Gadgetory

and good morning on October 3rd from the scene at New York Studios my name is BVG and it's time for episode 293 of the 359 podcast in the house today we got Ben Fox Rubin n Scotty Stein hey Scott thanks for coming hey thanks for having me on yeah so about this today we're gonna be talking all about Google's event tomorrow we're just basically going to do a preview for the event yep kicks off at 9 a.m. Pt 12:00 p.m. Eastern time you can obviously see the live stream on CNN if you like what are we gonna go through today we'll talk about AR and VR news obviously we're talking about Google home the home in E there's a lot of stuff that already leaked a couple days ahead of time so photos so there's like a bunch of things to actually discuss but even though we know a lot of the products that are being announced a lot of the details about their features when they when they're coming out haven't really come out yet so there's a lot of reason to actually see the Google event tomorrow but at the same time we'll run you through a lot of the hardware that is expected to be announced tomorrow either way sending your questions and comments BBG we'll get to as many as you can at the end of the show without further ado let's get to the podcast back in the chat to take your comments and questions in 3 minutes and 59 seconds from 3 to welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Scott Stein Google will be holding a big hardware launch event tomorrow starting at 9 a.m. Pacific time 12 p.m. Eastern Time yes the live stream will be available on SEANET what's going to be presented has largely been leaked out though unconfirmed the biggest device from the show should be the pixel 2 and pixel 2 XL notably they don't get rid of the top and bottom bezels like the Samsung Galaxy s8 and iPhone 10 do so Scott what are your thoughts on the design of this thing it looks fine I mean I love the build quality of the original pixel but again it had a large bezel on that phone but a lot of people care about camera quality pixel still has great camera quality the question here is to me does it do the 2 in the 2 XL take big strides in camera quality it already pretty competitive landscape and it doesn't look like they're going to include even in the Excel version two cameras on the back do you think that that could actually hamper them or hurt them in any way I think it could hamper you know I think that you know people are getting more used to the dual cameras and what they can do there is the simulated bokeh fact that the pixel did which was you know not fantastic but which was mostly software mostly software but that's kind of fits where Google wants to go which is you know I think a lot of these are about computational things you can do software wise are ways that are not in the in the physical camera so maybe they talk about that you know I think the general reaction when you sort of see it is like oh that's it but that's the case with a lot Snap is like okay it's a phone not only that but like think about the iPhone 10 where we're supposed to be a thousand dollars and people were there were a lot of folks that were trashing the design with like the knotch up top a lot of people felt like that was ugly or that was unattractive well and at least that looked a little more distinctive here I mean I guess you're looking like HTC and LG being the ones making these so you're probably going to expect a phone that falls in line with HTC and LG use recent phones and they are making really good hardware especially cameras so that's good news I mean there's rumors about the reports the squeezable sides the HTC you have I'm nervous to see how that works that is that a pretty interesting we's for assistance like that's no weird that's usually how I asked for assistance in places that yeah give them a nice hug it's good for SOS or something I'd be interesting idea like when you're panicked just squeeze and see what happening so another important new launch for Google should be the home mini smart speaker it's expected to be $50 and go up against the echo dot there's also the home max which is rumored which should potentially go up against the brand new echo plus what do you like this strategy that Google is is essentially in many ways playing catch-up to Amazon's variety of smart speakers well Google has the software and the AI down pat I mean their their ability to assist as grave the question is what is it going into so are they going to compete on that hardware territory certainly making a smaller one would be great to go up against the dot on a large range which is phenomenally successful as a big seller for Amazon that's the big seller out of the entire echo family yeah I think it's a great idea if you already have a lot of Android devices you're working in or anything that's using Google assistant then you could use it and get a lot out of it the larger I'm one between that and home pod and other stuff like you know what is that premium market looking like or are you trying to do this for music or they try we don't even know about home pod or what that's going to do really beyond music that's the Apple device that's all device that's expected to come out in December for three hundred and forty nine dollars yeah that is definitely premium tier that one we can't we came and talked about the assistant elements yet because they haven't even been discussed right and Sandra has been a laggard in that area for sure right right so yeah you're definitely looking at there's a huge landscape of Amazon products and can Google make theirs make sense Andrew Gephardt an interesting thought in his piece today what if you built the something into their Wi-Fi mesh router and I like that idea because if the question is how many little things you're gonna buy and my problem is that when the landscape splits like that and you can't work cross-platform you want to set up one set of devices and which one will it be right and when will I live with them and also when will Google on the hardware side start to try to lap Amazon instead of just playing catch-up there are a lot of other things that we didn't get to in a forum in a podcast including the expected pixel book laptop AR and VR news but either way if you want to read more about these stories check them out on CNET I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Scott Stein thanks for listening I'm impressed you crammed a lot into four minutes oh I think I could have done more Scott's a pro can always that's what the post show is for well the airfare time let's talk about it now because you're you know a local expert on the subject I'm hoping to see you there if we have more time as I said am most passionate about hearing about this but what I'm hoping for so let's talk about errand beer Google I was at Google i/o and so it's hard now because they make a lot of announcements there but they increasingly don't show stuff and they used to show stuff at i/o I've been like four or five times died oh and it used to be they would debut things and now it's like here's an announcement we'll talk to you later and so now when are they going to talk to us later like google lens really cool people were very excited yeah but like when you know when are we gonna hear about that so similarly with VR they made a lot of claims at at the last i/o and we still haven't seen the other shoe drop with those yet one of them is that they're gonna be standalone this is outside of phones of these standalone VR headsets they're going to be able to map the world around you using cameras not as advanced as Google tango but based on tango technology so the idea is you wander around kind of like an HTC vive an oculus rift you can it Maps the room you're in it can map a little bit of your emotion not the entire room but it means that if you're wearing if you've worn mobile VR headset so you got one of those it's not too often free gear VR Zord a dream you can't lean forward it doesn't do that you can only turn your head around you lean forward everything stays in place and you get dizzy so to be able to lean forward this it's called six degrees of freedom which is basically what Apple and Google are now doing with their AR where you can move around and look at things in the environment depth and see depth that is a combination of the cameras and the motion tracking chips inside the accelerometer gyro working together sometimes with other sensors so basically the long story short that it means you'll be able to duck your head in VR and duck under the virtual table it'll be more immersive but yeah more emergent like nobody likes the idea of you know being taken out of the moment in VR what you're doing is pitching your head forward right I didn't realize that and that's that's obviously a major oversight in the world of VR as it stands right now if that's something that's something that people do like so normally and you can't do it it means that like the holodeck part is gone like it's it for mobile VR it means like 360 videos are fine but if you're gonna do anything like I'm going through a haunted house or I'm like look exploring a virtual bedroom where you're moving around as opposed to the world coming to you it means that it it means you basically start clicking around with your with your controller to move versus leaning forward and stuff so anyway they be separate headsets which they haven't really talked about much and and if it's gonna be HTC and Lenovo who are making those as these unknown priced entities but then on the other side of it we're expecting that Google will have more developments for ad age for daydream VR for the pixel and for other Android phones at the same time they have something that's a lot like apples AR kit the stuff that does all IKEA on the subway which became a tweet and then stuff like that they're gonna have a similar set of software called AR core that they've talked about but they haven't launched yet okay so if it'll work on their phones and Samsung's phones for now big picture here who is the furthest ahead when it comes to AR and VR is it is it like kind of a scrum between Apple and Google is it the major VR headset makers like oculus like what do you see is like really innovating and pushing things forward in that market well for VR it's definitely I would I would put oculus at the leader of the pack and and also vive I think I'll just HTC from HTC Lou HTC has been in a strange situation I think now with vive um oculus being part of Facebook I think there's a lot a lot stronger push for for VR software and so that's the area that's that's pretty interesting to me I think they're to me they always seem like kind of a leader of the pack also they're in Mobile with Samsung's there's a really strong collection of lots and lots of apps AR it's funny because if it depends on how advanced you want to talk like hololens I mean Microsoft has been exploring oh yeah things doing this but I think they've lost ground they're looking at the vanguard but they're losing ground because right now in the things you can do without buying a Developer Kit Apple swooped in and did a lot with AR kit we're now all of a sudden you could have your existing iPhone and play around with stuff and develop apps for people who could download them and his illusions and they were it's it's obviously much more relatable and consumable thing getting yeah a giant AR headset that you've got your hololens yeah alright there's that and Google I think is has been doing tango for well before Apple but the problem is there was only on two phones so now they're there they've been doing tremendous groundwork but they have to catch up and actually get that stuff shared out too with people but it is novelty landscape right now so alright let's get to the questions we have a lot of really great questions but I'm gonna be selfish for a second I'm gonna because I'm sitting in the chair first and foremost little you mentioned the holodeck trivia for CNET die hards that is the code name for this studio because oh but my question is how do you think Google is going to approach exclusivity as someone who's very interested in the pixel but is locked into an 18 t contract am I screwed oh boy well what were those rumors at first about being Verizon exclusive I don't know if that's still a case or not I hope that well you can get it unlocked get it unlocked now get it unlocked that's obviously they you can always do that but it'd be nice if I could actually just make a clean sweep yeah yeah yeah I'm hoping you just pick it up and it'll be fine and you won't I mean yeah carriers or stranger the first pixel I think that was a strange story with it where you were like oh it's showing up at Verizon stores and you're like why can't I just what can't just get it ever why wasn't it just available yeah across the board well at that point I think it was an experiment Verizon probably came in and said hey we're the big dog in town why don't you bring it to us exclusively and we'll help you out generally those are why those deals end up working out I think consumers tend to be a little bit annoyed about it but it does reduce the level of risk for a company like Google in coming out with a brand new flagship so yeah it would be nice if they expanded at it out from a Verizon exclusive but at the same time it was kind of a leaky exclusive to begin with you could get it in a variety of other websites just unlocked sure absolutely as any solution would be I was just kind of curious if there was gonna be a cleaner way for me to make that jump and not spend several hundred extra dollars yeah because that's a good question it's it's a very good question we'll see see and I'm sure a lot of people watching will definitely be curious to see what sort of carrier structure we're gonna see tomorrow Google innovates again no carriers ever again right here's argon carriers are holding carriers and carriers go the way of the headphone jack which who cares about the headphone who cares about the camera I heard there's no headphone jack why says Richard Rutter echoed by James favor asking if they're gonna have a 3.5 millimeter jack very good question all reports say no headphone seriously okay super annoying so droid life had a lot of the early leaks of the Google pixel - when what was this first and now it like first came out September 20th so about two weeks ago I in with the guy who initially published his stories and was like what about the headphone jack because really he only had pictures of the back of the phone he didn't even have the screen and he said I don't know because that's that those were the leaks that he added up getting but it looks like now we're getting a little bit more information that they are gonna get rid of the headphone jack which would mean that it's probably USB type-c okay so wait so Apple said it was because of courage is everyone else doing it now just because it's cool they're all like saying so many story gist companies Samsung stuck with it hipster and they want to be like the anti cool it wouldn't show they want to show you that it can be done or not cool it's just it's just you know useful because the largest collective wise I hate that phones don't have headphone jacks however I like if a phone was coming out that I really liked and it didn't have a headphone jack I wouldn't be like oh I'm never getting that phone because it's missing the headphone jack something but you've lived in that world for at least a year now it's tremendously yeah it's tremendously annoying yeah you forget the dongle or you brought now you bring multiple headphones on planes because then you've got a lightning one and then I brought a switch and I don't have a 3.5 millimeter headphone because I only took that one again and then the battery is dying you got the Bluetooth headphones and you're in the plane and there's no it's like a Seinfeld episode so this is no first-world for the record its entire show could be called first world problem which we have mentioned many you should actually rebrand because we never land a 3 minutes and 59 side but the general the general move away from headphone jacks is really obnoxious and and I don't like it on anything but I'm just gonna get back to the point like I feel like phones you don't own a phone forever right you have a phone for like a you know - three years - three years of people maybe you get to like five but like it's not like a laptop where you just can't make it that many more years on phones they they don't last very heavy use so you carry them around with I don't know I think of it as like a it's it's a multi-year experiment if you go without one if you're willing to do that sometimes I would I would go well there was a phone I like if it was a pixel - and I go the cameras great I would go this is a lot put up with it this is a little disappointing though because I was annoying I was personally looking at the pixel to thinking you know what they're not so aggressive on design as the essayed with the edges and all right so the note aid for somebody that's looking to upgrade like I have an iPhone 6 and I was buying an iPhone 8 made almost no sense in the world to me like why would I spend that much money on a phone that was like very very similar with a lot of some like just an upgrade on internal components definitely to me the pixel - looks like a very good option by to suggest that they're gonna get rid of the headphone jack does give me personally a little bit of hesitation in purchasing it because that means like I have a bunch of headphones in my house that now aren't gonna be useful I spend my life dealing with cables your cables around here to make this stuff run and I hate cables and I want my life to be Wireless but the headphone jack was the last thing I wanted to go right it's been perfect technology for how many decades and it's been one of the only universal inputs for decades and the problem is is that that's now shifting because obviously the technology world has to change like the decision is made at some point that like you know what we're all using this let's let's move on from it it's not good enough right we're not there yet USBC is still a bit of a weird entity even though it's showing up everywhere but not not everywhere it's showing up a lot of places so then let's talk about if it's gonna have bluetooth 5.0 or not sure I would assume so yeah I'm like yeah it's at this point in the year Bazaar iPhone the iPhone has it yeah be bizarre not to write in it so expectation would be just to keep up with the Joneses they're they're gonna have bluetooth 5.0 as well all right back into some questions the cameras the thing for me I would say again how good is that camera the camera is anything for a lot of people the pixel did have very good camera that's what I remember from the pixels like if there's one thing I remember about last year's pixel is how good the camera was and low-light and that's basically what defined it and so now I almost think of that as more of the defining opportunity here it's like can the pixel to make isn't make a great a splash it's gotten so much more competitive to I mean like a Polly touts the cameras obviously Samsung does to be very curious to see how Google tries to differentiate in that field speaking of splash let's segue into Kurt's question is it gonna be waterproof should be so that was a big problem with the pixel last year right yeah was that it was a lot of proof it's supposed to be in a better damn well be if it doesn't have a headphone jack I mean I will throw something by the way I will I think everyone first world Robin saw a first world problem is unaware go on to this podcast that we were gonna lose the headphone jack let's just have these gadgets be easier for us like exactly it's like just stop complicating things in it in our lives with these little tiny annoyances but I think that sure it should have water resistance and you know be able to take immersion so I think if Google paid any attention at all to the criticisms about their pixel they absolutely should have some level of water resistance because that was that was something that was definitely lacking in their flagship phone last year and I think it's still sold reasonably well I don't know what the numbers were but it obviously wasn't a butter failure like the fire phone so there's that good reason for them to keep going with it that being said don't go swimming with your phones don't shouldn't be aiming for that in life and right that's the hardest thing with with reviewing like phones versus not swimming watch yeah exactly I'm not a swim first of all big surprise but the phones versus watches is just you know the age-old water resistance reminder it's like you can immerse some phones up to thirty minutes but they're not designed to be doing that all the time you know at this underwater scuba diving photos and videos and people taking with them all the time and showers other stuff it's just like don't do it with a thousand-dollar phone or a telephone also in the native sense like the way the phone is designed using the best thing you can do underwater probably take a picture right that camera's gonna get warped by the lack of light underwater and the way that the color spectrum gets skewed so you're gonna want hardware to add on to that anyways to get the best quality picture otherwise what the hell would you do with a phone underwater it's just nice for occasional toilet drops look yes intrusively absolutely but I would argue to that you know you don't really need your phone with you all the time if you're going on a swim like right leave your phone sometimes like that's oh that's okay you don't need to catalogue it everyone asked some people would cut their own hands oh I know it's good if you're at the beach and then you're in your be wearing your cargo shorts and then like the water rides up and then your shorts are wet and you're like oh my phone my pants you're right which happened to me once it might happen to you other people I know you wear cargo shorts all right we're running low on time let's slam through a couple of ones as quickly as we can I just like the comment from Drew Nielsen who says Danny Tanner would love a huggable phone make some noise when you squeeze it like I don't like Oreo is an Android name by the way okay sorry it's a stupid comment thumbs Timmy just call it Android 7 or what I don't want like these can you call it whatever you want we've been calling it the iPhone extra days I'm gonna never stop and calling it the iPhone x9 yeah it's gonna be axe okay Michael Brown shadow Michael Brown hey Michael I would be blown away if Google announced iMessage feature in the Google a low tomorrow mmm I don't know why that would happen though you mean like a proprietary like a no I think Oh integrating iMessage yes yeah that's like an actual iMessage I don't think it's ever gonna know unfortunately it's like a Sega Genesis playing a Nintendo game right maybe somewhere down the line but that's a little reason to do that at Apple we would have discussed that at WWDC or something if they're gonna but we need to do it but why there would be very little reason for them to do it the this is another element of Apple's walled garden where if at any point you decide to break free from apple prison they make iMessage this this thing where but you don't get texts from your mom for like three weeks or something family right but like for this short period of time like while you're running from the Apple Island so no I don't think you're gonna get I'm acid no I'm dollars Michael but that's the longest longest of long shots be a dream world sure okay you want that real quick USB C charger was that gonna equal fast charge I don't know how do you think good thing to do yeah I mean totally on the table that's something I would also expect at this point because so many other good phones I mean review Motorola's phones this hearing things like that he said I mean I'm used to seeing good fast charge you know showing up the iPhone included if you have to buy all these extra adapter is in order to make it happen you're not in box but fast charge capable sure again a to use the words table stakes but it's that as I hate that phrase but I do feel like table stakes that and also the water resistance I theaters are just expected at this point Michael Brown wants us to brainstorm for a hot second what do you guys think Google and the made for Google need to do to get pixel as popular as the iPhone and let's go ahead and bundle that together in Nasser's follow-up do we like the pixels design because he thinks that there could be some improvements of the original one I'm assuming I'm talking about - yeah okay that's the new one I definitely considered it could we know that one got lots of criticism the design pictures fine look now looks fine but my offensive its I would say that like Google does not have factories Google is not the one originating B's phones they you know provide the specs and blueprints to somebody else whether it's HTC HTC or somebody else as they've created a better partnership with some HTC engineers maybe they're going to be able to create better designs in the future but at the same time they don't have the same power over design as Samsung does or Apple does so I don't think that it's as you know design forward as it could be but I don't think that it's offensive either I mean in the original pixel everybody thought the bezels looked huge it looked very like interesting Oh looked like the iPhones bezels or everything else so I don't think that was like a major design win either but it felt nice it was nicely made I always think of Google's hardware products even the way back to Chromebooks and things every once in a while when they debut a product that was made by them I was thinking but more as I get a good utilitarian very cleanly designed yeah and as long as it is that I like that I like I hope the pixel two feels really super clean lensing the clean Android like well they find they should have the headphone jack you remember they were actually trumpeting that writing jack and when you talk about a utilitarian design and something that's just easily usable by most people they were like we still kept the headphone jack last year well I don't want readers I don't want it to be over designed like I sometimes I feel like some phones definitely something that Samsung with the first curved edges or like the second display with LG's phones and things like I don't I don't I would much prefer a very clean functional phone that just felt like it was really well made I think pick it up and you're like oh that's nice like I just I will use that all the time so going back to Michael's question about what would make the pixel as popular as the iPhone I don't I don't know exactly what that killer feature would actually be however I think that the field has been more opened this year than in the past because the iPhone ade it's kind of a punt they didn't really do much with it the iPhone 10 is so expensive whatever iPhone an x10 it's so expensive that I think it really pushes a lot of potential consumers out of that market so that give is the opportunity for Samsung or Google or even LG some of the other folks to come out with something is the pixel tube gonna be that I don't know but Google is also like big on software so we'll be very interested to see not only what the hardware looks like but also what this phone is capable of because that's that's a big strong suit for Google I also think the pixel may be I'm just working in tech too much but I feel like it made a lot of strides for getting in people's minds as a nexus always seem like a phone you had to be sort of like into that Club to be you know certainly like I want the Nexus phone but now I feel like pixel crossed over into branding for for an average person or someone just wants a good phone and now if they continue that just continuing to make good strides with that doesn't versus like suddenly dominating I think is very good place for them to be right now you keep wedging over there yeah I keep wedging in there and then before you know it maybe one of the top players in the phone market yeah all right Scott you say you've got nice clean and under design over design phone but I don't care I won't mind come pre Fidesz 'old we're at the end of the show but we want to make a quick mention nubs Media tweeted at us and he had a great question about the Wall Street Journal story Ben you want to elaborate on this yes so there's a Wall Street Journal story that I think he mowed yesterday they talked about the fact that Samsung is gonna make some good money off of the iPhone 10 I mean X because they're providing the OLED displays on those so we were talking about this a little bit ahead of the show and just the fact is is that Samsung because they're providing those displays on the top tier iPhone means that there's no way Samsung loses if the iPhone 10 does well Samsung kind of wins if people buy Samsung phones instead Samsung wins so they figured out a pretty brilliant strategy well and it's like kind of like when people talk about like Samsung versus other companies the reality that's in like the Marketing in the ad campaigns but in reality as a company that makes tons of components and is doing all sorts of worldwide business it's not that's not the case like it's much more complicated yeah they spread the bets around the roulette table and they're basically they're gonna do fine and that's that's what they are they're a massive electronics company so it's smart you know is that you know I'm sure Samsung would like to sell its own phones and still do fantastically with that but to be able to make these panels these OLED panels that are gonna show up all over the place that's a huge part and and to have Apple beholdin to their OLED panels is also a very powerful position for Samsung to be in I mean until Apple finds another supplier which could potentially be LG at some point samsung has some some very nice leverage on them which which could be interestingly used sometime in the future right and the need for these types of panels is not going to dissipate because there's gonna be all sorts of products not just phones down the road that I think it's it's a it's an interesting landscape yeah definitely but yeah I know your headsets nubs thank you very much for referencing that story and as always thank you very much for tweeting at us so and everybody for joining us today we are out of time we were over time you're over time but we don't get paid for it this is very much like the Ooty Jets game which by the way and thank you guys won so yeah they did bills are much more impressive so did the Eagles yeah also much more impressive we're all winners today okay so the 359 podcast is available on iTunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud Feedburner Google Play Music and of course cnet.com hopefully we'll see you guys again tomorrow probably after the pixel event bye dad that's a good point we're not gonna be on it are you a regular time tomorrow are we well we'll figure it out and we'll tweet about when will actually do the show alright so I apologize to everybody I just told we'd be back on tomorrow at 11:00 in the chat we'll be eating pizza and watching pixels well well yeah we'll figure it out but anyway thanks everybody for joining today yeah we'll see you again soon see you tomorrow Thanks