Why I'm Sticking With Google - Pixel 5a
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
2,516 words · ~12 min read
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- Who's in the market for a Pixel 5a?
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A 31 year old with braces. Just joking, I run a Pixel 4,
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and it's a retainer, 'cause I forgot to put it in last night, and I got to get my straighten on.
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5a, it's pretty interesting, except that it's not, because it's the same as the 4a,
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let's take a look at it. It's kind of a weird place for Google to be in,
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because with the Pixel 5, the flagship started sucking,
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and then the A-Series was kind of better. But now, the flagship 6 is supposed to be wicked,
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except that I hate the way it looks. And now you've got the 5a,
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which is almost literally the exact same as last year's 4a,
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you hear that lisp? Jesus. But it's like Apple has the SE,
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and they probably would have just not made a refresh every year,
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but Google was like, "Hey, why not just refresh it?" It's mostly the exact same, it's slightly larger
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and I think it's metal now. The cameras are the same, the SoC is the same,
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the battery is bigger, though, and that might just be all you need to know.
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Because I've had a Pixel 3 and a Pixel 4, and in both cases, I've had battery issues.
1:03
The 3 I had to RMA because the battery was so bad, it couldn't get through, like, one game of Catan.
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And then this one, which I've had for maybe a year,
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just in the last couple of days, I've noticed, I'm plugging this thing in like twice a day.
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It's hard for me to measure 'cause I'm already a grazer, not like a plug-in-over-nighter.
1:21
"Welcome to your new Pixel. Tap for tips." Hmm, we love tips around here.
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"Learn the essentials." Okay, look at this tutorial, it's great. I think I should know everything in here, right?
1:31
That's my job. Let's compare it to this flagship. One of the things I like about the Pixels here is
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that they're very small. They're one of the smallest phones you can get,
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especially if you don't get the XL. This is actually way bigger than this Pixel 4
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and slightly bigger than the 4a. And it's quite a bit heavier,
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even though this is like more metal and glass.
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Scale, scale please. There he is, there's my boy.
1:55
Pounds? What use is that? Only 164 grams.
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Only 175 grams. So it's only 10 grams more, I guess,
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but I think it's 15 grams more than the last 4a.
2:07
Honestly, I think more people should just buy these. I think we don't need to spend $1000, or 1200,
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or $2,000 on a phone. I think for most people, you're not gonna notice.
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The camera on this thing is great. The screen's only 60 Hertz, but hey,
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that's all we had like two years ago. Are iPhones still on 60 Hertz?
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It's fine, it's fine for most people. Look, it's snappy, yeah, it's brand new,
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but I think people are just, their phones are like their genitals at this point,
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instead of having a nice car, you don't have a car cause you live in a city and you're a millennial who can't afford it.
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So you just buy a nice phone. Look how cool my phone is. Stop it.
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That's right, David, there's a headphone jack on the top. - [David] What? - Again, so stupid.
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This phone has a way bigger battery than last time
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and a headphone jack, it can be done, and, guess what?
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It has greater ingress protection than the last one too.
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It has all three, the trilemma has been solved.
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Imagine that.
3:02
This is exactly like my current Pixel, I mean, that makes sense, it has the same software.
3:08
You know, it's a lot nicer to look this way.
3:11
This part of the studio is kind of uggo, I mean, you guys are handsome.
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The stabilization is great. It's high enough resolution.
3:18
This is fine, stop buying iPhones, save your money.
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Remember that ING Direct guy? So, display-wise compared to the predecessor,
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it's just 0.2 inches more screen.
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It's fully wrapped round, it's got the hole punch up here, it's all OLED.
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It is 60 Hertz. Also, they dropped the facial recognition from the flagship
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and in the A-series, starting from the 4a to now, they have the fingerprint, which is back,
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Wish I had had that during the pandemic wearing masks the whole time, this sucked.
3:45
I've been using my pattern, like a peasant, for a year.
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And you know, the fingerprint's always been faster because you can actually unlock it
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while it's still in your pocket on your way to your face. The next one on the 6,
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it has like a belt that goes across, which I hate the look of, but maybe that'll prevent rocking.
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Also on the 6, they're using their new Tensor silicon, their in-house silicon.
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So, this could be the last Pixel phone that has a Qualcomm Snapdragon.
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And I don't know if that's gonna be a good or bad thing, but if we're looking at M1s,
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it seems like vertical integration in that realm is a positive.
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All right, let's listen to the speakers of this baby. But before I do that,
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it's time for Jono to throw something at me. Ah, ha ha!
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Oh my God.
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Oh my God. I'm so glad I'm not Linus.
4:36
This is awesome. It's a dbrand grip case with an unflattering screen grab
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from WAN Show. Oh, that's rough, man, he just looks like super stoned and pixelated.
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At least his beard was trimmed that day, they could have done worse. He's got the dad hat on backwards,
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which actually kind of matches those headphones. This is such a light case.
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Did they change it? This feels like (phone case smacking loudly)
5:00
slaps the roof. This thing will fit so many phones.
5:03
Oh, now it feels very safe. Sorry, was this a brand new phone?
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That's why you get this case and you can see that it actually comes off a little bit
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from the face so if it lands like this, you've got some protection, I mean,
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you could still land on a pebble or something like that. Oh, oh, whoa.
5:18
The buttons are definitely different. Oh, so tactile, y'all.
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All right, dbrand, thanks for the money, thanks for the case. It's kind of annoying to me when you buy the flagship,
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because you're an elitist, and then the mid range is better, like it has a headphone jack and also,
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look how slim that speaker is at the top there now. See that up there?
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It's just very skinny like you see on a Samsung phone. Back in my day, we had a huge forehead
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with a little speaker. Whoa, is this the default size?
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This keyboard is huge. (electronic music)
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You mean you got double the speakerage at the bottom so you can do the handcuff thing and point it at yourself.
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The test for me is how annoyed would I be if someone was using this as the speaker at a party,
6:04
if I was like playing cards or something like that, and this is all we had, or I'm at the beach,
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how awful would that be? Not the worst, not the worst.
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You don't want to hang out with those people. You definitely don't want be that guy.
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If you're at home and you can't find your headphones, you just want to share a quick video on the couch
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with your loved one like on TikTok or some other app that I would never use,
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then sure, they're fine. This phone actually did lose a couple of things.
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It has 5G, like the predecessor, but it doesn't have the millimeter wave 5G,
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but no one really cares because it's not broadly available.
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And as Linus showed on the last Tech Tips, if someone stands in front of you, it doesn't work.
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But there's also some mid-band that it doesn't have, which is a more of a loss.
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How much does this thing cost? 450? The previous one was 50 bucks more than that.
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This is awesome. 450? This is gonna be my phone again.
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I used to have a Nexus 5X.
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Yeah, that one was cool 'cause it had like a nice colored back. But at least this one has a feature button,
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like the button is a different color. I like the little, I don't know if you guys can see that,
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but it's got like this knurling on it. It's ribbed for my pleasure.
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"Wayne's World" guys, have you seen it? If you're the type of person who runs their phone naked,
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this isn't so bad 'cause even if you're careful with your phone, one thing that happens,
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is it just falls out of your pocket. You put it in your shorts, you sit in the car and then it's so slippery
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that it just like works its way out and then suddenly, it's fallen onto the movie theater floor
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which was covered in sticky pop. This feels not that slippery, it's not as bad as glass.
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It has the kind of a soft touch, you wouldn't actually know that this is metal.
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It does have like a rubber kind of soft touch coating on it.
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I think it looks really cool and clean the way that it dips for that fingerprint reader
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then it comes back up, it looks pretty awesome, seamless.
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It only comes in one color, they're calling this, almost black?
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Because they have Just Black, last model was Just Black,
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I think this is almost black or blackish. It looks actually kind of green to me,
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kind of like how in "The Matrix" everything's green even when it's not.
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Subscribe to Carpool Critics. Another reason to get a Google Pixel phone
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rather than maybe even like a cheaper, or more feature complete Chinese phone,
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is that you get the Google features, so you got the Recorder app, which actually is useful.
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Basically, it just records audio but while it does it, it types out a transcript.
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And maybe that's not the most reliable transcript ever, especially if there's multiple people in the room,
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but what it does allow you to do is easily search your audio recording.
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And be like, what was the part where we talked about birthday cake? You type it in, oh, that's what they said about the cake.
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That's awesome, that's a Google First-Party App. They also have, and this is a lifesaver
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in today's spam-filled world, they have the Screen Call button.
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If someone calls you, you hit Screen Call, Google Assistant answers the phone and talks to them.
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And then when they respond, it types out what they're saying on the screen. Most scammers, as soon as I hit that button,
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they just leave and I don't even have to mess with that. And sometimes, when it is a number I don't recognize
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that turns out to be the dentist, you get to answer because I don't even have voicemail.
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Get rid of voicemail, get a Google phone. You are set, your life is way better.
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Let's take some pictures. Oh yeah, the depth.
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What the hell is going on here? Is this a bug?
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What the hell is happening? Are you seeing this?
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I've never had this before. Yeah, I do get some aliasing and lose some detail
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when I zoom all the way in. But when I go, even to like times two,
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it still looks very sharp. This is still a good camera.
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Oh, Linus! That is probably like 12 feet away from me.
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(imitates lens zoom) Still decent.
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I think this is pretty good, I mean, it's not like a gimmick, like, it's got a periscope on it,
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you can zoom into the moon, 50x. It's just very workable, especially considering the price.
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And you know, you're gonna get security updates for a long time and you're gonna get updates first.
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You don't have to wait for Android to release it to LG, doesn't exist anymore,
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and then for them to finally give it to your phone like months later, you're gonna get it right away.
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So, I think I might stick with the Pixel family for longer,
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especially if they're making the batteries bigger 'cause unfortunately, on this puppy,
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this is the one where they introduced a higher refresh rate screen and
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they introduced the radar thing where you're approaching your phone and it like lights up and crap,
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and they have like swipe gestures. I had to just turn all that stuff off
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because it was just draining the battery too much. The A line's where I'm gonna be from now on, guys.
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- [David] Heck yeah, join me, brother. - Preach!
10:31
Unless that 6 is dope. I want to see that, maybe the 6a is when I'm upgrading.
10:36
We didn't actually unbox it. You got a SIM card, pin, you got some literature,
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you get the adapter, this is for setting up your phone if you need to, like, ah,
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you wanted to take stuff off of your previous phone and put it onto this phone,
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you get a USB-C to C, that's a nice presentation,
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and you actually do get a charger, I've seen some rumors that the 6 is not gonna come
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with a wall wart. I mean, mixed feelings.
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On the one hand, I don't like there to be unnecessary e-waste in the world.
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But on the other hand, I don't think that these are that common yet. I still see a lot of
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USB Micro B chargers around
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and even in my house, I think I forgot my charger on vacation
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and then now there's like one between me and my wife and it is not enough.
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Like, it gets moved from the couch area to the bedroom, like, where's the charger?
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So, I do still want one of these. Fortunately, you can get one if you buy this phone.
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So cool, thanks for watching, guys. If you liked this video, hit like, hit Subscribe
11:32
and watch our other videos about phones.
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What's the outro for ShortCircuit, what do you guys do here?