Gadgetory

putting on March 5th episode 367 of the 359 podcast on BVG and your host today are Ben Fox Ruben and Roger Chang all the way back from Barcelona hello glad to be back are we already on 367 yeah okay I mean you're the keeper of numbers so you would know a week and a half ago is a three nor 59th wait that was a week and a half ago Wow do you like forever either way we also have an extended edition podcast from the weekend the Bryan put together yeah our conversation with Mark lesser yeah blesser mark lesser from Mouse org so check it out and we've also got Roger back here today to talk about all things Mobile World Congress we're gonna try to run through a bunch of stuff one let's talk about jamon we'll talk about of course which isn't kosher but no it's not but fine it's delicious and we'll talk about 5g the s9 a car a car that's operated by a phone from Huawei the vivo selfie camera iPhone clones with the knotch well we'll try to get you all through as many as we can get to them in the podcast but we will definitely talk about them after the podcast yeah and Roger is also our resident expert when it comes to 5g so please pepper in with as many ways you can I love to take questions on 5g specifically on that one but also I got one over what size G okay it's one more G than 4G got it okay yeah okay so send in your questions and comments BVG we'll get to as many as you can at the end of the show let's get to the podcast hang out folks we'll be back in three minutes and 59 seconds to see in the chat from three two welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Roger Chang so Roger you are back from Mobile World Congress the world's biggest mobile show what did you what did you see there what was the most exciting thing for you oh look the the headline of the show was undoubtedly galaxy s 9 was the biggest phone dominated pretty much all the headlines its next big flagship phone it's not hugely different from the GSA but pretty incremental I will say that the camera is amazing they did they focused a lot on you know redefining the camera and if you just take out all the hype it's actually a really solid camera that does decently well in low-light settings which is impressive to me look the galaxy s 8 is a good phone so I have that phone so in many regards why would you want to revolutionize that phone within a year I don't really think so so like don't throw out the design completely it makes sense to do some refinements with the s9 you had some opportunities to actually have some hands-on time with the s9 right yeah yeah so I mean I got to test it in low light settings of various dark bars in Barcelona and I compared them with my iPhone 10 and the pictures were a lot better I have to give to Samsung this they have this thing called a dual aperture setting so it has a specific aperture for nighttime setting versus daytime setting and it's it works wonders I have to say that the photos the photo quality it's pretty strong detail wise it may not have been as good as the iPhone 10 but in terms of brightness it definitely it beat the iPhone 10 by a wide margin yeah it's really interesting to see how much the camera technology has been going and leaps and bounds and there's also been like a pretty strong fist fight going on between the pixel the iPhone and Samsung so expect to see a lot more of that through this year I also wanted to ask you of course about 5g I feel like you were writing about 5g like every day or every hour at the show is it mostly hype at this point when should we expect to see 5g stuff tell us a little bit more about yeah so 5g is definitely quick it's going from hype to reality and I think this year you will start to see sort of the early May a 5g as something that you'll actually be able to use in very very limited areas and limited towns with limited devices remember the first phones don't come out until next year so the service the wider launch service won't be until 2019 that said you know like those early days the 5gt are not gonna be what I think everyone's gonna hyped or promised you know it's not gonna be as fast or if the coverage won't be as comprehensive they're gonna be a lot of dead spot the devices may not be as they may not last long battery life is gonna be a real issue if you'll remember from 4G those early days of 4G LTE phones they were tough those phones did not last long that got kicked off with a 4G network really fast I expect at least in the early days there's gonna be a lot of headaches a lot of difficulties with that transition so I think the promise of 5g is this like super fast super concert comprehensive network is still there but it's still a few years away yeah we will get be patient exactly we will get to see a taste of it later this year early next year but it's not gonna be great okay so how soon until we got questions about this on the podcast more than once how soon until a major flagship phone is gonna have 5g we might see it next year I got some very conflicting answers I talked to the various US carriers I think t-mobile has said that you know they kind of expect it to be a premium phone but I don't know if he meant premium or microphone you know 18t said that it might be that you'll see more 5g specific phones like we did with with 4G like a Samsung Galaxy 5g you know as opposed to like the flagship s phone all right we've got a little bit of time left so I wanted to get to one more thing iPhone clones we're all over the show we were making fun of the notch and now the notches everywhere I know so we I mean we saw with the sousaphone last week on Friday there were leaks from from Evan blast evey leaks basically pointed out that the LG G 7 or whatever they're gonna call it as well as the next one plus phone will have their own notches so the rumored to have notches so you're starting to see this this trend that iPhones kicked off and it may not be it's not a trend that I don't know everyone really wants to see happen but here goes yeah all right anyway if you want to read more about these stories check us out on CNN I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Roger Tsien thanks for listening alright everybody thanks for joining us that was a conclusion of the recording of the audio podcast we can go ahead and start digging through you're always brilliant questions and comments in the chat but since we're where they are brilliant already on the platform for 5g Roger you need me to define what 5g is no not really because it seems like the audience is far more educated than I am and they know plenty about what five jasser really mobile right so here's the thing that keeps kind of popping up why is it relevant to the regular consumer most people are actually fairly satisfied with 4G on their personal mobile devices why where does 5g come into play when does it actually become a powerful relevant force so this is and this isn't gonna happen for another few years as 5g matures but it's not 5g isn't really just about speed it's also about responsiveness something called latency and 5g has low latency so with 4G you know when you you know we click on a link on your phone there's still a bit of a delay for when your phone talks to the tower you know gets all the information it comes back so there's a bit of delay you'll see that a lot if you're doing mobile gaming especially if you're like playing with those real-time shooters there's a bit of that lag when you fire a gun when someone else actually sees you get hit or sees that she's the attack with 5g that low latency means that basically you have for almost real-time communication it's it's basically a millisecond less than a millisecond of delay and that enables things like self-driving cars because self-driving cars need to talk to each other and current networks are not fast enough to handle that communication time a telemedicine the idea that a doctor can control a robot that robotic arms in like a doctor in Switzerland control robotic arms in New York and basically perform surgery with those arms couldn't do that LTE because the lag time but with 5g at least theoretically the delay is so minimal that you can actually he could actually perform that surgery with those robotic arms and it would be precise right the other thing that we bring up a lot on the Podcast is the potential of 5g being available as your broadband replacement in home yep I think that's what we're gonna see first Verizon has really talked a lot about using 5g as that broadband replacement service something called fixed mobile broadband that's such a lovely name I know I know it's so sexy I mean but the idea that they no longer have to like rip up the streets to put in internet lines or fiber cables instead they're just using a wireless connection shot right into your house basically powering all the broadband in your home and Verizon I believe at least they said publicly Sacramento is the first town to get it this year there's gonna be a there's gonna be more but again this goes back to my original point with five g's we're not gonna see a lot of it even going into like early 2019 because I think the deployments are pretty minimal t-mobile talked about 30 cities 18 T 12 cities spent six cities Verizon hasn't talked about any cities with mobile broadband yet so that chances are you probably don't live in some of those towns although to t-mobile's credit some of the larger cities t-mobile Sprint some of the larger cities like LA Chicago New York will get some form of 5g next year and we also have pretty international audience here on the podcast Yap and you share a little bit maybe that you heard about in Europe when you were in Barcelona or maybe some other parts of the world that will also see some 5g networks no that's a great question India well India is not gonna get fired you for a while I'm sorry Korea Japan and China look to be the other big leaders here we saw in Korea in Pyongyang the Olympic Village actually had 5g up and running a kind of early version of it well wait I think you mean Pyongyang Pyeongchang I said young yang is a North Korean all right I met Pyeongchang it's fine I play a lot of trivia level game thanks for that correction that's a pretty pretty critical distinction there yes in the Olympic Village they did have a small 5g network running is kind of a test run but yeah you'll see Korea you'll see Japan have it Europe's a little bit behind I think they're all kind of still dealing with the money that they put into the 4G networks and there are a little bit more reluctant to get going on 5g because it is expense is basically you're running through a whole new big capital lesson plan to redo your network so they're you know they're better and faster stronger but that takes a lot of money so the customers that are best positioned to see 5g sooner rather than later it sounds like are the folks in the US yeah I think in the US and I think parts of Asia will be pretty well suited to get 5g some taste of 5g earlier rather than later mmm good coming from the chat Mike Shaw the burning question what phones currently support 5g will we all have time to upgrade in a year or two that's a really easy question answer no phone none or 5g not at all none in fact first phones won't show up and tell next year the the chipsets that actually enable 5g connection aren't even available yet I think they'll be available probably end of this year going into phones that come out next year I think they'll be fairly limited and I want to warn again those early phones are there gonna be battery hogs they're gonna be there maybe inconsistencies in terms of like connection and coverage and even in towns where they say they have 5g they're gonna be like kind of pockets of 5g like this is really helpful to get the to understand a little bit more around the hype because I feel like 5g has been hyped for four years right tech world and people might be really let down by those early days of 5g and those early days could last six months sounds kinda lame here yeah 4k yeah I mean like a more 4G I mean even 4k became eventually became ubiquitous though so that's eventual evangelize the key word I've got a 4k TV how many people are producing 4k content the exact handful Ram yeah and you bring up a good point with 5g how much stuff on your phone is really gonna gonna use that yes you you made you you reference a bunch of different uses but I like surgery yeah but like it's self-driving cars in surgery isn't really something that are quite there yet or something that people are going to use in their daily lives all right I mean I think early on it'll be about speed right like you'll be able to download and stream things super fast but I mean for a lot folks the LTE network is good enough and I think one of the other conversations I had a lot of conversations I had at the show was about making LTE better there not just because we're going to 5g doesn't mean they're stopping with the investment in for Jean ideas get 4G good enough so if you're on 5g and you somehow drop down to 4G it's not such a bad mmm fall down ball fall back because if you were around with LTE when you fell off LT and got back to 3G that was like horrible it was a terrible oh yeah but before it was happening all the time everywhere even if you theoretically were in a 4G area you would drop down a 3G and the experience the transition was not good yeah yeah back into the chat from no vent is how is galaxy s 9 compatible with 5g same question nope no sorry no phones coming up this year will have 5 g and i would i would probably bet that a handful of phones coming out next year have 5 um almost CERN the iPhone will not be one of them correct all right from imagine soggy what device is utilized 5g at the Olympic Village that you saw uh well I didn't see it personally from what I think they were like there might even like 5g tablets and I believe the 5g call was made but I don't think it was like it's very it was super limited it was sort of like they want to kind of test out some of the connections and how it would work in a real-world situation but I don't think there were any like commercial devices it wouldn't be a device that you'd be able to buy and one of the first things that people will be able to buy a correct me if I'm wrong here is that puck Vox yeah yeah and Verizon is basically confirmed that they will have some form of mobile mobile broadband 5g this year like just like 18 t and so presumably they'll also have pucks these are wireless hotspots and and they're basically they do that because it's easier to get that product through testing it's just you know there's no complicated display there's just or like it's a box that taps into the five gene and then broadcast a Wi-Fi network for you hmm from syringe oi will 5g get a similar reality check like our poor buddy 4G once the deployments begin on a wide scale I think so I think you're that's what I've tried to do with that story on Friday was basically kind of dispel some of the myths some of the hype you know it's it's I think the long-run promise of 5g is still fantastic and and potentially world-changing but it's gonna take several years and if you look at LG now right we're about eight years into about seven half years into the 4G LTE deployment it's not perfect now it's it's much better than it was but it's taken years for it to get better so I would expect 5g to just come on and change ones lives right away so when do we celebrate if they come out with three five nine G couple hundred years yeah probably if you if you're looking at like 10 years per G that's a lot of years I hope we live long enough to see it guys eat your Wheaties yeah we'll be we'll be like the the heads right oh that was a full come around on Olympic jokes by the way that you completely missed oh I did say eat your Wheaties oh sorry oh I was too busy talking all right let's take a sidebar real quick Anthony nuñez is in a crisis and it's not quite related but it's not not related either you guys have got his question a tons of times but I'm in the middle of purchasing a phone and need help between the last three you've narrowed it down to from the three he's looking at apparently price is not a concern nine iPhone 10 pixel to XL the three big boys right now who's really gonna lead in the charge I wish we had some more information from you Anthony about your simulations whether it's about money whether it's about boys cameras and money's no object I'm guessing because he picked those three doesn't pick the 10 I would say okay are you an Android user are you an iOS user already how much how many photos you take is the camera an important factor do you have any previous loyalties yeah yeah yeah do you care about the headphone jack because the s9 is the only one with the headphone jack the other one is is that it's very important to note that if you're gonna shell out $1000 on an iPhone 10 you might as well shell out an extra 200 or so dollars to get the additional storage so yeah yeah yeah and also the s9 do you want just the s9 or the s9 plus you just said nine just nine all right well I mean well if money's no object you have you have the 10 I have the aid I like the s8 and I would probably say that you'd be happy with the s9 I like that it still has the headphone jack I like the design of those phones I'm I'm a little hesitant to make a call I think if you are a it depends a lot on what you are now are you an iOS user own Android users I think that will depend a lot more on but for me at least but if the toss-up between the iPhone 10 and the the s9 I think the pixel to excel has had some issues or originally I mean I know the camera is pretty strong on it but it's yeah I think it's really between Samsung or Apple as it usually is yeah yeah all right let's move on to the more about the s9 sir enjoy Roger is the s9 superior brightness and vibrancy minute majorly influenced by its great screen well yeah I mean look it uses an OLED display now our focus on the display this year in terms of like improvement I mean it's last year's phone was a fantastic phone the display was fantastic and they really played up the display display is good it's already it was already a great display so it's just not a huge step up from the GS a go figure from Josh Boyd oh when will the Nokia smartphones arrive in the US haha Wow Oh Kia actually a Katy had a story and I believe only the the Nokia the new Nokia six new Kia six is coming to the US and with no carrier partners though I think they haven't yet they haven't yet signed up I don't think they will be signing up any US carrier partners there was a big question about that last year when they relaunched this is the startup hmd global which is making these Nokia phones there was a lot of questions about whether or not they would partner with the US carrier that has had that hadn't happened I don't think it's gonna happen with this one you might get it like at a Best Buy or an Amazon or one of those other random retailers but yeah it's it's not gonna it's gonna be a little bit harder to find that which one of which will limit the sales absolutely that usually tends to be the case and it's a small phone I think it's it's an okay budget phone I was pretty excited with their uh their flagship phones at the Nokia eight so I'm gonna butcher it Scirocco Scirocco I keep that part of the name keep wanting to say sriracha but it's not sriracha that would be a great name for it was I had saw it that was a nice really nice looking phone stock Android pretty much but that unfortunately is not coming to us since we are talking about the like that not the top tier phones anymore did you have a chance to check out the vivo concept phone yeah that was probably one of the crazier phones I saw the show now this is the one where it's basically they removed everything around remove the bezel almost entirely even to the point where there's no notch or anything for that face it looks really future as of that it is a concept phone it's a little bit if you know it's a little bit on the thicker side but on the top there is a pop-up selfie cam and they say it comes out in less than a second but I'm not really sure that's not fast enough first selfie unfortunately you know there's still the rear camera for you if you need to take a spontaneous photos and then there is the fingerprint sensor to fingerprint sensors in the glass so all kinds of crazy cool design concepts I don't know I remember correctly this one also doesn't have speakers it like the oh yeah I'm vibrant yeah as like almost like a bone conduction type yeah yeah yeah so this is a concept phone for one thing we don't even vivo doesn't sell phones in the US or do them and this phone in particular is just a concept device but it's definitely one of the more interesting ones the show and kind of points to what we might see down the line yeah and it's nice to see that they didn't bother with a knotch yeah this time because everybody else is like well Apple did it so now we'll do it now we can do notches cool Apple made not just cool I didn't know they didn't they just popularly they they just made they made it acceptable I guess I think the thing with the notches is that there's there's a specific reason to have the notch because of face ID yeah in the iPhone 10 what's coming up afterwards those other phones need to justify their notch for I mean you I imagine you see things like like with LG they have it they already have a dual cam on the front so a notch would makes that kind of not would make sense right yeah all right I have an idea about a mod for this vivo phone already so if somebody makes a case it turns a hand crank like on a jack-in-the-box and then when the camera like you reach the end of the pop goes the weasel' and the camera snaps up and that's your selfie you don't have a choice you don't actually hit the flash it's just whenever it surprises you and that's your takeaway selfie that would be yeah yeah that would definitely make it look a lot less you try extra for that permanently on there right you can just Roger I have to go home I left the hand cream for your front-facing camera still have the back one it's killer it's all good let's say you charge the phone to hey we only got a few minutes left and you're talking about the notch gate yeah we call it notch gate no no I don't know it's not a gate yet it's not a controversy it's a trend now it's become is it funny how it goes from one to the other so quickly yeah this is the way of the world anyway so Michael Brown is a longtime reporters at scene at what do you think about the Apple effect and how something that you don't think should catch on from Apple actually does good question I mean we've talked about this with notches we've talked about this with the removal the headphone jack Apple definitely has like they've shown a a willingness to kind of stand out for something to take a controversial stand whether it's removing the headphone jack or adding a notch and they they're known as a major major design house and so their design decisions whether good or bad in in our immediate sense end up having significant influence we spent a lot of time initially making fun of the look of ear pods and now they they look very typical and I wouldn't be surprised I haven't been on the market for Bluetooth headphones but I wouldn't be surprised if some knockoffs already exist that looks very similar to that yeah we got a follow-up from Anthony nuñez I'm scared of getting married to this entire Apple or Android ecosystem I get one for work and it's time for me to get a new one for myself I've got the phone success I want to know which I'm gonna looks great - oh so when it came down to the s9 with an iPhone 10 you've already got experience with the Apple oh I see I see I would in that case I would go with Android that way you're gonna have your foot in both worlds I do that I have an iPhone 8 that's my work phone and there is there is a little bit of lag time trying to like work the iPhone after spending yeah the only issue with that is because I mean I do the same thing yeah your brain like it's trained to use a phone in scale you have any muscle memory and then yeah exactly I've been having to like reprogram it to handle two different phones sometimes it's a little bit annoying but it's good to have you know a foot in each different like OS you're not beholden to the other so yeah I would say if you've already got an iPhone and you're looking to diversify a gs-9 is a it's not a bad way to get into the Android ecosystem mm-hmm okay at the last couple of minutes we have in the show a couple of takeaway quick impressions or predictions uh first from lucky never he wants to know about that foldable Samsung smartphone oh great question yeah great question actually I chance to talk with the Samsung the CEO of the Samsung's mobile business and he did confirm that they were still doing work on it he wasn't quite 100% commit to the phone coming out this year but it seemed like they were doing a lot of work there was a lot of progress being made on that phone so we might see it this year probably in the fall maybe if if it comes out this year but he did stressed that they were still working out like whether or not the experience of it is actually taking advantage of the foldable phone and just not and they're just not building affordable phone for the sake of doing it so at least they've got the right approach and attitude about it because it can't be a gimmick for this to work actually you know the foldable phone there needs to be applications that take advantage of that new designs I don't think that come out immediately out of the gate you know no I know but I mean you can imagine well Samsung definitely has an issue with software but you could you could see them building their own programs or apps to take advantage of the foldable phone in ways that inspire hopefully inspire other developers to create and that could have a huge influence we were talking about from Michael's question earlier Apple's influence yeah if Samsung creates a foldable phone that actually does take off and do well expect to see a lot more of those types of things yeah and last but not least coming in from mr. Tech a blackberry key one Oh after Rogers own hard asking a blackberry questions you're so kind yes the blackberry q10 key to that's a sequel firm we're expecting it later this year they had already talked about teasing us a fall to the key one there was some talk about the key one early in the show I believe the the head of the blackberry business under TCL and sort of told me that he's hoping to get like three to five percent of the premium market share that for him would be success I think that would equate to I was doing the math based off of estimates for how well the phone is done so far that's like it's more than like a 10x increase in sales for them they hit even three even three percent of the premium phone market not the toefl market just phones there are four hundred dollars or more and it's that's a pretty taller it's usually is for blackberry yeah I mean look I wouldn't say it's come it's coming back I would say it's alive like faint faint faint pulse but I mean they are selling phones and they are from what I understand I believe they're making money off of it and so so catch me up okay so first of all TCL is the yes new owner blackberry line of phones TCL basically pays blackberry Limited which is still around blackberry makes software now but they pay for the rights to use the BlackBerry brand in its phones so to make Blackberry phones okay and the key one which is the question was about does it have a physical keyboard and does it run on Android the key one's been out for a few months now so it's on the market it does have a fiscal keyboard there was a second phone they created called the BlackBerry motion which was all full screen full touchscreen the second one is believed to be a keyboard phone but we saw okay and that's we're gonna leave it for today thanks for joining us everybody leaving us on a blackberry question wow I mean it's great question no no totally three questions I love answered questions yeah alright cool so yeah we'll be back tomorrow who wants to take us out for the day I'll do it okay 3:59 is available on itunes tuna and stitcher Feedburner google play music the Amazon echo and of course cnet.com Roger Roger Roger thanks very much for coming back I'll see you guys okay you're welcome for coming back where else would I be okay hiding on Barcelona somewhere see y'all tomorrow thanks everybody have a good one you