Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Alfred Inge and with me is our fearless intern Brianne Garrett she put out a future this morning about the future of wireless charging and where the iPhone 8 could fit in now Samsung and Android have already you know implemented this feature if you put it down on a pad but Brianne you're making the point in your article that this is not true wireless charging what what is that yeah it's come become a misnomer officer it's on we have two major players that being Chi and power Matt and they really operate using inductive charging rather than true Wireless which means you kind of you know put your phone against a base and your phone's not you know connected to a wire but the base is so you can't really technically can't call this wireless charging they have this is pretty convenient they have it set up in stores like Starbucks and McDonald's where you basically just tap your phone onto a circular kind of tablet as you can see and it's pretty convenient it's nice we actually headed to a Starbucks yesterday and tried it out I hadn't seen it in person it's a tad finicky kind of have to like find the perfect placement to put your phone and order for it to start charging but once we figured it out it's um it's nice but there's definitely a little bit of an inaccuracy in calling it true wireless charging yeah so if Apple we kind of I've already seen this with their you know SmartWatch and with the air pods which also isn't true wireless charging so with the iPhone eight do you think that we'll be seeing this as this true wireless charging that everybody's talking about or do you think it'll just be sticking to the pad I mean just put it down that's hard to say there's been some rumors you know Apple has worked with G in the past so people are kind of you know guessing that they will work with G which is considered the inductive charging method but then there's also I'm energist which is one of the major power players that have actually started implementing true wireless charging but not on a consumer level yet and how this works is through radiofrequency this is kind of new and a little people kind of feel fearful of it because you know things past the air what's gonna happen is it's safe so there is a little bit of skepticism yeah it's a real shocker it's CNET's roadtrip series continues this time taking us all the way to a smart city in Italy Ian's share visited a Sicilian city that's about 2,800 years old but it's trying to bring its tech to modern day so they've got sensors on pretty much everything you know they got them in parking lots they haven't been there trash cans or bus stops and they all pretty much talk to each other and your phone it means you can kind of like find parking spots without driving endlessly a trouble that you know I've experienced a lot in New York or you can you know find out what the air quality is like ran what city problems do you hope to see you know a smart city to be able to like solve one day there's a lot I mean I go back between New York and Boston and I'd have to say as much as I love these ride-sharing companies I am a sucker for when it comes to cabs and so having a platform where I can you know obviously you can catch a cab on the street but I tend to have problems when it comes to that so having an app or some sort of system where I can locate where these cabs are and if they're available what saves some time so that would probably be the number one thing I'd like to yeah I'm like the complete opposite where I try to take public transportation as much as I can and I know that the MTA and New York is in dire straits right now and please if you could just I don't I know a smart city wouldn't fix it but I really I really want to like you know hope that it does you know there's so many problems with the MTA anyway so we're wrapping up today's show with more news from Apple and Qualcomm's legal battles the US government is getting involved now if the US International Trade Commission investigating a claim that Apple was illegally using Qualcomm's technology in their iphones modem the investigation could mean that iphones would be banned from selling in the u.s. now this wouldn't be any time soon it'd take maybe a couple years before they actually make their decision but can imagine that like the u.s. without any iphones being allowed to be sold there i it's not really imaginable to me at this moment maybe you know within the next year something crazy will come out that will you know yeah we may have to be it have to be crazy yeah crazy and have to be but right now I see the iPhone going nowhere no time soon well thanks for listening if you liked anything you heard today check us out on sea I'm Alfred a I'm breanne Garrett so I would like to agree with the MTA sentiment /i are first of all they need to get it out of the like 20th century technology like they're literally not even they recently only installed like Wi-Fi stations and you only like this year was able to use your phone underground but I mean more of their issues are you're like functional issues where signal problems and you can't tell unless like you're really far away all these issues and I don't know if it's something that a smart city would be able to fix because like the technology in general is so old there that like literally at 34th Street they use technology from like World War two and they can't fix it because it's so deeply embedded in there yeah that being said I still hate riding the MTA yeah I mean there are days I flip back and forth between the extremes where I say you know I really appreciate that it exists where would we be without it and then there are other days where I want to like find where their home addresses are and see where fate takes me I mean but they have been adding some smart city elements to their buses though turn the buses have become like Wi-Fi enabled you can charge your phone on and you can track where the buses are on like your phone if you're like you'll ever tell you what bus stop it's been in that stuff and in certain neighborhoods I actually saw one two days ago they have like the bus post and it'll tell you like how many minutes away it is yeah unfortunately the one that I was trying to ride was it literally had no number it just said like nothing but it had like lights just passing through that's what I got a wonder is what happens when the idiot the minutes away is beyond like the two so so I I was there with my girlfriend and I was just saying you know this bus goes all the way back to our apartment let's just wait for the bus here we waited like 20 minutes yeah and it still never changed on the thing even though the bus above it like it was it was like five minutes two minutes whatever yeah and it got to a point I was like I'm just gonna see where it is on my phone app and it was 30 minutes away I'm like that's cool let's go that you didn't display it up here on your soil smart bus stop that's all right I'm just gonna take the train home now Thanks all right we've lamented enough since most of our listeners are not in New York City we apologize but it does suck sometimes and we're just getting it out getting it out of our system you're saying a smart city would be able to fix that so these are cool but if you're studying abroad a plus public transportation systems definitely rub it in and I'm not used to being back in New York all right yeah let's jump into the chat first up - what's up dude the matter Matthew batcher yeah that's a good eye but it's actually a belt buckle not a 45 adapter that's on on the desk in front of me so cheers there's a camera behind me oh right I forgot and then he also goes on we want to talk about the wireless charging for a little bit dad says hasn't IKEA been making furniture with key charging for a few years now is the story with Apple is finally doing it I'm not sure I don't know why it was charging companies like I I look at the IKEA catalog like religiously this is like a recent development this was I saw it like the first time I had seen it was like this year was like a cabinet like a bedside cabinet that you could put your phone on huh interesting yeah how recent was that you know I saw it in like like maybe like the fall catalog or something and it operates in the same in the same method is inductive charging how it works no I just know that you put your phone on it and it charges so probably but yeah I mean not on the line of Ikea but definitely with like Samsung and Android devices all like yeah a lot of people have been doing wireless charging for a while now this is another case of Apple Wireless yeah like there's another there's another case of Apple just coming out and he we invented this like it's in the same way where you know Bluetooth headphones have been around for a while and then out of nowhere hey we have the air pod have you guys heard of wireless headphones like it yeah it's Apple being late to the game and just saying like this was this was awesome what are you talking about we make this collective whatever and all things coming out of that company at this point they're purple wants us to compare contrast how fast will it charge will it be faster than the Qualcomm quick charge that I do not know because we do we have numbers on that yeah you're gonna match the Qualcomm quick charge though because unless like like that charge is like ridiculously fast and that's wired like so we actually I included in my story we did a scene that test and found that the Galaxy s8 took 3.5 hours to charge inductively compared to a typical two hours it would take with the standard USB C cable so you're getting a longer charge with the I feel like for now maybe for like the next like two three years I I generally feel like Y are just gonna be much faster yeah yeah yeah especially not against the quick charge so isn't that like that's like 30 minutes or like a full charge exactly something you want maybe put on sleep and then wake up and you're good I mean isn't that the whole like idea behind like true wireless charging though where like even though it doesn't charge really fast you're literally doing nothing extra to like get it yeah you're sacrificing time for convenience I guess yeah I kind of like this idea Dell has a question what about the prototype for having a wireless charging modem which charges all devices in the same room now that that's a dream come true so wait does it also provide like Wi-Fi or something or no no I think he's referring to as a modem as it be a centralized hub yeah charges multiple things just as you yeah that's mobile devices yeah that's supposed to be it's supposed to be the point is that you have like this one yeah I guess modem in a sense that is important yeah modem that's providing charging capabilities through the air through radio frequency so it is kind of a concept that it hasn't necessarily been on consumer level yet but it has been tested I think Disneyland did something like that recently where I was like a specific room that you could it was like a test kind of thing where you know they wanted to do it where people like could go and then just look you have their phones charged in that room while they like just hang out there kind of thing yeah the only thing with that if true wireless charging was available do you realize like how packed like Starbucks would be oh you know I'm glad you brought that because like sometimes like I'll go in a Starbucks Justice to charge my phone and if all the seats all the seats near the outlets are always taken yeah yeah so if it was wireless charging and you don't have to plug in anything and you also don't have to put on like a specific pad like you could just be in the room surprisingly though all of these the inductive charging stations I have yet to see anyone use those yeah it's just me but I try to one out when I was in Toronto and my phone was I didn't have my charger on me and yeah it took forever so I can see that being a big reason why I can also see you know not every phone is compatible with that car yeah I just don't think the technologies like really there right now it's a nice idea let's swing back over to Apple for a second Michael Brown sir like Apple made mobile payments popular wireless charging could be like that let's take this down to brass tacks here Apple was kind of ahead of the game on mobile payments don't give him that much yeah I I will say that's kind of the you know motive or advantage that Apple has here with a lot of these things is that they don't have to be the first to something you know it's like being like the first on a live stream comment section doesn't matter it's kind of more like the quality of comments here but I think I think it's that sensors they have a massive user base and it's much easier for them to adopt it and they can kind of refine a lot of these it's also taking something making it better than calling it your idea calling it more unique not necessarily first the game that you were the best of the game yeah I think I think that subjective still of course I mean and I think you know in technology we've obviously seen that a lot like it doesn't matter if you're first it kind of matters like how many people are using it right now like as we've seen with snapchat and Instagram where you know Instagram copied everything I snapped did what's doing way better because they have a much larger user base yeah that's true if Apple does anything they appease there are in Britain embedded audience almost it in bread I mean it's branching off of that I just I love that this comment exists svet Slav says oh my god the whole Apple sheeple versus Android fanboys is getting ridiculous it's gotten almost as bad as liberal versus conservative we have a choice guys whenever companies compete we the consumers win thank you for saying that actually sincerely we get a lot of you know trolls and extremes and it's just nice to see someone with the level head I've always thought it was ridiculous with people taking sides on these things because I unless you work for them or are making money off of this I really don't see why you're such like a like a warrior for or like this company that really has no ties or affiliation to you like it's a sports game like they're at battle I've always felt about sports I mean if you've got money invested yes sports a little different but I get what you're saying swinging back over Danny Green asks so speaking of trains and buses is there an app in the works for more than one city to help you find if your train or bus is on time and I don't think that's really ever gonna be in the cards because every single cities public transit authority is its own private entity there's no is he talking about like trains and buses between cities oh that's is that what you meant Danny you know what I don't know why I just kind of jump to that conclusion that's probably exactly what he meant yeah I mean there's there's apps like like for Amtrak and things like that yeah buy the business but if he's talking about like an aggregation of like every cities like trains and buses I think you know a lot of for a lot of them they're not really like like that advanced yet I mean I know New York has there's I don't know what it's like in Boston like do you have like an app there to tell you with something's on time there's even in New York there's no app than no see if your train is on time they only have them for left and when it arrives but it's not saying oh this train is 20 minutes too late yeah I don't really think and as far as like the aggregation goes between cities I feel like you to travel to a lot of cities to like have that be useful but how many people do I know they do that for libraries like they have an app that aggregates all the libraries and that tells you like what book is available yeah oh that's cool I don't know that actually it's funny you say that I'm just signed up for my New York Public Library card especially last night I think the library is a comeback right now definitely well did you see that they announced the the criterion collection is going to be available for stream but I was the Brooklyn Public Library it is all New York Public Library oh really yeah and I'll be honest that was a mitigating factor and pushing me or to finally go and get my card I really got my library card after some I saw some like idiot comment on Facebook where I was just like you know what if they had like a Netflix but for books dude wait I should have a card it's like that Wall Street Journal article about Millennials discovering TV antennas oh my god you're right is it like a free way to get like TVs without streaming what did you catch his age how old is he yeah yeah it was like a shared post it was like a meme like oh one more for Michael Brown we gotta wrap it up here soon but will Wired versus wireless charging matter if there is a place where a place every where for wireless charging for example restaurants homes stores and etc so kind of like what you're talking about with the Starbucks scenario like do you think that like wire like basically why are we gonna go extinct kind of thing like there's I think he's saying will it matter whether it's wire free was whether it's inductive or whether it's radiofrequency like you could charge it anywhere like would it even matter if I think it definitely does because it's just also about the time it takes to charge I'm also like you also got to think about like all the bureaucracy that they're gonna manage yeah or to get this everywhere I mean like because it's not really like a major thing right now it's really not in the on the political like eyes well I just think about you know now we know that like Wi-Fi is like pretty much everywhere right but like think about all the like hurdles that they had to jump through for you know is Wi-Fi like frying your brains kind of thing right are these like wave signals like messing you up kind of stuff which they're still like arguably like talking about like in Congress yeah I mean imagine if that's taken that long how long it's gonna take for this true wireless charging to kind of make it past the is it safe yeah my scared to use it stage it's gonna be a little bit of time before it's actually you know accepted yeah razor goes back to our discussion about Apple fanboys Android fanboys sheeple etc the issue is that we don't have enough competition Android and Apple equals not enough competition thus devices remain overpriced for both ends he's got a point too this is really good discussion this is a whole episode in itself we should have just gone on it's the yeah I mean a lot of people Battle Royale yeah there's no competition they're just I mean I don't know man that Nokia 3310 it's coming back yeah they're running on Android though that's that's a good point that's why there's no os's like that okay that's a good point and like blackberry tried making their own and then just decided to jump on Android that's that's the thing like there's all these people saying like oh well like this is competition and but like because Android made their stuff like all open-source it's like it's all pretty much Android versus exactly yeah alright that's a good point all right I'm just bummed out yeah it's probably the time to wrap it up thanks everybody really that was fun home I feel like what you heard today the 3:59 podcast is available on iTunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud Feedburner at Google play music and of course cnet.com thanks for watching thank you you