The Two Blokes Talking Tech podcast – Episode # 731 – Foldable Phone Frenzy

Samsung has their own “Wide” foldable coming out later this year – how does it stack up next to Apple’s “ultra” – we compare the dummies…

Microsoft has an Aussie update to flight simulator and DJI has new smaller and affordable Drones.

Trev has a new TV finder tool and Hoyts has a fancy new screen!

Full AI Generated transcript below

[00:00:00]  Trevor: I’ve given you warning for the first time in the history of the world.

[00:00:02]  Stephen: There was a countdown.

[00:00:03]  Trevor: You actually did a countdown.

[00:00:04]  Stephen: What’s happening here?

[00:00:06]  Trevor: What is happening here?

[00:00:08]  Stephen: Right.

[00:00:08]  Trevor: It’s unprecedented. But I have just remembered. And look, for the people listening at home, we’ve gone a little bit out of order this week. We’ve actually recorded the private feed beforehand. And what you’re about to witness probably should have been in the private feed, but we got very distracted about other things. But I got Stephen something.

[00:00:26]  Stephen: Oh, hang on a minute. Look, what?

[00:00:28]  Trevor: It’s a Star Wars thing.

[00:00:30]  Stephen: Darth Maul. Who’s that? Darth Maul.

[00:00:33]  Trevor: Very good.

[00:00:34]  Stephen: Yeah, there’s a new show. Is there? Where did you get this from? Someone sent it to you, didn’t they? Yeah. Someone sent it to you, huh?

[00:00:41]  Trevor: Disney.

[00:00:42]  Stephen: Oh, is there a costume that goes with it?

[00:00:43]  Trevor: No.

[00:00:44]  Stephen: It’s Darth Maul. There’s a new—

[00:00:45]  Trevor: Just hold on to these for a minute. Just hold on to these for a minute.

[00:00:50]  Stephen: Oh, you got his lightsaber. No! Really? The double lightsaber? My one broke. Oh my God. Wow. Where did you get this from?

[00:00:59]  Trevor: Put the things in. Where’d you get them from? DisneyStore.com.au. What?

[00:01:04]  Stephen: You bought them?

[00:01:04]  Trevor: No. Magic in the mail. That’s what the sticker on the box said. Magic in the Mail. Did you put it in properly? Did it make a noise? Yeah. When you put it in, it should make a noise. Mate, you’re telling me how to do it, ay? Listen. There you go. They emailed me yesterday and said, did they arrive? And I said they did, but they’re driving me insane. I can’t work out how to get them working. Did you get it working? It’s not working. I got it working this morning.

[00:01:31]  Stephen: Is it batteries in it?

[00:01:33]  Trevor: No, yeah, it was working this morning. I was lightsabering around the office. Is it in properly?

[00:01:39]  Stephen: Yeah, should be.

[00:01:41]  Trevor: Maybe it needs a proper Jedi.

[00:01:45]  Stephen: Yeah, right. Oh, that, that was in.

[00:01:48]  Trevor: That’s in. Yeah, please, please, hang on, hang on.

[00:02:03]  Stephen: Take your head off.

[00:02:05]  Trevor: Woo! Hang on, that’s sorry. What’s this one?

[00:02:13]  Stephen: Oh, oh, that’s Mara. Is that Mara Jade?

[00:02:18]  Trevor: I don’t know.

[00:02:18]  Stephen: What the hell’s going on here? What are you getting all the Star Wars stuff for?

[00:02:21]  Trevor: It’s May the 4th week.

[00:02:23]  Stephen: What about— what, they don’t send it to the biggest Star Wars fan, they send it to you?

[00:02:29]  Trevor: Oh man.

[00:02:30]  Stephen: Oh, this is Christmas come early, mate.

[00:02:34]  Trevor: Can I— who is— am I your enemy?

[00:02:37]  Stephen: No, no, that’s— if that’s Mara Jade, no, no, you shouldn’t be hitting it.

[00:02:41]  Trevor: Shouldn’t be hitting that.

[00:02:43]  Stephen: Oh my God.

[00:02:46]  Trevor: Oh, listen to that.

[00:02:48]  Stephen: That’s a great one.

[00:02:50]  Trevor: Who’s Mara Jade?

[00:02:51]  Stephen: I think she’s a, like a, like a Jedi in training.

[00:02:55]  Trevor: Oh, look, it goes up the thing. Anyway, so I was most impressed.

[00:02:59]  Stephen: Christmas Day or—

[00:03:00]  Trevor: It’s May the 4th, mate.

[00:03:02]  Stephen: Wow.

[00:03:02]  Trevor: I was most impressed because, um, the— it’s funny because the— this thing, the— who is it? Kylo Ren? What, what is it?

[00:03:11]  Stephen: Who is it?

[00:03:11]  Trevor: Darth Maul. Anyway, this thing Oh my God, it came first, right? And I had to work out how to put that together. Let me tell you right now, Stephen, of the box you mean? No, the two— the thing in your hand.

[00:03:22]  Stephen: I know it’s got a little connector.

[00:03:24]  Trevor: Oh mate, it took me forever to work out what that was.

[00:03:27]  Stephen: Well, can I just tell you, because Darth Maul— hang on, you would have known he’s a dual lightsaber guy, right?

[00:03:31]  Trevor: And so they said to me, did it arrive? I went, yes, and it’s driving me insane. I may throw it against the wall because I can’t wait to put it together. But I took a pause the next morning, I went, okay, I’ll get it going. I’ve got it going. And then I thought, it’s a bit stupid without the, you know, sabery bit. And then, then, then a big parcel arrived that said Magic in the Mail, and I went, what the hell’s that? Because I’ve got a bunch of— I’m doing robot, uh, no, not robot, stick vacuums. It was about the size of a stick vacuum box. I just assumed that’s what it was. Lucky I opened it because it was the saber bit, the saber bits, plus this little guy. Hey, look at you! He’s never been so happy ever.

[00:04:06]  Stephen: You have to bleep out my—

[00:04:07]  Trevor: yeah, I’ll have to remember the exclamation at the start of the show. He’s very excited.

[00:04:12]  Stephen: Well, that is awesome, mate. Well, aren’t you lucky, eh? Hey, they never sent me that. No, Disney Plus. Hello, hello, Steven.

[00:04:23]  Trevor: Do you think I want to keep these stupid things?

[00:04:25]  Stephen: So you’re giving it to me?

[00:04:27]  Trevor: They’re a gift from me to you via the good people at disneystore.com.au.

[00:04:33]  Stephen: We love Disney. That is awesome.

[00:04:35]  Trevor: That’s where you can buy this.

[00:04:35]  Stephen: You know, I’ve got to say, I had this before, although it’s a little bit different. It’s different in the TV show. I had the two of them.

[00:04:42]  Trevor: Yeah. And let me ask you this, were yours, were yours the weathered version?

[00:04:47]  Stephen: Or the— no, no, right, the pristine. Yeah, see, they’re out of Phantom Menace, right?

[00:04:51]  Trevor: Because, because—

[00:04:52]  Stephen: can you turn it off?

[00:04:53]  Trevor: What happened?

[00:04:55]  Stephen: What happened?

[00:04:56]  Trevor: And that little red dial at the bottom here.

[00:05:00]  Stephen: What happened with my one, I had them up against the wall, had them on a stand.

[00:05:04]  Trevor: Yeah.

[00:05:05]  Stephen: And the top, I was pulling it out, the top thing fell off. And it fell on the ground and the connector snapped. And so half the connector’s still in one half, the other half is still in the other half, and I can’t use either.

[00:05:21]  Trevor: Oh no.

[00:05:21]  Stephen: So, hello!

[00:05:23]  Trevor: Can you just smile at the camera with a lightsaber in each hand or something for your thumbnail? That’s beautiful, well played. Look at him.

[00:05:33]  Stephen: That’s awesome.

[00:05:35]  Trevor: It’s like, thank you, Disney. I appreciate it. Because when they contacted me, I said, with the greatest respect, it’s not a Today Show segment.

[00:05:43]  Stephen: You should have said, with the greatest respect, why are you sending these to Stephen Fancy?

[00:05:46]  Trevor: I said we would have a lot of fun with them if I showed him on Two Blokes Talking.

[00:05:52]  Stephen: Monday was May the 4th.

[00:05:53]  Trevor: That’s why I’ve got them.

[00:05:54]  Stephen: Today’s Revenge of the Sixth. Did you know that? It’s the sixth.

[00:06:00]  Trevor: See, it all comes in a little box.

[00:06:01]  Stephen: Yeah, that’s a toy. You know how many of them I’ve got?

[00:06:03]  Trevor: And I don’t have this one.

[00:06:04]  Stephen: I will say I don’t have this one.

[00:06:07]  Trevor: Oh wow.

[00:06:08]  Stephen: Yeah, or this one.

[00:06:09]  Trevor: I will say, um, they are impressively built. Like, they are— they’re very good. I love that. That’s so cool.

[00:06:18]  Stephen: And they do put it close to the microphone. That’s a nice little sound. Yeah baby, that’s Star Wars for you.

[00:06:27]  Trevor: Um, and it’s funny because with— when I had that one, when I had your one without the— what’s his name— Maul.

[00:06:32]  Stephen: Darth Maul.

[00:06:33]  Trevor: Yeah, without the Lights on the end. Yeah, it doesn’t do anything. You can’t make any sense. I spent—

[00:06:39]  Stephen: they don’t do it. You need these.

[00:06:40]  Trevor: I know, but I spent a day with the batteries in trying to work. I took them out, put it back together, like trying— why doesn’t it make a noise?

[00:06:46]  Stephen: Because it doesn’t have this. Yes. Hello? What about a phone call?

[00:06:50]  Trevor: Well, this was meant to be a surprise.

[00:06:52]  Stephen: Surprise.

[00:06:54]  Trevor: Okay, as per the beeping, I have to remember to do.

[00:06:57]  Stephen: Yes, yes. Well, there was one of the— you thought I let it slip.

[00:07:00]  Trevor: To be honest, your disappointment around—

[00:07:01]  Stephen: I thought it was a private pretty poor.

[00:07:02]  Trevor: Yeah, you’re pretty disappointed in a picture.

[00:07:07]  Stephen: Because there’s a new show, there’s a shadow, it’s called Darth Maul: Shadow Lord, just started, animated show on Disney Plus. Hence the reason for this picture and the weathered, different looking lightsaber. It’s a different timeline to what he was in Episode 1. Right, so Darth Maul was introduced in Episode 1.

[00:07:25]  Trevor: Don’t mess with me, folks.

[00:07:26]  Stephen: So you can unscrew this. Oh yeah, there you go.

[00:07:28]  Trevor: Yeah, but don’t, because stuff like the batteries will come out. Just wait, we’ll do it at the end, we’ll put it back in the box properly. ‘Cause you know, it’s worth a bit of money. Well, thank you, Trev. How good’s this? Hey, it’s like literal Christmas Day for Steven.

[00:07:41]  Stephen: That is awesome.

[00:07:41]  Trevor: If you’re wondering what Steven looks like when he’s at Disneyland, this is what he looks like.

[00:07:45]  Stephen: This is my face at Disneyland.

[00:07:46]  Trevor: If you’re wondering what website Steven’s going to as soon as he gets home, disneystore.com.au.

[00:07:51]  Stephen: Well, as a matter of fact, I did buy something on the Disney Store yesterday. Really? There’s a new mask that’s out. So in Return of the Jedi, when, When they’re at Jabba’s palace and they’re rescuing Han Solo, Princess Leia disguises herself in a mask. Boosh is the character’s name. And that was the mask that she wore to disguise herself. And that’s what I’ve got.

[00:08:18]  Trevor: I’m super excited. Pass me that book. Doing very well.

[00:08:20]  Stephen: Put it down. Wowee, that’s a great surprise. That’s the best start of this podcast we’ve ever had, I reckon.

[00:08:27]  Trevor: I don’t know how we recover from that. Very nice.

[00:08:29]  Stephen: Look at that. That’s the smile. That’s a Star Wars smile right there. That’s it.

[00:08:34]  Trevor: That’s genius. Well, I’m glad.

[00:08:36]  Stephen: Is that it? Can I go now or what? Is that it?

[00:08:38]  Trevor: Yeah, I’m worried that we’re not gonna get a show in now.

[00:08:40]  Stephen: No, no, mate, I’ll try.

[00:08:41]  Trevor: Stevens.

[00:08:41]  Stephen: You know what? I’m gonna try even extra harder for you today.

[00:08:44]  Trevor: Are you?

[00:08:44]  Stephen: Yeah.

[00:08:44]  Trevor: He’s gonna put extra effort in. Yeah. This is huge.

[00:08:47]  Stephen: Yeah, I’ve never tried before, but I’m gonna try today.

[00:08:50]  Trevor: Today’s the day Stevens tries.

[00:08:51]  Stephen: I’m gonna put some effort into it. Yeah, mate.

[00:08:54]  Trevor: Anyway.

[00:08:54]  Stephen: You got my attention.

[00:08:55]  Trevor: It’s not a paid ad. I just do appreciate the fact that the people who were promoting the Disney Store were willing to send that stuff.

[00:09:01]  Stephen: Yeah.

[00:09:01]  Trevor: Just for this, for this little show.

[00:09:03]  Stephen: And not knowing who the biggest Star Wars fan in tech journalism would be. I defy anyone to be a bigger tech fan than me in our circle of journalists. Yeah. Or, you know, in general.

[00:09:16]  Trevor: You said bigger tech fans. You mean bigger Star Wars fan?

[00:09:19]  Stephen: I’m sorry. Yeah. Bigger Star Wars fan in tech circles.

[00:09:22]  Trevor: Busted. We get it.

[00:09:23]  Stephen: Just been totally taken by surprise.

[00:09:26]  Trevor: Well, happy Star Wars week.

[00:09:27]  Stephen: That is brilliant. Yeah. And happy Revenge of the Sixth as well today. That’s right. We had May the Fourth and you saw my post. I just posted to some with my friends to yours. They’re all the figures. People ask me, guys, are they, what are they? They said they’re figures in my theater, life-size figures in my theater. That’s legit. But yeah, May the 4th, always celebrate May the 4th. Every day is May the 4th at my place.

[00:09:46]  Trevor: I forgot to say, I was gonna send Fred a picture of the R2-D2.

[00:09:49]  Stephen: Yeah, haven’t you sent it?

[00:09:51]  Trevor: No, just to May the 4th.

[00:09:52]  Stephen: Well, you took one with him, with it, remember at my place? Oh, I sent it to him.

[00:09:56]  Trevor: Yeah, definitely sent it to him.

[00:09:56]  Stephen: And he said, thumbs up, mate.

[00:09:58]  Trevor: I can’t remember what he said actually.

[00:10:00]  Stephen: Oh, he said, who is that guy?

[00:10:01]  Trevor: Might not have been a full thumbs up.

[00:10:03]  Stephen: Ah, but it was a bit of logistics to get that over, wasn’t it? Yeah, I think he had to separate it and put in two different boxes.

[00:10:10]  Trevor: And I don’t have the message, man.

[00:10:11]  Stephen: And it was so fast, it got it to me in two days.

[00:10:13]  Trevor: Yeah, well, that’s why it cost so much.

[00:10:15]  Stephen: And the reason— and I remember the date it arrived was my wedding anniversary, November the 21st. It arrived.

[00:10:22]  Trevor: Best wedding anniversary ever.

[00:10:23]  Stephen: Oh, this is amazing. Had to explain to Joe what it was, didn’t tell how much it cost, but Yeah, that’s probably— I said it was $300 from Home Depot.

[00:10:32]  Trevor: That’s factual.

[00:10:34]  Stephen: That’s actually $300 US from Home Depot.

[00:10:37]  Trevor: She doesn’t need to know that we were then on charge and on charge and overcharged.

[00:10:40]  Stephen: Shipping charges, that’s something that’s entirely different.

[00:10:43]  Trevor: You do not want to know. We’ll keep that out of the show. Wowee.

[00:10:47]  Stephen: How do you top that for a start of the show? That’s amazing.

[00:10:51]  Trevor: I don’t know, but I can’t believe you kept that secret too. Oh mate, I’m like, how do I keep this? Because I knew we’d do movie and EV and stuff before. Yeah, right at the end of the day, you just pulled it out.

[00:10:58]  Stephen: Boom.

[00:11:00]  Trevor: I’m like, where am I gonna keep, I gotta go and find something to put it under.

[00:11:04]  Stephen: Oh, you’re a genius.

[00:11:05]  Trevor: So that you wouldn’t see it.

[00:11:05]  Stephen: Well, I’m glad that you—

[00:11:07]  Trevor: I’m kind of glad you weren’t overexcited about the picture.

[00:11:10]  Stephen: Oh, no, ’cause it was Darth Maul.

[00:11:11]  Trevor: I know, but it’s like you were like, hey, good on you, mate, thanks, you printed a picture for me.

[00:11:15]  Stephen: I knew it was sent to you somewhere, but it’s a different timeline to the episode. Episode 1. Yeah, it’s different, yeah, anyway. I won’t go into it now, but I’ve been watching it, it’s not bad, it’s animated, but still pretty dark for a cartoon animated. Like animated, you normally think kids are gonna watch it. And they do, but it is, yeah, it’s pretty, pretty cool.

[00:11:35]  Trevor: Animated, does it look real or animated?

[00:11:38]  Stephen: Animated, animated, yeah. Doesn’t look real at all. It’s animated, animated, yeah.

[00:11:42]  Trevor: All right, well, we could probably log off now.

[00:11:45]  Stephen: Can we just say goodbye?

[00:11:46]  Trevor: Thanks to Arlo and Nikki. They’ve been great. They have nothing to do with the Star Wars or Disney, but may the fourth be with you. But also I’ll give you the box to put everything in.

[00:11:55]  Stephen: I’ll take everything.

[00:11:56]  Trevor: No, it’s just the packaging box. It’s the sticker, the sticky things, the sticky things. It’s not obviously Disney, but when you look at it, when you know what it is, you know it’s Disney. But it’s the Magic in the Mail label that I thought that was really cool.

[00:12:10]  Stephen: Wow.

[00:12:10]  Trevor: That’s what it says on the box. Magic in the Mail.

[00:12:12]  Stephen: I’ve got to get into Disney PR and say, listen, how about you just go to DisneyStore.com.au and buy some stuff? I did and I do. So, okay, I think I’m there still well in front.

[00:12:22]  Trevor: All right, well, wow. Let’s do this.

[00:12:27]  VOICE OVER: Welcome to Two Blokes Talking Tech, not a bad price, with Trevor Long from eftm.com, really handy device, and Stephen Fenech from techguide.com.au.

[00:12:39]  Trevor: All right, episode 731. Thanks to the good people at Netgear and Arlo. We’ll tell you about them shortly. They’ve been longtime supporters of the show, and all that we ask is you think of them when you’re considering their product category. So if you’re in the market for home Wi-Fi, we’d love you to look at the Netgear products on the shelves or on the website. And if you’re in the market for home security, Arlo’s got you covered. They’ve got a product for every need and we reckon they’re up there with the best, if not the best. So give them a shout and have a look for their products.

[00:13:06]  Stephen: That’s what we use.

[00:13:06]  Trevor: We’ll tell you about them more.

[00:13:08]  Stephen: How many Ally Cameras you got at your place now?

[00:13:09]  Trevor: I think it’s probably 8 active.

[00:13:11]  Stephen: Yeah, I’ve got about, I think I’ve got 7 or 8 of them.

[00:13:13]  Trevor: Then there’s 4 that sit in a drawer if we have a mouse attack. They’re called Mouse Camera 1, 2, 3, 4. They get deployed under shelves. Really?

[00:13:23]  Stephen: You still have that?

[00:13:23]  Trevor: I remember that was a while ago. No, we haven’t had that for ages, but they’re there. I’m not getting rid of them in case I need them. They’re ready to be out of battery and deployed.

[00:13:33]  Stephen: They’re great.

[00:13:33]  Trevor: So they actually exist in my— when I scroll through all my cameras, down the bottom is mouse 1, mouse 2, mouse 3, mouse 4. And I don’t want to delete them because then I can deploy them real quick.

[00:13:41]  Stephen: That’s amazing.

[00:13:42]  Trevor: Brilliant stuff. Anyway, episode 731, folks. 731. Great to have your company. Let’s top down the hell out of this, Stephen, because what dummies have you purchased this time, Trevor? Received. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

[00:13:54]  Stephen: Yeah, sorry, received.

[00:13:55]  Trevor: You know that we’ve had the Apple So this is the Apple Ultra, if you want to call it that.

[00:14:01]  Stephen: So this is the foldable that Apple is allegedly releasing later this year.

[00:14:05]  Trevor: We know that we—

[00:14:06]  Stephen: this one folds.

[00:14:07]  Trevor: Yeah, we know. Excuse our voices, all the excitement has made us hoarse. We know that that compares to the Samsung Galaxy Fold 7. Yes, it is shorter and broadly different shape. Broadly it’s wider. So it’s shorter and wider if you think about that.

[00:14:21]  Stephen: I refer to this one. So that’s the traditional shape.

[00:14:24]  Trevor: Yeah.

[00:14:25]  Stephen: I refer to this one. So the Apple dummy is passport-shaped.

[00:14:29]  Trevor: Yeah.

[00:14:29]  Stephen: So it’s about the size of a passport.

[00:14:31]  Trevor: Well, I’ll introduce you now to the Samsung equivalent.

[00:14:35]  Stephen: Let’s—

[00:14:35]  Trevor: Samsung.

[00:14:36]  Stephen: Okay.

[00:14:37]  Trevor: This in theory is the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide.

[00:14:42]  Stephen: Wide. That’s what it’s called.

[00:14:44]  Trevor: I mean, that’s— no one knows, but wow, that’s what they’re saying.

[00:14:47]  Stephen: So, so I can see what they’re doing there, right? So they want to obviously Samsung, as they did with the— do you remember when the Edge came out, the S25 Edge. Yeah, they announced that knowing that Apple’s going to have the iPhone. Yeah. And so Samsung, let’s— is it safe to assume that they’ve done this knowing that Apple’s going to do that?

[00:15:07]  Trevor: I’ll put it to you this way. I was thinking about this, and I get a lot of comments on videos about this, uh, that it’s actually Apple copying Huawei because Huawei already have a product available that is exactly like this, right?

[00:15:18]  Stephen: Yeah.

[00:15:19]  Trevor: But then I would argue, how long has that, um, 3D file been out? Like, it’s been—

[00:15:24]  Stephen: yeah, months, months, months.

[00:15:26]  Trevor: Like a long time.

[00:15:26]  Stephen: The Apple one? Yeah, yeah. I finished that 3 months ago.

[00:15:29]  Trevor: Yeah, but I— and I think there were, there were artist impressions of it even before that.

[00:15:33]  Stephen: Yeah.

[00:15:33]  Trevor: So I think I’m gonna— I am gonna say Apple was first with this passport size, but I think others have followed and quicker into production. Apple and Samsung though look ready to go. So if you open that up—

[00:15:45]  Stephen: I really like this. Can you— I’m trying to open that one up.

[00:15:47]  Trevor: It’s just a bit tight. Yeah, it’s got magnets in it.

[00:15:50]  Stephen: It.

[00:15:51]  Trevor: So I think that what you see here also, it’s 4.9mm thick by my measure, which is very, very marginally more than the Fold 7.

[00:16:01]  Stephen: So it’s thicker than the 7?

[00:16:02]  Trevor: Yeah, like by 0.2 of a millimeter, not much. And, and you know, this is a dummy, it might not be true, but what, what is fascinating is that close it and hold it look, you know, the same thing we talked about with the cards. The same thing we talked about with the iPhone is that it kind of feels good in the hand.

[00:16:20]  Stephen: It does. Nice size.

[00:16:22]  Trevor: I really think that.

[00:16:23]  Stephen: And what they’ve achieved here is a wide front screen that you can easily type messages. And it’s actually— is that wider than the S26 Ultra? Is that wider than a normal— have you got a normal phone?

[00:16:36]  Trevor: I don’t have a normal phone. You’ve only got foldables around here.

[00:16:39]  Stephen: So see how here, I see how you got—

[00:16:40]  Trevor: I think it’s very similar. Look at the 7, the 7, uh, I think to the Y, very similar in width to an Ultra.

[00:16:49]  Stephen: Yeah, so you’re right, that’s normal, slightly wider, slightly wider, because like my dream phone was to have an S26 Ultra size screen and just that opens it up. Of course, that’d be perfect scenario. But I can see, I think you could get a lot done there. So the aspect, I’d say, I’d, I’d say that that’s slightly wider than the normal screen.

[00:17:07]  Trevor: Yeah.

[00:17:08]  Stephen: And I think a lot of this way, you’d be like, say this one, you’ll fit 4 icons across this one you’ll fit 5, you reckon? Yeah.

[00:17:16]  Trevor: I think what’s interesting is a lot of people say, but half of it’s going to be the keyboard, and that’s true, half the screen will be taken up by keyboard. But why are you typing? You’re typing to respond to a message, so you can still see your message. You’re typing to type in a website, you know, it doesn’t stay up there.

[00:17:28]  Stephen: That’s right.

[00:17:29]  Trevor: The keyboard doesn’t stay on screen for long. But the problem is when you get things like you’re entering a code from a, for an, you know, for login and stuff, and the page doesn’t understand that, so it’s underneath and you can’t see it. You get those user interface issues of like third-party apps and websites. That’s a concern for me.

[00:17:46]  Stephen: I really like this. Now, uh, obvious question on the back— is that charging? Is that MagSafe? What is that?

[00:17:53]  Trevor: I’ve asked that question, and, and that is not Qi 2. That is not a magnetic attach indicator. That is simply an indicator of where the charge coil is. So that case, if you want to make a Qi 2 case You’ll be able to pinch my skin on it when I fold it.

[00:18:10]  Stephen: Pinch me.

[00:18:12]  Trevor: No workers’ comp here, mate.

[00:18:13]  Stephen: It’s, um, so isn’t that what the S26 has got? Same thing, a case, and it then gives you magnetic.

[00:18:19]  Trevor: There’s no—

[00:18:19]  Stephen: so it’ll be case and it’ll be wireless charging.

[00:18:22]  Trevor: It’s not going to have magnetic attached, it’s going to be just wireless.

[00:18:25]  Stephen: So if I have just a mat, that will charge wirelessly? So it has it. Okay.

[00:18:29]  Trevor: Whereas we’re not sure, the S25 Edge, uh, camera system too. We’re not confident that the iPhone will even have wireless charging.

[00:18:38]  Stephen: Yeah, mate, don’t you think it’d be a bit of a negative point if it doesn’t?

[00:18:45]  Trevor: It’d be weird. It won’t have Face ID or wireless charging.

[00:18:49]  Stephen: Why won’t it have Face ID?

[00:18:51]  Trevor: There’s no indication. There’s no indication of a front camera.

[00:18:54]  Stephen: So it’s just, I’m thinking, think Touch ID. Touch ID. Oh, wow. Well, there’s a, there’s a little camera here.

[00:19:00]  Trevor: Yeah, no, I think that’s speaker. What?

[00:19:04]  Stephen: Yeah, it’s on the screen. It’s in the screen.

[00:19:06]  Trevor: Oh, in the— oh, the dot.

[00:19:07]  Stephen: Yeah.

[00:19:07]  Trevor: Oh yeah, there’s a dot there. Camera. Definitely camera.

[00:19:09]  Stephen: Sorry. Here, that’s a speaker there.

[00:19:10]  Trevor: Yeah, there’s a little camera.

[00:19:12]  Stephen: There’s a front camera there too.

[00:19:14]  Trevor: No, it doesn’t.

[00:19:14]  Stephen: No front camera on the, on the Fold at all.

[00:19:17]  Trevor: It appears not. It appears not.

[00:19:19]  Stephen: Do you think that’s unusual?

[00:19:21]  Trevor: I think it’s, it’s potentially early dummy, right? Yeah, I, I would argue early dummy.

[00:19:26]  Stephen: I’d be very surprised you didn’t have a selfie camera on that.

[00:19:29]  Trevor: Same.

[00:19:29]  Stephen: But inside there is one.

[00:19:30]  Trevor: Inside there will be.

[00:19:31]  Stephen: There definitely will be. And is there one in here? You can’t really tell, can you?

[00:19:34]  Trevor: No, you can’t tell.

[00:19:35]  Stephen: There’s no indication.

[00:19:36]  Trevor: Because they would never make screens that just use that.

[00:19:38]  Stephen: Open that up and I reckon go to top down again. So this is the—

[00:19:41]  Trevor: for Stephen’s direction.

[00:19:42]  Stephen: This is the companion. Just take the 7 away. So let’s compare unopened phones where— or I can put them side by side if you want. Yeah, you’re good. Okay, so which is— I think Samsung’s got the edge on the size slightly.

[00:19:58]  Trevor: Samsung. So Samsung’s is taller. Yes, by— I actually measured it.

[00:20:03]  Stephen: I think it’s 8mm.

[00:20:04]  Trevor: Yeah, 7 or 8mm. And Apple is, is wider by like a millimeter or two.

[00:20:09]  Stephen: Wow.

[00:20:10]  Trevor: Um, but that— there seems to be quite a bezel on both, so you can’t really tell which screen will genuinely be—

[00:20:15]  Stephen: and you know, like, looking at Apple’s one I get the feeling that to, to use it, like, people are always going to have the front screen to do most of their stuff, but I reckon they’re going to— more people are going to use it flip up, use it like that.

[00:20:30]  Trevor: Yeah, they’ll hold it that way.

[00:20:32]  Stephen: Yeah. And have all their apps and be able to put this on. Imagine what, um, TikTok and Instagram, we fill that really nicely.

[00:20:41]  Trevor: Yeah.

[00:20:41]  Stephen: Or if they want to do side scrolling, they can go that way, but that’ll fill up the whole thing. And then when— if they want to watch a movie, the movie will sort of fill up. They’ll still have letterbox because, like, you open up the 7-screen and you’ll see there’s a lot of wasted space when you want to watch a movie. Or like, if you letterbox it, you’re going to have all of this space.

[00:20:59]  Trevor: There’s more dead space.

[00:21:00]  Stephen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this, this makes sense to— for, like, you’re not carrying more screen than what you need.

[00:21:07]  Trevor: I think it comes down to how they sell it when they announce it. And you know, how does Samsung announce it and sell it without acknowledging anyone else in the market? Because they can’t say they’re first.

[00:21:19]  Stephen: Because they’ll say, we’ve been doing this for 10 years, mate. We know what we’re doing. They’ll say, you know, what is it, 8th generation?

[00:21:25]  Trevor: But what do they say? What do they say is the justification for this new form factor?

[00:21:30]  Stephen: I think it’s just to appeal to more customers, mate. I look at this as even being like a hybrid between a Flip and a Fold. If the Flip and a Fold had a baby, that’s what it would look like.

[00:21:39]  Trevor: Yeah, true. That’s kind of basically given the middle ground, especially as you said, with this concept.

[00:21:43]  Stephen: Yeah. Because are they still going to have a Flip?

[00:21:46]  Trevor: Samsung?

[00:21:47]  Stephen: Yeah. Well, apparently so.

[00:21:48]  Trevor: Going to fold.

[00:21:48]  Stephen: They’ll have the Fold, they’ll have the Wide and a Flip.

[00:21:51]  Trevor: Yeah.

[00:21:51]  Stephen: So we know that the Fold is mainly a high-end.

[00:21:55]  Trevor: This is a very good way to type and work, isn’t it?

[00:21:58]  Stephen: Yeah.

[00:21:58]  Trevor: Upright Flip style.

[00:22:00]  Stephen: Because you try to type on that.

[00:22:02]  Trevor: It’s wide. It’s too wide.

[00:22:04]  Stephen: You need to see your keyboard’s got a big gap in the middle.

[00:22:07]  Trevor: Yeah.

[00:22:07]  Stephen: That makes more sense.

[00:22:08]  Trevor: And again, what’s really interesting is think about Samsung’s hinge allows very clear points to put it right.

[00:22:13]  Stephen: Yeah.

[00:22:14]  Trevor: And that activates things like if apps are done well, like YouTube will go to half screen. Yeah, you do that and you’re typing. I mean, you can do some really cool stuff.

[00:22:22]  Stephen: Do you think— I know, I kind of know the answer to this, but do you think Apple will make any reference to that at WWDC? Because you know what, the developers need to be on board for that. Because that’ll have iOS 27. Yeah, but the developers, do you reckon they got something up their sleeve just in case? So when they know that it’s coming, or— you’d think Apple would want to have those optimized apps.

[00:22:44]  Trevor: Yes, but they will, they will, they will have on—

[00:22:47]  Stephen: still maybe do some sneakies.

[00:22:48]  Trevor: They’ll have 4 developers that have created something that works really well to demonstrate to everyone else what they should do with their apps. That’s what they do.

[00:22:56]  Stephen: Shame that it’s not ready to go.

[00:22:57]  Trevor: And there is, as we said, there’s that potential that the phone comes out a week later and this one comes out a month later, maybe, which gives developers, you know, 4 weeks to build something. Something different. And if you look, if you’re an app developer with millions of users in multiple form factors and you’re not playing around right now with sketches of how your app will act in these different—

[00:23:16]  Stephen: definitely be ready, be ready, definitely. Because look, it’s, look, it’s become, it’s so hard to keep this secret, eh? It’s sort of the world’s worst kept secret now. Um, and that obviously both companies are heading down that— well, I, I like that it’s the hybrid of the Fold, isn’t it? It’s like not quite the Fold, not quite the Flip, it’s sort of in between. Yeah, when you sort of classify— I think So that I reckon will appeal to a greater number of users. That, that might be too high-end for people. The Flip might be not quite enough.

[00:23:45]  Trevor: In the end, the rising tide lifts all boats. This, like, the Samsung device, yeah, will get attention and we’ll be able to talk about it from—

[00:23:54]  Stephen: it will be released first—

[00:23:55]  Trevor: by saying this is not just a new design for Samsung, but it’s a shot across the bow for Apple, who are reportedly bringing the same thing out, right? So that’s going to be the story at their event.

[00:24:04]  Stephen: Yes.

[00:24:05]  Trevor: Whereas when Apple comes out, it’s holy hell, Apple has done what Samsung doing for 5, 7— I’m talking about our reporting of it.

[00:24:11]  Stephen: Yeah, yeah.

[00:24:12]  Trevor: Apple’s doing what Samsung’s been doing for 7 years, and they’ve done it a different way. They talk about it in these examples, yada yada yada. And so the world goes mad going, this is awesome, I’m going to get one. And then it inherently lifts the profile of the Samsung range as well.

[00:24:26]  Stephen: Hello. Yeah, right.

[00:24:28]  Trevor: Let’s see.

[00:24:28]  Stephen: I really like it.

[00:24:29]  Trevor: I’ll be honest with you, I think Samsung says nothing about Apple. You know how sometimes they bring out those stupid ads that are— yeah.

[00:24:35]  Stephen: I don’t think they’ll just say nothing.

[00:24:38]  Trevor: Let them lift.

[00:24:39]  Stephen: I like how it’s got the square edges like the Ultra, the S26 series, whereas the Apple’s more rounded edges, rounded on, but all like similar to the Oppo and the Google Pixel where the Fold where it’s got the square, the curved screen going into a square corner. Yeah, but this, the outside corner is curved. Yeah. At a pinch, which would you choose?

[00:25:01]  Trevor: I mean, I could do—

[00:25:02]  Stephen: Gun to your head, which one?

[00:25:04]  Trevor: Oh, well, no, there’s no point.

[00:25:06]  Stephen: What do you mean?

[00:25:06]  Trevor: I could use either, no dramas at all.

[00:25:08]  Stephen: But you got to choose one. That’s the point. Which would you go for, iOS or Samsung?

[00:25:12]  Trevor: At a pinch, I would always choose Apple. If gun to my head, I’m going to choose Apple over Samsung.

[00:25:17]  Stephen: Okay. I really like this.

[00:25:20]  Trevor: But again, this is the inside baseball, first world problem tech journo.

[00:25:27]  Stephen: Yeah, we can use a different phone every day of the week.

[00:25:29]  Trevor: But here’s the point. When I— when we walk away from the Samsung event, I could use that phone for a long time. I’ve got no issues.

[00:25:37]  Stephen: I’m still on Android now. You still on Android? I’ve been on Android since February.

[00:25:41]  Trevor: I will enjoy that form factor. I’m confident. I don’t mind the feel of it.

[00:25:44]  Stephen: We’re both still using the OPPO Folds, by the way, aren’t we? Yeah, we’re still in the fold bit.

[00:25:48]  Trevor: Not opening it much, but I wish there was a percentage.

[00:25:51]  Stephen: I open mine all the time and I’m not talking about my legs.

[00:25:54]  Trevor: Wow. Okay. I wish there was a stat in the settings things that told you how often you’re looking at the screen?

[00:26:01]  Stephen: I reckon there’d be something in there. You’re gonna check for that.

[00:26:03]  Trevor: Maybe it’s in developer settings or something.

[00:26:05]  Stephen: I find with my Fold behavior, I’m, um, I watch a lot of stuff on it. Like, I, if you put it this way, if you’re scrolling TikTok right now, it’s not as good on the open screen. You’re not on the inside? No, mate, what are you doing?

[00:26:17]  Trevor: Because it’s not as— it’s no bigger, right? It is no bigger. It’s not. The only advantage is what we did the other day when you can do both.

[00:26:24]  Stephen: But yeah, dual scroll. Yeah, no, I’m okay.

[00:26:26]  Trevor: Because if you’re on Instagram looking through stuff, nothing’s better. In fact, it’s worse most times.

[00:26:32]  Stephen: I’ll tell you what, fold, the folding form factor has made me, it’s turned me or made me play more puzzle games.

[00:26:39]  Trevor: Okay.

[00:26:40]  Stephen: I play way more puzzle games.

[00:26:41]  Trevor: Right.

[00:26:42]  Stephen: Yeah, like on my phone. I don’t, a normal form factor, I wouldn’t play what I play on the folding device.

[00:26:49]  Trevor: What do you play?

[00:26:49]  Stephen: Like I play, there’s like a game called Blokudoku. I’ll show you. It’s, uh, is that Sudoku? Yeah, well, it’s just blocks, but you just gotta fill in the gaps. And like, here’s a—

[00:27:04]  Trevor: Let’s go live.

[00:27:04]  Stephen: Here’s the game here.

[00:27:05]  Trevor: Stand by, we’re going live.

[00:27:06]  Stephen: Yeah, here’s a new game.

[00:27:07]  Trevor: Going live into Stephen’s Blockadoo.

[00:27:09]  Stephen: Yeah, my Blockadoo-ku. There we go. So the idea of it is to, you put them into the squares and when you fill up either a line or a square, it clears it. So you seen that there? Look here, I’ve got a square there. Right, so you got rid of it, right? So I’ll put this one up here ready for another square. I’ll put this one over here and then it’ll, it’ll keep going until I fill. So I’m going to fill that square up there. Gone. And that is, uh, yeah, what the hell is that? It’s just fun. It’s fun and it’s kind of a little bit like Sudoku, a little bit like Tetris. It’s, it’s all happening. Yeah, it’s great.

[00:27:42]  Trevor: That’s weird.

[00:27:43]  Stephen: And my record I think is about 4,000 too. Pretty good. Yeah.

[00:27:46]  Trevor: How long are you playing that for?

[00:27:48]  Stephen: Oh, last few weeks. Yeah, but you know what, I find it— oh, probably like, you know, 10 minutes. Like, I find that if I’m watching something and it doesn’t need my full attention, I sort of hop on the game and just listen to it. So if there’s a background show on, I can get away with doing that as well. Yeah, like if my wife’s talking to me— nah, just joking—

[00:28:05]  Trevor: she has my full attention.

[00:28:09]  Stephen: Yeah, no, but it’s, it’s, uh, and there’s another one too, um, similar to that where it’s like, uh, like, not like Candy Crush, but it’s like that. You get the different Tetris shapes and you’ve got to build lines and get rid of of it.

[00:28:20]  Trevor: It’s frustrating to me though, the— that more apps aren’t. And that’s why I feel like we know that the fold form factor has not taken off as everyone would have hoped. Some of the apps are not being built that way. So TikTok— I did a video years ago, a couple of years ago, about how cool TikTok was on an open folded phone.

[00:28:38]  Stephen: Yep.

[00:28:38]  Trevor: Um, because what it would display was the video to the left and comments to the right, so you instantly saw the comments. And that’s what happened.

[00:28:46]  Stephen: Really?

[00:28:46]  Trevor: They got rid of it? No, it doesn’t work that way anymore.

[00:28:48]  Stephen: Or have you not?

[00:28:48]  Trevor: It was so good.

[00:28:49]  Stephen: Is there a setting? I know in the Samsung.

[00:28:51]  Trevor: I get comments on that video from years ago going, this doesn’t work on my phone because it doesn’t work anymore.

[00:28:55]  Stephen: Because on the Samsung, the Fold years ago, probably the same now, you can, you can choose whether you want to optimize it for the Fold if you open it. So it’ll think, okay, I’ll display the app a different way for it. I don’t know if that’s the case with the Oppo. I’ll have to check the settings, but I couldn’t see any. It displays pretty good.

[00:29:12]  Trevor: Yeah, I just, most of the time, if you’ve got more, so if you’re an app and you’re using a front screen of a phone and then you’re suddenly given more screen left or right, however you want to look at it. Yeah. What have you got that you can put there? And for Instagram and TikTok, it’s comments. Most of the time, like I would say 20% of videos, I instantly open the comments because I can see the first minutes and I go, I got to see what people are saying. Yeah. Straight to the comments, as they say, right? So let me see that straight away, you know?

[00:29:38]  Stephen: Yeah. To your point about Apple and sort of how this is going to really create a frenzy for Fold, everyone going to think, oh, how good’s Fold, even though they’ve been around for years. I think that that will flow into the developer community as well, I reckon. And well, yeah, that’s probably true. That will— the Apple, the app developers who, let’s face it, most of Apple app developers. Yeah. Now that there’s a device that can help with that, the big screen, big inside screen, may think, you know what, this is a thing now, let’s do something. And that’ll maybe spread out to all the other apps around as well. But I think we’re in for— it’s going to be for some people a steep learning curve because a lot of people like— if you’re an iPhone user, you’ve never had a folding phone in your life. So this could be a, you know, some—

[00:30:24]  Trevor: in the 7 years that Samsung has been doing it, so has Motorola and Google and Oppo and others. So Android by Google has been modified and recreated and reimagined in many ways so that things like when you are half open your screen, the top half can be a video in YouTube, for example. People. But not every like streaming service does that. Like Kayo, you know, doesn’t allow you to do that. So you can kind of sit your phone like this.

[00:30:48]  Stephen: Well, YouTube does, you know, you can sit YouTube on top half.

[00:30:50]  Trevor: It automatically does that. Yeah.

[00:30:52]  Stephen: It’s good that Google has a foldable because they’re the Pixel, because then, yeah, they do Android. So of course they’re going to optimize Android for that. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, exciting. It’s a folding war.

[00:31:03]  Trevor: It’s going to be a war.

[00:31:04]  Stephen: The fold wars are going to start. July. Star Wars.

[00:31:07]  Trevor: Fold wars. In September.

[00:31:08]  Stephen: Yeah, it’ll be a folding phone-a-thon.

[00:31:12]  Trevor: I’ll give you a better one: folding phone frenzy.

[00:31:15]  Stephen: Folding phone frenzy. Bit of alliteration, even though it’s PH for phone, but that doesn’t matter. Well, the sound of it is—

[00:31:19]  Trevor: you’re allowed, we’re allowed it, aren’t we?

[00:31:21]  Stephen: That’s absolutely right. Folding phone frenzy. Is that the title of this episode?

[00:31:25]  Trevor: Oh, I like it.

[00:31:25]  Stephen: There we go.

[00:31:26]  Trevor: I hope I remember it.

[00:31:27]  Stephen: Folding phone frenzy. Yeah, and put the surprise look on our faces.

[00:31:32]  Trevor: Yeah, but we’ll be talking about lightsabers.

[00:31:34]  Stephen: Do you have a stock? Have you run out of stock images? I have a lot of, a lot of. We might need to do a couple more.

[00:31:40]  Trevor: It’d be good if we could, if you don’t mind. Yeah, sure. Yeah, it’s funny because Victoria’s been looking through the Opus clips trying to learn how to use that and stuff. So hopefully in the next few weeks we’ll start getting some social clips. Wow. And she loaded up a second show and she goes, oh, I thought it was going to be a problem because Steven was wearing the same shirt. And I went, no, it’s just the covers, bubba. She was like, it’s a different show.

[00:32:02]  Stephen: Continuity doesn’t really matter. Really matter.

[00:32:03]  Trevor: Nah, not for the COVID image. Not for the COVID image.

[00:32:07]  Stephen: Yeah, true.

[00:32:08]  Trevor: We should— you know what I should probably do? I should probably get really clean photos of us in boring faces, smiley face, and then put them into AI so that I can ask AI to generate a surprised face expression. I’m pretty sure that’s what YouTubers are doing now. Like, you reckon MrBeast? There’s no way they’re not using AI to generate his thumbnail and cover art and stuff. Yeah, it’s crazy.

[00:32:32]  Stephen: It’s exciting.

[00:32:34]  Trevor: Anyway, a folding phone frenzy coming your way. Uh, details at eftm.com. And, um, yeah, we’ll be across it. You know that we’ll be across it, folks, uh, because that’s how we are, right?

[00:32:44]  VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Stephen Fenech.

[00:32:49]  Stephen: Two Blokes Talking Tech is proudly supported by our great friends at Arlo, and we urge you to give Arlo a try if you’re looking to get into your security cameras, or you may have already existing cameras you may want to expand them, you may want to change them. We believe Arlo are among the best you can buy, not only the cameras themselves, but also they have great support with their security plans. So it does— having, having a security plan does really expand the, the usefulness of your cameras and the use of your camera. So I can give you smart notifications, it can, it’s got, it can identify people, can give you vehicle, animal, package, people notifications as well. But also too has other safety features like can detect audio. So if there’s smashing glass or God forbid a gunshot, it’ll detect this. Also can detect flames. So you think about this, if it can detect flames, that’s gonna work faster than a smoke detector. ‘Cause what do you need before smoke? Flame comes before smoke. So it’ll detect it before a smoke detector would. So not only is it gonna keep you secure outside your home, but also inside your home as well. There are models that of course are weatherproofs for outside, including their new pan and tilt range. But there’s also a range of indoor cameras as well, so you can set them up and have added peace of mind at your place. Be secure, go with Arlo. Check them out, arlo.com.

[00:34:11]  VOICE OVER: Everything about tech you never wanted to know. This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:34:19]  Trevor: All right, well, uh, Microsoft announced this week that they had released the, uh, the 21st global update, or world update is what they call them. So Microsoft Flight Sim was re-released in 2020, very, very big overhaul of a game that’s been around for decades because it basically, it had better, better planes, more realistic, more realistic actual avionics and the way the planes operate, but also the scenery that you see when flying was real. It’s real satellite imagery, and they had used computers to turn every tree into a tree and all that kind of stuff. Every building’s a building, etc.

[00:34:51]  Stephen: Looks real.

[00:34:52]  Trevor: Essentially from the air it looks real. Now there was, there was things like when you go down low, didn’t look real because they were just blocks and not some buildings. And so you’d— over time they’ve been rolling out these updates every few months. In 2020 they did a global update, world update that was Australia. And this week they’ve released the 21st world update titled Australia. And so basically it’s more great content featuring Australia. So in there, there is lots to show. But broadly, if you look at just New South Wales, for example, Albury has been populated in kind of real world. So what that means is if there’s a town hall or a town center or a shopping center, it’s been mapped off the 3D image, off the 3D image, as opposed to just being a block or just a generic house. It might be more looking, look like a real house. Coffs Harbour, up at Chatswood, the commercial buildings are all there. Even out at Wagga, there’s a bunch of airports like Bathurst, Bathurst Airport, rather than just being the exact landing strip, they’ve got the proper taxiways, the proper buildings and all those kind of things. A lot of sites and different things. So basically it’s more detail in a whole bunch of places now available on Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is really cool because it’s free.

[00:36:04]  Stephen: Yeah, you’ve got the—

[00:36:05]  Trevor: if you already own the game, you just get these updates for free.

[00:36:07]  Stephen: But you got to pay upfront. So if you want to get into it brand new, it’s about $90. Yeah. How much?

[00:36:11]  Trevor: $90.

[00:36:12]  Stephen: That’s not bad.

[00:36:12]  Trevor: But it’s also, by the way, it’s on Xbox, PC and PlayStation now. Oh, and I had a lot of people today commenting saying, dude, try it on PSVR. Oh, and I’m like, oh, I’ve got to tell Harry. That’s got to be wild. Wow. Because looking out the window and stuff like that.

[00:36:28]  Stephen: So tell me, you can no doubt have a— there’s like a third person view so you can see the plane.

[00:36:32]  Trevor: Yeah, you can choose to, like in a racing car, you can choose to drive from behind or in the cockpit.

[00:36:37]  Stephen: Yeah.

[00:36:37]  Trevor: What do you choose? I’ve never flown cockpit because you can’t see anything. And pilots are amazing because even when you’re landing, you can’t see the bloody runway. And I’m like, I need to— I need the trailing view, like I’m flying behind it so I can see that the tail of the plane. So the third person view. Before you got here, I was landing a 747 at Sydney Airport and I’m like, tail and nose of plane lined up with the runway. There we go.

[00:36:59]  Stephen: How’d you go?

[00:36:59]  Trevor: You landed it? Nailed it, mate. Nailed it. Butted it. Absolute butter.

[00:37:02]  Stephen: So if someone said, hey, we need someone to land the plane, you’d be right to get up and say, yeah, I’ll be honest. I’m doing great. Hang on, where’s my PlayStation controller?

[00:37:10]  Trevor: We’ve got the yoke and the pedals.

[00:37:12]  Stephen: Oh, you’ve got the whole thing?

[00:37:13]  Trevor: Yeah, we’ve got the whole thing at home. Do you remember that story where we had the flight sim here? The one that I took in on the Today Show for Karl. And then Harry made a bet with Amanda that if he got more than 80% in his maths test, which he’s never done in his life, the little shit got 84%. So we’ve now got this massive flight simulator.

[00:37:29]  Stephen: That’s funny.

[00:37:29]  Trevor: Yeah.

[00:37:30]  Stephen: And he still likes it? He plays it regularly?

[00:37:31]  Trevor: He loves it. Yeah, he doesn’t play it regularly.

[00:37:33]  Stephen: And did he— does he want to be a pilot now? Yes, he does want to be.

[00:37:36]  Trevor: He’s got good training. It’s pretty good training. Wow. Like you could put him on a—

[00:37:40]  Stephen: I know that there are pilots who use this on their leisure time.

[00:37:43]  Trevor: Mark Illich, one of our long-time listeners, has the full flight simulator. Shout out to Mark.

[00:37:47]  Stephen: Really? Like your life is flying, yet you come home and you fly fly. What is up?

[00:37:51]  Trevor: Can you imagine what your wife would say?

[00:37:52]  Stephen: What is up with that?

[00:37:54]  Trevor: You know, but it’s like Max was stuck.

[00:37:55]  Stephen: But is it like practice? But for him, is it practice?

[00:37:58]  Trevor: How much practice? I don’t know that it is.

[00:38:00]  Stephen: Fuck yeah.

[00:38:00]  Trevor: Maybe it’s because, you know, when you’re an A380 pilot, you get to fly to, you know, Singapore and Los Angeles and you want to, you just want to, you just want to fly to Bathurst one day.

[00:38:08]  Stephen: Yeah, maybe. You know, yeah, just A380, just back on a water pilot.

[00:38:12]  Trevor: You got like, then you got— it’s pretty—

[00:38:13]  Stephen: you got 8 hours off then. Yeah, yeah.

[00:38:15]  Trevor: I mean, let’s be honest, it can’t be that hard to fly an A380, right? It’s all fly-by-wire autopilot. Autopilot. Pick a heading.

[00:38:20]  Stephen: See you later. Boom.

[00:38:23]  Trevor: You know? Yeah. I mean, they’re not napping, but they’re chatting up there, aren’t they? You know?

[00:38:27]  Stephen: Yeah.

[00:38:28]  Trevor: I’m joking.

[00:38:31]  Stephen: Respect my brother-in-law’s—

[00:38:32]  Trevor: We all have great respect. Anthony, Mark, everyone else. We respect you and love what you do.

[00:38:38]  Stephen: We love you.

[00:38:38]  Trevor: Keeping us safe in the air. But I did, like just this morning, ’cause I was just, I haven’t checked it out for a while. I hadn’t flown it for ages actually. And like I was flying over the office here and the whole office area is properly structured.

[00:38:49]  Stephen: Really? Yeah, there’s my office, bro.

[00:38:50]  Trevor: Yeah, it’s legit, like seriously, the whole structure.

[00:38:52]  Stephen: Is there a car parked out the front?

[00:38:53]  Trevor: I didn’t know, I didn’t look close enough because I had to be at altitude, you had to be careful. Oh, okay. Gotta keep the car spot off. But one of the weird updates is Springwood in the Blue Mountains.

[00:39:04]  Stephen: Springwood?

[00:39:04]  Trevor: My grandparents used to live at Springwood, so I flew a helicopter over Springwood going, I mean, it’s good, but this is a weird place to—

[00:39:11]  Stephen: Did you fly over Humby Bong, mate, and Griffith and all those places?

[00:39:14]  Trevor: No, haven’t done that yet. Yet.

[00:39:16]  Stephen: Do a little, like a Top Gun style, you know, drive by, fly by Melbourne, Geelong, Bendigo, Mildura. You’ve been buzzing the tower, mate, at these places?

[00:39:27]  Trevor: I normally just fly light aircraft. It’s easy to maneuver.

[00:39:30]  Stephen: So choose aircraft as well. Yeah. I mean, I decided to hop in a 747 this morning.

[00:39:35]  Trevor: Yeah, well, I was actually trying to see if I could find a, like, a good livery that I liked and, you know, buy it, but I couldn’t. For some reason on the Xbox I couldn’t search.

[00:39:41]  Stephen: Design your own? I don’t think that’s that easy. Do you have an EFTM program?

[00:39:43]  Trevor: I always have the tail numbers EFTM or EFTM29. Which is my lucky number, my favorite number. And so I normally, that’s always there no matter whether I’m in a private jet or a chopper.

[00:39:55]  Stephen: What’s the variety of aircraft you’ve got? It’s huge. From everything.

[00:39:58]  Trevor: Fighter jets to 747s.

[00:40:00]  Stephen: Fighter jets too?

[00:40:00]  Trevor: There’s also a, yeah, you can, like, there was when Top Gun Maverick came out, there was a whole mission created that was like flying the—

[00:40:10]  Stephen: Oh, like in the movie?

[00:40:11]  Trevor: Kind of like the training missions.

[00:40:13]  Stephen: Wow.

[00:40:14]  Trevor: Also of note, there’s a mission which I haven’t been able to find because I think you’ve got to kind of qualify for it, but there’s a firefighting mission launch. So this was why they had a partnership with the RFS. It was really just a promotional partnership, but the RFS were just keen to promote rural fire service and the reliance on aerial firefighting. But yeah, there’s a firefighting mission you can do which, you know, there’s real smoke coming from the ground. You drop the water. Yeah.

[00:40:42]  Stephen: Yeah. Are you going to fill up and then go, go away?

[00:40:44]  Trevor: Yeah.

[00:40:45]  Stephen: How’d you go with that?

[00:40:45]  Trevor: I haven’t done— I couldn’t find it on the game because I think you’ve got to qualify for missions. You’ve got to kind of do a bunch of them to qualify for the next ones.

[00:40:50]  Stephen: What’s the easiest mission? Like, how do you start?

[00:40:53]  Trevor: So it’s great because what you can do is you just— there’s training. So you go into career and there’s just, you know, takeoff, turnaround, landing. There’s basic stuff. I could teach you that stuff.

[00:41:01]  Stephen: Like you’re being a student.

[00:41:02]  Trevor: And then there’s just simple missions like landing challenges, or there’s challenges like landing challenges.

[00:41:07]  Stephen: So could, like, say I pick it up, I buy this today. Hey, can I be flying it by tonight or do you want to work this out?

[00:41:12]  Trevor: You’ll be flying 1 minute later. No, no. Yeah, right. Especially just with an Xbox controller.

[00:41:15]  Stephen: Bit of it on rails and you can—

[00:41:16]  Trevor: It’s fun, mate. And you can set it so that it’s looking after you. Because in reality, if you turn off assists like in a Formula 1 game, you’re going to spin on the first corner.

[00:41:25]  Stephen: Yeah.

[00:41:25]  Trevor: If you turn off assists, you will not get the plane off the ground.

[00:41:27]  Stephen: Okay. Yeah, right.

[00:41:29]  Trevor: So then when you get better, you might think, oh, I’ll try it. You will stall the plane. Everything will go wrong.

[00:41:33]  Stephen: Yeah, right. Okay. I’ve seen it happen. To that length, like say you mentioned pilots flying this, so they they can fully replicate real flight.

[00:41:40]  Trevor: There are people I’ve seen on the internet who have connected through— yeah, firstly, full rigs, full like actual cockpits, but they connect on the internet to like air traffic control. They have someone that becomes air traffic control.

[00:41:53]  Stephen: Really?

[00:41:54]  Trevor: Because it’s essentially multiplayer. You can see other players in the game.

[00:41:57]  Stephen: Okay.

[00:41:57]  Trevor: Wow.

[00:41:58]  Stephen: Oh, really? So if I’m flying, you and I are online together and we’re flying towards Homebush. Yes. I’ll see you out the window.

[00:42:04]  Trevor: Seriously?

[00:42:04]  Stephen: Yes. Wow.

[00:42:05]  Trevor: And remember also, and this is going back to 2020, it’s real time. So when I was flying this morning at 4 AM, I’m like, I need to change the time because it’s dark.

[00:42:11]  Stephen: 4 AM? There’s still a curfew. What are you doing, mate?

[00:42:14]  Trevor: Yeah, yeah. And the weather’s real too. Like, not real real, but the cloud— if there’s clouds in the sky—

[00:42:18]  Stephen: Relevant to the day.

[00:42:19]  Trevor: Correct.

[00:42:19]  Stephen: So if today’s a rainy day, it’d be rainy day in the game.

[00:42:22]  Trevor: Correct.

[00:42:22]  Stephen: No way.

[00:42:23]  Trevor: Really? And you can change the setting so it’s dry, but you can make it so that it’s—

[00:42:26]  Stephen: So you can make it, give me real world conditions.

[00:42:29]  Trevor: There’s also real-world air traffic, but I’ve never really interacted with it. So yeah, keep your distance. Like if I’m landing on 16R and traffic’s coming in on 34L, I don’t care, I’m just going against the traffic.

[00:42:43]  Stephen: This is Sydney Airport.

[00:42:44]  Trevor: Yeah, yeah, that’s just whatever, because I know I’m not gonna die.

[00:42:47]  Stephen: Pretty cool. I know there’s a lot of plane fans and tragic—

[00:42:51]  Trevor: so Jörg Neumann, the head of Microsoft Flight Simulator in Australia for this launch, and I was talking to him yesterday morning before we were on air, and he’s he was chatting and I said, mate, you’ve got to say that on air. He goes, there’s 500,000 people playing this game in Australia. He said it’s not a game.

[00:43:06]  Stephen: Sorry, mate.

[00:43:07]  Trevor: It’s a simulator.

[00:43:08]  Stephen: Simulation. Yeah, I’m sorry. Okay. It’s not a game.

[00:43:11]  Trevor: Yeah, he was pretty strict about that.

[00:43:12]  Stephen: Corrected you on that one.

[00:43:14]  Trevor: But yeah, 500,000 people.

[00:43:16]  Stephen: So where’s he based, America?

[00:43:17]  Trevor: I’m going to say Europe.

[00:43:18]  Stephen: He had an accent, didn’t he?

[00:43:19]  Trevor: Yeah, he’s like Scandinavian.

[00:43:21]  Stephen: Is he a pilot by training?

[00:43:22]  Trevor: I have no idea.

[00:43:23]  Stephen: You should have said, are you a pilot, mate?

[00:43:24]  Trevor: I don’t know. But a couple of things, and I mentioned this at AFTM.

[00:43:27]  Stephen: Yeah.

[00:43:27]  Trevor: Australia has the third largest number of airports of any country in the world. What? America has like 15,000.

[00:43:34]  Stephen: Third dump?

[00:43:34]  Trevor: I think it’s Brazil and then Australia. Why? We’re so big.

[00:43:38]  Stephen: Okay. Yeah. It’s like, yeah, that’s fair.

[00:43:40]  Trevor: 2,500 airports.

[00:43:41]  Stephen: So Australia, we’re the third in the world.

[00:43:43]  Trevor: In the world. Per capita, probably number one.

[00:43:44]  Stephen: Wow.

[00:43:45]  Trevor: No, per capita, we’re probably number one.

[00:43:46]  Stephen: Yeah. Wow.

[00:43:47]  Trevor: Okay. Because we’re such a small country. Isn’t that wild?

[00:43:49]  Stephen: Small population in a big country.

[00:43:51]  Trevor: That’s correct.

[00:43:52]  Stephen: I see. Wow. Yeah, every day’s a school day.

[00:43:54]  Trevor: Every day’s a school day. So look, if you’re like me and you hadn’t fired it up in a while, it’s worth firing up, do the download. And just—

[00:44:00]  Stephen: but though, you can— if you decide, I want to give this a crack, you can be enjoying it straight away. You’re not going to have to be thinking—

[00:44:06]  Trevor: you just go, you know what, it’s not like a lot of the games, they make you qualify for stuff. No, I mean, for the missions, there’s a whole thing to go through, but you can go, right, I’m— you can get the map and go Sydney. You can click anywhere on the map and go fly from here. Yeah, you can set a route to go to here, but you just go from here, choose a plane, done, and just off you go. You’re in the plane.

[00:44:25]  Stephen: You don’t have to set a destination.

[00:44:26]  Trevor: Takes 2 minutes to load the plane.

[00:44:27]  Stephen: You just go boom.

[00:44:28]  Trevor: Yeah.

[00:44:28]  Stephen: And, um, okay, so, but as you get better, you can turn some things off so that you’re more in control. Is that right?

[00:44:35]  Trevor: Like, I’m a free flight person. I just want to jump on for 5, 10 minutes, fly for a bit of fun and look around. Whereas Harry’s more of, today I’m going to fly from Sydney to Byron Bay.

[00:44:45]  Stephen: So he makes a plan in a 737 and, you know, do all that. Wow.

[00:44:48]  Trevor: And, you know, I do— like, you can, you can land at Sydney Airport and request fuel services, request a pushback.

[00:44:56]  Stephen: That’s crazy.

[00:44:57]  Trevor: Through it, through air traffic control.

[00:44:58]  Stephen: They tell you what gate to go to. Yeah, seriously. Yeah.

[00:45:01]  Trevor: Wow. Yeah, it’s real, bro. It’s not a game.

[00:45:05]  Stephen: Yeah, not a game.

[00:45:06]  Trevor: It’s a simulation.

[00:45:07]  Stephen: They call it a game. Yeah, but yeah, you— there are some pretty sophisticated rigs you can get out. Yours is pretty solid with the yoke and all that.

[00:45:13]  Trevor: Yeah, rudder, yoke.

[00:45:14]  Stephen: It’s like the— I know you got your setup for your Formula 1 and all that, so similar. You have the rudder, like pedals and all that too. Wow.

[00:45:20]  Trevor: Yeah, so rudder pedals, the real deal, yoke, and then you can have throttle controls. And what we’ve ended up— Harry likes having the yoke, the pedals, and a joystick for side control, ’cause a lot of planes are flown with the joystick.

[00:45:32]  Stephen: The Airbuses are flown— yeah, wow, so amazing.

[00:45:35]  Trevor: All depends how you want to play.

[00:45:36]  Stephen: That’s amazing.

[00:45:37]  Trevor: Or simulate.

[00:45:38]  Stephen: Simulate, it’s not a game. Yeah, well, what do you say then? You don’t play it.

[00:45:42]  Trevor: Well, see, again, I saw in the comments, I say that of the YouTube video that Nine News put up and it’s like someone said it’s a simulation, not a game. And then someone else goes, simulation is a category of computer games. Get over yourself. Okay.

[00:45:53]  VOICE OVER: Which is true.

[00:45:54]  Trevor: Let’s be honest.

[00:45:55]  Stephen: It’s not real.

[00:45:55]  Trevor: It’s a computer game.

[00:45:56]  Stephen: So it’s a game.

[00:45:57]  Trevor: Sorry, Jorg, but it’s a computer game.

[00:45:59]  Stephen: Is that his name, Jorg? Jorg, yeah. Good on you, you’re a good bloke.

[00:46:04]  Trevor: No, really good bloke. Anyway, so download it, enjoy, have fun.

[00:46:09]  Stephen: So how much is it? $90?

[00:46:10]  Trevor: $90, around about, if you haven’t got it yet. Go and get it, it’s good fun.

[00:46:13]  Stephen: I might download it, imagine flying it in the theater. Yes, imagine that.

[00:46:17]  Trevor: Yeah, just beautiful.

[00:46:19]  Stephen: I can get it on PlayStation as well, you said?

[00:46:20]  Trevor: Yeah, I might put it on PlayStation and check out the VR.

[00:46:24]  Stephen: That’s wild. Yeah, good call.

[00:46:26]  Trevor: It might make me sick though.

[00:46:28]  Stephen: Yeah, you’re a bit delicate like that, aren’t you? Yeah, maybe. Is there a game like that on the Vision Pro at the moment or no? I don’t know, could you play it? You can’t play it on the Mac, can you? It’s not a Mac game, is it? Isn’t that funny? It’s a PC game, but isn’t it? Yeah, PC game. Yeah, Xbox, PlayStation, but not Mac. Not Mac.

[00:46:45]  Trevor: Despite the fact that at every Apple event when they talk about silicon, they have some AAA game developer there. No one’s playing games on a Mac despite the fact it’s one of the most powerful computers.

[00:46:54]  Stephen: Oh yeah, yeah, and great looking screen in there too.

[00:46:56]  Trevor: You think about our Mac Studios, right?

[00:46:57]  Stephen: Yeah, they could definitely handle it easy, but no one’s built it without breaking a sweat.

[00:47:01]  Trevor: Not enough of them, I don’t think.

[00:47:03]  Stephen: Yeah, the rebuild the architecture of the game culture and the, of the game, of gaming platform is a PC.

[00:47:08]  Trevor: Yeah.

[00:47:09]  Stephen: Yeah.

[00:47:09]  Trevor: Wow. It’s fascinating. All right. Two blokes talking tech.

[00:47:12]  VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Stephen Fenech.

[00:47:18]  Stephen: While we’re talking flight sims, I thought we’d continue the theme and talk about drones. You like that? Drones. Um, DJI, uh, they got the new Lito. Is that how you pronounce it? Lito? I call it Lito. Uh, do the Lito.

[00:47:34]  Trevor: You said Lito before.

[00:47:35]  Stephen: I said Lito. I’ve always said Lito. But, uh, yeah, these are a new, uh, entry-level 249-gram drone. 249 is important because they specify that you can basically fly this anywhere, even within the 5.5-kilometer range of an airport under supervision. Vision. So these are— there’s the X1 and there’s the— is it the One?

[00:47:57]  Trevor: Yep, the One and the X1.

[00:47:59]  Stephen: And they— the X1 has a slightly better camera system, but the drones are basically identical. And these are designed to be, I think, aimed at first-time flyers. So for people who are keen to get started, they’ve got really simple instructions, really a lot of safety features, so a lot of sensors so you’re not going to fly into a wall or a tree or anything like that. And I think it’s a good idea to make them affordable be approachable so they’re not going to really intimidate a first-time flyer. And you know, if they do crash it or lose it, it’s only like, what, $539, which is decent but not also $3,000.

[00:48:31]  Trevor: Hard to crash. Yeah, because they’ve got the obstacle avoidance built in. Like, that’s the great thing. And you’ve got to remember, they’ve got a return to home. They have had the DJI Mini for a while, right? But it was $700, $800. It sort of crept up in specs and price. Yeah, $539.

[00:48:47]  Stephen: Yeah, and that’s just for the drone. Yeah, and they’ve got the Fly More combos and the X1, I think I think it’s 649. Yeah.

[00:48:53]  Trevor: And it goes up to 1,000 with everything.

[00:48:54]  Stephen: That’s quite reasonable. And considering too, forget the drone part of it, the camera part of it, it’s pretty good as well. Like 4K, it’s got all the modes, the quick shots and all that in it too. So you can look like a genius.

[00:49:05]  Trevor: Which you never used to get in their entry-level stuff.

[00:49:07]  Stephen: Yeah. Now it’s part of the app and the software. And I think, yeah, smart idea because, you know, more people want to fly a drone and this one, there’s no, because it’s $249 and it’s in big letters, big numbers on the product, on the box as well. That, okay, I can fly this anywhere. The other drones that are bigger, you can’t fly it near an airport, you can’t fly it in certain areas. This, I think it’s a smart move that people with supervision and care can fly this basically anywhere.

[00:49:34]  Trevor: Yeah, I still report every single video I see to CASA that’s illegal.

[00:49:39]  Stephen: Really? Yeah.

[00:49:40]  Trevor: If you’re on Instagram and you find some bloke flying over the Harbour Bridge at night and Opera House, that’s highly illegal. The most illegal thing you could possibly do. Can I just go, hey CASA briefing, this is great. Great, you know, like it’s just, it’s wild that these people are just doing it randomly.

[00:49:55]  Stephen: To get permission is so expensive to do that, you know, you’ve got to pay thousands to be able to do that.

[00:49:59]  Trevor: Yeah, yeah, because it’s a controlled airspace.

[00:50:01]  Stephen: Exactly right, people don’t realize that. Yeah, well, that’s, that’s the first thing they teach you when you’re, you’re getting your, you, you leave it even out of the box, there’s a little leaflet, the places you can’t fly. Yeah, like you just got to use your common sense.

[00:50:11]  Trevor: But yeah, well, unfortunately there’s a bunch of tourists, cowboys out there, right?

[00:50:14]  Stephen: Yeah, so it is tourists and they’re doing it for clickbait.

[00:50:17]  Trevor: ‘Cause they know they’re making beautiful videos. Honestly, beautiful videos. Congratulations.

[00:50:21]  Stephen: They look amazing, yeah. Illegal. Yeah. There are some places with signage. I’ve seen places around Europe where it said, there are signs, no drone allowed. ‘Cause they’re probably real, like I’ve seen it in Malta. Malta had around the Grand Harbor and the Fort St. Angelo, beautiful, but big signs, no drones at all. I don’t know whether it was like a security thing or what it was, but some places around Europe really specify that. So no mistaking it, but otherwise use an app to see where— OpenSky. I think it’s called Where Can I Fly? That’s cool.

[00:50:52]  Trevor: OpenSky now.

[00:50:53]  Stephen: Yeah, so you can check out what’s safe, what’s not, ’cause you’d be surprised. You might be somewhere and there’s like a helipad somewhere over here or some other closed airspace that you can’t fly. So best check before CASA, before Trev dobs you in and comes knocking on your door.

[00:51:09]  Trevor: And I don’t care how much I know you, I will report it.

[00:51:13]  Stephen: I’ll make sure if I put in there, I’ll exclude you, mate, from my sharing.

[00:51:18]  Trevor: Yeah, not that I—

[00:51:19]  Stephen: everyone, I’m a licensed pilot. I do not break the law with my drone.

[00:51:23]  Trevor: Oh, well played. Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:51:26]  VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Steven Fanek.

[00:51:32]  Trevor: And we do it all thanks to great people at Netgear for your home networking needs. If you’ve just started realizing how good your home internet is. You’re getting 500 megabits, getting 1,000, getting maybe getting 2 gigabit speeds. Are you getting those speeds across your whole home? Go grab the speed test app, do a speed test standing right next to your modem, work out what you’re getting, then work out what you’re paying for, and then go to the other side of the home and work out what speeds you’re getting everywhere else in the house. And even though it might have been good a year ago, these new speeds out, out, out surpass what a lot of Wi-Fi systems can do. You might need Wi-Fi 7, 6E, 6, you don’t know. You might have quite an old system. This will future-proof you for the best internet, the best speeds across your whole home. And Netgear’s got you covered with all those technologies in their Orbi and Nighthawk range of Wi-Fi systems. There’s a system for every person, every home, every need, and you can find them all at their website. You can get discounts through shopping directly with them as well as exclusive products, and you can find them all at netgear.com.au.

[00:52:27]  VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech.

[00:52:30]  Trevor: Oh well, here’s— okay.

[00:52:33]  Stephen: Just so you all know, on the run sheet is a question mark. The trivia.

[00:52:36]  Trevor: I thought of something.

[00:52:37]  Stephen: We’ll get to that. You thought of something?

[00:52:39]  Trevor: Yep. So I talked about this quickly on EFTM, but I’m quite proud of it.

[00:52:42]  Stephen: Recycling content, eh?

[00:52:43]  Trevor: You don’t know about it yet.

[00:52:45]  Stephen: I don’t know.

[00:52:46]  Trevor: I want to show it to you. Excuse me? I want you to go to eftm.com. Oh, okay.

[00:52:50]  Stephen: Just another excuse to get another hit, eh? Oh, yeah, baby. Hang on, I blocked that on my browser. Why am I not?

[00:52:56]  Trevor: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:52:57]  Stephen: I’m already on EFTM.

[00:52:59]  Trevor: Top right, which TV to buy, very top of the menu, right? So I’ve created this page, which is essentially a database of all the 2026 TVs, right?

[00:53:10]  Stephen: Wow.

[00:53:10]  Trevor: The reason I want you to see it is I want you to, I want you to click on size and click 100 and up.

[00:53:16]  Stephen: Yep.

[00:53:16]  Trevor: And then just go, that’s it, show me. So it’s gonna show you all the TVs that are 100 inches and up. There’s 11 TVs, right?

[00:53:21]  Stephen: Okay, wow.

[00:53:22]  Trevor: So you’ve sorted probably by low to high. Now scroll all the way down the bottom. Look what happens when you see the Samsung 115-inch or the Hisense 116-inch TV.

[00:53:32]  Stephen: There’s reviews of this, my tech review. Yeah.

[00:53:35]  Trevor: So I’m linking to all of our reviews.

[00:53:37]  Stephen: Oh, good man.

[00:53:38]  Trevor: And so across the year, as we all review more products, we’ll add— I’ll add in the reviews. Every—

[00:53:44]  Stephen: I’ve just got the Hisense Mini LED, so you can— I’ll tell you when that’s up.

[00:53:48]  Trevor: Well, when we get there, when you get it up, I’ll put it up there.

[00:53:50]  Stephen: This is a good idea. It reminds me of what I did when I first started Tech Guide. Do you remember I had the buyer’s guide? Yeah. And it would narrow down the search.

[00:53:58]  Trevor: So this is dynamic. So the prices are updated. Updated, ah, hopefully daily. I’ve got a bit of work to do. And it’s showing you the best price as well as the changes in price. Not in that you won’t see any in the 100-inch, but if you change to another price bracket, you’ll probably see—

[00:54:11]  Stephen: getting to be getting a few people through here, eh?

[00:54:13]  Trevor: Um, I haven’t really— soft launch.

[00:54:15]  Stephen: Oh, this is it. Is this the soft launch?

[00:54:16]  Trevor: Pretty much. Hello. Yeah, welcome, welcome to the soft launch. But the other thing I’m going to do, so I’m going to track—

[00:54:21]  Stephen: I’m just going to click on my link to Tech Guide here.

[00:54:24]  Trevor: I’m going to track the prices. So that in a month or two when you click on a price, you’ll be able to see what its lowest price was and its highest price. So when you walk into Harvey’s and they say it’s $19.99, you can go, mate, a month ago it was $14.99. How about you do a better deal? Do you know what I mean? Because if you know that it’s been lower, then ask for it to be lower.

[00:54:45]  Stephen: Wow. That’s pretty cool.

[00:54:47]  Trevor: So my idea—

[00:54:47]  Stephen: Did you build all this yourself? Yeah.

[00:54:50]  Trevor: So nice. My idea here was if you reset the filters, Everyone has a different approach. Some people just want to shop on price. As you know, you take these calls on the radio, right? Some people like, I’ve got a budget, $15,000 max. So let’s, you know, bring it down to $2,400 or whatever your budget might be.

[00:55:08]  Stephen: Oh, it crashed on me, mate.

[00:55:09]  Trevor: And create a window.

[00:55:10]  Stephen: I tried to drag the price down and it went blank. Or do I just sort of click down the line here?

[00:55:14]  Trevor: Just drag the little dragger. Wow, your browser’s crap. I’m using Safari.

[00:55:17]  Stephen: I’m using Safari as well, mate.

[00:55:18]  Trevor: Look, see, it works beautifully.

[00:55:22]  Stephen: Beautifully.

[00:55:22]  Trevor: And so, you know, different people want to search for a different reason. You know, you can search just by OLED TVs, just by RGB, for example. You can only look at RGB every time.

[00:55:33]  Stephen: Problem repeatedly occurred with choosing a new TV search.

[00:55:37]  Trevor: Oh, that’s sad.

[00:55:38]  Stephen: I broke it. Sorry, mate.

[00:55:39]  Trevor: You broke it?

[00:55:39]  Stephen: I broke it.

[00:55:40]  Trevor: No, no, it’s not broken. It’s working for me. It’s only you.

[00:55:42]  Stephen: Wow.

[00:55:42]  Trevor: I’m in Safari as well.

[00:55:44]  Stephen: What’s up with that?

[00:55:45]  Trevor: But you know, you know how when you’re talking to someone, they go, I want a new TV.

[00:55:48]  Stephen: Yeah, I ask them, what do you want to get?

[00:55:52]  Trevor: Just giving them advice, you’ve got to find out what their boundaries are.

[00:55:56]  Stephen: So yeah, price, size, they’re the most common parameters. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

[00:56:01]  Trevor: Sometimes you get someone say brand as well.

[00:56:03]  Stephen: Yeah, I want a Samsung. Is that one of your choices by brand?

[00:56:06]  Trevor: Well, what happens is after you show, say, all the OLEDs, then you can filter it by branding. You can just go, I just want to see Hisense.

[00:56:12]  Stephen: Okay, so you can do that afterwards. Yeah, I’d make that a top line one, mate.

[00:56:15]  Trevor: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t think it’s a first question. I don’t think it’s the first 3 questions for people. Yeah, that’s smart there by default. So isn’t it weird though? And so I did some numbers and I, I had this on, I think I did this on Triple M this week, but there’s 136 TVs, 136 TVs, wow, 2026 model TVs.

[00:56:33]  Stephen: And so how far in there, 52% of them are 75-inch or bigger.

[00:56:38]  Trevor: 52%, that’s not surprising.

[00:56:40]  Stephen: But did you just go major brands or everybody?

[00:56:43]  Trevor: I’ve only done those 4 brands. That’s right.

[00:56:44]  Stephen: So Kogan, I didn’t know.

[00:56:45]  Trevor: I’m going to add Kogan.

[00:56:46]  Stephen: TCL.

[00:56:47]  Trevor: TCL’s in there. So Hisense, Samsung, LG, and TCL. Right. And I’ll contemplate how I add Kogan. I don’t think I’m going to add all your Big W brands and stuff because I really want them to be— this is for people who are looking for a brand new 2026 style TV.

[00:57:03]  Stephen: Because like, remember I met with my brother doing my AI stuff? I’m going to try to turn Ask Steven into like that. You know, I’ve got my little thing and it’s gonna then sort of come down to a menu. Like trying to recreate my buyer’s guide, my interactive buyer’s guide I call it.

[00:57:19]  Trevor: Yeah.

[00:57:19]  Stephen: Yeah. I’ve got AI working on that. Yeah. So that way you can maybe find the answer to your question without having to email me just by looking through the content on my website.

[00:57:29]  Trevor: Yeah. See, I wouldn’t do that because I need people to email me for my podcast. Yeah, of course.

[00:57:33]  Stephen: No, but I get people emailing me anyway. But there’s that option too if they want to dig further. It’ll get me some hits on the site just like this will get you yours. Yeah. So yeah, and me. Thanks for the link, mate.

[00:57:44]  Trevor: But that’s because we need to build reputation around these things. You know what I mean? Like people need to know that if they’re going to have to make a decision while they’re shopping, they should then go to the one who recommends.

[00:57:53]  Stephen: They’re making quite the investment. So yeah, absolutely right.

[00:57:56]  Trevor: You know, once we get into the $2,500 TVs and stuff. Yeah. We’ve had this conversation, but this is the biggest year for TVs.

[00:58:04]  Stephen: Yeah, I agree.

[00:58:05]  Trevor: In such a long time.

[00:58:05]  Stephen: We’ve hit another level with RGB now. It’s another— well, you know what, for us it’s big, but I think a lot of customers are still a little bit there. Put it this way, if you’re coming into 2026 thinking I need a new TV, you’re going to be thinking, whoa, where do I start? Because 8 years ago when you bought your other TV, yeah, it was nothing like this out there. So a lot of changes for people. Yeah, so that’s good.

[00:58:27]  Trevor: It’s fascinating time of year because the TV season, we know what all the TVs are, but we’re just so far off having a real perspective on like we can now judge them on price. I’m fine with that. I can judge an RGB against an OLED on price. Well, that’s Yeah, that’s not enough yet.

[00:58:42]  Stephen: Yeah, but I think the people who shop on price, they’re obviously looking for the best value. So they’re thinking, well, what does $4,000 get me if I buy a Hisense? What does $4,000 get me if I buy a Samsung or an LG or whatever? I think that’s a good way of narrowing down your choices to see what gets your best bang for your buck, or, you know, cost per inch sort of thing as well. Like, you might say $4,000 might buy you an 85-inch Hisense where it only might get you 75-inch Samsung sort of thing. So knowing that is, is a good thing if you can get a nice little shortcut you could put there for them. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:59:15]  Trevor: And you get that. The other part of it is just the model. I haven’t worked out yet how to properly discern for people because I realize that this is very in for us, like the R95, there’s the R85. You kind of need to show— and I did rank them in the data. I’ve ranked them. So like if you’ve got 3 different types of OLEDs, which Samsung do, I kind of rank them 1, 2, and 3. You kind of need a way of showing that it’s, you know, ranked higher or lower without making it look like a review ranking. Yeah, like it’s a— I don’t know what’s it called, you know, it’s not a 5, it’s not 3 stars versus 1 star because the 1 star is an excellent TV. So it’s not a review, it’s about in their lineup, within the Samsung lineup, this is the first best or third best, you know. That’s a little trigger that I’m—

[00:59:55]  Stephen: it’s like in context, uh, correct reviews in the context of these TVs.

[01:00:00]  Trevor: Yeah, how do I know which one’s better and which one’s not? Yeah, yeah, it’s a difficult thing because it works within a brand but it doesn’t work across brands. So, you know, LG’s B series, is that actually equivalent to Samsung’s, uh, 85 series OLED?

[01:00:16]  Stephen: Yeah.

[01:00:16]  Trevor: And is there 9090?

[01:00:17]  Stephen: How do you, how do you compare that?

[01:00:19]  Trevor: They’re not, right? But they are level 1, 2, and 3. So, so LG’s level 1 TV is their G series. Samsung’s OLED is R95.

[01:00:27]  Stephen: Yeah.

[01:00:28]  Trevor: So the two, they are the premium.

[01:00:30]  Stephen: Yeah.

[01:00:30]  Trevor: And when you step down, you step down in different ways, but they’re not really genuinely the same step down. That’s so complicated. I’m confusing myself.

[01:00:37]  Stephen: That’s hopefully made it simpler for people.

[01:00:38]  Trevor: I don’t know, I might have made it harder for myself now that I’m thinking about it.

[01:00:41]  Stephen: Anyway, you created a bit of work for yourself.

[01:00:44]  Trevor: I’ve created a monster. It’s pretty much all I’ve been working on.

[01:00:46]  Stephen: Is that right? Anyway, there’s a few other Dan Tyson and Scott Plowman bylines on the site this week.

[01:00:53]  Trevor: They’ve been working pretty hard.

[01:00:53]  Stephen: Yeah, right.

[01:00:54]  Trevor: That’s great. Good that you got that luck.

[01:00:56]  Stephen: Luxury, mate, eh?

[01:00:57]  Trevor: Appreciate it.

[01:00:59]  VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Stephen Fenech.

[01:01:06]  Stephen: Well, Hoyts have a new cinema technology, would you believe? And it is LCD.

[01:01:14]  Trevor: What, so it’s like the wall?

[01:01:16]  Stephen: Well, it is. Is that what Samsung’s is called? Yeah. Yeah, it’d be similar to that. It’s called Hoyts Apex.

[01:01:21]  Trevor: What’s this called? I’m looking for it. This is the lead story.

[01:01:24]  Stephen: It is a supersized LED screen. 21 meters wide. They’ve only got one of them at the moment in Melbourne Central, so they’re one of their flagship cinemas. It is 21 meters wide, 17 million pixels, and they’re also actually acoustically transparent pixels. So the sound— because you know when you go to the movies, you go up to the screen, it’s, it’s perforated, so there’s speakers behind the screen, so the sound comes from the screen. And the similar with this too, so it’s got the transparency mode there so the speakers can still sit behind the screen. But it does offer like just basically like it’s got 17 million pixels, 30 times better picture contrast, and the viewing angle is 160-degree viewing angles. You know, projection is obviously got a great viewing angle, but the brightness of projection is what lacks when you— what compared to LED, right? So it got that as well. It’s also got the acoustically transparent LED screen like I mentioned, but it also has like richer color gamut as well. As well. Higher dynamic range, HDR, and the capability too of being curved. You know, some cinemas that are really big can actually, they sort of curve at the edges sort of to wrap around the audience. So there’s that potential as well. So yeah, check it out if you’re living in Melbourne. It’s at the Melbourne Central Hoyts Cinema. Did you know the CEO of Hoyts Group is Damien Keogh?

[01:02:51]  Trevor: Oh, Kingsplay.

[01:02:52]  Stephen: Former Kingsplay, yeah. Did you know that? You know that?

[01:02:54]  Trevor: He came to our school probably when he was a Kings player at Condell Park Primary School.

[01:02:57]  Stephen: He’s the Hoyts CEO.

[01:02:59]  Trevor: Yes, I did know that.

[01:02:59]  Stephen: Yeah, manager. He’s the boss at Hoyts. Yeah.

[01:03:03]  Trevor: How does that career transition work?

[01:03:04]  Stephen: Yeah, I don’t know. Well, he’s obviously qualified in— he’s got a university degree in probably economics or law or something else. So he’s not just a— he’s just a good basketballer as well.

[01:03:14]  Trevor: But just a good basketballer. Did you hear that, Damien?

[01:03:16]  Stephen: Yeah, you’re a genius.

[01:03:17]  Trevor: I’m pretty sure he’s a title-winning Kings player.

[01:03:20]  Stephen: One of the best.

[01:03:21]  Trevor: I’ve got some old radio reports I could share with you that probably you were playing singing. Yeah, Trevor Long here, the King’s, uh, the Kings are trailing the 36ers.

[01:03:32]  Stephen: Yeah, you sound like, you sound like Richard Callender. You know Richard Callender, mate? Listen to him. It’s, that’s it, you sound like he’s wind.

[01:03:48]  Trevor: Oh really?

[01:03:49]  Stephen: Richie Callender, you know, Ken Callender’s son?

[01:03:50]  Trevor: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:03:51]  Stephen: Sound like him with the real, the little turn of phrase with the little like racing.

[01:03:55]  Trevor: For the record, I’m not a basketball fan or reporter, so I don’t know why I was sent. But he can count and read.

[01:04:00]  Stephen: That’s all you need to be a reporter, mate. You can count and you can read. So you know which player’s got the most baskets.

[01:04:04]  Trevor: You gotta remember back in the day that was sitting on the sideline, just sitting there with a landline waiting for it to ring and it would ring and it’d be like, okay, you’re on. And I’m like, okay, let’s look where the score is, you know. There you go.

[01:05:16]  Stephen: Do you get paid for that?

[01:05:17]  Trevor: Trevor Longlife from the Kingdom. I was probably Ross Loughnane.

[01:05:19]  Stephen: You were working for TGV at the time. Who’s this for?

[01:05:21]  Trevor: That was Kel Richards. Probably a Saturday night.

[01:05:24]  Stephen: So your job at TGV was going out sports report, like sideline eye?

[01:05:27]  Trevor: Well, no, I don’t know what my job was.

[01:05:28]  Stephen: Tony McGay. Were you Tony McGay?

[01:05:29]  Trevor: I didn’t do a lot of that, I’ll be honest. Yeah, well, no, I was more producing back in the studio. So obviously someone was sick.

[01:05:36]  Stephen: I don’t know if I’ve still got them or not. I wish I had my, uh, right, because when I was doing my HSC, I had a radio show, Radio East of Sydney. Yeah, I had my own radio show for like 3 months and then I had to do the HSC and then got a job. And I think I’ve got some of those tapes laying around. I gotta look for ’em. ‘Cause I used to tell my mum, I said, “Okay, when I ring ya, I’m about to go on air, just press record.” She’d record me.

[01:06:02]  Trevor: Somewhere I’ve got a recording of me ringing David Tapp on Straight Talk with David Tapp in the late ’90s.

[01:06:09]  Stephen: Wow.

[01:06:10]  Trevor: And I remember, I know what’s on the tape ’cause it’s me talking about— it might even be talking about like cigarette sponsorship and how stupid it is that they’re getting rid of it because it’ll ruin the sport. Because I’ve never taken up smoking, David, and you know, I’ve watched motorsport all my life and it’s never made me want to smoke. Yeah, and that’s kind of rubbish. Or something about Tony Longhurst at Bathurst.

[01:06:27]  Stephen: I don’t know, mate. My show on Radio Eastern Sydney used to be 6 till 8 on a Sunday night. Oh no, 5 to 7 on a Sunday afternoon. Afternoon and I’d be playing music, like, you know, playing my own music and then, you know, chatting away in between and just lining up because I did all the panel work myself. And I, you know, did this quarter turn of the record so it hits the mark properly. And mate, when blended them in, I got really good at it towards the end there. I was pretty shit house at the start but got the hang of it. It was really good. Yeah, that was all right. You know what, big thanks to— I remember my, one of my, my Year 12, one of my teachers took me in there to have a chat about, you know, youth stuff, blah, blah, blah. And the bloke said, well, you know what, if you want to, there’s a spot here, son. And his name’s Dennis Hunt. Dennis said, he goes, mate, do it. And he, and mate, if it wasn’t for him saying, mate, why don’t you do that? I would have said no way. But then he sort of said, mate, have a go. And that’s what got me into, I think that’s what got me into the, I was always wanting to be in the media, but that really sealed the deal. Being able to do that, he goes, come on, what if you don’t do it? You might not get another chance. Dennis, yeah, he was one of my, one of my, uh, yeah, nice bloke, good, good teacher. But, um, mate, it was because of him, and then I end up getting that— there’s a stint there for you that I could have kept going with, but I stopped because I, you know, finished school, started working at News and all that. But mate, they were the glory days. You used to have to go to— because Radio Western Sydney was inside Paddington Town Hall, so you have to go to Paddington Town Hall, and normally I’d be— I had to get the bus from home, or like, I wasn’t driving, wasn’t driving yet, I was still sort school. Yeah, that was a while back. And my local paper did a story about me doing it, how I’m on the radio. Boom!

[01:08:09]  Trevor: Bet your mum’s got the clippings of that.

[01:08:11]  Stephen: I’ve got the clippings of that still. I’ve still got it. Yeah, I’ve still got the clipping of that. And yeah, and that was 1985. So that was like 3 years before I played for Souths or anything, but just— and it was the same year I started work at News. The guy, what’s his name, Craig Knowles was the station manager, wrote me the best reference that helped me get my job at News Limited. Wow.

[01:08:33]  Trevor: Yeah, it’s your fault, Knowlesy.

[01:08:34]  Stephen: Yeah, bloody hell. Launched a career. It was awesome times. Good times.

[01:08:39]  Trevor: Lovely to chat. Let’s do it all again next week.

[01:08:41]  Stephen: I’ll be here, mate.

[01:08:42]  Trevor: Okay.

[01:08:43]  VOICE OVER: This is Two Blokes Talking Tech with Trevor Long and Steven Fenech.