Gadgetory

good morning on wednesday April twelfth it's episode 209 of the 359 podcast and in the house today as Joanie souls minh and Roger Cheng good morning everybody morning how you doing what we talked about we are talking about the galaxy has state launching but launching without Bixby only night you actually care we will talk about Fitbit delaying reportedly delaying the launch of its first smartwatch and lastly store the m's of benro he's on here about amazon parent dashboard a new way to spy on your kids fire tablet activities actually I want this for other tablets I don't know if I want is for a fire captain I don't own a fire but anyway anyways as usual give any questions on any of these topics live in the comment section Brian will get to them but they all the best we'll get to them in three minutes 59 seconds hopefully from approximately 32 welcome to the 359 when we talk about top tech news of the day and all the crap we want to throw in I'm Roger Cheng I'm Joni salzman we're a little bit more than a week away from the launch of the galaxy s eight but when it comes to us it will be missing one key feature bixby that's right the digital assistant that played such a big part in its announcement isn't quite Floyd baked and will come out in the spring Joan you think that's going to make a difference for samsung well considering no consumer in the US has ever heard Bixby's dulcet tones before it's not like they're gonna be missing something that they already were counting on right right but um from reporting that sharra tooken as done Bixby's a big linchpin to some of Samsung's strategy right they really want to put big speed in multiple products they're using this phone as far as the pilot gadget to put vicks be in but it is kind of weird that it's gonna be like they made such a big deal that they spent a lot of time to the announcement and then to have it launched without Bixby's a little weird I i really wonder and i vas samsung this haven't got a response but what happens with a button there's a dedicated bixby button on this phone what happens about pun when it launches are you just gonna have a bun that you push nothing happens well I mean there's a lot of opportunity there there is what uh what if like um it brought up like if there's a fire call 911 or something yes just in case just to like hedge all bet if there was a way that sort of PSA it's there was a PSA if you could program it to do something else at pulp a camera or pulp a specific app that would be fantastic they haven't said anything about this but I'm really curious what they end up doing with the Bixby blood a problem with that would be people get used to like I love having my shortcut to Spotify or Facebook whatever and then when Bixby comes on like get out of the way I don't know all right next up Fitbit is reportedly delaying the launch of its first SmartWatch Joan you've got all the details yeah there was a report out from yahoo finance late yesterday that some production and design snafus are delaying the follow up to its blaze kind of SmartWatch fitness tracker hybrid so it's supposed to be a phone that really takes on the Apple watch sort of world of smartwatches but problems like being tenes in the wrong place and so GPS doesn't really work that great also especially with go if you're taking on Apple waterproofing isn't working allegedly reportedly that's causing it to them Fitbit to move the planned launch from the spring in the United States to the fall okay all right so i'm not a huge delay but still a bit of a setback do you think people even want a Fitbit SmartWatch I don't know do people even want a SmartWatch period that's probably a better question and we need a much longer podcast to dedicate to that subject alright so lastly if you're a parent concerned about what your kids are watching amazon has a feature for you it's called parent dashboard it's a site that provides a report on what your kids watching which sounds all great except it only works with fire tablets Jonas is something you would want to use well as a mother as a parent um I'm terrified and confounded about what's technology could do to my kid's brain so I would be interested in learning more about how to you know leverage a fire tablet so that my kid can use it for good things and not for ill but it's I don't know I also don't actually have my kid on any kind of tablet so I haven't gotten into that realm yet yeah i mean my my my kids too young obviously to use a tablet but i guess the point of them is on doing this is you know the hope is these kinds of services will get you to buy a relatively cheap fire tablet for your kid to use this is an extension of free time which is an app that already limits the amount of time that you can actually bet you can use it the tablet which provides age appropriate content I've got stuff like flash cards and gives again the add the site gives parents a quickly digestible report on what they're looking at in the apps and videos for me would be YouTube videos right like seeing what kind of content watching is pretty clutch so all right for more of these stories check us out on cnet I'm Roger Cheng I'm Joe nice osmond thanks for listening alright so we're opening it up to the chat send us in your questions and comments about the stories we cover it and maybe even beyond we'll see what we can get to today most notably a lot of people are kind of in agreement with like then if Bigsby's not ready why are they still Hawking it all right but there's a great comment I from from Pamela that on the other side is that the reason they're they're not launching with big space because it like we said it's half-baked they're taking the time to make it better launching with a little longer they want to then and then she calls us after having a problem with him for the record I don't think we have a problem well I mean literally the headline was pretty neutral like I'm asking if you care that big speed is or isn't on this phone I think one of the reasons why they're delaying it they are launching this for they said they'll launch them for the global version which probably means that the key to work in Korean I think they need some work or some time to get it to work in English properly we had demos with Bixby none of us were actually able to use it ourselves whenever did they use Bixby it was always a samsung person who did it and it was very it was a very controlled demo and they were very limited kinds of uses for it in the demo so I mean even even a few weeks ago during our briefings with what Samsung I mean it was kind of clear that they were still getting the kinks out on this thing so it yeah I mean to to the commoners point like it's kudos to them like for pushing it back and making sure it's it's fully ready before launches it's just like a weird thing to that makes it a big deal of it during the announcement and then that had it long yeah they were counting their chickens before they hatched a simple case of that I mean it's one thing I mean Apple did this with portrait mode with iphone 7 plus you know they said this isn't beta this isn't gonna be out quite yet but they actually were pretty clear and upfront about it Samsung have implied that this was going to be like the big feature that you'd be able to you know boot up your phone and turn it on immediately while radit we talked about the big speed button being reappropriation zwi got to hear what you would use a big speed button for if not big speed what would you guys use I like Joanna like your idea about Spotify yeah for you I don't know what I would honest I'd probably do it on Twitter I seem a tweet a lot Twitter Instagram I hope we have it on actually Instagram would be pretty nice I would like my calendar to pop up on the fly that'd be nice yeah I mean I get it cuz I'm super over organized I get notifications a lot for calendar I feel like I'm pretty covered there but ya know I probably change it up week to week yeah just uh just to have a new flavor on my phone every week XP isn't on the US phones um what's the next opportunity for samsung to like have like the splashing introduction of bixby if it's not going to be the the no date would be the next the note 8 or the gear s and that's not that well no date isn't that far off that would be well it's like the timing works out it's August September is usually when they launched its there's a couple months away and but it's not like a year no no no and it with what they're saying with the fall launch I mean it seems like the timing would work for it to not only go on the s8 but also the note 8 as well run the same time so that would be I would guess that would be their biggest most marquee product for the year second to the essay there's the gear s4 which is their SmartWatch but I don't know if that's that's a high profile of product it's not yeah not a high profile of product but it's a good use case for a boys absolutely i was actually using the s3 this weekend trying to text my brother and I was like typing in his name and it was it took so annoying took a really long time I mean once you got a contact i was able like send a voice text message which was fine but like finding your contact was was not super easy so having bixby to do it would be super helpful yeah uh Danny Green our buddy Danny Green says I would have the big people in order papa john's pizza ya know what I actually think that's a great idea I know I wanna repeat enjoy some free pizzas on Danny and expanding on that he's my hero right now don't make the big speed button mad you wouldn't like it if it's a mad there you go it's how will be taking that long to come up with that joke uh I feel like there were enough there were enough bixby jokes initially or a Hulk jokes I came out for the first run right yeah but not enough no no no that there's still plenty more room to go when it comes to Bixby jokes question from Chad in the chat so we'll galaxy s a Microsoft edition have big speak Cortana and Google assistant seems a bit much that's a really good question i don't i don't know that's yeah that is that's a lot they can't it's redundant well you can do anything yeah you can do whatever you want really it's all software right um i don't know i know the the google google system will be active for them home button and then bixby will big with a big speed but i don't know if there's gonna be like a dedicated Cortana button so that kind of leads court on on the coal that's going backwards on everything they're taking buttons away from everything where they had more buttons you know they wanted to go retro with with a big speed more button they kept calling it a walkie-talkie like experience then the next year they just pull out a calculator well they do have their own calculator which is kind of insane like they decide to put people to work on a dedicated calculator app even though android has one they wanted to create their own uh here we go jerod in the chat says would like it to be a dedicated camera button just to do it shot snapshots just one boom without even having worry about the load screen I think that's they would hold it down for video so they've argue actually that's really that's smart yeah it's really smart I mean they argue that there's already a dedicated camera button the home button if you push if you double tap is the cameras quick geek oh nice for samsung yeah I would oh there's no there's no physical home button anymore so you kind of to like find it now yeah yeah is there a confirmation with like click for you if you'd I don't maybe I haven't had a chance to actually click the home button on that as ridiculous as that sounds so I don't know if there's like a haptic feedback thing like like iphone but I imagine there is i don't know i would be worried about having a dedicated but I there be a lot of videos on the inside of my pocket I like at least a double panel extra insurance did you sexy a key grazed by yeah a lot of people are saying that they are pretty different about the Bixby situation they're more interested in the screen yes specifically nubs did not order for Bigsby i pre-ordered for that screen the screen is pretty gorgeous yeah yeah yeah it's like it blows the iphone away I mean that AMOLED screen it stands out too i went to i was wandering around a bit high the other day I needed to go by rogue 10 and i went to a physical store to buy a physical DVD woohoo oh my god so retro about a DVD or blu-ray blu-ray okay to be fair not quite all right totally retro but in the phone displays yeah the s8 pops it really yes and it's not even like the displays all that fancy you can see it from a mile away yeah it's it's huge and it's just it's colorful vibrant I mean that really is a marquee feature i mean if anything that's what people are buying the phone for it it's all about the screen yeah uh have you guys had any experience with the i mean we don't have an essay in office here but from anything we've gotten exposure to has anyone seen the vr in action people are asking about uh I didn't get a chance to try it out Scott did I imagine it's going to be better but not like significantly better I mean the screen quality is it's bigger and I think they packed up a few more million pixels which makes a bit of a difference but I mean it's not like it's not 4k it's not AK or anything like that that's really what you'd need for to make a difference in the VR experience I mean I think incremental bumping up the number of pixels like this I don't think holy changes the VR experience should have Scott on some time to kind of lab right on it oh yeah yeah yeah the big change is the the controller right yes yeah exactly isn't a screen thing note on screen thing but you're right it's a it's like daydream it has its own control that's motion sensitive which yeah I've argued like they should have been from the beginning is the control scheme is kind of weird you're always you're touching the Saudi or your headset you're not really sure what to grab minutes no well just orienting it can be a little awkward yeah but I i mean i'll give them kudos for coming out with us so much earlier than any other absolutely and doing it cheaply yeah doing it yeah I like David's comment hi Cortana ask Google assistant to open big speech haha i love that wasn't ever viral video not too long ago about an echo fighting back and forth with the Google assistant yeah yeah yeah which was it like at which live theater some probably I just kind of remember the popping through like a Twitter feed or so yeah it was golden though yeah I got real esoteric when we get the essay 10 let's see if we can get it to fight itself but bigsby won't be around well eventually though oh yeah yeah when it comes I would like to see that wouldn't you yeah yeah you get them all come on a circle here it's Syrian law although Syria probably wouldn't interact with this you'll just sit out the whole say yes there's like style I'm too good for this Jerry's asking to elaborate on the VR does it come with free VR yes if you pre-order the galaxy s 8 you will get a the new gear VR with the controller as part of the bundle and is the note 8 going to get 4k I have no idea no idea that's that's coming in the fall that's months away yeah to really there isn't a lot there are rumors on the note 8 yeah just because everyone's been focused on the essayed uh bridging into competitor territory Zachary's asking when do you think apple will ditch that giant home button Oh little question I'm thinking this year this is it man you think so the anniversary edition kind of makes anniversary edition yeah for one of their models at least they're gonna ditch the home button it seems like that's the trend of the year is getting rid of the home button you saw LG do it you saw samsung do it obviously and now pressures kind of on Apple to do it or else it's gonna look like it's it's a little slow if it doesn't get it in this version yeah right it's all just turning into giant slabs a glass right i mean the key that i want to seize whether Apple can figure out getting the the fingerprint sensor underneath the screen like if i can work on the front like it does now the home button like i think that's that's a pretty big leap concerned samsung couldn't quite get that done the fingerprint sensor is in an awkward spot like kind of right next to the camera yeah that's still weird yes still weird that always bugs me hey before we wrap it up for the day because we're getting close to the end our friend Jesse gateman the UH contributor winner yeah on to Roger in the face thank you thank you photos he I cherish them forever he received his prize package he saying thank you also on to say thank you again anticipating there was a lot of fun yep hopefully would do something like that I go to record that it's not fun to punch Roger in the face how would you know because punching people of face is bad especially my friends please don't do it those are all those are all correct statements wouldn't i wouldn't refute any of them but no thank you for for taking partner or a little a little fun we have for our 200th episode so we'll just have to see what we do for 300 something that doesn't involve me being punched hopefully we haven't been literally punched yet no I'm horvath or figuratively punched out on punching Roger please all right Ben Alfred Oh kitty kitty haha not men not offer don't punch anybody done well I don't know if that's an absolute solution alright alright that's a that's a good place rap thing is it I don't know should we take another question they're kind of like palate cleanser yes yeah I don't have anything right now alright we're just talking about punching uh yeah that's that's I'm sure that's how about the comments have been steer too so all right with that you liked anything you saw or heard here check us out on cnet our podcast is also 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