The 2026 Smartphone Awards Discussion Episode

Andrew Manganelli (0:00)

This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week hosts Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research. Bring your fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Liz Ann as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting and what sectors are on the move right now?

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Marques Brownlee (0:33)

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Marques Brownlee (1:47)

Apple always seems to try new things, at least with the iPhone, twice. So they tried the mini, the 12 mini, and then they, yeah, and then, you know.

Ellis Roven (1:58)

How did you have your hand on that?

Marques Brownlee (2:06)

Yo, what is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques.

Andrew Manganelli (2:12)

And I'm Andrew.

Marques Brownlee (2:13)

No David today. But over at the producer desk, we have Ellis and Mariah is back. And it's mid-Techtober as you listen to this and as we record this, which means, of course, there's a little bit to talk about. It's kind of crazy. There's like one week of lull.

Andrew Manganelli (2:28)

It's the break between Techtober, or Tech-Tember and Techtober.

Marques Brownlee (2:32)

Yeah, like Techtober kind of spills into the beginning of Techtober, and then Techtober is about to kick off again, but we have a little rest period. But in this episode, we still have a couple other things. We've got to talk about some price increases in some phones that also have already come out.

Apple, with an unusual partner to release some new products, potentially. We're also going to have our preliminary discussions, our way too early discussions, on what could be the smartphone awards this year.

Andrew Manganelli (2:59)

I wouldn't even call it way too early.

Marques Brownlee (3:00)

Not even way too early, but early enough that there's still phones coming out, but early enough that it's fun to talk about. We have some thoughts.

And of course, we'll end by talking about some MMOs. I know what that stands for, but I don't know what else we're talking about. So it'll be good. Don't forget to subscribe, of course. We have found that asking you to subscribe does way more towards getting you to subscribe than anything else, so I'm going to just say it. Make sure you subscribe if you haven't already, wherever you listen to podcasts, or especially on YouTube. Appreciate y'all.

Andrew Manganelli (3:30)

We discussed that with Adam Gold, or Alex Goldman, this week on our bonus episode that came out on Tuesday. You may have missed if you weren't subscribed, but that was super fun episode. We talked all about podcasting, the old days of podcasting, what it's like starting one today, whether it should be on YouTube. We talked about asking your audience to do things like subscribe or be a premium member, and how excruciating it is, and how we feel bad about doing it sometimes.

But we still have to do it anyways. But great episode, go give it a wash. I said wash, because I was going to say, if you have extra dishes, and I was ahead of myself.

Marques Brownlee (4:03)

Give the dishes a wash, you know what we meant. Give the dishes a wash.

But first, did they even test this?