WEBVTT

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i know this title concept has been done to death but i have actually never done

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it because i believe that if a product pretty much does what it says on the box

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there is someone out there who will love it otherwise why would they make it

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and there is a lot that i have found to like about the samsung galaxy s20 ultra

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over the last two weeks i'm not gonna skip over that stuff but the truth of

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the matter is i'm gonna be shelving this phone as soon as i am done filming this

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video let's talk about why

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today's video is brought to you by ifixit ifixit's mahi driver kit includes

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their quarter-inch aluminum screwdriver handle with a magnetic bit socket knurled grip and swivel top plus 48

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driver bits check it out at the link in the video description

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my immediate impressions of the s20 ultra 5g were mostly positive it's

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generally chunkier than the iphone 11 pro max despite being a little bit

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lighter but it is superbly balanced as

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all things should be and the slimmer 20 by 9 display makes it easier for me to

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wrap my fingers around it the materials are also great and remind me more of an

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iphone 10 or 11 series than anything else that i've held today

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but with all the right samsung flair added to it the bezels are much thinner

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than apples and i think samsung has finally perfected both the curve of the

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edge of the display and the width of their bezels so that distortion and

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reflections around the edges of on-screen content are non-existent and i

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almost never managed to accidentally activate the touchscreen with my palm

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while i was reaching across it even the hole punch display which i

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still hate and would immediately trade for a pop-up selfie camera like oneplus

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pro series is obviously better than apple's now very

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for head notch i did miss having the earpiece a little

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bit lower down i find it more comfortable to hold against my ear but

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if the mandate at samsung is maximum screen coverage

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i prefer a proper grille even if it's a weirdly positioned one to a vibrating

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screen like on the lg g8 even though i normally use my airpods pros these days

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when i do want to listen out loud like in the bath it makes a big difference

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for watching movies and videos on the go to have an amplified earpiece speaker

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that doesn't vibrate your phone as a quick aside by the way guys i get a lot

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of flack for constantly bringing up the movie watching experience in my phone

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reviews and i'm finally at the point where i'm just not going to take it

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anymore i've got to defend that look guys not everyone has the income or the

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lifestyle to allow them to settle down for two hours at a time on the couch

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with their big screen HDR tv and watch a movie

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so yeah the phone is small and there's going to be directors and filmmakers out

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there that are going to give you a hard time for watching their movies on it but

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given how awesome phone screens have gotten this one in particular i don't

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think it's much of a stretch to say that a galaxy s20 ultra is probably going to

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be the best HDR display in the house of

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most of the people who end up buying one the white point of the natural mode is a

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little warm for my preference but after a short adjustment the s20 ultra screen

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looks great under basically any conditions at night in bed all the way

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to under direct sunlight so yeah if your close-up vision is still

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good i see nothing wrong with throwing on a pair of like drop thx pandas and

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firing up a movie on your phone i had no difficulty even streaming my heaviest

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blu-ray rips from my plex server over wi-fi and the good news about the screen

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gets even better 120 hertz support is basically the icing

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on the cake here sweet delicious long-awaited icing it was

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actually kind of funny seeing the reviewers who obviously mostly use

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mainstream phones heralding 120hz says

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the next big thing guys it was the last big thing like to

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be clear it's great but here's some kid back in 2011 explaining how it improves

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the smoothness of game animations and makes your device feel snappier and more

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responsive but hey at least we finally got there right so gamers and

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performance enthusiasts rejoice i have seen some complaints about poor

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battery life particularly with 120 hertz enabled and especially on the exynos

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models as well as about the lack of support for high refresh rate at the

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native resolution but samsung's full hd plus mode didn't

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bother me at all and i managed to get through the last two weeks with

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everything enabled no dark mode everything at 120 hertz always on

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display and that includes one really long day with over seven hours of screen

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time love it the only thing i ended up not loving about the screen is the

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in-screen ultrasonic fingerprint sensor it's much better than when it first

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launched on the s10 series and most people probably won't notice or care but

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when it comes to raw quick draw speed apple's face id and competing

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fingerprint unlocks are still a hair faster something people are noticing and

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caring about is the significant differences this time around between the

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exynos and snapdragon versions of the s20 ultra

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i have seen outlier results for both with users reporting more than 10 hours

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of screen on time with various optimizations but for the most part the

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ones who are complaining about really bad battery life are only exynos users

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as for how to explain the difference andre from assani's preliminary

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reporting on inauth.com seems to contain some strong clues

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users who predominantly watch video which uses efficient fixed function

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decoding hardware or who browse the web might see just a 10 deficit while users

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who occasionally run heavier apps could fall behind by 25 or more due to

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exynos's inferior power efficiency now i

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get it there's a reason everyone does it the cost saving and supply chain

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management rationales behind dual sourcing parts for a high volume product

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like this make a lot of sense but the issue is that they have to be built to

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the same spec and right now with the state that things

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are in if i'm a customer who's in an exynos region

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this kind of battery life performance makes samsung's entire s20 lineup a

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no-go for me right out of the gate and

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downright embarrassing honestly when you consider samsung's all-day battery

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marketing as for the camera it's cool i it nope

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it's super cool it's still a samsung camera so the colors might lean a little

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on the cooler side especially side by side against an iphone which tends to

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lean warmer and their over sharpening is ever present but at reasonable zoom

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levels like 5x there is no doubt that

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you are going to end up with images that contain a lot more detail than if you

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were just trying to use software to punch in on a 2x zoom shot on an iphone

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combined with the 12 megapixel wide angle you've got a lot of shooting

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options and i think most people are gonna find something to love about it i

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do wish they hadn't quite hyped it up as hard though video recording quality is

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still way behind apple and some of the touted features like the

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100x zoom and 8k recording are honestly

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useless as anything other than a party trick the 100x zoom adds so much

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processing that i would rather move my face closer to my phone and let my brain

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do the guesswork and the 8k video recording mode isn't so much bad like

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it's fine it's just entirely unnecessary

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with the sensor and processing power that can be crammed into a cell phone

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you're just better off with decently encoded 4k than with 8k and as for

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samsung's assertion that you can pull 33 megapixel stills out of their 8k video

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that is laughable even the example they show on the website looks like hot

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garbage because of the motion blur that's inherent NVIDIA capture

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why would anybody do that especially when the camera app supports just taking

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a still while you're recording video i also didn't find myself using the 108

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megapixel mode at all under ideal circumstances indirect

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sunlight it might be worth switching to but you better hope there's absolutely

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no shadows in your shot because its dynamic range is much worse compared to

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when you allow all of the cameras to work together even though both modes

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support HDR onto software samsung's Android skin has improved so much that

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people rarely complain about it and in fact when we did our recent video

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highlighting the top new features of Android 11 the comment section got

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absolutely flooded with people who apparently didn't realize that

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yes i get it those features are already built into your samsung phone but they

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are not yet part of the stock Android experience

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i've actually even been uncharacteristically happy with the software support that i've gotten on my

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daily driver note 9 which is coming up on 2 years old now

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however notifications have been and continue to be a problem for me

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samsung in general needs to expose notification order controls either by

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allowing app priorities to be manually tuned or by enabling an option to just

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put everything in in reverse chronological order because i am

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constantly getting pings on my phone that are for like my garage door opening

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and then i need to scroll all the way down through a list of messages people have sent me to find out what buzzed my

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phone not to mention that most of the notifications don't have a time stamp on

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them for some reason also nothing that i did made my

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microsoft teams notifications come through on the s20 ultra now this could

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easily be microsoft's fault since teams is a hot pile of steaming garbage but it

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does mean that i'm going to have to dump this phone immediately no matter how much i like it because i use that for

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work bottom line then the s20 ultra is

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great in a lot of ways the quality of the materials the specs the performance

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all top notch and i'm not usually one to complain about a

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price customer for anything remember

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but the thing is it starts at fourteen hundred dollars that is three hundred

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dollars more than the base model and just fifty dollars less than the top

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spec iphone 11 pro max with four times

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the storage that would be fine if it was utterly

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flawless or if it had some space-age new technology that needed an early adopter

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subsidy remember guys i defended the fold

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but it's not and it doesn't at this price where literally anything

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else is in play if you want a head turner get a fold if you want a status

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symbol buy an iphone if you want to take pictures get a pixel or an iphone if you

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shoot a lot of video get an iphone if you actually work for

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your money here's the thing i didn't notice a significant day-to-day

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difference in experience between this and my old daily driver note 9.

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if however you're a rich kid and you want to play with the zoom something i

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can pretty much guarantee you'll get bored of within a few days hey for you

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though there's the s20 ultra

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and it's brought to you by dbrand dbrand is making me say this the

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dbrand grip is super grippy you will never drop your phone again even if

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you're me haha see is that so that'll show you dbrand where'd it go it

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includes military grade impact protection absorbing technology it's

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ultra low profile at just two millimeters thick it's got super tactile

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buttons with their springy polymer and full compatibility with dbrand skins hey

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check this out dbrand i improved your skin i put an Linus tech tip sticker on

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top of it so check out dbrand.com Linus drop tips we're gonna have that linked

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below to check out their lineup if you want my impressions of the z flip by the

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way check out our ShortCircuit channel where i unboxed it i am not going to do

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a full review on here because i didn't want to use it for that long so i sent

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it back to dbrand as soon as i was done i'm going to link that video down below

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make sure you subscribe by the way