Overview of Waveform Podcast — “Apple M6? S27 Leaked? It’s Gadget Season!”
This episode is a broad gadget roundup centered on the upcoming wave of fall tech launches. The hosts spend the most time on Google’s Pixel 11 lineup and its new AI-driven features, but they also cover surprise Apple chip/computer releases, an early Galaxy S27 Ultra leak, Nothing OS 5, and a handful of smaller product and community updates. The overall tone is skeptical toward overly specific AI demos and enthusiastic about interesting hardware changes.
Pixel 11 Lineup: Strong Cameras, Weak Value Proposition
The hosts’ main takeaway is that the Pixel 11 phones are very good, but the Pro models are increasingly hard to recommend.
What they liked
- Camera quality is excellent, especially the upgraded main and telephoto cameras.
- The selfie camera is still strong.
- The standard Pixel 11 feels like the best-value model in the lineup.
- The Pro Fold gets more goodwill because foldables are inherently expensive and the IP68 / software angle helps justify it.
Why they’re not sold on the Pro phones
- The Pro and Pro XL don’t feel meaningfully ahead of the base model for the extra cost.
- The Pro phones reportedly have less RAM than last year’s Pro models, bringing them even closer to the base phone.
- The speakers argue that the base Pixel is the only one that feels like a reasonable buy, while the Pro tier needs more value to justify itself.
Bottom line
- Great phones overall.
- Base Pixel = best deal
- Pro / Pro XL = nice to use, hard to recommend
- They expect many buyers may be better off with older Pixels or discounted models.
Google’s “Gemini Intelligence” and Highlight: Interesting Idea, Narrow Execution
A big chunk of the episode is spent criticizing Google’s new AI-driven phone features, especially Gemini proactive assistance and the Highlight lighting feature on the back of the phone.
Gemini proactive assistance
The hosts argue that the feature is:
- Too specific
- Hard to trigger
- Poorly explained
- Set up with too many hidden requirements
Examples they discussed:
- Reservation suggestions only pop up in very narrow text-message scenarios.
- It requires specific app installs and settings toggles.
- Grocery list integration depends on the list being named in a very particular way and tied to specific services like Instacart or Costco.
Their criticism
- Google markets it like a broad AI assistant, but it behaves more like a demo built for a handful of edge cases.
- The hosts felt it should be more generally useful and discoverable.
- They also pointed out that Google’s own descriptions of these features don’t clearly tell users what will actually trigger them.
Highlight / rear lighting
They had a lot to say about the new rear light feature:
- It’s effectively a notification/assistant light on the back of the phone.
- It only supports a limited set of colors, with no red.
- The light’s implementation seems to reduce the effectiveness of the flash/torch.
- They think Google shipped only a tiny slice of the functionality this hardware could support.
Their main argument
If Google is going to make the phone’s back light a “Gemini thing,” they should also:
- support messages, calls, and other common notifications
- allow more customization
- make it useful enough that people will actually leave their phone face down
Their overall verdict: cool concept, badly undercooked execution.
Apple News: M6 Mac mini, M5 Ultra Mac Studio, and a Surprise Event
Apple unexpectedly dropped a bunch of new hardware news, and the hosts were clearly energized by it.
What Apple announced
- New M6 chip
- New M5 Ultra chip
- Updated Mac mini
- Updated Mac Studio
Highlights
- The M6 Mac mini is now a 2nm chip machine with impressive performance and upgraded unified memory bandwidth.
- The base Mac mini is no longer the ultra-cheap deal it once was; the price has climbed a lot.
- The M5 Ultra Mac Studio is the monster machine of the bunch:
- fused from two M5 Max chips
- massive GPU/CPU counts
- up to 512GB unified memory
- up to 16TB storage
- They joked that maxing out the Mac Studio gets absurdly expensive.
Event and product timing
- Apple’s event is set for September 9
- The slogan is “Surprise and Shine”
- The hosts suspect Apple is saving some bigger announcements for the event, including:
- a foldable iPhone
- a touchscreen OLED MacBook Pro
- They think the Mac mini / Mac Studio announcements were moved out to make room for bigger visual products in the September and October events.
Apple polishing cloth
They also noted that Apple’s polishing cloth is now $9 instead of $19.
- They were unsure whether it’s smaller or simply cheaper.
- They mostly treated it as a funny but notable price drop.
Galaxy S27 Ultra Leak: Camera Plateau / Mesa Design
The early leak of the Galaxy S27 Ultra design sparked a lot of discussion.
Design changes
- The phone appears to move from the familiar camera-ring layout to a large camera plateau/mesa.
- The leak shows:
- two left-aligned cameras
- a pill-like section on the right with flash/sensor elements
- a mostly bare right side of the plateau
Why they liked it
- It’s a meaningful change after years of very similar Ultra designs.
- The new layout may reduce wobble.
- They generally preferred this to the old three-ring vertical arrangement.
Extra commentary
- They compared the shape to a mesa more than a plateau or butte.
- They noted that other brands, including Xiaomi/Huawei-style designs, have played with similar camera-island ideas before.
- They also reflected on how under-display selfie cameras largely faded away because people cared more about camera quality than hiding the cutout.
Nothing OS 5: Cleaner, More Cohesive, More Playful
The episode also briefly covers Nothing OS 5.
Main changes
- Smoother, more cohesive animations
- Refreshed fonts and icons
- Two new lock screen clocks
- A dedicated Glyph app
- Better QR scanning behavior
- A new collector widget that turns objects in photos into sticker-style cutouts for the home screen
Their reaction
- They liked the update overall.
- The collector/sticker widget was singled out as a fun, whimsical feature.
- They thought the launch video was oddly paced and too long before getting to the actual update.
Other Notable Side Topics
YouTube bugs and view-count changes
The hosts joked about:
- broken padding/layout in the YouTube mobile subscriptions tab
- how YouTube treats Shorts and long-form playback as weirdly separate
- the new engaged-view vs. public-view counting system
Pokemon Sleep x Fitbit-style collaboration
They discussed a Pokemon Sleep collaboration with a Fitbit-style wearable band:
- nice dark-blue color
- branded as a sleep tracker / sleep game tie-in
- they found the collaboration amusingly niche
Premier League fantasy league
They encouraged listeners to join their Waveform fantasy league for the Premier League.
Robot Olympics
A humorous detour into viral videos of humanoid robot competitions in China:
- robots sprinting, falling, and crashing into walls
- the hosts found it chaotic and oddly impressive
Trivia Answers
WD-40
WD = Water Displacement
- The “40” refers to the 40th formula attempt
- Originally designed as a rust-preventive coating for rockets, not as a general lubricant
Pixel front-camera locations
The two Pixel generations with the front camera in the top-left corner were:
- Pixel 5
- Pixel 5a 5G
Overall Takeaway
This episode is a classic Waveform gadget-news mix:
- Pixel hardware is improving, but Google’s AI features feel overly narrow and awkwardly implemented.
- Apple is gearing up for a busy fall, with new chips, Mac updates, and likely bigger product reveals still to come.
- Samsung’s next Ultra looks meaningfully different for once.
- Nothing continues to polish its software identity with playful UI updates.
The broader theme: hardware is getting interesting again, but the hosts remain unconvinced that most “AI features” are actually useful yet.