Mishaal Rahman and FragmentedChicken are in South Korea for Samsung Unpacked!
It’s weird with time zones but they’ll be on for the next hour or so. They’re juggling on-the-ground stuff at the press conference so post any questions here and they’ll respond once they can!
Edit: We’ve left the hands-on area, but feel free to continue posting your questions. We’ll continue to answer them if we can, and might have another opportunity with some of the devices.
For articles about Samsung’s latest announcements, see the Megathread sticky at !android@lemdro.id.
Would love to get that Tab S9, but it’s way too expensive for my current budget.
Me too! With those specs it’d be better than my current laptop, but it’s also probably twice as an expensive as my laptop
Will Samsung ever rethink Knox and allow custom roms without losing warranty coverage and negatively affect resale value? What about allowing banking apps to work again if you go back to the default rom?
It’s an interesting question this and whether Samsung is willing to use GSI’s / DSU.
Last time I checked that was a negative?
Most OEMs aren’t willing to preload Google’s AVB keys for their GSIs. DSU is only really supposed to be used by app developers (and even then most app devs don’t know it even exists or use it) which is why most OEMs don’t bother with it.
Highly unlikely. The root/ROM community has always been a small niche - and these days, it’s even smaller that it has ever been. Such a minor audience means nothing for Samsung.
It’s pretty unfortunate. I’d love to see some regulations put into place that would ensure the option for unlockable bootloaders. North American devices are stick without the option in the first place :(.
Unlockable bootloaders aren’t a big issue - you can buy devices with unlockable bootloaders in NA, depending on your carrier - the bigger problem these days is the likes of SafteyNet and KNOX, which makes it a pain to live with an unlocked bootloader. What we really need is a change in thinking that an unlocked bootloader doesn’t necessarily mean a device is insecure, and instead of not giving the user a choice and locking them out, they should pass on the responsibility to the user. Eg, a banking app could make a user accept an agreement that the bank will not be held responsible for any hacking related losses etc, instead of straight up prevent the app from running. For this, Google needs to take the lead - they were the ones who introduced SafteyNet and caused this whole mess in the first place. Once Google takes the lead, Samsung and other manufacturers could follow, and the dev ecosystem will follow too. But I’m afraid it’s all a bit too late now, the best one could do, as an individual, is to boycott apps which use the likes of SafteyNet, leave bad reviews, complain to the CEO etc, but all this is unlikely to have any impact, given that we root/ROM users are a small minority.
I’m really interested in the tab s9 series. Anything stand out to you such as performance or screen quality? I really want to get another Android tablet to replace my old tab s6 but I really want something more performant for the money.
Here are some of my observations:
-The crease on the Fold5 has improved a lot. The Fold4 crease had noticeable depth, while the Fold5 is subtle. That being said, I wouldn’t let the crease be the deciding factor in purchasing any foldable. It really does disappear while you’re looking at it straight on.
-The Samsung logo that was previously carved out on the hinge has been replaced with no carving at all. That’s an improvement since the letters can collect dust, dirt, and oil, and actually also had stickers that could fall out, revealing what was left after they carved out the letters on the hinge.
My first question for @FragmentedChicken is, are you able to comment? Welcome to Lemdro.id!
No
Excellent. Not sure how many folks are awake over on our end of the world! How’s the energy over there?
I thought it was pretty overwhelming with how many people there were. Everyone was just recording with their phone or camera, a bunch of flashes constantly going off. Apparently that’s business as usual for this type of thing.
Do they have any catering at those events? Post up venue photos!
Nice behind-the-scenes! What did you use to take these?
They had a bunch of desserts (different kinds of scones) and drinks.
Why dont you guys ask Samsung to not put so much bloat into their OS.
What exactly do you expect us to do lol? Sneak into TM Roh’s bedroom and whisper that in his ear?
Thanks for joining us here in our new home, so happy to have big names help to validate it!
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the watches, it feels like the 5 was kind of an incremental upgrade, and it’s looking like 6 might be similar, anything that’s not captured on the spec sheet that makes it a worthwhile upgrade?
What are you thinking of upgrading from? I’ve seen a lot of people say a similar thing about the Fold 5 versus the Fold 4 but it’s worth noting that most people don’t upgrade their devices every year so the target audience likely isn’t people like us.
For sure! I’m actually just in the market for watches in general, I love the ticwatch dual display (but don’t love that my tichwatch pro 3’s software is… collecting dust on the proverbial shelf…) but the samsung watches always seemed so spiffy and clean! So you’d say overall we’re still pretty incremental then in terms of meaningful changes from the watch 4?
I also actually daily drive the TicWatch Pro 3! I know Mobvoi is working on a Wear OS 3 update for the watch, but it’s still in private beta and probably won’t roll out soon for regular users.
I’m personally interested in the Watch 6 because it runs Wear OS 4 based on Android 13 out of the box and thus has access to a bunch of Wear OS apps I currently can’t get on my TicWatch lol.
Another question now, how do the hinges in the new foldables feel? We’ve had some good competition in that space so I’m hoping we see some refinement from Samsung this year. Which of the two would you most like to daily drive?
Haven’t had the Fold 5 for long enough to really comment on the hinge durability but I’m not worried about hinge right now though.
As for which device I want to daily drive, I’m most looking forward to using the Z Fold 5 since I do a lot of work on my phone and I think I’ll take advantage of the multitasking capabilities.
