skin tone and adjust the color.
 I'm so too charged.
 Let me just add it for...
 And so it'll...
 I don't like the front camera.
 I really don't.
 It really can really butcher your skin.
 And then it has what they call selfie focus, which is their portrait mode on the front.
 So would you say overall, you've only had it for a few days,
 but it seems largely the same with the addition of a wide angle lens
 and slightly better low light performance.
 It's like an S8.5.
 I mean, it's the iPhone 6S, right?
 It's the iPhone 8.
 It's the same design.
 It's got the same internals with newer, more modern stuff.
 They added a few things that you don't have on the prior model,
 but it looks the same.
 It feels the same.
 If you close your eyes, it's like you're using the same phone.
 Vishal in the chat just pointed out...
 Also focused on your camera.
 No notch.
 No notch.
 Samsung, one of the few manufacturers this year,
 going with this symmetrical design...
 No notch and a headphone jack.
 And a headphone jack.
 So you don't need this in your...
 Phone to get.
 You can just take these and throw them to hell.
 Get out of here.
 I feel like my decision hasn't been made.
 Why would I get any other phone in the world
 if they're not going to have a headphone jack?
 I mean, the S8, I will say, the S7 and the S8,
 well, the S8 I think was prettier, minus the fingerprint sensor.
 I think they set a standard for phone design.
 Apple had to meet that with the X.
 They did it, notch aside.
 But no one else is close.
 Even the Pixel.
 This is a smaller Pixel.
 This isn't taking nearly as good.
 It's not just design,
 it's like the level of fit and finish are really nice too.
 It's a very well-polished, well-made device.
 This is something important to me because I do kind of want,
 I'm kind of looking for an Android phone.
 I want a smaller phone.
 And the Pixel 2 is notoriously bezel,
 forehead-inch and heavy.
 Big forehead size means all five of them.
 The metric everyone is insisting that we now use...
 Oh, yes.
 Is screen-to-body ratio.
 Yes.
 Which makes me want to die.
 What's your screen-to-body ratio?
 It's a little bit too much, my friend.
 Too low, it's something.
 So great, it's beautiful hardware.
 The camera is a Samsung camera.
 People, if you like it, you're going to love it.
 It's going to be an improver.
 If you're like me,
 I think the iPhone and the Pixel are just a little bit nicer.
 It really comes down to the look.
 And if you didn't like the look before,
 you're not going to like it now.
 It's like an aesthetic choice.
 But here's what we always say about Samsung phones.
 Great hardware, most features.
 But you stick around for Bixby.
 Run in the software, and it's just the same as ever.
 There's two web browsers, there's two email clients,
 there's two messaging apps, there's two assistants.
 Two web browsers, two app stores, two gallery apps,
 two email apps, two payments apps, things like that.
 And certain things are better than Google's.
 Like Samsung's internet browser, I've been saying for a while,
 is better.
 Samsung Pay is better than Android Pay.
 But the point is, most of them are not better,
 and then you have to have both.
 So it's a whole bunch of folder of Google apps,
 and a whole folder of Samsung apps.
 It's nice that you can corral them like that,
 but they're shit better.
 And then we've got to talk about it.
 Two assistants on the phone.
 And two assistants, right.
 One of which is mapped to a hardware button.
 There it is.
 There's the Bixby button.
 I'm a Bixby person.
 Okay, so this is Bixby, what is this called?
 This is called the Bixby Home, which is basically like Google Now.
 By the way, Vlad Savov,
 one of our great reporters, editors, said,
 the Bixby button is hardware bloatware.
 That's where he's at with Bixby.
 Tell us what they're trying to do.
 Is Bixby unimproved?
 So it's gotten a little bit of a facelift.
 It's a little nicer to look at, but who cares.
 And it's slightly faster, but it's still slow.
 And then in the camera app, Bixby Vision, they call it,
 where is that, has gotten a couple of new features.
 You can do makeup with it, which is kind of crazy.
 Oh yeah, I saw this.
 So you can do like different, oh, there I am.
 Oh, pretty.
 And then I can like buy that makeup directly from Sephora.
 Of course.
 Are you kidding me?
 Because why else would it exist?
 Wait, go back to the makeup.
 I want to see that.
 There we go.
 You can do different looks.
 Honestly, I would use this.
 This is great.
 Yeah, so there's that.
 You know, it's got some text things or whatever,
 but for the most part, it's still Bixby.
 It's still weird.
 It's still slower than Google Assistant.
 So let's just try this.
 It's voice to text is not as good.
 And its whole thing is that it can actually operate the phone for you.
 It's supposed to be able to operate the phone for you.
 So you can be like, turn Wi-Fi off.
 And it opens its settings.
 Oh, nice.
 Turn Wi-Fi on.
 Great.
 Turn Wi-Fi on.
 And then Dan was showing me earlier, we can just tweet from his account.
 Let's not do that.
 Open Twitter and tweet, I love Bixby.
 It's my favorite.
 That's not great.
 Oh, it got five experience points.
 It didn't do that at all.
 So that's like the greater pitch of Bixby is that it can go into your apps
 and do things.
 It's key to your voice, right, Dan?
 It has been trained on my voice.
 Dan, you do a tweet about how much fun you're having being on the show.
 All right.
 Here's some ideas.
 My good friends, Paul and Eli, they're great to hang out with.
 Dan.
 Just do the tweet.
 Open Twitter and tweet, I love Paul and Eli.
 Great.
 Is it ever going to get your name?
 Nope.
 Paul, enable great.
 Yes, it is.
 Everything.
 Oh, there you go.
 Wait, it just says, I love Paul, enable great.
 Yes.
 Yes.
 Okay.
 So there's a part, I was expecting to hate Bixby.
 There's a part of me that says it's like it can do more things.
 It actually controls the phone in the app.
 My big problem with it is that it's slower than just the phone.
 It's easier to open Twitter and just type that out.
 And here's the other problem.
 I'm just going to be real with everybody.
 Every time I hear the word Bixby, this is a high-end, beautiful, polished device,
 and the assistant is named Bixby, which literally makes me think of a dog wearing shoes who is a butler.
 It's like a clippy.
 It's like Samsung's clippy.
 It's like a joke that we've been telling on the VirgChats forever, and last week I asked people to send me pictures of a dog wearing shoes,
 and our producer, Creighton, literally started a Tumblr, BixbyShoes.tumblr.com,
 and we have a lot of fan art of Bixby.
 Here's, who's this one?
 This is, I don't have a name on this one.
 Here's one.
 This is great.
 Paul, here's your cheater-ass submission.
 Yeah, I didn't draw anything.
 Is that okay?
 It's just a really good photo.
 It's a good photo.
 This is my favorite by far.
 Ricky tweeted this one of me.
 This one looks like he opened a door that's a phone.
 I like the tongue.
 I think he's walking out of a smart Samsung refrigerator.
 Yeah, that's great.
 This one's pretty good.
 He's holding a tray that says stuff.
 And then this last one, this is great.
 So here's the art.
 This is from Cameron on Twitter, but then he showed us his process, which is a video, which the dog is part of the logo.
 It's a real tall dog.
 It's a real toss up.
 You tell me who should win the prize.
 We have a clear winner.
 Is it Cameron?
 Yeah, yeah.
 Not only did he do a great job, but he showed his work.
 He showed his work.
 Like I cheated.
 You definitely cheated.
 I have to say I'm more impressed with Bixby than I expected to be, but I would prefer to just turn it off.
 Yeah, so you can turn it off now.
 You can actually go into settings.
 You can turn off what they call Bixby Home, but you can also turn off the buttons.
 So now the button does nothing.
 But you want to remap the button.
 A camera or something?
 Natively, no.
 There are apps in the Play Store that you can download and will let you remap it until Samsung pushes an update and then it breaks and you have to do that whole dance again.
 But Samsung does not give you a native way to remap it, so it just basically becomes a fidget button.
 Oh, yeah.
 But between this and the Pixel and the fourth coming Pixel, those feel like the only Android phones playing.
 Everybody else is doing bad, weird notches.
 There's a lot of notches out there.
 So I'm not going to buy an Android phone with a notch.
 I understand why.
 Well, maybe I would if this wasn't so good, but this does seem to be a very good phone.
 It's an excellent phone.
 It's just loaded with Samsung software.
 You've got to decide if they're good or not.
 The other thing is that you can't rely on Samsung until you get the next version of Android anytime soon.
 I'm going to get this name wrong.
 I apologize.
 Johan in the chat says, is the iris scanner comparable to the S8?
 Is it quicker or the same?
 So same.
 They do have a new feature that they call intelligence scan, which combines iris scanning with their face scanning function
 and will determine which one to use based on your conditions.
 It's very obvious they're trying to ape face ID, but it's still slow, still kind of clumsy and awkward.
 But thankfully, the fingerprint scanner is easier to use.
 You still have the fingerprint scanner, so I'm not totally like, you know.
 What about Samsung's Animoji?
 They're real bad.
 Let's look at these real quick and then we've got to...
 So they're called AR Emoji, and that is supposedly me.
 Is that you?
 I believe it.
 It doesn't use any special tech.
 It's just using the front face and camera.
 So you can see the tracking is pretty bad.
 You look kind of sleepy.
 And I look very sleepy here.
 Let's do one of those.
 That's some like uncanny valley shit.
 Yeah, it's just creepy, and the tracking is really bad and things like that.
 Here's Ashley.
 I can be Ashley.
 I think Ashley's looks way better than mine.
 Yours looks like a real jerk.
 Well, I guess that's very real.
 It turns out.
 And then they've got these weird animals.
 I don't think they're a jerk, Dan.
 No, this one is, but that one is like a stoned, angry rabbit.
 Wait, do the weird.
 This one...
 What?
 What is that?
 I think it's a bear.
 I don't know.
 I've got yours up here.
 So here's what I was going to say about this.
 An evil cat.
 Compared to what Apple's doing with Animoji, which is a very restricted inside of messages,
 Animoji are not in the camera app on the iPhone, right?
 It's inside of messages.
 Correct.
 It's really hard to get out of messages.
 This is just in the camera app.
 Yeah, so I can take a picture.
 It's a more recorded video.
 I think you'll see more of this crazy machinima stuff.
 Yeah, it's just easier to get out of the phone.
 It's really annoying how...
 People are like creeped out by it.
 Locked down Animoji is.
 So then the other thing that it does is it creates all these reaction gifs based on...
 Like it creates your Animoji and then it makes a whole palette of reaction gifs.
 This is like bitmoji.
 It's basically not.
 I don't...
 It's like pure Samsung nonsense.
 There's a nonsense division at Samsung.
 Okay, Pixar's got a new movie coming out and it's about parachute sports people, right?
 And so a studio rushes to market and does a direct to DVD release of their fake knockoff
 parachute sports people movie.
 I call this stuff Samsung couldn't help itself.
 All right.
 I'm just so ecstatic.
 We're going to take a break from the S9 for a minute.
 At the very end of the show, Dan's going to come back.
 We're going to take your phone calls.
 Which is going to be dangerous and weird.
 On the S9.
 No.
 It's going to be great.
 You're going to do a good job.
 Call us with your questions at the end of the show.
 Dan will be back to answer those questions.
 I'm excited to see how that goes.
 Next, Paul, I am told that you ruined one of Dan's computers.
 I made a video about it.
 Here's my big fear.
 I don't like to do pranks on people because I don't want to be pranked.
 And I broke my own rule, but Dan was really chill about it.
 So please watch this video of mustard on the laptop is what I'm calling it.
 Watch this.
 We'll be back with that circuit breaker.
 Hello.
 I'm Paul Miller.
 Welcome.
 Okay.
 Dell says its new XPS 13 won't be stained by mustard or permanent marker.
 Guess who got a Dell XPS 13 today?
 Dan Seifer.
 And guess who has mustard?
 I have mustard.
 Dan's at lunch.
 Look at this beautiful laptop.
 Be ashamed of somebody put mustard on it.
 I'm so scared of shaking it.
 A little bit there.
 A little bit there.
 Okay.
 Just going to smudge it around just a little bit.
 I don't want to ruin the laptop.
 Just a little bit of mustard.
 Look at that.
 Beautiful.
 Dan will never know.
 Nobody has to tell Dan what just happened.
 Hmm.
 Just comes right off.
 Not even a problem.
 Get all the mustard.
 Okay.
 Well, that was the scariest thing I've ever done in my life.
 Oh, yeah.
 And nobody has to know.
 Okay?
 All right.
 I'm here with the world's bravest human, Ashley Carman.
 Ashley thinks I should leave the mustard on the laptop.
 You definitely should leave the mustard on the laptop.
 What if Dan hurts me?
 It would be funny.
 You would like that.
 Okay.
 Okay.
 So I just put the mustard on and just walk away?
 Yes.
 Okay.
 All right.
 This is how peer pressure works.
 You just do what other people tell you to do.
 Look at that.
 So clean.
 It's like I never even put mustard on it.
 Mustard.
 Oh, gosh.
 That's the gross.
 That's the grossest thing.
 Oh, my God.
 Before you sit down.
 It's kind of gross.
 Wait.
 How do you feel?
 How do you feel?
 I'm honestly a little grossed out.
 It's disgusting, right?
 Why?
 It's filthy.
 Do you guys think it'll stain?
 Here you go.
 This is going super well.
 At least it's not ketchup.
 Because that stinks.
 So put it in the del.
 This white texture finish on the XPS 13 is mustard proof.
 And now I'm regretting telling Paul that for obvious reasons.
 It's on the internet.
 Anybody can read it.
 How long was this mustard here?
 Just a few minutes.
 What kind of mustard are we looking at here?
 No, no, no, no, no, no.
 We need to leave this for like an hour.
 I got work to do.
 It's too bad.
 You're supposed to be able to leave it on for up to a week.
 Well, you know, in the few minutes it's been here, I see no issues.
 Goodbye.
 This is so gross.
 I apologize, Del.
 But you guys did this to yourselves.
 So Dan, are you not mad at me?
 I'm never mad at you, Paul.
 Aw, thanks, Dan.
 Do you want to have a little mustard hug?
 This is what true camaraderie and friendship looks like, everybody.
 And smells like mustard.
 Smells disgusting.
 That was beautiful content.
 Truly beautiful.
 I'm an enabler, and I feel good about it.
 What other laptops are we going to put mustard on?
 We should just put it on every laptop.
 That should be our test, the Virgis signature laptop test.
 The mustard test.
 Yeah, mustard test.
 Essential.
 All right.
 Now it's your time for the best part of the whole show, right?
 It's Ask Circuit Breaker.
 So we premiered this, what, a couple weeks ago?
 And now we're on our third week.
 We're here.
 Last week you asked us many questions.
 We picked them out.
 One of the questions we have is actually a demand.
 We'll get to it though.
 And we want you to keep asking us questions.
 So please tweet at us.
 You can leave comments on the YouTube video.
 Go for it in the chat.
 You can go on Instagram.
 We have so many places you can reach us.
 Just send us a message.
 Ask us a question.
 Jake and I are here.
 We're here to answer your questions.
 Preferably nicely, but, you know.
 Yeah.
 We take questions in any form.
 It's true.
 All right.
 So our first demand, or actually complaint, is that last week we talked about the Nintendo Switch and various accessories.
 We didn't end up getting to the cases.
 And I'm sorry about that.
 But I've brought a couple cases here with me today to explain to you how you should look for a Nintendo Switch case.
 So I own a Nintendo Switch.
 And I actually don't have a case.
 But that's just because I'm a rebel and I don't respect my gadgets and it's fine.
 Live Dangerous.
 I've carried it around without a case in my backpack and just let it kind of jostle around in this.
 Like, don't do that.
 Just don't do that.
 So I polled a couple of my coworkers who are way more responsible than me, particularly Creighton, who is our show producer.
 And he recommended this case, the Unique Hard Shell Case.
 I've actually taken this case to Mexico with me before.
 He let me borrow it during a family vacation.
 So thanks, Creighton.
 The thing to note about this case, and I think the reason Creighton chose it, is one, it has this hard shell so it's protective.
 Also, it has a sleeve here where you can put different game cards.
 And there's a pocket so you can keep a massive battery, which is what Creighton does.
 Or a Joy-Con or whatever else you want to keep in the pocket.
 I will say that while this is protective, it has lots of room, it is massive and pretty much took up my entire carry-on.
 So, you know, if you have space, go for it.
 But if you don't have space, I talked to Chris Welch, a news editor here at The Verge.
 And he has this case from a company called Tom Talk that's the Commuter Slim Case.
 It's way thinner, but it's a little hard, but definitely not as hard as the Unique one.
 You'll see in here there's no pockets. That's what it's missing.
 It does have a little game card slot here, but there's no place for you to keep a battery, really.
 His switch is in here right now.
 So, the key things I think you'll want to look for if you're looking for a case is that pocket,
 if it's important to you, if you think you're going to carry external batteries or something like that.
 Or if you plan on carrying Joy-Cons.
 If not, if you're just purely a Commuter, you're on the train or something like that,
 maybe you just want a slim case that's light and easy to carry around.
 So we have both options for you here.
 That case looks fantastic for just throwing it in your bag.
 Yeah, this is great. This is definitely what I would go with.
 That's what I would be worried about.
 Yeah, this is what I would go with, purely to keep your screen protected.
 I would never carry it. I can't keep things charged.
 It's like the Pelican case of Switch.
 It's huge. It's massive.
 So next we have a pair of questions about Android Go.
 Android Go is Google's new stripped down version of Android.
 It's meant for phones that are really low end, like under $100.
 It came out on a bunch of phones last week.
 And we've got a couple questions.
 The first is whether Go apps are available on other phones.
 And so part of Android Go is it's not just the operating system.
 It also is bundled with a whole bunch of apps that are supposed to be optimized for lower end hardware so that they'll run better.
 And the answer is sort of yes and no.
 Some of the apps are available. Some are not.
 The good news is that two of my favorite apps are available.
 The first one is Files Go.
 You can download this on any phone, and you really should.
 It's like basically the file explorer that Google should have included with Android but didn't.
 It recommends files for you to delete, and it just is a really easy way to look through all the images, songs, and so on on your device that you have probably forgotten about.
 So this is really great.
 The other one is called Datali.
 And it's not strictly a Go app, but it's going to be on some Go phones.
 And it's made by the same team inside Google that makes the Go apps.
 And this one is for tracking your data usage.
 It lets you quickly see how much each of your different apps are using up.
 It lets you lock them so you can say, I don't want Instagram to use any data right now, and it'll only work over Wi-Fi.
 It is really easy to use.
 It's another good one if you're trying to make sure that your device doesn't use up too much stuff.
 So the other question we had is why isn't Google just making all of its apps optimized so they run faster?
 And I think that's a really good question because, you know, some apps get really, really heavy.
 But the reason why Google hasn't done this with all of its apps is because some of the, you know, it is optimizing them, but optimize is like a really big, broad word.
 And so in some cases, that means stripping features out.
 If you try Maps Go, which you can download on any device, it's just like Google Maps, but worse.
 You just should not download it.
 But if you try Google Go, you'll find a completely different experience because it's been customized for different markets where people are just coming online and the search box looks basically as foreign as a command line.
 So you're going to get different experiences in different places.
 The only unfortunate thing is I wish that YouTube Go was available in other areas.
 I think that's another reason that you're not seeing these expanded.
 YouTube Go has some of the paid features that you find in YouTube Red.
 So I'm sure there's sort of a monetary thing in there, too.
 That's it for us.
 Be sure to send us more questions for next week.
 And now over to Dami with some musical calculators.
 Hello.
 Hey.
 Dami's here, everybody.
 She has more than musical calculators.
 You have like a selection of crazy new instruments.
 I have so many fun, wacky musical instruments I want to show you guys.
 I'm going to save musical calculators for last.
 Save the best for last.
 But we're going to start with the Atama tone.
 I think a lot of people might recognize this.
 This has been around since 1998, which is kind of surprising.
 I've never seen one of these in my life.
 Okay.
 Does this sound familiar to you now?
 Sounds like a nightmare.
 Okay.
 So this is created by a Japanese design firm.
 Is this a muscle game?
 Yes.
 He's got a little face like he's saying hello to you.
 But yeah, we have a picture of Mewa Denki, the Japanese design firm behind the Atama tone.
 And that's them right there.
 They're super dope, as you can see.
 Can you buy a full-size one?
 I don't think you can buy that one.
 But the Atama tone is available in different sizes and colors.
 I think they have like little keychain versions of it.
 So can you play a song on this?
 I personally cannot.
 You can try if you want to.
 But there's three, you can play it in three different pitches.
 So you can set it to low, mid, or high.
 High is like kind of a little bit obnoxious.
 So I'm going to set this to mid.
 And I'm going to hand this over to you and maybe you can play a little song for us.
 I know you were practicing a little bit earlier.
 I have to say the face on that thing, and I say this with all the love in my heart,
 when the mouth is closed, the face just reminds me of Dieter.
 I don't know why.
 It's like half smiling, but it's still kind of like disappointed in you.
 Oh, yeah, okay, I see that.
 Yeah.
 I think it's cute.
 Diamond in the sky.
 There you go.
 Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
 Just two hours of rehearsal before the show, everybody.
 But you are.
 So can you modulate the tone?
 You can like do vibrato with your fingers a little bit.
 It's horrible.
 Just do that.
 All right, take this away from me.
 Okay, so let's put this away.
 And think about the last time that somebody invented a new instrument, like straight up
 just invented like an analog instrument.
 So that's what Yamaha did last year with the Vinnova.
 This is like a cross between a recorder and a saxophone.
 And they like to market it as a casual wind instrument.
 As you can see on the screen there, you can just take it out to picnics like on the go.
 Oh, yeah.
 Yeah.
 What makes it casual?
 Is it easy to play or is it like low maintenance?
 It's like super lightweight.
 It's like made of plastic, I think.
 So it's waterproof.
 You put it in the rain if you want.
 Take it anywhere.
 That just looks like he's carrying a duck.
 Go back to that one.
 This one is weird because she's like, you suck at the Vinnova.
 This one is carrying a duck.
 Yeah.
 I don't know that you want to just roll around like that.
 Throw it in your purse.
 You never know when someone's going to ask you to play the Vinnova.
 Yeah.
 I personally, I don't know how Yamaha did offer to send someone who knew how to play.
 But you, Crate and our producer was like, we got it.
 You have to do it.
 Let's see.
 Okay.
 I'm going to try this.
 I'm so embarrassed.
 You got it.
 I will say that it does sound like me trying to play the saxophone.
 There we go.
 Whoa.
 Okay.
 So I'm going to put that down.
 I'm really impressed that you went for it.
 Okay.
 So I've never played the reed instrument before in my life, but yeah, this uses like a synthetic
 plastic reed.
 If you play like a clarinet or saxophone, you should be able to pick this up pretty
 easily.
 But they have a lot of-
 You can take it to the beach and you're back.
 Yeah.
 Just on the go.
 It's whatever.
 And people are like, is that a duck?
 And you're like, no.
 And then you whip out a Vinnova.
 So how much is it?
 This is $99, which I think is a pretty good price.
 It's like disposable.
 I don't want to necessarily call it that.
 Yamaha introduces the disposable saxophone.
 Well, like-
 It's lightweight.
 No pressure.
 That's amazing.
 But yeah, I'm really excited to get to these.
 These go calculators.
 I ordered these from AliExpress.
 These are my personal calculators.
 It's the AR7778.
 You can also order it on Amazon for 20 bucks.
 But everything's in Chinese, so I had a little bit of trouble figuring it out.
 Weren't you saying you found these from some YouTuber?
 Yes.
 I found this on a YouTuber called It's a Small World, and this person is like a master at
 it.
 She was playing four calculators at a time.
 She was playing like the Super Mario theme song.
 So thank you to her for being my inspiration.
 I think I've seen this video and it is absolutely amazing.
 It's amazing.
 So.
 Wow.
 Okay, so you can play like almost two octaves.
 As you can see, the time and date is here.
 Is it 2005 right now?
 Yeah.
 So it's a little bit behind.
 Maybe that's when it was made.
 Let's all just take, everybody close your eyes and remember January 1, 2005.
 But yeah.
 The full throat of youth.
 What was happening?
 I have no idea what I was doing.
 I was in high school.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 Anyway, you can also use this as an alarm clock so you can wake up to the sweet sounds
 of a calculator.
 I also want to point out that every time you put in batteries, it plays this jaunty tune.
 Oh my.
 This is a really intense calculator.
 Is it meant to be a calculator or is it supposed to be an instrument?
 I think it's a little bit of both.
 Can you do math with it?
 Yeah, you can absolutely do that.
 This is like for accountants with dreams.
 They sneak into work and like, I just bring in my regular work tools in.
 Important note on that.
 Is there a headphone jack?
 No.
 Disappointing.
 Just, yeah.
 All right.
 So it goes on for a really long time.
 I will be taking your requests in the chat.
 You have some sheet music here?
 Yeah, I came with sheet music from Holy Express.
 It was just a bunch of numbers.
 No way.
 Yeah.
 It's a lot.
 It's a lot of songs.
 Any songs that you might recognize?
 I don't know.
 Maybe people who can read Chinese in the comments can tell us.
 But yeah, they gave us a lot of different songs.
 There's one with a lot of 666's.
 Oh, okay.
 That's the devil's music.
 Right now it's in a mode where it's just playing numbers in Chinese.
 Yeah.
 So you have to kind of play around with it.
 And now we're back to the songs.
 It's pretty good.
 It's like Jingle Bells.
 Yeah, that's kind of how I was going with it.
 Only I don't know how to play the calculator.
 But you do.
 Yeah, so I can play Smash Mouth.
 All right.
 All star.
 I've never been more excited.
 Oh, wait.
 So you've labeled this one?
 Yeah.
 So this one, I'm really trying to learn this.
 I labeled it with my Post-it notes.
 I'm going to try playing it right now.
 Yeah.
 Wow.
 That's great.
 I just want to do that one part with all the do's.
 Yeah.
 You guys are not really into tune.
 They're not tuned together at all.
 Just like grab a friend and you can.
 By the way, Rashad, request Sandstorm.
 How does that one go?
 It's like.
 Oh, shoot.
 Dobby just broke out Sandstorm on a calculator.
 All right.
 What's next?
 What's next?
 We got One Hotel California, which is obvious that people would ask.
 Oh.
 Wait, we got more.
 We got more people.
 Cliffs of Dover.
 And then Funky Town is in here.
 Whoa.
 Dobby.
 Dobby's too good.
 She's going to quit her career as a professional calculator player.
 I'm taking this opportunity to announce that I'm leaving my job.
 I'm going to become a musical calculator.
 I would like to tell everybody at The Verge that if you are going to quit, the way to do it is to show up on the show and announce your future career as a calculator.
 I'm shocked at my hidden talent.
 That was amazing.
 I can't believe you got Sandstorm.
 Sandstorm is incredible.
 Wait, how much are these?
 These are 10 bucks on Aliexpress?
 10 bucks on Aliexpress if you're willing to wait three weeks.
 20 on Amazon.
 And then what's the channel that you should check out to watch people freaking out on?
 Oh, It's a Small World on YouTube.
 I've seen that video.
 It's incredible.
 Also, I saw somebody do a duet with himself with this Disney covers.
 Oh, yeah.
 That was really inspiration.
 Yeah, Polly Vaughn's video editor is really good at playing the Vinnova.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 That was incredible.
 Thank you so much, Dami.
 If you don't know, Ashley actually hosts a great podcast called Why'd You Push That Button with Kaitlin Tiffany, who's also on The Verge team.
 They did a first season of 10 episodes, which you can go listen to right now.
 Their second season started today, and we have a little trailer for it.
 So we're going to watch that.
 We're going to come back, and then Paul just keeps threatening to teach me how to type, which is something I already know how to do.
 Basically, the next Mavis Beacon.
 So watch this.
 We're going to come back.
 We're going to play some keyboards.
 Have you ever ghosted someone?
 No.
 So?
 I'm not proud of it.
 It's very immature of me.
 This is a pretty typical New York ghosting story.
 He was 10 minutes away on his way texting me, and he ghosted the shit out of me.
 I mean, yeah, it was fun.
 I had a nice time, but I mean, I don't know.
 That was really it.
 I wasn't really looking for a relationship or anything.
 This is really bad.
 I've ghosted a lot of people.
 He would text me, and then he would just keep texting me.
 And then at one point, I realized he was having a complete conversation with himself.
 We went on one date, and I thought the date went really well.
 So then when she ghosted, I was really confused.
 So I was like, OK, I don't really want a magician in my house.
 Boom, ghosted.
 I've never really let people do it to me, because I think it's a big part of my anxiety where I'm like, I always need to have an answer.
 Like, god damn it.
 So then he found me on Facebook, and then he found me on Instagram, and then he found me on LinkedIn.
 And then he was like, are you dead?
 Maybe something actually bad happened.
 Months into the relationship, he just dropped all ties.
 I've never really had a terrible date, or I've had so little respect for a person that I was just going to stop talking to them because I thought this isn't worth it.
 I realized I was completely incapable of telling people that I didn't want to see them again.
 I feel like there are tears to ghosting.
 First date, you're fine.
 Second date, I feel like maybe you can do it.
 Beyond that, I feel like you're in dangerous territory.
 I've been like minorly ghosted on before, and every time I'm just like sending them a message like, you know what, if you don't want to hang out, like that's cool.
 There's a lot of strategy involved.
 If you're wondering what to say, like I just didn't feel the spark, because that's kind of, it's not like a bad thing about them.
 Never gave in. Never gave in. I will not give in. Will not. Thanks.
 Why'd you push that button is my favorite podcast on this planet.
 And you must absolutely listen to it.
 Also, I have been a horrible ghost in the past. I'm so sorry.
 I just want I want you to feel like I ghosted you, but you went into this other emotional zone.
 No, I just didn't do the bit at all.
 That hit me really hard. Oh, you were ghosting me.
 I was trying to and then you were supposed to react.
 I never ghosted you.
 You just started apologizing to strangers.
 All right. What do you got here?
 Well, some tech bullshit.
 This is the tap.
 Tap strap.
 Sometimes it's called I think it's just called tap.
 It's a wearable.
 At the end of all this, we're gonna take your calls.
 Let's put the number on the screen.
 You have nine questions. Dan's gonna come back and we're gonna answer your questions from calls.
 What is it? 18444 emotion?
 Yeah, we'll see.
 Okay, I came up with that.
 This is the tap wearable keyboard.
 It's a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
 The mouse part is not true.
 Yeah, but so you you tap to type.
 So like like this is a E I O U.
 There's different combinations of fingers like D M Z.
 So I'll do a little my current on my phone.
 Oops. We've already started.
 So this is like a little speed run.
 Just type in.
 Oh, how does this work?
 Is there like a virtual keyboard in front of you?
 Are you courting?
 It's chords. I'm making shapes with my hands.
 It's like almost like gestures a little bit, but they're taps.
 And so I've got to make the right hand shape.
 It's almost like sign language in a sense.
 Well, I got that one wrong.
 11? That's not terrible.
 That's not that I'm in the double digits.
 Why would you want to do the very legit reason why is that like so I've got some some phones with keyboards.
 Remember there was a time when phones had keyboards.
 That's like a weird Android sidekick they made.
 Yeah, this is a very strange phone or Blackberry's.
 Remember Blackberry's.
 Anyways, you could feel what you were typing with a software keyboard.
 You can't. And so if you want to input text on your phone, you can always use your voice.
 But if you want a discrete way to input text mobilely.
 But what I'm really excited about is wearable computers like stuff like Google Glass or whatever the future holds for what we're going to actually wear on our face.
 And will we have discrete text input or will we always be using our voice?
 So this is obviously we're not going to do this joke.
 Fun fashion statement. I love this show.
 I think I was like 2008.
 OK, this is the twiddler keyboard. This is in a sense a very similar concept.
 You're making finger combinations to make the letters out of a limited set of keys.
 Also as a joystick for use as a mouse.
 And this was used by a lot of the wearable computing.
 I think we have a photo. Yeah. So right here.
 This is my personal hero, Fad Starter, who has been basically using a twiddler keyboard and a wearable computer since, I don't know, the 90s.
 This is Steve Mann. These are very, very, very important people.
 They're still working on wearable computing stuff. This is a photo from the 90s.
 Yes, that's very nice. I'm just looking at sort of the Birkenstock finish on the jeans over there.
 You know, people were saying the 90s are back. They're kind of right.
 This could totally be on my Instagram right now.
 OK, so anyways, this could be the keyboard that I've been looking for.
 Yeah, it's a tap keyboard. So I want you to try it out. Yeah, I'm into it.
 I'm going to teach you how to type.
 Since we've been teasing that this whole time.
 All right. So there you go. So you got some brass knuckles.
 All right, all right, all right. So you just go past the knuckle here?
 Yeah, all the way up here. It comes in two sizes and it's comical.
 You really need, this is the large and it's definitely too large for me.
 I'd like to announce that I will be in Avengers Infinity War.
 Oh, good. Good. OK, so here's a little tutorial.
 A-E-I-O
 So what you want to do is you're going to float your hand and then tap on the surface.
 One, two, three, four and five.
 OK, all right, all right. So then tap all five to proceed. There you go.
 OK.
 Why don't you come in? Put your hand right there. There you go.
 All right. It doesn't work perfectly.
 So this is one of my biggest problems with it.
 Now try to curve them when you tap. Curve them? Yeah.
 Oh, it works way better.
 So it's not like you're typing on a virtual keyboard.
 You're kind of making these gestures.
 But this tapping is very important.
 And sometimes because it's, you know, it's using motion detection to figure this out.
 Sometimes it doesn't quite figure it out.
 So I think this like learning system is amazing.
 And it built you like learn some of the letters at a time.
 It gives you mnemonics. You're doing it. How am I figuring this out already?
 It very quickly becomes.
 Here, let's let's do some new letters.
 You've got this one. So that's A-E-I-O-U.
 So let's do N-T-L-S.
 Basically, the more common letter is, the easier it is to do.
 Two fingers together. Tap fingers one and two.
 There's a songs. Really great songs.
 But the problem is really good positive reinforcement.
 You get it right and really good negative reinforcement.
 You get it wrong. But sometimes you make the correct shape.
 But you've just moved in some slightly incorrect way.
 And it can make it hard.
 It can make it kind of hard to learn.
 You got this space is all five fingers at once.
 It's the middle finger and ring finger.
 And period is a double space.
 Kind of like a mobile.
 So why would you? So this is like your.
 Oh, wait. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK.
 Yeah. You getting it? Yeah.
 You getting it?
 I mean, that's annoying when it gets it wrong.
 It's weird how quickly that I seem to have learned this.
 Right. It just goes right into your brain.
 Yeah. So we're. Neela and I are both left handed.
 You can. You have to switch it with software to which hand it's going to be on.
 So if you learn it on the right hand, it's mirrored.
 So thumb is a index finger is a middle finger is I so forth.
 This is weird. It's weird how quickly.
 Well, oh, you type of words now.
 You're basically a typist.
 You can type words like lass, sass, mass.
 No, you can't do mass. I don't know how to do anything. I got that one.
 No, come on.
 Nailed it. All right. So how much is this thing?
 This is one hundred and fifty dollars. Yeah.
 And there's a bunch of different apps for for mobile.
 There's like they have games. They have this these learning apps like they've kind of reinforced both like the physical capability.
 And the actual typing capability. I mean, just that was weird that I figured out how to do that.
 You picked it up pretty quick. You ever watch me play a video game on the show?
 I'm usually bad at them. That was weird.
 Well, someone pointed out to me that in a sense, it's kind of like learning guitar chords.
 OK, because it is a cording keyboard in a sense.
 OK, I'm going to do the ultimate test.
 I'm going to try to type on my laptop. Yeah.
 And I'm also going to try to pair something on Bluetooth.
 We're going to get a sign that says days since last Bluetooth fail because we're at like one.
 Hey, hey, got it. OK, so there's a few things here.
 So like. These three fingers is delete.
 Return is kind of weird. They're enter.
 So I'm going to also really don't like how to type my name.
 So the P is kind of a weird shape. So P A U L is.
 So your idea is. Oops.
 Cool.
 Oh, G is a tough one. Is that what? Yep. Guy.
 So I've been practice for about a weekend. OK.
 I got on Friday. The idea here is that you wear a computer on your face and you.
 And I type. And you just walk up to service.
 Here's the thing. I'm using this hard surface. Right.
 On their commercial, they use it on a lot of soft surfaces like they're using it on like someone does it under a table on a knee or someone does it on his arm.
 So like and.
 Especially the more complicated letters are really hard to do on soft surfaces, which kind of almost ruins the entire point.
 I think about Twiddler doesn't matter what the surface is for this.
 You want to be able to take notes while you're just out and about hanging out. Yeah.
 And you can't really do it. Oh, the other thing I wanted to show you the mouse.
 Sure. Show me this. This is the optical sensor.
 See if you can see this. Yeah. OK.
 So this surface is what slides on the table.
 And it just does not work. It does not look like it's worth.
 So there's like how do you click? I think it's a middle finger.
 Oh, it's just it's just like now it's typing accidentally.
 There's like a right click. There's a scroll gesture.
 I had the inventor of this demoed it for me and he could barely use the mouse.
 He kept on saying it's really impressive how good mice are these days.
 We're as an excuse for why this is so bad, but it's really hard to use as a mouse.
 So that's kind of a bummer, too. OK. But I'm excited about this.
 Hopefully they can keep improving it with software. There'll be some software updates.
 Yeah. And I'm going to I'm going to keep practicing, maybe do a little bit of typing on the go.
 I like it. OK. Dan is back. That was cool.
 The tap. I'm very interested in like new input, new interface ideas.
 Dan is back. He just wandered over to the archives. Oh, to get the phones.
 And I am told we have a call. What? You want to call us.
 You can call eight four four four three six six eight four six. We'll take your questions.
 Caller on the line. Talk to us. Oh, I'm told we have to wait.
 We'll see. We'll see if we can use this phone technology. All right. Caller, talk to us.
 Oh, hi. I just had a question about the Samsung Galaxy S9 camera.
 Yeah. OK, so my question is how in the marketing they're talking about how the camera is like reimagined.
 I just wondered if that meant that the phone was actually like the camera was actually much better than most high end smartphone cameras.
 Or it was just like the same that the camera was just the camera hardware was just read on.
 What's your name, man? Paul. Paul, as you say, you call Paul.
 Sorry, a little fuzzy. I call I'm going to answer this one, but I'm going to tell you my gut instinct is that is just a marketing tagline.
 So, yeah, that's the thing with marketing. You have to understand it's all marketing.
 So Sam was going to Samsung's going to try and market this as heavily as it possibly can and use all the words it wants.
 The reality is they have done a lot of work on the camera. It's not just the new switchable lens.
 They do have a new sensor that is a lot of more processing on the sensor itself to do reduce noise and image artifacts and things like that.
 And it also does things quicker on the sensor to do that kind of processing.
 So it should produce better images than the S8 or last year's phones. Is it dramatically better than any other phone in the market?
 No. Is it better at all than any other phone? Like, is it better than Pixel 2? What would you say?
 It's a lot of personal preference at this point. What would you say reimagined refers to?
 I believe what they're referring to is the ability to switch the aperture because that is that is an entirely new thing that we have not seen on other smartphones.
 It's interesting. Yeah. And you get that myself, you know, like a photo and stabilization and stuff like that.
 Yep. These do have image stabilization on both the front and the rear cameras.
 So that all carries over from the S8 as well. Optical image stabilization. Yep.
 Yeah, I think the thing to me is having the mechanical aperture.
 For so long, the thing with smartphone cameras was to make them better, to make them more like DSLRs.
 We don't have the physical space to move light around like a DSLR. We're going to have to do this all on software and figure it out.
 We're going to add a lens to get a depth effect. We're going to do all this other stuff.
 And now we're starting to see actual physical camera features show up in these cameras.
 But for not the reasons that you would otherwise expect. Yeah. Yeah.
 I mean, if it was like, you know, I really feel like the the mechanical aperture is more of a marketing tool for this.
 The phone looks exactly the same as last year, as we pointed out before. So Samsung needs something to market this phone with.
 And the mechanical aperture is. We have a question. Thank you, Cole. Appreciate the question. Thanks a lot, Cole.
 So, Gabriel asked in the chat, does a larger aperture work for video? Yes. OK, so you have enough for video.
 Yeah. I haven't really done a ton of testing with that as how much control you have, but it definitely will do it in the automatic modes.
 Let's see if we can do it live. Paul Kim's over here. All right. Paul Kim.
 Break it up. That's a great question. All right. Not one I always think of. That's not me.
 Just there we go. We're going to take this riveting video of the S9 Plus here.
 I'm going to go into manual mode. There's something with I've got the controls here, so I'm going to open it up to F1.5.
 I'm going to shoot some video. Now, once it's in video and recording, you can see very faintly.
 Let me get this on the black there. You can see it's set to F1.5, but I can't actually change that in video recording.
 Once I stop recording, I can switch to F2.4 and record a new clip at F2.4, but I can't switch on the fly.
 Victor says, does Face Unlock plus iris scanner combo work well? I think the real question is, does it work as well as Face ID in the iPhone?
 No, it's slow and annoying. The other thing that it does is we don't have it set up right now is that it shines a red light.
 On the iPhone, it does an infrared thing, and our cameras can pick that up if we put Eli's iPhone here.
 You can see I'm going to hide his notifications, but you can see it flashing on the camera.
 On the Samsung phones, it actually flashes and you can see it. It's annoying.
 You set that up. We have one more call from our friend, Sam Sheffer. Sammy, are you on the line?
 I am here. Hello.
 What's up, baby? How are you doing?
 I'm doing well. Watching the show live, I'm curious. Do you think this new aperture in smartphones thing is a trend?
 Or is this sort of like every smartphone now has two cameras? Is Apple's new iPhone going to have a variable aperture camera?
 And then a kind of a follow up is, do you think we'll ever see interchangeable lenses on smartphones?
 That's a lot of questions, Sam.
 Yeah, Sam's going for it.
 I don't think it's going to be a trend simply because the benefits are not manifest.
 It feels really like a purely marketing thing. With the dual cameras that we're seeing on a lot of phones...
 Wait, I disagree with you. You get better at getting the right one inside of the camera.
 But why would you ever switch it to f2.4? Just keep it at f1.5.
 Because having a wide open aperture, you do lose some detail. You lose some sharpness, right?
 Not in my experience.
 All right, fine. I mean, you're going to review this thing.
 Stay tuned for the review.
 But they keep it closed more often than not, right?
 They keep it closed more often than not, and I think that is to increase the depth of field.
 But as we saw in the examples, the difference in the depth of field is minimal at best.
 And also, in my experience, the difference in sharpness is imperceptible.
 What about the most important question that Sam asked? Interchangeable lenses?
 No. So here's my big worry with this thing. For real.
 My 6S died, not for any particular reason, except I dropped it.
 And the mechanical focus, well, it wasn't like it died for software, like the battery died and slowed down.
 It was literally the moving part in the camera that focused it, sort of grinding.
 And that was it, the end of the phone.
 Having moving parts in phones scares me, and I think we've seen this endless trend to get rid of every moving part.
 Instead of interchangeable lenses on cameras, I'd rather have a battery door and a replaceable battery.
 You're not going to get that.
 So I think Moment is, I know that's, you use a bunch of interchangeable lenses on your existing phone, right Sam?
 Yeah.
 Yeah, I think those companies are going to have a field day because it's specialized.
 I think the real race is getting more light into these sensors.
 So Samsung has done one thing.
 I think there's a reason that they had to build a mechanical aperture ring to close it down,
 because I think you want it closed more often than not, even though it dances, you can't see it different.
 But I think the real race is what Google is doing with automatic HDR.
 I think Apple is going to do its own tricks.
 Yeah, they're all doing multi-frame processing now where they capture a bunch of frames,
 stack them together to reduce noise, increase detail, things like that.
 Google pioneered that.
 Apple does it.
 Samsung does it now.
 They say they're doing it to a greater extent with the S9.
 Like you said, the real enhancements are going to be on the software,
 because there's a physical limit to how far you can go with the...
 So call it now, does the 2018 iPhone copy Samsung with this aperture thing?
 No.
 No.
 I would say no.
 I sincerely doubt it.
 I think Apple will find a way to mock this.
 They will find a way to say, we don't need to add moving parts to the phone.
 We can do this with our software.
 I mean, that's just the way...
 So they'll just go in with like a 1.4 lens instead and just say, ha, Samsung.
 Maybe, I mean, like again, like we were saying from the beginning
 when we were looking at comparison photos,
 these photos still look like Samsung photos.
 And I think Apple is very happy with the way its photos look.
 And they've been happy since the iPhone 6, right?
 I mean, they've been putting iPhone photos on billboards and being like,
 look at how great these photos are for just five years.
 So any incremental improvement I think is going to be tough.
 I think Apple's bigger challenge is the Pixel,
 because I think the Pixel takes better photos more often.
 I think iPhone can generate beautiful photos,
 but more consistently, I think the Pixel 2 does a better job.
 Thanks, Sam.
 Thank you, Sam.
 All right, guys.
 Just talking to you.
 See you, buddy.
 Last question.
 We've got to go.
 Max is asking, how's the battery life in the S9 and S9 Plus?
 So for just to lay down the specs, they are exactly the same as last year.
 So it's a 3,000 milliamp hour battery in the small one,
 3,500 milliamp hour battery in the big one,
 and you can expect the exact same battery life in my experience.
 Is the 845 supposed to be more efficient in any ways?
 The 845 is supposed to be more efficient,
 but it's not a dramatic leap like from other processor generations.
 It's still the same manufacturing process, 10 nanometers,
 so you're not getting efficiencies there.
 Samsung says there's some software efficiencies and stuff.
 The real world experience has been that the S9 will last a day for light users.
 The S9 Plus will last a day for heavier users,
 but if you're a real heavy user, you can even kill the S9 Plus battery.
 Neither of them have bad battery life, neither of them have exceptional battery life.
 It is the typical, what they market, it lasts a day and no more.
 All right, we've got to wrap up. We're way over time here.
 This was a trial run of calls, so thank you for everyone who called in.
 Next week, the entire middle segment of the show is just you calling us
 for emotional support about your gadgets.
 Emotional tech support.
 Emotional tech support, which Paul and Ashley piloted ages ago.
 I'm excited.
 Pioneered you, Max.
 Keep this number in mind. If you've got a question next week on the show,
 call us, ask us for support.
 I want to call out two people.
 Burt, who's watching in the Philippines, thank you for watching.
 And Techno Info RD is watching from the Dominican Republic.
 Love that.
 Thank you guys so much for watching.
 We're done for today. We'll be back next week, Tuesday, 4 p.m. Eastern.
 You can obviously watch the show on VOD on YouTube,
 and there's clips on the website and everything.
 Next week, we'll be back.
 We've got a bunch of stuff, and we're going to take your calls
 for like 15 minutes of crazy tech.
 It's going to be something.
 They said it's going to be done.
 But we're going to find out if we can.
 All right, that's it for SoccerBaker Live!
 We'll see you next week.