Gadgetory

good morning on Thursday March 8 we're in post bomb cyclone recovery mode it's episode 366 of the 359 podcast I'm BBJ and your host today are Roger Chang and dan freakin Ackerman all the way in from the blizzard that's right you made it out from the snow it was a big Trek yeah was it how it was it hard for you though was just kind of raining yesterday yeah actually it was way worse for us we had no power all last night Ben Fox Truman are normal who would have been our normal host today is out because he still has no power in his home so yeah still there's it's there's still some shaking out to do a lot of a lot of dirty grimy snow on the streets oh yeah path to the snow dogs being walked use your imagination Roger what are we talking about all right so we're we're devoting the entire show to the galaxy s 9 the reviews are out so we're gonna break down everything for you Jessica Colcord isn't here obviously but we're gonna break down her review and really talk about the nuances both Dan and I have had a chance to play with the phone so we're here to answer all your questions about the GS 9 so without further ado again giving big questions leave them in the comments section Brian will pick up the best we will get to them in 3 minutes and 59 seconds from 3 to welcome to the 359 I'm Roger Chang and I'm Dan Ackerman galaxy s 9 reviews are out and so what's the verdict our own Jessica dual court says the phone works two steps forward but one step back so a couple pros the camera is pretty decent it's it is definitely an upgrade design is great and it obviously has the latest specs and decent battery life there are some cons though the camera the big boast of the camera is low-light photos it's unclear whether or not they're actually that great especially in those darker conditions they're brighter but they may not be clear the AR emoji and Jen and I disagree about this but AR emoji for me was completely half-baked and then intelligence cam the facial recognition system is not as secure as face ID yeah I got a pointless yeah it's a it's the retina scan and if that doesn't work it switches to the regular face camera which is not as advanced his face ID for Apple's advanced not secure is the biggest point of that correct because it doesn't have the 3d sensor in the front camera and so I want to get to a are emojis which you know I think it's probably the most interesting feature on the new feature on this you have to say that's the most interesting feature means it's a bit of a stretch as an upgrade right right so you know I disagree I look like I said I think this is a bit of a half-baked it doesn't work as well doesn't really read your facial gestures although well and it explicably gave me a man bun which i think you'd look at with a man but I don't think I do I think we have to try I think we have to do our test this for a while but what do you think of the AR emoji try I thought it was a lot of people not that I thought it was better than people said not great it's not a replacement for the an emojis from Apple that do the really great face tracking it doesn't do really great face tracking because again it doesn't have that 3d special sensor on the front but I thought it made some pretty good versions of me and some other people once you tweak it a little bit you can have some fun with it I liked it it makes a little kind of stamps the little gifts dance yes yeah I'm alive I did a live test on CBS this morning where I did a very you know when you do a live tech demo on TV man you're taking yeah so nerve-racking we did live a are emojis of Norah O'Donnell and John Dickerson and and me uh and they all came out pretty good now we could have spent more time tweaking them later but the fact that it does it so quickly right I think it's kind of cool well I mean look that's those are fair points this is hopefully this is just like version 1 and they'll get better over time hopefully with software updates but you can see the video here like where we're trying to sow it and there's the man bun I do not look good like man love it no no and how does it even know it cuz it only looks at the front of your face it just it just guess randomly generated and guess there's a mic a man bun guy so there you go I want time with a camera as well obviously you know their big focus was on the idea that this is the camera reimagined right some of the big things it has the industry first dual aperture mode an F 2.4 stop for daylight photos F 1.5 for nighttime photos did you get a chance to try out some of the kind of low layer and you know you can let more light in and make a brighter picture that doesn't write freeze necessarily there you know the resolution or the sharpness of the photo but more than more than that that's it's kind of cool to see that in action if you see a super close-up shot yeah but the fact that the dual lens camera is only on the larger of the two phones yes I think I think is them is almost the bigger photo story in a way what the big feature they've been touting you don't get if you get the regular right well just to be clear though that dual aperture setting is on both it is on both phones it is just it's basically the shutter to closes and shuts a little bit tighter we tried this out actually in Barcelona in a bar at like 1:00 a.m. 2:00 a.m. dark setting really the optimal setting for a low-light photo test the photos were definitely way brighter than the iPhone 10 but I know it's the quality the clarity of the photos were not that great a little bit fuzzy a little bit yellow like when you push real film and it get more grey right right so you know it's basically a toss-up I would say and I think this is justice conclusion like if you have a gs-7 basically have a two-year-old phone or older this is a pretty worthy upgrade right if you have a phone that's less than a year old a year old this is not especially if you have the Galaxy s8 from last year this phone looks the same it feels the same it's such an incremental upgrade I think these companies get caught in this trap of the annual upgrade cycle where they have to have a new product every year at about the same time whether they need it or not right alright so for more on these stories check us out at CNET I'm Roger Cheng I'm Dan Ackerman thanks for listening I like your comment Dan about how if you have to tell the movie and then there's already something wrong I mean Samsung was telling the camera as sort of their main afraid but I feel like the AR moji was like one of the standout features from it was one of the only the kind of bullet points you could really put on it yeah and show people exactly and Plus does anyone feel like their high-end smartphone camera is not good enough already at the point of such diminishing returns yes even an original pixel you know the GS 8 iPhone 7 even the iPhone 6s plus like those are all pretty good cameras right and so yeah if you've got a fairly casual user what are you doing with these photos and and they already print great they already look great online and they were too great in photo you know gallery the exo marked the you know the hammer rating firm I think gave the GS 9 she has my plus one point higher score than the pixel two which was not reigning champions so and I think it's two points above the iPhone and okay yeah but the thing of it is like I think that doesn't really matter unless you're a professional right if you're a professional photographer who wants to use a phone to take photos and I can see photographers moving in that direction right for some types of tasks sure then maybe that's the phone you'll get if you're if you're a parent or a college student or whatever the photos are already more than good enough and have been for years yep I would say with in terms of low-light photos that still is a real issue with all camera phone I don't think Samsung really solved it I know they made a big deal about brighter photos but if the photos are brighter but they lose that clarity I don't know if it's really worth with that sacrifice I think we're this area for everyone to improve this software wise in how you tweak the photos after almost implement I know when they take a photo with either an Android phone or an iPhone they use that little auto fix yeah on every photo and it really does a lot of great stuff but it could be smarter right I think as camera AI continues to improve you'll see much better benefits from improving how it does those auto fixes and Auto Corrections than in making you know the resolution a little better or adding more you know we've already doesn't yeah the pixel we don't need anymore megapixel right yeah maybe you don't I say the only thing actually we're talking about on this phone is the mechanical aperture yeah I think that is actually a cool feature we are not seen that anytime before so it's let's tau innovation where innovation is worth it problem is it works automatically there is a pro mode where you can you can change it toggle it yourself but it switches on and off automatically based on situation and sometimes it gets a ride sometimes it doesn't get it right and so yeah it's look I yeah give them prop for for adding something new to the camera I just don't know if it really helped all that much it's it's it's tough to have a bunch of standout features year after year we have upgrade kind of the same type of phone and you go like and last year's story we're talking about this before the podcast began last year story brand-new phone completely redesigned was coming back from the disaster of the note seven it was four there was a lot more to it beyond just the phone right there was a phone there were the features the new look there was a story behind it this comeback story this year it sort of like well you know it's it's a new phone doesn't really look the same does it look the beginning of the year so we have to have a new one so here it is yeah yep taking questions from the chat first out shout shout out to Jason rebel eddo who says he just ordered the brand-new Zack Morris banana phone all right Jason first one on the list but to be fair though the banana phone is not the same as Zack Morris phone does that poor soul is like a giant brick oh you're right you're right I said the banana phone as a matrix phone yeah yeah I'm sorry sorry oh did you insert the Zack matrix reference or no Jason said Zack Morris phone I mistook that and said banana phone Zack Morris phone was like that you were like a player giant the brick phone the charging station yeah only through my first half cup of coffee just bear with me here let's talk about the aperture again key V Quang it says is the galaxy s nines dual aperture really that impressive so let's expand on what we talked about earlier in the abbreviated podcast Jessica did do a lot of shots I'm gonna try to dig some of the examples out which I couldn't get to quick enough because four minutes is not enough time right so let's talk about let's talk about camera yeah I mean let's slide with the cam I mean the aperture the idea that it could switch between these two different apertures I feel like physical change rather software change where other cameras use a low light mode where they basically just brighten the photo they basically change you know they do a digital write tweak of it this is actually changing the amount of light that's coming in that's that's that's important it's definitely very cool to see it in action like when you when you kind of see it up most you see the the lens kind of shrink and then an expand based on the needs just to know like Jeff in her review Jessica note and I I tested the phone but not extensively Jessica's obviously spent a lot more time with it she note that the notes that the low-light photos are unrealistically bright and blurry so that is an issue that's going to be the trade-off when you've got that lower aperture well one of these motors was brighter yeah professional camera like tools and said like manual focus like aperture control all that stuff is best in the hands of professional photographers who know what it means and know when to use it and how to use it yes when you just tack these onto a consumer product you're gonna get the auto set and when you have those lower apertures your camera really needs to be steady for this one right so that's not gonna work if you're holding your phone in your hands so that's I think again I like I like this on principle on paper it all seems really great band practice doesn't really work as well as Samsung would like sure sure uh taking more questions from the chat hold on and bringing it up right now Oh Danny Green's asking how we how we doing on they'll drop test that's got to be forthcoming oh it's coming yeah we don't actually have our own units to drop yet so that's coming though we would definitely be doing a drop test who doesn't like to see destruction yeah exactly from Matthew dacher is anyone going to mention Android pee also what does Android gonna do after Z oh that's a great question we still have a couple more letters couple iterations a few more years before they happen so a few but that'll come quicker and this is gonna be like y2k all over again I don't know maybe it'll just change the whole naming scheme like get away from from confection they'll go to national parks right and mountains around California no that's that's already been taken oh okay because I've just been taken already turns Android P I mean we don't have a lot of information about it I mean I think the most one of the most noteworthy things is this allowance for the knotch mmm right it's supposed to make it easier for OMS to create notches and so Android will actually work around that physical whatever little cut out cut out right and so you know like essential when they created their version with the notch they actually had to like redesign allows the software to incorporate that notch and now with the new system of the new version OMS will be able to just basically just put out whatever notch they want and Android will work with it I think it's just interesting because now we're seeing at least if you look at all the rumors like Huawei LG one plus a sous all these companies are coming out with notch phones and it's like one of the most I don't know love it or hated features on the iPhone 10 like a necessary evil right and was they wanted you had to put that valley a design compromise right and so now now everyone's it's become it's gone from like this kind of like glaring ugly thing to a status symbol for a lot of people because the iPhone 10 is so expensive mmm if you have a notch phone and means you've got a you can afford a notch phone but it but at least in the US market how many people are buying phones from these other brands yeah yeah yeah that's a good point I mean this is I guess more from a global perspective right particularly in places like China where Apple still holds a lot of cachet and now it's like the Apple brand is now linked to a notch yeah and so everyone else is building out not just phones that's why you see a1 plus you see a soos these are not hand makers that handset makers that work in the US but they do sell law phones in China the Samsung have a big China market for phones that's decent size effort for these premium super premium phones yes yeah yeah yeah but it's not it's not anywhere I think they're getting they're definitely getting beaten up by the likes of like Huawei one plus and Xiaomi in China A's but yeah seriously they don't have notch they they keep mashing the knotch so I don't know you have an iPhone 10 right I do what do you think of them I don't really notice it yeah it kind of fades after a while right although there are a lot of apps that have not been optimized with a notch or four the slightly different aspect ratio that's right so so you do have some problems in some feather I noticed that early on it's gotten a lot better though I've noticed so my apps have been updated to take advantage that's the magic of the Apple ecosystem there's things just kind of get updated in the background and you don't really notice it has a same magic listen that's what we're it's just kind of working eventually he's like oh everything got updated it's why everyone's on the same version of iOS right we have such fragmentation we're talking about the right boy what does it matter how many people are you gonna have that on their phones that they bought very over in the last six months or last year Android Oreo is not very well it's it's a huge issue when we tell people day in and day out the single most important thing you can do to be secure in your personal digital devices is to make sure everything is updated if you're on an old OS well that's part of the problem there is for a lot of these customers like that is not an option being able to upgrade to the latest opera it's just not an option you you know you're stuck with carriers mandating more tests handset makers are just sometimes they just don't want update yeah so I'll tell you though a way around this it's not an unsolvable problem because we used to have this in the computer space and I'll tell you exactly what happened any time you had a gaming laptop or laptop with a discrete graphics card from AMD or envy in it in a desktop you could always go and download the drivers directly from Nvidia but on a laptop you specifically had to get updated drivers from your PC manufacturers Dell or HP or whoever else yeah several years ago they they open that up they said you know what we're not gonna do it this way anymore everyone agreed you can just get your the Nvidia will make the laptop graphics card drivers you can download them install them you can have them done automatically and Google's to some extent does this now they've introduced programs that were the security updates go through like not the full operating system updates but there are like software patches things that are critical for your phone to go through certain phones but it hasn't reached everywhere Android Market is so huge mmm so fragmented that there are gonna be phones inevitably that get stuck in the past but if like the Windows market is so fragmented too people have different types of computers to spend years trying to consolidate everything yes still not really they've done a good job pushing people towards Windows 10 parks because it was free - yes upgrade but you don't have to go to down there HP or anybody for updates you can go to Microsoft and Nvidia and whoever I just think it's an exponentially harder problem for Android there's so many more different devices so many different more manufacturers in different regions it just it's it's a mess yeah it's a big problem to get everyone on the same page for a while exactly are we ready for some more questions no but go on anyway you guys are really getting into it there first off I have to point out that McKell so tatin says dan you sound like Weird Al Yankovic oh that could have bad I think that's good very good from Carlos Martinez so what kind of assistance is there on the galaxy s 9 Oh unfortunately it's you know who big speak XP I play experimenting in Bixby it doesn't play as primary a role in this phone as the GSA like there's no dedicated Bixby pond right I'm not I think the boys a program though they're right I know but I think the key is it's not something that talks to you so much anymore as in it's sort of a keeper of smart AI camera mechanics yes like that translate stuff and the recognizer yeah you basically you can hold bixby vision up to it like a sign with the foreign language and I'll automatically translate it so even though it says you know don't walk here in Spanish it'll actually appear in English for you so that's kind of cool very Google lends life I think it uses a lot of Google resources for that but they've definitely downplayed big say they've rebranded it without verbally rebranding it and said oh it's it's an AI camera helper box yeah it's less of an active assistant horror of a passive visualised specialized more passive kind of works in the background a little more they had a they had a feature they talked about that was not ready yet and I believe it's probably still not launched yet where it could look at food and guesstimate how many calories are in that food no it did work we didn't work yeah yeah we've been working pre-law it I mean it didn't always recognize things yeah it was yeah it it doesn't work quite well yeah well it's still pretty early yeah it's funny LG with their geo their fee 30s mm-hmm cue has a similar feature we were trying that out trying the the AI vision I did know to recognize food good not calorie wise I think it recognized like one of my colleagues is food as well yes he's a doughnut and goes oh what's what's a doughnut on average okay here's here's an average for doughnut right if you need a phone to tell you that I will say impressively the the GS a galaxy s 9 did recognize my gin and tonic as a gin and tonic oh so not a vodka tonic kind of impressive it was cotton Brussels like how did it know that I usually don't know am i coming through your social media profiles and see which drinks you tweet about most and created a drinkers profile of you except I'm not I don't drink gin tonics ever so like that was an unusual drink that I had knew you were in the mood for something different that day maybe tell I'm unaware / with that sooner than later for the record I don't hate donuts but we all know that they're not exactly healthy expanding on Carlos since we were talking about assistance anyways he wants to know if we have any input down the old creepy Alexa laughter no oh yeah my didn't laugh yesterday yeah mine didn't either I think Amazon's putting out a fix for it as far as I know I did not witness this and I was neither did I yeah I ask Alexa to laugh because we're people were hearing but I just got one ha like that and the whole deal was it wasn't supposed to be like you couldn't like call for right right who's happening is my happy way maybe there are other laughs when I asked for laughs I just got a a fake laugh ha yeah that would scare the crap out of out of my got more than one so that's a horror movie season on Black Mirror yeah from Rosanna Minos the question is if the emoji avatar can be shared with anyone or if it's restricted to Samsung users only know it yeah exactly the kid files but not lot real-time you can make a little video you basically record a little video or something and then it's and then it's a video got it from Raymond how bad is the bloatware now the latest Samsung I used was Essex and I had to get rid of it because the bloatware was killing the performance oh yeah disappointing your carrier but I mean they've done a good job pairing it back a little bit Darce random stuff there's a random apps a lot of duplicate of apps that are just fair like there's also like Samsung feature creep yeah where they have so many different like Samsung branded apps and there's nobody what ever you there are so plenty of those I'm sorry yeah here's a good question from Scott Maya picking up on the point that Dan you made why do Android devices take longer to get the latest updates if there's different manufacturers why is the OS from Google well I mean Google builds the OS and so it's different because I'm at the gimped updates right so basically every handset manufacturer tweaks Android to their own specifications Samsung to the earlier questions has plenty of bloatware or different software that it loads on to Android and it customizes every every handset maker customizes Android to some extent and so those minor customizations make it a little bit more complicated for them to run an update a full update of the operating system and then if you add into the carrier right exactly then you add in the carriers who also need tests because they need to make sure that that new operating system works well with their network and really depending on which carrier like Verizon particularly is is very strict with their tests it can take months to get an operating system through that process that's why you have such a disparity on when phones get updates but you've got a pixel phone that sort of like direct to you is directly a Google phone those updates come really fast but if it's a Samsung phone which is heavily customised there's a huge amount of work that Samsung has to do as as well as the carrier before can even get to you and the carrier has to feel motivated to go and do and support older phones and stuff whereas with an iPhone no matter who the carrier is you get your updates directly from Apple yes that many settings with that phone that is kind of like the best sort of the unfair advantage that Apple has because they had that bad negotiating tactic from the get-go they're basically able to set the ground rules like we're dealing with these uh these OS updates directly to consumer you guys stay out of it and that's why you don't have like a teen team apps like right on your iPhone exactly you don't have like a TT branding on those phones right bring back MapQuest hey we're almost out of time but here's a question from Jason again I did peel to the s9 do we know what type of headphones it comes with it's like a step up they're not like just stock headphones I think are the AKG yeah it looks like now I don't know specifically what models these are but I've worked a little with AKG mics in the past and I've been impressed with their work and so clearly though phone jack standard studio headphone - correct yeah they do professional grade equipment with thing that means pressing me most and this is just on my own glance is that the cable itself for the headphones looks sturdier looks like it's really and I'm less angle prone hopefully who uses wired headphones anymore I feel like we've moved almost exclusively to blue 12 you do if you're an iPhone user kind of have to yeah yeah listen the only reason I still hang on to that myself is just because I have a pair of professional-grade mixing headphones that I like very around with me and they're not Wireless yeah yep let's take one more do we know anything about the battery life so far I thought that was supposed to be one of the strengths of the 845 chip yes so the Jessica does tell that battery life is decent you probably get a whole day's worth if you're a power user probably less than that but guess 8:45 Snapdragon chip runs a lot more efficiently they didn't make a huge amount of changes to display or the which is a big battery hog there so presumably the battery is well and note that the larger phone the s9 Plus has a bigger battery so we could run longer yeah and interestingly those 845 chips are going to be in a bunch of laptops this year yeah and they claim that those laptops will run for like 20 hours because they're basically running Windows 10 but on a phone ship yeah but we'll see how they do performance wise and we'll see how they do battery wise I'm kind of interested with the specs on that chip how warm the phone is going to get personally is that something that always irritated me I've had a couple of different phones and the most recent memory as I've been bouncing around and I had a couple of them just heat right up in my pocket here and they were older they were older but when you start putting this much yeah horse power and I'm it's so it's not necessarily putting horse power it's when you're using that horse power through we noticed when we were running erm oh geez the phone did get warm yeah but if you're doing regular things like you know browser the Internet no it's not I love how every time we talk about a phone now like if you're doing the regular things you do on a phone not making phone calls we are out of time for today Dan thanks for joining us my pleasure thank you Dan sorry we missed you guys yesterday is we were disappointedly snowed in yeah bought into the snow hype I mean you know the hype was real for me so I was really happy that I didn't come in the office cuz it was kind of terrible so alright fair enough but that's it for us for the week we will be back next week resume regular scheduled programming yeah we don't get buried by snow is there another storm coming out okay I can't deal with it I don't know anyways rouse you want to take us out yeah if you liked anything you saw or heard here check us out on CNET sorry I was gonna say podcast I don't know why our podcast is also available in iTunes tune in stitcher feedburner Google Play Music the Amazon echo and of course cnet.com try to be like Ben yeah that just didn't work anyways you can also subscribe watch us and join in the weekly conversations on CNET periscope live stream and YouTube channels so see Aldo next week right see you Monday yeah Monday everybody weekend everyone thanks for joining us yeah okay bye bye