Engadget Podcast: Diving into NVIDIA's RTX 5090 and Samsung's Galaxy S25 launch

Engadget Podcast: Diving into NVIDIA's RTX 5090 and Samsung's Galaxy S25 launch

It feels like CES again with a slew of tech news this week! In this episode, Devindra dives into his final thoughts on NVIDIA's $2,000 GeForce RTX 5090, a super-powered video card with a healthy dose of AI. Senior Reporter Sam Rutherford also joins to explain everything Samsung launched at its Galaxy S25 Unpacked event. And of course, we'll chat about some of the technology industry and policy changes from the new Trump administration. Stay tuned to the end of this episode for our chat with YouTube Director of Product Management Jack Greenberg about some new features headed to YouTube Premium.
Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="mailto:podcast@engadget.com?subject=Engadget%20Podcast%20Feedback">email us[/url] or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/2019-08-01-engadget-podcasts.html">Engadget News[/url]!
<div id="99049fa3c44f40b181c6928ea43ee6a3"><iframe height="480px" width="100%" scrolling="no" src="https://player.simplecast.com/d3dc597c-2303-4fd3-8d9f-9066bd1aaa52?dark=false&show=true"></iframe></div>
<h2 id="jump-link-subscribe">Subscribe!</h2>
<ul>
<li><a data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:iTunes;elmt:;cpos:3;pos:1" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=9b2a3988-c5c9-4640-8e2b-1de7b2717343&siteId=us-engadget&pageId=1p-autolink&contentUuid=2457dc55-33a2-4901-a0b7-e46cd49f69bf&featureId=text-link&merchantName=iTunes&custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL2l0dW5lcy5hcHBsZS5jb20vdXMvcG9kY2FzdC90aGUtZW5nYWRnZXQtcG9kY2FzdC9pZDExNDI3OTA1MzA_bXQ9MiIsImNvbnRlbnRVdWlkIjoiMjQ1N2RjNTUtMzNhMi00OTAxLWEwYjctZTQ2Y2Q0OWY2OWJmIiwib3JpZ2luYWxVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL2l0dW5lcy5hcHBsZS5jb20vdXMvcG9kY2FzdC90aGUtZW5nYWRnZXQtcG9kY2FzdC9pZDExNDI3OTA1MzA_bXQ9MiJ9&signature=AQAAAWJHcmXyQ-7AudKR5aRLEyUmyijdQ7H9Vt1h9AGHryZ0&gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fthe-engadget-podcast%2Fid1142790530%3Fmt%3D2" class="rapid-with-clickid" data-original-link="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-engadget-podcast/id1142790530?mt=2">iTunes[/url]</li>
<li><a data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:;elmt:;cpos:4;pos:1" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?siteId=us-engadget&pageId=1p-autolink&contentUuid=2457dc55-33a2-4901-a0b7-e46cd49f69bf&featureId=text-link&custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL29wZW4uc3BvdGlmeS5jb20vc2hvdy8zRUMzZE1JUkI5OWRrdm9TQmVTTzdHP3NpPWY3VUFMR0ttUkRXdE9yVThaNC11aVEiLCJjb250ZW50VXVpZCI6IjI0NTdkYzU1LTMzYTItNDkwMS1hMGI3LWU0NmNkNDlmNjliZiIsIm9yaWdpbmFsVXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly9vcGVuLnNwb3RpZnkuY29tL3Nob3cvM0VDM2RNSVJCOTlka3ZvU0JlU083Rz9zaT1mN1VBTEdLbVJEV3RPclU4WjQtdWlRIn0&signature=AQAAAXSewPlXrrBjTSM0H9lHAmed0nzvipiNaJGoa3Iv5Ob1&gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fopen.spotify.com%2Fshow%2F3EC3dMIRB99dkvoSBeSO7G%3Fsi%3Df7UALGKmRDWtOrU8Z4-uiQ" class="rapid-with-clickid" data-original-link="https://open.spotify.com/show/3EC3dMIRB99dkvoSBeSO7G?si=f7UALGKmRDWtOrU8Z4-uiQ">Spotify[/url]</li>
<li><a data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1" href="http://pca.st/mlY3">Pocket Casts[/url]</li>
<li><a data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1" href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/engadget/the-engadget-podcast">Stitcher[/url]</li>
<li><a data-i13n="cpos:7;pos:1" href="https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cDovL2ZlZWRzLnNvdW5kY2xvdWQuY29tL3VzZXJzL3NvdW5kY2xvdWQ6dXNlcnM6MjQ1MjIwOTU4L3NvdW5kcy5yc3M&ep=14">Google Podcasts[/url]</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="jump-link-credits">Topics</h2>
<ul>
<li>TikTok was only banned for 14 hours, what happened? – 1:27</li>
<li>Devindra’s NVIDIA RTX 5090 Review: more power than most people need – 13:53</li>
<li>Samsung Unpacked announces Galaxy S25 series and teases a thinner phone – 30:25</li>
<li>What the new administration’s Executive Orders mean for AI, EVs and the environment – 54:23</li>
<li>Pop culture picks – 1:03:41</li>
<li>What’s coming to Youtube Premium with project manager Jack Greenberg – 1:07:06</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="jump-link-credits">Credits </h2>
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Karissa Bell
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North
<h2 id="jump-link-transcript">Transcript</h2>
<div class="breakout-box">Devindra: What's up internet and welcome back to the Engadget podcast. I'm senior editor Devindra Hardawar, this week I'm joined by senior reporter Sam Rutherford. Hey Sam. Hey, how's it going? Going okay. And also podcast producer Ben Ellman. Hey Ben. We've got so much news. So much news, including a quick update on pretty much everything we talked about last episode.
A lot is happening. both in the tech world and in the political world that affects all this, too. So this week, we'll be diving into some of the updates from the TikTok ban that, that was not. Some thoughts on that. I have thoughts on the NVIDIA RTX 5090, which I spent a couple days, most of this week reviewing, but I wish I had gotten it earlier.
Sam has a lot of thoughts on the Samsung Galaxy S25 launch event, that impact event. And we will all be breaking down kind of the new political order with the new Trump administration. A lot of things have happened, a lot of executive orders and clearly a sign of like what they plan to do when it comes to the environment, when it comes to the tech industry, all sorts of stuff.
Stay tuned to the end of this episode. I'll also be chatting with YouTube project manager, Jack Greenberg. He's in charge of YouTube premium which is launching some new features this week. We get into a good conversation about that and how useful that service is too. It's one of those things I like.
And I think kind of an undersung great streaming service. As always, if you're enjoying the show, please subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcatcher of choice, leave us a review in iTunes, drop us an email at podcast and engadget. com and have to say. I guess not RIP TikTok. So here, here was the thing last week we talked about with Carissa Bell from Engadget.
We talked about the potential TikTok ban coming and a lot of stuff happened after we recorded. So the Supreme court unanimously, unanimously said that they're not going to stop the potential ban. And then Tik Tok had a bit of a countdown on Friday and Saturday. I saw a lot of posts from people that were basically, here's my last post.
RIP. Thanks for all the, you know, thanks for all the memories and something.
Ben: And more than that, it was tearful. It was so many people saying like, I felt like I built a. community. Yeah. There were some people who really relied on TikTok for like a significant amount of supplemental income. I saw at least one person who said they had a full time job, but they still count TikTok as their income from TikTok as like a significant amount of their.
Income that, like, really helps them live. This person was not an influencer. They were just, like, a person who posted a bunch and eventually got, like, a couple hundred thousand followers. That's, that's something, I mean, that's Every time, even if it's, like, a potentially dangerous service, I don't know, and we'll talk about, like, all that stuff.
Devindra: But it's a community, like, are you losing your friends? Even if you're losing your followers, you're losing like the thing you used to do every day. For me, TikTok was the place where I would love to just like sit and unwind after like the onslaught of bad news and everything. My daughter and I would love like scrolling it and finding fun videos and stuff.
Like just the way you discover things, a lot of fun. I don't know if TikTok meant anything to you, Sam.
Sam: No, I mean, I definitely feel for the people who like. When you build up a community and then the whole platform just gets taken offline and you're like there's a void in your life I you know, I think that's something that I think everyone can sort of identify in different route, you know avenues of their life Yeah,
Devindra: yeah, but it's just it's one of those things.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah Yeah, as far as like I'm not a big tick tock user or social media user in general So I didn't have as much impact on me. Although ByteDance which is, you know, TikTok's parent company. They also own some game published and stuff like that. So I couldn't play Yeah, that's
Ben: right.
Marvel Snap. Yeah, I couldn't play Marvel Snap over the weekend. And that that was just, like, really
Sam: weird. You, like, open up the game and it's just, Oh, we're we're we're gone. We're trying to come back soon. And then, hey, we don't know what's gonna happen. And then eventually they did come back and the game's back online now.
But it's just like That's just like a really weird side effect that like, I don't think people were, they were so focused on TikTok that they didn't think about all the other companies or apps that, you know, ByteDance is kind of in charge of.
Devindra: And we should, we should talk about like the broader political context here too, but go, go ahead Ben, yep.
Ben: Yeah, I can cover both of those things. So, what shut down on Saturday night? It was TikTok, it was Marvel Snap, it was CapCut, it was eventually Lemon8, which was, I think, I had not even heard of that. But yeah, yeah, a, a tick tock, like kind of competitor to Instagram or something. It was like a cross between micro blogging blue sky X style stuff and Instagram.
I noticed I was getting
Devindra: invites to lemonade within tech talk and I was still like, what the hell is this? Yeah.
Ben: Yes. Yeah. So after the Supreme court upheld the ban on Friday. Tik Tok did its big countdown of saying, Hey, we're going to be going offline as of Sunday. So everyone was doing their really like tearful posts saying, I've, you know, I'm going to miss everyone so much.
I saw one user mentioned that it felt like the end of eighth grade because everyone knew that they were going to different schools. So to speak, and nobody knew whether or not they were going to see their internet friends again.
Devindra: Every time a social network dies, it's that same thing. That's what I'm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Ben: I was hanging out. I was like scrolling to my heart's content on Saturday night. And I figured that we had until like 1201 Sunday morning, technically that didn't happen. The tick tock actually. Shut down around 10 30 or so. It threw up a Error message. Once you tried to sign into the app again, like if you closed the app It said at first we regret a US law banning tik tok will take effect on January 19 and force us to make our services Temporarily unavailable.
We're working to restore service in the US as soon as possible and we appreciate your support please stay tuned. And then within a couple of hours, it changed to a law banning TikTok has been enacted by the U. S. Unfortunately, that means that you can't use TikTok for now.
Yeah.
Ben: We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with the U.
S. on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned because this was happening the day before a new president was inaugurated on Monday, the 20th president elect at the time, Trump said that he really wanted to do something about saving tick tock and that this was one of his first priorities.
People were talking a lot about how Democrats really bungled into this situation because Trump was the one who started the TikTok ban in the first place He started it by executive order Then it was codified into law this past May of 2024 as part of an omnibus bill That ended up funding Weapons for Ukraine and Israel as well So it was kind of like a big national security like helping our allies sort of thing.
So there was a Like 12 hours 14 hours. I think 14 hours. Yeah, according to NPR that TikTok was not available and then it just came back and they're like, thank you so much President Trump Like we are looking forward to working with you in the future
Devindra: It's worth pointing out like how very clear that messaging was because this was a pop up message we were getting within tik tok and It was almost as if ByteDance was very much like politicizing its own base to be like, Hey it's up to the Trump administration to save us.
Hey, thank you to the Trump administration. Really painting a picture of like who is saved everybody's favorite social network.
Sam: Yeah.
Devindra: So I found that, that kind
Sam: of odd. That's my biggest just frustration with this whole saga is that. Trump originally manufactured the problem and then he gets to come back later and manufacture the solution when it was, it was all a bunch of nonsense to begin with and it's just like, yeah, you, you, and like, and then there's people cheering about, oh, how, how Trump saved Tik Tok and it's like, no, no, he didn't.
Ben: Yeah. It was also manufactured via xenophobia and xenophobia. You know, this was from the time when he was calling COVID 19 the China virus. And so of course this is like the China app or something. So this is coming from just like four sagas ago. In, you know, American politics.
Devindra: And now he likes TikTok because TikTok people helped him get elected.
He was, he was able to blow up on TikTok.
Ben: Allegedly. I mean, I think it was more of that. I think they
Devindra: invested a lot of money in in promoting his shit on TikTok too, so.
Ben: I heard one person mention a figure, please don't quote me on this, but the figure mentioned was that Turning Point USA, the conservative Like political action group for young people was getting something like 60 million views a month on TikTok and the Republican Party, Trump especially, was like, Hey, this is really useful to us.
Devindra: Yeah. And I'm sure we have not seen the numbers yet, but I'm looking at all the money Elon Musk was throwing around to help Trump get elected. Yeah. I'm sure all of some of that went to TPUSA too. We'll probably hear about that eventually. We should talk about like where we are right now, because we've got a lot of stuff to cover too.
So Trump has delayed the TikTok ban for 75 days via an executive order. That's where we are now. There is, there are discussions that he could not have actually promised that TikTok was going to be okay and the people, you know, serving TikTok in the U. S. There's actually no way to, for him to like assure those companies that they were okay to re enable TikTok and start serving the site again, because he wasn't president.
He was just a guy who was going to be president with no actual powers, but Hey, nothing matters anymore. Right? So he can say whatever he wants and sort of paint himself as the hero. once again, just, just a wild state of affairs.
Ben: Also the 70, is it 70 or 75 days? I see 75 days, at least on our story. Okay.
Yeah. So the 75 day limit also is like, has no basis in the actual federal law because the federal law says that if TikTok makes some significant motion toward divestment and like selling to a US company or something, then You can grant a 90 day extension where TikTok is no longer banned. So that would be three months.
So this is like somewhere in the middle. It doesn't agree with the text of the federal law. Trump is talking about some kind of joint partnership. And let's also remember like TikTok. Yes, does have some kind of connection to like China, Southeast Asia and you know, all of their like big headed bureaucrats and strong men.
So who knows if Trump himself is getting rolled by someone who is just a little bit smarter in dealing with leaders with a lot of they think highly of themselves, but they're not too smart.
Devindra: Yeah. There's a lot going on here. I also think it's worth pointing out that the TikTok that came back, it's sort of, this is sort of like a pet cemetery situation, if you're all familiar we're talking
Ben: about pet cemetery.
Yes. It's not exactly the same one that we had before.
Devindra: It's a little different. It feels like certain other content is, I think people are showing like searches around fascism, searches that were not particularly Trump friendly, were not working really well. Yeah, the algorithm's just a little bit
Sam: different.
Devindra: It's a little bit different. A lot of people have been saying that, at this point, it almost seems clear that Every major social network has basically been co opted by the right wing, or is at least leaning that way because they wanted to be goody, goody with the Trump administration coming in. So that includes Facebook.
That certainly includes Twitter slash X. The only one that is sort of like, it's not huge, but it's the one that has sort of prevented this is is our lovely blue sky. Because it's federated and it's avoiding like it's avoiding these particular, you know, issues. And it also has like a pretty progressive user base.
So that's just an interesting situation of where we are. I'm still like, occasionally I'm using TikTok now. I'm uploading to TikTok, but I'm like, now my blinder, my feelers are certainly more up in terms of how they're manipulating information, especially after all, they're you know, begging and praise for the Trump administration ahead of this too.
It's all kind of gross, social media in general. We're just, we're just like getting down a dark path. So anything else you guys want to add about. Where we are now, it's good with TikTok.
Ben: This is very much a developing story. Stay tuned to Engadget. Stay tuned to your favorite tech news, because the 75 day deadline is going to be coming up sooner than we think.
And who knows what's going to happen? Who knows what's going
Devindra: to happen? We, this entire weekend has been like a fricking whirlwind because like we were following the TikTok news. I knew. Chris and a whole bunch of reporters were like looking, keeping an eye on things on the weekend and writing stories over the weekend.
And then the inauguration happened and a whole bunch of more news happened. And I would just love for it to stop just for, just for a second for us to catch our breath. Yeah. Let's
Ben: talk about a gadget though, Dev. Let's talk about the 5090.
Devindra: Let's talk about the 5090. And this is NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090.
This is their flagship GPU. It is 2, 000. I spent a big chunk of time reviewing and benchmarking this thing. And I have a couple of takeaways. You can check out my review on the site right now. I gave an 88 out of a hundred. Not because I think it is a perfect card, I wish it was not 2, 000, I really wish Nvidia wasn't out here really pushing the limits of like, really just like pushing like the, the price range of like what a GPU can be the 3090 I believe was 1, 500, the 4090 Was 1600 and they're just like creeping up and up and up.
It's justifiable some like, it's a little bit justifiable in terms of what the Hardaware that they actually put in here. Like this thing has 32 gigabytes of DDR7v RAM. 32 gigabytes of RAM in a video card. My entire desktop system has 32 gigabytes of RAM right now. So that is, that's kind of where we are.
And I just have to take a minute to just sort of like. Soak that in. It is wild. Like what this card is. It has a 91 billion transistors. It has 21, 760 CUDA cores. At the same time, it is also thinner, like it's also skinnier than the 4090 was. The 4090 was a big hunk and beast. It was a three slot card that really took up a chunk of space inside my desktop.
This thing is a two slot card. It can actually fit into small form factor systems. So it's actually. Smaller, more efficient at the same time. Also more power hungry than the previous car. It just kind of a wild thing. Yeah. I saw a power draw of like
Sam: 550, 600 Watts depending on the like, you know, use case.
Devindra: There's a, in 3dMark, there are benchmarks that you can interact with, like really ray trace benchmarks. So there's one called Speedway. I did the interactive mode. So you can like move the camera around and look at characters and stuff. And once I did that, this card was. Eating 550 watts of power.
The card was a hundred percent. The fan was like really blaring, but not like super loud. It's actually not too bad for as far as like a high NGP goes. And what's really interesting is like, as soon as I quit that demo, as soon as I quit any game or something, it gets back down to a really decent idle temperature of like 35 to 40 Celsius.
So under that, under that benchmark, when it was fully under load, it was 79 to 80. During most games, it's like 70 Celsius. So these are. Good temperatures for video cards for people who don't know. And yeah, the the actual results to like benchmarks are good. It's a fast card. I don't know what to tell you.
Like it is a 2, 000 video card that is significantly faster than the 4090. And also if you add in the stuff around DLSS 4, which is NVIDIA's AI upscaling technology. Now it offers multi frame generation. Whereas with DLSS 3. 5, the last generation one it could, that one could generate one frame. For every frame that was actually being rendered by the card.
So it almost like doubled your FPS. This card, because of the way DLSS4 works and the increased reliance on AI and tensor cores, this card can basically NVIDIA says, like, deliver eight times the frame rates. Essentially, you can generate one three frames for every frame that's actually being rendered by the card.
So that's like a 4X upgrade, they call it, too. A lot, a lot of, a lot of frames. Let me tell you how many frames, Sam. The frames include 240 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077. In 4k, with all the graphics turned all the way up, with Ray Tracing Overdrive mode on, which is like the really intensive Ray Tracing 2, which is like fully reflective just a lot of detail happening there 240 to 250 FPS just cruising through that game.
Just wild. Like, I was a little gobsmacked seeing that number. If I tell you that, if I tell you this card can get those frame rates, are you impressed? Or are you worried about, like, the potential fake frames, Sam?
Sam: I mean, so the multi frame generation is sort of its own thing. And like, you know, there are some issues of that where, you know, you still, you know, it has, has its own set of artifacts and stuff like that.
But for me, like, you know, people have been talking about this idea of like 4k gaming for a long time, and we've never really had like a GPU that could deliver, you know, all the bells and whistles, graphic settings turned to max at 4k. Until it seems like with this, you know, with the 50, 90. So I think for me that that's a really interesting kind of just like, you know, benchmark just like of, you know, where gaming is at today.
And even on a personal level, like we were talking about this before the show where it's like, I really want to upgrade, you know, I have an older GPU, I have a, you know, a 2080 TI. And so I'm definitely a good card. It's a, it's a good card, but like, you know, I'm, you know, it's old enough. It's I'm due for an upgrade, but at the same time, it's like.
I would love to get like the top of the line flagship, you know, RTX 50, 90 card, but 2, 000 is like the, the, the entire price of what my, you know, desktop CPU cost originally, including the case and motherboard and all that. That's your entire system. Yeah, that's my entire system. So it's like, it's, it's really hard to justify.
So, you know, maybe, you know, I was like talking about, Hey, when, when the new cards come out, maybe I'll take a look at the 49 DC with the price drop on that is like, or, you know, maybe wait until later in the spring when like the 50 70 TI comes out or the 50 80. And then, you know, we'll kind of have like a better idea of like, you know, what this whole generation 50 series really looks like in terms of like, you know, price performance and what kind of value you're actually getting from that.
Devindra: That's a good point. Like, I usually tell people when new Hardaware comes out, if you don't, like, it's not always wise to jump to the most expensive flagship thing, look at the last gen, see how the prices drop. NVIDIA is saying that the 5070, the RTX 5070, which is 550, is as fast as the 4090 when it comes to frame rates, but it's including these generated frames.
So it's including AI generated frames that can match the actual FPS value of the 4090. But at the same time, there are a lot of other things DLSS four is doing a lot of that is also going to the older card. So they're doing like more efficient, retracing generation, more efficient there's all sorts of stuff.
The super resolution feature, which is the thing that like delivers higher quality textures, that is more efficient. That's going to be more effective. That's also going to work down to like the 30 series and the 20 series cards. So even the card you have, Sam, we'll get some benefit from this stuff. But yeah, the question is like, do you, should you invest in something like the 47 or 50 70 or 50 70 TI, which I believe is 200 more or even the 50 80 rather than a faster last gen car, like the 40 90, I cannot.
Like just given how involved the 4090 is and how big that card is, I can't imagine that thing is going to drop below a thousand dollars, you know, it's really going to depend on
Sam: the market. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Devindra: Like those cards probably, they probably didn't make too many of those cause it's the flagship.
Not many people were buying them. You may find some use, but I don't, I really don't recommend buying. Use
Sam: GPUs especially, I feel like are such a crapshoot where like, Hey, you could be lucky and it works great, but then. You know, if it doesn't, you're just like, you have no warranty, nothing to fall back on.
And so yeah, that gets really dicey.
Devindra: It's like buying a used hot rod because that's how gamers tend to run their GPUs. And these things are, they're drawing a lot of power. The fans are doing a lot of work. Like there are really easy ways for you to like fry a GPU or mess it up. If you're overclocking it too much or you stuff it in a case where there's not enough airflow.
There's a lot of ways for a GPU to go wrong. So I would just be really careful about that. For your purposes though, Sam, like you're thinking of buying your, so you're, you're considering like rebuilding your whole rig. So you're going to need a new CPU. You're going to need new motherboard. You're going to, you're going to need new, faster Ram actually too.
At the end of the day, I don't. I don't think anybody should justify spending 2, 000 on a single video card unless you are a creative professional or a streamer or somebody who are an influencer who is doing a lot of like high end video work because this thing does crunch through video transcoding faster than anything I've seen before.
If it's the cost of this will help you make money faster, you know, or make content faster, then yeah, that's justifiable. I don't think like that. It's a 2, 000 video card, like on a moral level. I'm like, no,
Sam: yeah, even for me It would be more of an ego purchase. I can't justify The like, the gameplay performance that like, you know, that home that like, I'm like, you know, I'm not streaming.
I'm not doing anything with this. I'm not encoding videos. Do you have
Devindra: a 4k 240 Hertz monitor, Sam?
Sam: No. And, and, but you know, one of those. So, and so this, this is all sort of like the big, you know, maybe possible 2025 desktop upgrade for me. It was like, I want a new monitor and I want to revamp the rig. And it's like.
And when you consider the price of a 2, 000 GPU, suddenly things are getting a lot more expensive than I originally budgeted for. And so I was like, all right, I got to, I got to come back down to earth.
Devindra: Also your children have to eat, you know, you can't spend all your money on GPU money. But
Sam: the
Ben: other thing is like the classic.
It's the classic issue of like, not wanting to put a Ferrari engine inside a, one of those seventies Volkswagen bugs, right? Like you need to make sure that the rest of your system can catch up or make the best use of this enormous graphics card.
Sam: Yeah. And the other thing that kind of think about it in terms of like a more you know, market perspective way is that part of the reason why Nvidia can price the 50, 90 at 2, 000 is because they have no competition.
AMD does not have an equivalent Offering for the 50, 90. And so you see that jump from 1, 600 last generation with the 40, 90 to 2000 with the 50, 90. And it's like, we really need more competition in at least in the top end GPU market in order for, you know, prices to be a little bit more, you know.
Devindra: I don't know if that's like AMD is right now saying like they're focusing on the mid range.
They're focusing on things that are like slightly more accessible. They're still doing some low end stuff, but Intel actually out of nowhere with their XCSS cards have actually been doing a good job. The ARC card that I talked about a while ago 250 bucks. There is some price gouging going on there, but you can still get that card for under 300.
It's a pretty good deal. It's really up to AMD. To kind of catch up to where Nvidia is. But a MD, you know, is doing their own thing. Like they're thinking of gaming graphics in other ways. 'cause they build the graphics that go in the PlayStation and that go in the Xbox and they think of integrated graphics.
They're not, they're thinking of like graphics that can be put into consumer boxes at reasonable price points that normal people can buy. They're not as interested in, I'm gonna make a $2,000 GPU you know, for crazy, crazy gamers. It'll be interesting to see what AMD does, because they talked about, they will have their own form of a neural network upscaling similar to DLSS this year, but they're not, they're doing some frame generation at once again, though, NVIDIA has like been here earlier.
They're doing multi frame generation generation. And let me say in cyberpunk in, what was it in Dragon in dragon Age? The Veil Guard, which also 200 FDA 250 FPS, everything cranked up 4K in Star Wars Outlaws. These games look buttery smooth. Like I didn't detect any of the artifacts that I used to see in DLSS.
Sometimes in DLSS, like really fringy objects like a metal grate or something, or something far off in the distance would like shimmer a little bit and look a little wrong. That stuff doesn't, like, doesn't really appear anymore. They actually have some new DLSS features that are also going to clean up the way their algorithmic upscaling works.
It is rendering these games at a lower resolution than 4K, upscaling them, but also doing all these other magic tricks. But, I, I kind of felt like Cypher in the matrix, right? I know the steak isn't real. I know the matrix is telling me that it's delicious and juicy, but I'm so tired. I'm so tired of like the low frame rates and the lack of feasibility for 4k gaming.
I'm like, ignorance is bliss, I guess, because I can't really tell. My eyeballs can't tell. It feels good. The latency is good. Just feels really good. After all that though, no, nobody should buy this card. You should not buy this card, Sam. It is irresponsible. It is immoral. It is. Nvidia just totally flexing.
I think the 5080, which is going to be 1, 000. Hey, that's really expensive, but if you can justify it and if you think it'll last you five years, sure. That
Sam: seems like more of a sweet spot in terms of like, value for performance.
Devindra: Well, I would say the 50, the 5070. If that thing really, if you can really get the 5070 at 550, it does a lot of these tricks.
You would actually do some pretty decent 4k gaming for people who have maybe 4k, 120 Hertz monitors, which are more common. Those have been around for a couple of years, 240 Hertz monitors only came out last year and they're really expensive. I think for most people like that card will actually serve you for five years really well.
Also, because. 8K gaming is not a thing. We're not really going too hard beyond 4K. Like 4K is kind of where we're going to be at for many, many years. I do not want to think about
Sam: 8K gaming in the, anytime in the future. Don't think about 8K
Devindra: gaming. The only thing people are thinking about is maybe higher refresh rate 4K.
And I'm like, Hey, we hit 240 Hertz. You're doing like decent 4K upscaling. We're good. We are good right here. And I was worried about like what this card would mean for the overall market. And, you know, what, what is gonna be the biggest gaming device of this year, Sam?
Sam: The, the, the switch to obvious. The switch to, I mean, it's not, it's not gonna be close either.
Devindra: It's going to be the switch to by a mile. And even in terms of like PC Hardaware, I think like the PC handhelds the gaming PC handhelds, this is a good year for those. 'cause those things are getting cheaper. The, I, I bought the retro pocket five and that thing was like 200 bucks. Two 50 bucks. Like they're getting so cheap, they're really capable.
But the switch to. It's going to be an affordable consumer device that will not deliver these frame rates. It's not going to render in 4k. It's going to look old. Like a lot of people are assuming it's maybe about as powerful as like a PlayStation 4 Pro, maybe slightly faster than a PlayStation 4, doing good HD, you know, gaming essentially, maybe just kind of solidifying 60 FPS, but it's going to be an underpowered machine.
That is meant for mass consumption that has weird features like a joystick that turns into a mouse That that's what matters is gonna matter more in the gaming world than a 2, 000 GPU This is a pure Nvidia flex. Nobody buy this card, even though it's like a freaking unicorn That's kind of where I'm at with this thing.
Yeah, so Ben any any thoughts hearing about this Hardaware? I'm thinking that you could really do some serious CAD and SOLIDWORKS work on this. You could. That you could definitely, like, model some protein folding.
Sam: Yeah, I mean, you know, like Divinder said, if you're using this in a professional manner,
Ben: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It
Sam: makes a lot more sense. But if you're just, you know, a regular home user playing games on it, It's, it's total overkill.
Devindra: Total over. If you're a video editor, if you are somebody who's dealing with streams, or if you're actually a successful streamer or influencer, then yeah, it may be worth having something like this, but also a lot of those folks are having other people edit their videos and handle stuff too.
So like they're not actually buying the Hardaware they need to support their stuff. It's a whole thing. 15 ID. Good card, check out my 2500 word review of this thing, and please don't buy it. If you buy it, please don't, like, just don't tell the world. I also feel like it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing to tell people that you bought an RTX 5090 in this economy.
In this world that is about to fall apart. I don't, I don't think so. So anyway, that's the 5090. If you have thoughts about this thing or you have questions that you want me to test, like things you want me to test on the 5090, I am in touch with the people from Topaz, the upscaling video software. I want to like do some video upscaling on the 5090 and kind of see what's possible with that thing.
So we'll do some of that. Hopefully we'll test the 5070. That's the one I really want to test soon. And yeah, stay tuned for more of our coverage around this stuff.
Let's move on to the stuff from Samsung, the Samsung Galaxy S 25 event. First off, like what devices were announced, Sam? And were there any major surprises?
Sam: Yeah. So this was kind of like as far as it goes in terms of, you know, unpacked events. It's kind of a low key event because we only got three new devices.
We got your base S 25, your S 25 plus. And the S 25 ultra. Now, depending on how you're counting, there were a couple other teases for some other devices that I think we'll get to later. But you know, even some of the people on chat were like, they were kind of given like, you know, big yawn snooze for this event, because at least on a Hardaware level, these are very, very similar to what we got last year and depending on how you're looking at it the year before that too.
Because display basically the same design, very similar charging speeds, very similar there's a quirk with kind of the wireless charging. And so the, at least the Hardaware changes comes down to two basic upgrades. Now we're getting the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip across the board and that's globally.
So that's really, really nice for, you know, Asia and some parts of Europe where they were getting Exynos chips unlike America where we always get the Qualcomm stuff. So that's really nice to see it's going to be available globally. Samsung says that it worked, you know, tighter with Qualcomm to kind of, it's not just an overclocked chip of the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite, they kind of changed some of like the, the ISPs or some of the, you know, individual packets inside the SoC.
So, it's kind of hard to know for sure how much that affects the overall performance, but that's what they're saying. And then for the ultra, just the ultra, there's a new 50 megapixel ultra wide camera. And that's kind of it in terms of new Hardaware performance. Samsung is claiming, depending on if you're looking at the NPU but about 30 to 40 percent better performance year over year, and about 18% faster frame rates in Vulcan based gaming.
So that's kind of what you're looking at in terms of like speeds and feeds. I have to say,
Devindra: looking at the new ultra Sam and that new camera and everything, I hate the way this phone looks what the yeah,
Sam: I mean, I don't want to go off on a huge tangent in terms of like, yeah, just phone design in general has gotten very samey basically, you know, you still get the titanium frame on the ultra, but the whole idea is just like, you have a very nice metal frame, you have glass in front and back and then you have, However, many number of little dark circles for however many cameras you have on the back and, you know, all, all the iPhone and pixel, the Google pixel does it to, they all kind of look the same in terms of like your standard smartphone.
That's not a foldable or whatever. And it definitely bums me out. Samsung. Okay. And so they probably a good segue to talk about how. Samsung did tease a fourth member of the S25 family in the Galaxy S25 Edge. And people were saying this is like the most interesting one of the bunch, and they didn't tell us much about it.
It's probably not going to go on sale until sometime later this spring or summer or whatever.
Devindra: So it was just a teaser image? It was just a little
Sam: teaser. There's a short clip to go with it. And they didn't tell us any specs, price, or anything about that. But basically, the S25 Edge is basically our super, super thin version.
Of the standard S 25, at least that's what it looks like. And there were rumors about an S 25 slim. And basically that's what it looks like. The S 25 edges. But the thing is, Samsung used to make edge phones long time ago with the Galaxy S edge S S I remember
Devindra: we were there. Yeah. The galaxy,
Sam: no edge, the galaxy S seven edge.
And they had cool, like it had a cool, like. Glass edge that you could use it to like put apps on and stuff like that, or at least app icons. But this is just a really, really thin phone. And so it's like, okay, fine. I guess you could do more. And so some people are saying this is the most interesting one of the bunch.
And I'm kind of sitting on the opposite side of that, because do you know why I'm not impressed because this is basically one half of a foldable phone. And then they just put a regular screen on top instead of a flexible screen. And it's like, what do you. Yeah, so the thinness is almost, it looks to be exactly the same thinness as like the galaxy Z fold, but you know, cut in half and then they put a glass screen on top.
Devindra: So they're probably, they saw those rumors about the ultra thin iPhone. I feel like Samsung is like, Hey, we, we got to have an ultra thin phone and we got to be for there faster. But I saw people getting excited, like, Ooh, screen on the edge. And I was like. We've been doing this for too long because I, I remember I, I was S25 Edge
Sam: does not have any of those features.
It's just a, you know, a regular metal frame. And so that's, you know, it's a thin phone. I thought I was really over the thinness wars and phones in general, but I guess people are excited about it again.
Devindra: Remember the Narnia phrase, do not speak the, the, the old magic to me, which I was there when it was written, I was there when the old, like Samsung you know edge phones were created, which had they had some features, they had like weird touch features.
This was a full decade before the, before the foldable phones or anything. Just kind of wild, kind of wild. And that was there. One more thing that was there after all the announcements, we've got one more surprise for you. Were people actually excited for it, Sam? I think like I said, it's like me,
Sam: me, maybe I'm out of touch because I think the idea of like a super thin phone, people are excited about again.
Maybe like, you know, younger people are like, I want, you know, I want some, they didn't
Devindra: know they weren't here for the last edge phone. So the Samsung, it's like
Sam: new feature. They see, they see like the galaxy Z flip is like, Oh, that's really nice and compact, but I want something a little bit more durable, but still, you know, fits in your pocket easy.
I guess that's what the S 25 edge is going to be.
Devindra: I see some software features. I hear a lot more AI features going on too. Anything notable that you want to mention?
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. So. This is kind of, you know, another iteration or a kind of revamp of Samsung's Galaxy AI suite of software.
So, they're kind of introducing this kind of concept called AI Agents. And that basically means that like, you know, you can use more natural language controls or voice commands to do things just a little bit easier. And also, a lot of the like, existing features have gotten renamed so that they kind of Encompass a bunch of different tools all in, you know, one kind of umbrella.
So for example smart select, which has been around forever on Samsung phones is now called AI select. Okay, cool. Okay. And you know, you can use it to like, you know, take screenshots, turn videos into gifts you know, summarize stories. And so this is kind of like. Hey, this is like your vision sort of like looking at the screen and giving you a bunch of options on what to do with it.
And so I think that's, you know, definitely nice and definitely makes it easier to use and easier to understand because you're not looking through like a giant menu. And the UI has kind of been changed so that, you know, if you do AI select, it'll kind of put little glowy highlights around different areas of the screen.
So like this,
Devindra: the Siri design. Yeah. What are we, what are we doing? Samsung, but you spent the last year saying Apple's shiny Siri border is kind of pretty and Samsung's like, oh yeah, it is pretty yoink. And so I think what Samsung
Sam: is like, you know, obviously learning from some of its competitors and figuring out how to make.
You know, AI a little bit more approachable. It's good, not terribly original though. Same thing for like, you know, sketch to image. Stealing
Devindra: is the word I'd say more than learning. Yeah. Yes, yes.
Sam: Same thing for like sketch to image, which is like, they're, you know, you use AI to like draw, and you know, you tell AI what to draw.
Now it's called drawing assist, so a little bit easier to know. And you know, they added some more features, so you can pull up an old photo and add an AI. You know, art to it, or you can use a text prompt to add AI art. And you know, the results are generally a little bit better, a little bit more detailed.
Okay, fine. But I'm, I'm, I'm really just not sure that like, this is the reason that was going to cause people to go out and buy a new phone. Yeah.
Devindra: Yeah. Just like, it's funny, we saw, we saw it. Do you sort of a summary of a couple of paragraphs of a website? The summary was just as long as those paragraphs.
On the website, just read, read the words, read the read totally. And, you know,
Sam: also once again,
Devindra: kind of cribbing off some others of a Sherlyn being really silly with the phone too. So yeah, definitely, definitely go
Sam: watch our video. You know, part of the, we were testing out a new circle to search feature, which allows you to kind of hum into the phone and get like, you know, Google to figure out, Hey, what song am I trying to identify?
It also just straight up a listen to music like Shazam. And, you know, Sheralynn she, she got a little heat for not, not humming APT by Rose and Mark Brown super well. And so, hey and then, and then she did it again and it was fine, but some other, you know, quick rundown of some new AI features.
So there's a new audio eraser. So obviously not something that is super new. We've seen Google do this, but. It uses AI to like analyze like wind noise and speech. So you can do like a live EQ and then, you know, tune the things up on the fly. Super easy. That's a
Ben: big thing. I love that.
Sam: And then the other big kind of new AI features what Samsung is calling their now brief and kind of now, now bar technologies.
And this is basically like. It's looking at what you do on your phone. It's looking at your calendar, your appointments, traffic, weather, and stuff like that. And it's trying to suggest, Hey, you know, for example, you have a meeting at nine o'clock, but your alarm is set for eight 30. You might want to bump that up a little bit.
And so it's like, okay, this is helpful. And you know, the now bar is kind of an offshoot of that. And it's going to appear on the lock screen and in your notifications. And it'll do stuff like, Hey, you want to watch you, you like the Detroit lions or, you know, RIP lines for, for this playoffs, but like, you know, it'll surface the score right inside your lock screen or on your notifications, but you can kind of already been able to do this before with some of Google's, you know, live notifications.
So not, it doesn't feel like, you know, a monumental change from what we have already. It's also
Devindra: funny looking, looking at Samsung's screens, like looking at their design for their UI and everything. This, this, this is just an iPhone. Like this is an iPhone whether it's all converging, this is, this is converging.
It's a magic island updates. These are magic island updates at the top and the bottom. Like it is, it is convergence. And I know Apple itself also took a lot of influences from what was happening on Android phones, especially around notch stuff. But I guess like the thing I've noticed is like Apple tends to work harder in developing a design language.
And wow, we're, we're still just like copying. We're still just like in a straight up copy, copy what these companies do. Okay. Okay. Sure. Yeah. There was one kind of other thoughts.
Sam: One kind of like small hidden thing. Samsung also says that you can use like, you know, natural voice language commands to kind of just manage your phone.
So you can go in and like, hey go in the photos the gallery app and be like, hey, find me a bunch of photos with voice commands of like, of wine or find me a bunch of photos from Las Vegas or whatever. And so, and you can even like tell it's like, hey, change the resolution of the screen or turn off Bluetooth or stuff like that.
Or you can, you know, say like, Hey remind me to watch, you know, the an upcoming sports game and it'll go figure out which game you're talking about and put that calendar notification in the calendar app itself. And so it's like. It's making it a little bit easier to do more complex commands just with your voice.
And I think that's just good from a general accessibility and just usability point of view. But like I said before, I'm not sure that you can convince someone to buy, especially for the ultra 1, 300 phone, just for kind of a revamp of AI features.
Devindra: Especially a lot of those features seem like they're hitting Google Gemini.
They're hitting things in the cloud. So are these coming to older Samsung phones?
Ben: Yeah. And the hum to identify a song thing, it's existed within Google for a while now.
Sam: Right. And it's, it's been available in Shazam for a while now. So it's like, once again, it's like, because a lot of these features are available elsewhere it's, it's it's kind of a hard sell that said, like the phone itself is still a great phone.
I was using it last night. You know, kind of preparation for the review and it just like. I love the screen, the design, you know, a little bit curvier around the edges. Very nice. And it's like, but the thing is, it's a, it's a really nice screen. It's a really nice phone, but so was the S 24 ultra. And so it was the S 23 ultra.
And so it's like, that becomes the really difficult, like kind of. Mental process or gymnastics. You have to figure out, I was like, is it worth upgrading from a year old phone, especially a year old S ultra? Definitely not from a 23 ultra or 22 ultra, maybe you're, you know, you're talking, you get, you got a little more, you know.
Overhead to kind of capture. Yeah. It's really tough.
Devindra: And I do want to, I feel like Sam, like just real quick, these phones don't exist for like, for us, I guess in a way, like they're not for the spec chasers or the people who are constantly upgrading. It's for like, you want the iPhone equivalent, right? Like you want a average consumer to go into the store.
What's the latest Samsung. Cool. Here's a new one. Doesn't it doesn't really matter if it's that much different than last year's, but yeah, go ahead.
Sam: Yeah And so I want to mention two quick things some kind of quirky things that Samsung did for the ultra specifically so they got rid of Bluetooth low audio on the s pen itself and That means you can't do air actions anymore.
Now Samsung's justification is that no one was using air actions They said like a very tiny fraction And even when they what are air actions, air actions is like you can do gestures with the pen to control your phone. And so you're, you're laughing and kind of that kind of, kind of hints at like why the movie is cause no one was doing that.
And even when they were, Samsung says the only feature that people were using. Was using the click function on the feature to trigger the, the phone's camera as kind of like a remote shutter thing. But because you can, you know, still hold your hand up in front of the camera like that or use your watch or your galaxy ring if you have one of those to, as a remote shutter, they kind of said, Hey, we're going to take this off.
It's going to make the, you know, S Pen a little bit more durable because there's no Bluetooth radios inside. And so it is a downgrade, but depending on how you use the phone, you might not even notice.
Devindra: That was like one of those wild, sometimes Samsung takes wild swings to be a little different and sometimes that works out well for them.
Sometimes it's like, we're going to make a big ass phone screen. It's called the galaxy. No, you look ridiculous. Holding it up to your head doesn't matter. Actually, people just want big screens and that, that banked for them, they'll fail with the fold, but still like do you success as generations and end up like owning a big chunk of that market.
Yeah.
Sam: And then the other, the other weird quirk is that. This phone officially does not support Qi 2, or at least full Qi 2. Samsung says the Galaxy S25 line is, quote, Qi 2 ready. Now that means that What
Ben: does that mean? What does it mean?
Sam: So and unfortunately, let me explain it. And it's really annoyingly, like, niche.
So, you can still wireless charge at up to 15 watts. That's kind of been around for a long time. But, one of the key components of Qi 2 is that The S25 doesn't have magnets inside the phone. So what all of the attachment points won't work unless you get a case that has magnets in the case. And so that's one job.
Samsung.
Ben: I know. And it's like, yeah, why do we think this is? Is it because Samsung wanted the phone to be like that much later?
Sam: I have no idea. Samsung has not give us given us an official statement on it. I think they're doing it to save a buck. I think, I think it's a purely cost saving measure. And it's really annoying because Even as an Android person, MagSafe wireless charging on the iPhone is one of the best things that Apple has done to phones in recent history.
Devindra: And MagSafe accessories, like just in general being able to slap my phone on my car dashboard, slap a battery
Sam: pack on it. Apple gave that tech to the wireless power consortium who built, you know, use those specs and protocols to help inform what she too is. And so she too is basically the exact same thing as MagSafe, but for all the other non Apple devices,
Devindra: this is hilarious.
And then, and then Samsung
Sam: doesn't follow through by making the S 25 fully ready. And it's like, yes, most people, you know, they're going to put their phone in a case, and they might, you know, if they get the right case, they might not ever know the difference. But it's like, why? You like, you're just making it extra complicated because you couldn't follow through all the way.
Devindra: And it's really disappointing. It's funny that Samsung is out here. Like I will clone the iPhone design a little bit. Like I think the, the base S 25, 25 look really iPhone y. They'll, they'll steal a lot of like UI designs. Apple gives you an actual functional tool that can make your Hardaware better.
Nah, no, What,
Sam: what is going on over there? All of the like MagSafe accessories work with Qi2 devices so it's like there's already a huge ecosystem of peripherals and accessories that you could use if you had, you know, were fully Qi2 compliant, but now you gotta worry about getting the phone and then getting the right case and then you're gonna be okay.
Devindra: So it's not Qi2 compliant. I think the word is Not Cheetu compliant because Samsung are being little jerks.
Sam: And for me, I don't like cases. So that means I got to figure out some sort of weird sticker add on. Or, you know, there's people out there who have like, you know, you can get like sticky adhesive magnets and put them on yourself.
And it's just like. It's just a really clunky solution. And I'm just generally not a fan of it.
Devindra: I can't believe you're still case free, Sam. You have you have two kids now and it's like, they're, they