Gadgetory

this week we tackle an ethical dilemma about a smartphone close to many people's hearts we take a closer look at the benefits of unlimited data and whether or not they're actually beneficial and check out the moto active a workout watch that does more than just play your music it's styled in cnet cell phone podcast on this Monday March 19 2012 I'm Jessica doll cord here in San Francisco with LAN la hello and technical producer Steven Beecham hello good morning Brian Bennett joins us from New York hey guys so before we begin let's do a little bit of housekeeping first thing I want to do is announce that we're having a special episode of dialed in on Wednesday March 21st that's going to be at 11am Pacific 2 p.m. eastern why because last week we got all hot mother talking about ETFs otherwise known as early termination fees and at the end of it you know we were responding to readers email and at the end of it we thought well this you know we clearly have a lot to say people clearly have a lot to say out there there are a lot of horror stories tips and that we can just all share around so we're going to have a special etf rant off and tip session so join us live will be taking live calls will be reading emails that you send us so send us your email send tips and any experiences any stories or save them up for a phone call and you can share it with us live next I wanted to just give a little shout out to Lynn and her awesome chart making skills if you haven't seen we had a lot of iPad coverage last week and she created this great and beautiful chart about AT&T vs verizon and what their 4g LTE networks are in terms of stats such as the date that it launched the number of markets it covers number of people covered promised up load and download speeds and a comparison of some of the phones so not only is it informative but it is glorious to look at so great job Lynn and you should all check that out as well as all of our iPad coverage if you're interested in so without further ado let's get into the meat of the topic today and a story that has actually had its seeds from a very long time ago well before January anyway bit of the works for a while this is the story of this american life and actor mike daisey who traveled to china and basically went to Shenzhen went to the foxconn factory where Apple manufactures many iphones and created this one-man show on Broadway and elsewhere was actually here in Berkeley very close to San Francisco and it's been pouring around its going to DC next week just finish up its New York run actually this weekend and basically created this one-man show called the agony and ecstasy of Steve Jobs and produces a lot of facts and stories based on his travels in China and bow about what the working conditions were in shen zhen so fast forward very popular podcast This American Life I guess interviews him for four hours makes him the star of one of the podcasts and then some of the producers decide that maybe some of the facts really didn't check out so they went into China and found his translating exactly and she kind of had something different to say so this has developed into a giant brouhaha where Daisy is defending himself in his blog post citing artistic license today he's gone after this american life saying that they quoted him out of context are Greg Sandoval from cnet news went to his last matinee performance in New York where he received a standing ovation Greg didn't actually get to go inside because he hadn't purchased tickets far enough in advance but definitely interviewed some of the people about you know whether they knew about this or not and what they thought of it so it was pretty interesting a lot of people of course had some negative things to say about his so-called artistic license with the fact others did enjoy the show and thought that it was brilliant and insightful and it piqued their curiosity you know stating that well you know maybe not everything was factual and its pure form but holistically the picture was so this just opens up you know all sorts of it breaks open all sorts of dams about ethics and journalism and artistic license and things like that so when it comes to sending a damning message about technology especially when it's a device that's widely used today is there something to be said for artistic license was Daisy in the right is his position defensible or should he apologized and take a different stance what do you guys think about this well I mean I well I'll just gonna say you know it's a shame because I do think that topic that he's reported or not reporting on with the topic that he's discussing and basing his shows on is a very real real issue and you know I think that it's too bad that you know his sort of lacks you know not really following journalistic standards is a shame because it's not it's going to do damage to the whole topic as a whole and the whole story as a whole I think and I think people are going to discount any you know future reports are going to take it with a huge grain of salt now and you know it basically does damage to the whole a whole issue even though it's something that I feel is really important yeah I just think I don't like how kind of unapologetic he was I mean when you listen to the retraction and Ira Glass and at first he was just saying I'm really sorry but you know I am this is theater not what I do is journalism but he knows that this american life and PRI and when Ira Glass and every one of the producers do does is journalism and in the beginning he was just saying I'm really sorry that you guys took it as truth but the bottom line is I'm not a journalist and by knowing that it was going to appear on this american life then he should have known that and they fact checked the thing obviously not well enough but in the first when they first around the episode Ira Glass went through the fact-checking process in hell some were wrong but they decided to run with it anyways until they found out later that more things were wrong and at first he's just hear him say I really regret it i'm sorry and then the more that he's being exposed now he's saying with the latest news saying that he four hours of grilling edited down to 15 minutes and my my quotes were taking out of context it's like well you know if you didn't have people operate under the assumption that everything you said was true than this one I have to happen and he was just I just don't like how he's very not he's just not very remorseful and he kind of put the steak and the integrity of this american life and what they do vaughan herbal and he kind of risked their integrity and he's just saying oh but I'm not a journalist so it's okay but they're what they're doing is sorry I you know you know I gotta say too we had Mike Daisey and Charles Duhigg from the New York Times on reporters roundtable a couple months ago and he never said that he was taking artistic license or anything he was standing by all of his yeah he sing it now yeah he's singing now that he's that he's in trouble so to speak but he never he never came out and told us any of that you know and I understand he's an actor and he's not a journalist but at the same time it just seems kind of like was he trying to get publicity for his show or what what was he trying to do well let's pause for a second and invite a couple of our live listeners to call in if they have anything to say on the matter Steve what's the number I got it right here 1 888 900 cnet 2638 you can call us live right now to talk about this and we will put your call on the air so give us a call so yeah I mean in the meantime so then we look at things like that also have to do with technology in the modern time we're not looking at something in the past what about movies like The Social Network well that's just a dramatization like based on a book and and when you go into the movies theater you expect to see a movie but it could still be damning I mean how many people went to see that movie and walked away thinking about Mark Zuckerberg had to actually live this life in its entirety I guess I mean when with with that kind of like the damning liable thing it's just like okay that's just someone's repeat is someone's reputation and but i don't i don't know about like damning evidence it's just if you are operating an assumption that what you're saying is if the audience is operating on the assumption that what you're saying is true so if an audience goes into a movie theater then and it says this is based on truth this is a documentary then you have to make sure everything that you say is with integrity but like seeing something like social networking what do you see actors when you see actresses and you see a director and things like that you know that there that the audience shouldn't be expecting a hundred percent journalistic but to play devil's advocate how is a stage production any different than a production exactly stage magician is fine but the fact that PR I went up to them approach them said we're going to run your show we're going to fact-checking and we're going to you know we're going to run your show and you know it's a journalistic radio show and mike daisey who probably knows what this american life is and knows what kind of standard they operate on said yeah sure everything yeah it's okay and you can see that like during the retraction he was also kind of like back backpedaling anyway so he should have just yeah so this american life definitely has a responsibility of their own to present their material however they do so i mean it should they be held responsible at all i mean they are that's why they're saying like bottom line this was our fault we should have retracted it once the moment we didn't get in touch with the translator and that's why it does come down to them in certain aspects but i just think they got totally duped I mean like what happens when your source lies to you and just as yeah this is true and like and then I mean of course they could have found the translator and done everything but but a quote basin there's uh there's some other issues too i mean i think that the translator i mean who knows what role she had and not to say that she was she was saying something that was not true but you wonder what the interest is of interest is and who she represents or yeah if she has any Chinese government have gotten to her and said hey I got her this up yeah not to be all conspiracy theory on you guys but I mean you never know and I mean I you know I do think that it's like I said it's really sad that that we're talking more about this guy's actions which were crappy because you know like a better word he went to he basically gave the impression I mean he went to China he went to shen jen or wherever it was and he went in front of the he did actually go to the factory to Foxconn and he actually was um you know there and interviewing people so he did make the impression that he talked to all these people even though he didn't um you know so many it is it is a responsible thing to do but on the flip side I think that this issue is real and and it's in affects a lot more products than just Apple products to affects all the phones and yes tough laptops everything all the stuff is being outsourced so in some senses does it matter I mean he his dramatization has sort of blown open the door on on you know he's been able to make it personal right by pointing out a very particular device and basing his show off of his experiences visiting the factory he's been able to raise awareness about not just Foxconn but also you know the entire life cycle of the electronics that we use every day so in January cnet actually interviewed Mike Daisey and the question was put to him that he visited factories and talked to Foxconn employees with the help of a translator you interviewed workers some as young as 11 during shift changes over the course of many days given the heavy security there the suicides were you surprised by how many workers were eager to talk to you so he talks about that and basically he says that he asked journalists before told him that his plans and they thought that nobody would ever speak to him but he went ahead and he asked anyway he says I don't want to be too speculative but it has crossed my mind that is very convenient for journalists if we convince ourselves that no one will talk to them then that saves us the difficulty of having two out do our jobs we convince ourselves that no one's there and no one's going to talk then you don't even have to go to the factory he means so I feel like he is putting himself in the role of a journalist there when it's convenient for him and then also during this interview CNN asked you know we said the story or the show is not just storytelling it's also a call to action because after the show the audience members are given information on what they can do to try to get apple and other electronics makers to change working conditions what made you decide to take the extra step his response how could it be otherwise frankly it's the least I can do it doesn't even seem like it'd be ethically responsible to perform a show illuminating these things and proposing that there is a chance for us to turn things around to begin the process of waking up and then not provide some ideas toward what what that might entail it would actually just be an irresponsible it would actually just be irresponsible as a citizen and people have actually come forward in support of him people have called Apple customer service relations it has galvanized some people what do you what do you think about those statements well I mean I mean I do think that he you know like you said he put his he he definitely put himself in the position of being a journalist that was delivering facts and getting and delivering information that not everybody has access to or even saying that you know sounds like you know he's saying that people didn't even have the the sort of the wherewithal to go grab those facts or to talk to people and that type of thing so so once he puts himself in that position it's you know he's definitely he should know and you know he's definitely deserves all the criticism but like I said the issue is really important though because you know people people have been dying there in though in that plant um you know they did put up those Nets you know it mean to keep people from committing suicide yes the key people from jumping yep so a lot of the stuff um you know yeah okay he should be completely grilled for fabricating the truth and posing as a journalist but that we have to realize that the issue is a real issue and people should really think about where these products coming from and you know how they're created you know personally I mean I would love to see a day when we have like really sustainable and you know eco-friendly devices that are actually cool as well you know not just like made out of you know I don't know like you know corn byproducts or something but you know something that actually looks good and that you can actually keep keep with you you know and not have to keep reusing just reuse the internal components or something so that that is something that I believe industry should go in to take that direction but you know it is a shame it's a shame that you know this this topic has been sidetracked by this guy's actions so one more thing i'll put in before we change topics is that the original retracted now deleted episode of this american life with mike daisey is reportedly still on sale at amazon at show number 45 for if you want to hear the original it's already available at pirate bay and one thing i will say also is that mike daisey did redact some of his one-man show in New York to highlight the areas where he and his translator were disputing so you guys have been shy over the phone but if you have any other comments you can definitely email us and and share them with us we'll give you those details at the end of the show so switching gears AT&T has right done away with all of its unlimited plans but if you had the $30 unlimited plan you were grandfathered in there is a new story or new report actually from consumer reports that is suggesting that your unlimited plan may not actually be saving you any money that's correct and basically don know at cnet took a look at this situation and he basically figured out you can see was lucky enough to have one of those grandfathered in unlimited plans I believe he's paying thirty dollars a month or was and he actually tested his his his data usage and found that he wasn't coming anywhere near the 300 you know you basically anywhere near the amount that that they were charging for for unlimited like he was he was coming underneath 300 megabytes so we decided to just you know go for that plan and stay lofts which costs 20 bucks as opposed to 30 bucks so he's saving ten dollars a month you know he's basically just saving that ten dollars a month as opposed to just handing it over for no reason and you know the thing is I think that's a good that's a great observation and I guess you know you really don't use that much data on on a 3g device like that like the iPhone on eighteen t though I have to tell you that when I personally have been using a 4g LTE device on verizon i actually started to burn through those those data allotments pretty fast you know granted it's a phone that i'm not paying for it was a test device i was using the Samsung Galaxy Nexus on verizon LTE and in Ice Cream Sandwich there's a little feature where you can see now just how much data you're using built right into the OS I don't you guys have seen this yes oh yeah so at like I actually i only use that phone for like maybe two and a half weeks and i already got a warning for two gigabytes of data so I'm like what on earth and it turns out that i do all these really really kind of questionable things like uh i don't well okay oh I'm sorry that I did not come across probably i don't know how many videos you're streaming no no no no no it's not like that what it is is I'm listening to podcasts you know just using google listen it's just that a lot of times i'm running out the door and i forgot you know I forgot to download the latest you know NPR shows or whatever it is dialed in podcast I listen to myself what it's kind of interesting so and you guys to as well so I realized you know I like run out the door hit refresh and it starts sucking down all that stuff while I'm walking down walking to the subway because once again on the subway there's no connection anywhere and I know that's not a smooth thing to do and it definitely does you know pull down lots of data but I still do it and I think that's the majority of my data usage there but also I do a lot of I know I know I shouldn't do this but I used tune in Android app to listen to live radio and that's streaming over 4g to probably not a good idea but sometimes you know I just need to listen to the radio like right then you know and i'm outside i'm walking around so i think if you have access to that to that faster connection you're probably going to end up using it depending right then depends on what you do but if you have an iphone it looks like us you know on AT&T the 3g is not really going to be burning much data at least that's what this consumer reports report had found for now but then what happens when the iPhone becomes a 4g LTE device oh yeah in its next iteration so and there is the reminder that once you leave you're grandfathered plan there's no going back in that's right yeah that I've actually do that I personally think you should invest in your future and keep it however if you don't ever see yourself actually using the phone for streaming video or anything like that then you might save money in the long run by leaving it and that's the question because what's the stop eighteen t from saying oh well you know what the 4g device that's that doesn't apply to you even if with even if you have a grandfathered in I don't think that will happen I think that 4G LTE ipad users are still grandfathered in mmm yeah they'll be no tech talk I from our chat room is saying that he was told his grandfathered plan will stay when he was upgraded to the next iPhone so yes he is corroborating that so oh nice so it really is a solid plan um let's take our break and we will be back with headlines of the day you welcome back to dial it in where we've got some quick hits coming right at you verizon has reconfirmed by telling Dow Jones that all smartphones going forward will be 4g LTE well guess what they told me that very same thing first back in January at CES so keep a lookout for all verizon smartphones to be 4g LTE no question also there is a simple hacks as a user of a mac rumors forum that will allow you to run your verizon LTE ipad on 18 tease 3g network i have not been able to try this out myself but if you want to give it a go there are more details at dialed in sony announcing their new Xperia Sola and basically this device is a dumbed down version of some of their other Experian axis so interesting is that it has a finger tracking feature which lets you scroll without having to actually touch the screen and then also we have yeah it's crazy I want to see this in action and we also have HTC who has confirmed a whole slew of phones I believe it's 16 in all that will get ice cream sandwich updates so basically we've got a lot of phones including the droid incredible 2 the HTC Thunderbolt a whole bunch of different devices so definitely check that out and speaking of ice cream sandwich Samsung Nexus S will also get the ice cream sandwich and the nexus s 4g wigan ice cream sandwich update in April and it's finally confirmed before they were kind of not very sure but now we have word of it and the Nokia Lumia 610 we learn can be doubled as a Wi-Fi hotspot up to five other devices can connect wirelessly the note the Lumia 710 and 800 don't have it yet but sources have confirmed that they it will come to the two devices good news so we checked out a bunch of devices this last week including the LG Connect 4g for metropcs the samsung galaxy s2 for US cellular the motorola moto active gps fitness device that Brian took a look at and the ZTE score for Cricket Wireless so Lynn we want us through the LG Connect 4g just a little bit yeah the LG Connect four G's a phone on metropcs so it's for anyone who doesn't want that for anyone who likes a no paid no contract kind of phone I personally liked it it was really bright and very fast both the processor and I and the network because it is 4G and it also has a really bright screen 700 nits of brightness and I just kind of really like the phone it was its Android I do brunch abrin yeah yeah yeah it is and um yeah the backing I wasn't such a fan of aesthetically because it kind of feels a little plastic e but everything else that has a 1.2 gigahertz dual-core processor and um and yeah it was a really adequate phone that i would recommend for anyone especially for people who like metro pcs and it's always nice to see kind of higher end phones for those kind of networks to recall the price point for this guy mmm oh that oh wait here it is 319 dollars after a 30-dollar mail-in rebate yeah so kind of it's a sweet it's pretty steep that kind of makes it one of their priciest no contract offering yeah and then you get a data plan and voice plans up really yeah I checked out the samsung galaxy s2 for US cellular it is exactly the same as every other galaxy s2 it is of course on US cellular's 3g network and the take-home message that i have is basically it's a good phone it was a good phone then it's a good phone now and i think that it has the staying power so even though we are hearing of the samsung galaxy s3 coming up I think for US cellular customers this would be a good buy still this one is also a little pricier it's 220 999 so 230 dollars after $100 million rebate and that is with a new two-year activation and Brian you checked out okay so is this really the full name motorola motor active moto active gps fitness tracker and music player is that really the full name on the box well well actually i think it's safe to say you can just call it the motorola moto active the rest is you know basically okay it's it's it's think of it as a really beefy in apple nano I you know ipod nano if that also has GPS built in that has a Wi-Fi radio as well as a bluetooth radio that comes with a watch strap or at least you can get it with that in the kit the whole thing cost 249 for an 8 gigabyte version and basically 299 for a 16 gigabyte version and it's a music player see that costs more than the phones I know I know right I know I know well the thing is what it does is it connects to only well only fortunately connection Motorola phones but what it's really for is for you to track your fitness activity as as far as workouts bike rides against sensors put on your bike you can run with it its water resistant and it tracks you via GPS it also plays music that you can put on to the device over USB and it will actually monitor your performance so that if you really kick in but to like I have the tiger or I don't know what your favorites that song it's definitely on my workout mix right yeah it seems to be a popular one but you know it basically will listen to you and and figure out what how well you perform to what songs you're listening to on a device and it will start to suggest a playlist for you to keep you motivated it sounds a little gimmicky but it's an interesting device if you really want to track your workout and also it ports over to the moto active comm service web portal and you can you know analyze your your workouts there see how long you've been doing see if you've got you know increase your speed or your time or decrease your time hopefully and they have a whole like 40 different activities so basically you said it doesn't provide casual activity tracking so what does it not do well it doesn't uh kind of acting oh my god I love it um yes so it doesn't actually act like a like an all-day activity tracker in that say if you have a Fitbit device or some of the other devices like the Nike FuelBand it won't give you a sort of plan for just daily activity and how much you need to move to to really be in shape per day you know as far as like a pedometer is concerned so I can't say okay you need to you need to work you need to move around at least you know 10,000 steps a day for you to lose 10 pounds you know in 30 months there's 13 like a 30 days or I don't know like three months or something depending where the fitbit will actually let you do that and other devices i think do that too so that's the one thing I mean it could easily do that it's just a matter of software because it tracks all your your steps and everything already so it's a very pricey device that's funky and interesting but I think there's more needs to be done on the back edge to make it really really appealing to everybody but if you really feel like one of those triathlon super men or women you you should probably check it out because it definitely will give you lots of information about your hardcore workout and also mad respect to you if you are so Lynn you checked out the ZTE score could you give us the rundown of that yeah this is a phone offered by Cricket Wireless it comes packaged with move music it's a music serie a music subscription tie in the phone itself is kind of slow and I don't really like the display just the responsiveness is kind of insensitive insensitive but not really sensitive and also insensitive but of and yeah I was kind of slow and and the the I mean you reviewed the move music before and we both aren't really fans of the user interface it's kind of clunky and I didn't really but I love the concept of move music I think it's a fantastic idea yeah I like that I mean of course if you huge fan of music and want to have unlimited downloads of albums and artists it's great for for that but as for a phone with like smartphone features with a touchscreen and a fast processor this isn't really my favorite yeah Linda actually gave it two stars I think it's been a long time since we've seen a phone renewed that low so the bottom line is don't get this there are other move music phones for cricket if that's what you're interested yeah there's actually like the ziti chorus which is it has less features than the score but the audio playback for the music is so much better which was really um odd oh well fascinating we got a reader email that I want to share with you guys um so this was from an anonymous reader who's been nursing an original verizon motorola droid oh yes eid i knew it i knew their people out there like that man there you go wants a quad-core phone knows that there are problems getting those two run on 4G when do we imagine that a quad-core phone will be released in the u.s. because remember that the HTC One X is quad-core outside of the US and will be on a fast dual-core processor within the US thanks that he or she can get the phone to last through july so didn't you see someone recently Jessica had a razor like an old-school razor yeah I did actually um so verizon motorola droid wins yeah it was my my roommates friend has this like seriously beat up original RAZR and it's got chips taken out of the paint I mean like you can barely read basically like the thumb prints have like worn away all of the writing on the keypad and it is it looks like it's time to change so I he was basically trying to decide between iphone 4s and the motorola droid razr and what did you did you give him any advice i said sorry Brian you were going to say something well just gonna say it sounded like the battle-scarred some sort of star Wars technology you know like like Han Solo's blaster or something yeah exactly got all the scuff marks on it it's you know it's like does he sleep with this thing at night I feel like it's a prized possession and I was trying to like you know rip it away from his grasp um ah I think that for him I think he would enjoy the droid razr not max oh you're recommending the droid razr yeah I recommended the droid razr maxx but he doesn't want to spend three hundred dollars on it and he is not that concerned with the battery life he thinks he'll be able to plug it in and have access to his charger frequently and he actually doesn't I mean he's using a motorola droid razr he doesn't use Google Maps he's not using all of the smartphone features so right now he doesn't miss them but he's a fairly young guy I think he is going to use it I mean he's he's in his late 20s he's going to use all of these features and they're going to change his life he doesn't have any other apple products so I don't think it's imperative for him to stay or even necessarily beneficial to stay within that environment from an environment standpoint and I don't think he has especially strong feelings for the iphone so i think if he's going to go out and buy a new phone today for him in his use case and his preferences and his aesthetic i think that he would like the motorola droid razr but onto our anonymous reader a quad core do you guys have any predictions when we're going to get a quad core phone in the US I mean I'm thinking my feeling is I don't know obviously you don't know but I think by June or at least by you know by ctia that trade show that will happen may in mid-may right um early May amazing yeah that that is where care is going to drop the news about what phone is going to have quad-core that's where I'm thinking well here you know what's gonna happen with quad-core i agree with you personally so I clean wasn't there that I just wrote up a quick post today this morning about the HTC One X which there's a rumor that it may show up on sprint but that's dual-core that would be little chorea yes Ali but I still but it could be a very fast dual core and we may not even notice it that's true I mean you know I'm ER when dual core was the rage right yeah that was a year ago core black takes a while from the time they announce things to the time that you get it but if you can get your phone to last through July then I think that that's that's pretty safe I think you will probably find what you want so that is all for this show but a reminder if you can't get enough of us and you want to rant or share tips on early termination fees getting out of contracts early problems with contracts you can't get out of anything like that we are having a special on wednesday that's March twenty first 11 a.m. pacific time 2 p.m. eastern time we're going to be here Roger Cheng is going to be here we're going to try to get a special guest but we're still working on that either way we will be talking about why it happens the agony when it happens other tips will be taking live calls we will be reading your emails so share your rants your horror stories any tips you might have about early termination fees your cell phone coverage in general you can email us dialed in and cnet com leave us voicemail 1866 402 2638 all of our blog posts are dialed in cnet com I'll CNM podcasts are at podcast cnet com and feel free to comment on anything you heard in this show and all other shows so thank you for joining us and we will see you on Wednesday all right I am