Gadgetory

good morning on Wednesday October 5th it's episode 305 of the 359 podcast my name is BVG and here are your hosts Ben Fox Ruben and a homeless at Alfred and Roger J rhythm I'm sorry it's also October 25th but that's okay we went back in time what did I say October 5th I say October 5th I think yeah so we've got a stacked stacked podcast for you we'll be talking about Apple and how it's boosted supply for the iPhone X even though that may not be enough we're gonna talk about Amazon key a new service that includes a smart cam and we're talking about Verizon bring it back full quality video streaming which they've taken away two months ago woohoo back but it cost money of course it does don't things usually yeah well it was it before it was free before so as always if you have any questions leave them in the comment section Brian will pick out the best we will get to them in 3 minutes and 59 seconds from 3 to welcome to the 359 I'm Roger Cheng I'm Ben Fox Ruben so Apple is desperate to get more iPhone X's out their latest Bloomberg report says that they've actually told in manufacturers to ease off the accuracy of face ID so they can loose production right sound good right I mean Bloomberg was clear to note that even with the reduced accuracy they claim it's still more secure than touch ID the fingerprint sensor but it's sort of it's another indication that the iPhone X for the iPhone 10 is gonna be a really really hard item to get this holiday do you think that might actually benefit Apple in some way I mean like obviously not with their bottom line but at the same time if it gets so difficult to get an iPhone 10 the resale market it's going to be huge if you're one of you the few friends that actually has one this will be like the it thing oh yeah let me could show off it definitely will be an it thing a status symbol one of the hot holiday items I don't know if it's a said good cuz that reseller market Apple doesn't really get a no tanzanite no it's more for cachet right there there's gonna be a cachet for this thing just because it's gonna be so difficult to find but I know Apple wants I mean they want to boost production they want to get as many these things out there cuz all the indications that was seen for the carriers the iPhone eight hasn't really sold that well so you know I think there's gonna be there's this kind of disconnect where there's huge demand for the iPhone X but there isn't a lot of supply it seems like there's a a decent supply of iPhone a it's panade demand so they're in a weird position right now yeah yeah I mean while I'm just sittin on an iPhone 6 next up we wanted to talk about Amazon key bet you actually were you're in Brooklyn for this briefing a few days ago tell me more about the service yeah I got to see a demo of this essentially the way it works is is that there is a new camera called the Amazon Cloud cam that Amazon creates and it helps enable a way of getting in home delivery in your house and then the smart cam is it basically taking your nest here in many ways yeah it would take on nest and a lot of other smart cam developers so this is this is Amazon getting its first major foray into smart cams as well but the other thing that this could actually do is letting guests in future months you could let in a dog walker or a house cleaner or so it works with the smart cam and also a smart door lock to actually enable this thing cool alright lastly Verizon brought back the full quality video streaming this is something that they'd actually was part of your unlimited data plan until they took it away in August there was a there was a bit of an uproar amongst consumers who felt like they were being unnecessarily throttled down well Verizon is bringing back next week but it will cost $10 extra why so called streaming yep yep arises really just you know do they hate their customers I feel like they're there they look at this as an opportunity to get a little bit more money out of subscribers so if what what did some of the other guys do right now like I feel like t-mobile probably does something a little bit more consumer friendly yeah so a lot of them do kind of throttle down the video quality you know usually it's down to a DVD quality or even less than 720p but there are there's an option to either pay up for higher quality I think t-mobile is actually kind of giving it away mostly and at least they offered an option for all the other carriers offered an option for full quality videos Verizon ahead took it a while took it away for a while which people thought was a sign that they couldn't handle the traffic so the fact that they're bringing back at least shows that you know their network can't handle this stuff it's important know that a lot of phones really can't do better than 1080p like they talked about questions like how how desperately do you really need such high resolution on a tiny screen for a lot of people it's totally it does make a difference at all they're like maybe two or three 4k phones out there like one that Sony makes so no one buys it and so it that's a little bit more negligible I think this is just getting it out there and having that option for folks who really care about this stuff it's probably small part of the customer base but it's a vocal one so it's just having it out there all right more of these stories check us out on CNN I'm Roger Cheng I'm Ben Fox Ruben thanks for listening all right so we'll delve into the chat and I'll start digging out some of your best comments and questions right out the gate people borrowing mr. tongs bad Apple over and over and over this looks like a mess this is a BS shortage Wow hashtag our ap Apple Wow it's tough I we always knew this was gonna be a somewhat awkward year for them guys with the iPhone aid it's not a significant change from the past yeah years with the iPhone 6 success 7 it really doesn't even look that any different for the bag I mean I've talked to folks who have bought the iPhone a or A+ and these are people who you know they don't necessarily care about the latest greatest they just want a new phone they've had their phone for two plus years usually just want a new one and I get their reaction it's been like mixed to negative a lot of this just were like this was exactly like an iPhone 7 I even though with the glass back yeah and you know one when I met you though well it's got wireless charging you know the the response I've got from a couple people were like well I've got a really thick case that's really oh yeah so like the so far the reactions been muted it really is kind of you shown in the sales too right said absolutely the all the US carriers have reported earnings spring with the laugh they did this morning and everyone pretty much everyone at least hinted at the fact that the lack of an iPhone X this quarter made a difference no customer additions were lower than a year ago upgrade rates were a lot lower people weren't moving around and usually when a new phone come when a new iPhone comes out that's a time for people to switch around there wasn't a lot of movement the last quarter granted I thought I came out September 22nd so I was sort of the tail end of the last quarter yeah but like I remember reading a lot of like analyst notes there was so much discussion about the 10th anniversary being a quote unquote supercycle new person where a lot of people were waiting whether two three or four years to actually upgrade their older clunky or iPhone games and unfortunately they're in this awkward position of either getting in iPhone 8 if they want the latest and greatest which isn't really that different than past years or praying that they're gonna get an iPhone X are we doing X you keep saying I know I keep miss speaking it's iPhone 10 no I like X I like x2 it's we just have to talk about it at every podcast I never mention it but yeah like the supplies are gonna be significantly limited I would say well into next year that seems yeah obvious yeah the funny thing is you know even last year Apple con Telegraph to people through various media reports are like the big change is coming next year or 2017 not 26 so a lot of people knew a lot of people who were up for upgrades last year probably held onto their phone a little bit longer because they were thinking well the the real big change the real new iPhone is coming in 2017 fast forward to now and yet like right now the only option is the phone that is marginally different or better than the last version so I guess it's worth arguing and the changes coming in 2018 and then 2019 changes are always coming right Ange is coming next year I guess could be Apple's new slogan I'll just stick with everybody take some questions yeah let's do it all right so first out the gate pay Joe is the 256 gigabyte or 64 gigabyte going to be harder to get space gray or silver is that going to be harder to get to those are really specific wiser I don't know yeah I think the answer is yes yes probably I would say specifically to your question about whether or not their differences we can't say for sure I would imagine both they're gonna be both colors we'll be accepting difficult to get I don't think there's gonna be like a limited version in terms of the memory I would imagine a lot of people are gonna go for the 256 gig version since you're already spending that much so that might just be tougher because people more people are gonna want to get that one because right superuser phone we're spending a thousand bucks already why not spend another hundred fifty for the 256 members yeah Thank You Apple sales and that is for sure right that and add that's apples logic that's why they eliminated the middle option there is no longer that like 128 right the 128 there's like there was always kind of a logical middle option that seemed like okay it's not crazy expensive but you had a decent amount of memory they limited that option so you have to go for like either way too much memory for a higher price or like not enough memory for the cheapest price no not a great option either well yeah that's that's a good insight that the 256 is probably gonna be even harder to get but yeah you're right it's gonna go from very hard to super hard to get either yes I mean I kind of agree with you if you're gonna be spending that kind of coin anyways you might as well go all in yeah but at this point you're going to try to go all in and they're gonna say sorry we don't have any yeah yeah that's I wonder if people will settle for the 64 gig version if it's just start waiting in line the chat for people I know Michael Browns hanging out in the chat today and I know Michael our boy Michael mega Apple fan and I'm more out there too if if you were in that situation you got in that line and all they had left was a sick 64 would you settle or would you wait it out for the 256 I know we'll into bed now you would buy it you the 64 no I was thinking the complete I don't know see this is what you do you'd buy it for a while they have a pretty I think they have a pretty liberal return policy mm-hmm specially during launch time and so what I imagine you were doing I immediately either flip it or hold on to it till there's more supply of the 256 gig and like go back and return it that way you don't walk away empty-handed that's a good point I was waiting in line if I was alive for a week well for one thing if I if I don't keep it I would just flip it right because that thing would be worth twice right yeah so there's that remember when the phones had like four and eight gigabytes Oh God the Dark Ages it was not that long first world is problems like 10 years ago 9 or 10 years yeah that that's it might as well be a century all right more questions shining che dumbing down the face ID accuracy seems like a very uh napple thing to do what will come back or will that come back to bite them insecurity tests I like the pun there yeah I I don't know it's it's really it's really in a dependent we haven't obviously don't have it we haven't tested it yet and we won't know if they're gonna be like different batches with different variations of accuracy yeah I kind of complicated well not only that but like during their you know whole stage presentation they really emphasize the whole face ID thing so right if we were if we are gonna believe this Bloomberg report that they are degrading face ID in any way at all it's not a very good look for them right right we got kind of a two-parter here apart from Derek part from mwj Davies kind of coming from the same place and you got to ask yourself what does Apple oh why does Apple always have shortages is it not a ploy why can't they figure this out and would Apple really have a shortage of the iPhone X when they plan to sell in more countries than ever before right from the get-go do you think it's the manufacturing problem is manufactured similarly to you know the shortages of nintendo's and it's an increasing demand lowering supply in order to build hype I would say if this phone wasn't significantly different than previous models then yes but you think they actually drop the ball yeah well if it's dropping the ball if you read the whole Bloomberg report it's actually a really good rundown of all the issues they've had whether it's supply shortages for animal displays whether it's getting the infrared sensors to work correctly to fit into the phone cuz it's such a small part there's so many parts to kind of bundling together for that front-facing camera it is a pretty complicated thing they basically had to like throw away initial batches they had to shut down production for a while because it wasn't working correctly I think there are just a lot of complications because they did load a lot of new tech for Apple allow detect for Apple into these phones and it's a whole new production way of producing a phone and that leads complications I mean if it was just another iPhone 8 that looked the same and they somehow magically had shortages I would be a lot more suspicious but given the fact that this is so wholly different than previous models interesting I die by the fact that there are supply shortages because they just can't make enough cuz it's so much more complicated sure alright thanks to that insight yeah I think you made sense out of it I mean it did it right change my opinion on it my guess is like those jerks right I mean yes still do we have any Amazon key questions I figured I'm not yes I do want to talk about that personally I'm very interested let's got the last couple of Apple questions yeah sure June buck why didn't a Polly I phone eight and eight plus with bezel list displays don't they know if they did they would be killing the phone game right now yeah killing it in the phone I think that goes back to that the point I just made it's difficult to produce that many phones using that particular display I think four of that dispensary using AMOLED will inch they're getting from Samsung they can't get enough of those that's why we're getting a real supply shortage with iPhone tens I don't know if they could have done it with with LCD which is what they've been using which was what they've always been using what with it with the bezel this display I mean like we've already seen with Samsung that they went to bezel this with their all their flagship phones but those are all using AMOLED displays right well it taking out the AMOLED display part and just looking at it from a design perspective it's obviously been proven that people are really interested in that product as the the questioner mentioned sure has time so he's doing really well this year and selling a lot of those phones yeah despite the fact that they had a phone last year that blew up sorry that that's definitely shown that they had a nice I'm in complete agreement with you about why didn't they change at the iPhone eight more like why doesn't it have the bezel this display doesn't need the face ID bit they could have gone with gone with just that redesign and I think a lot of people would have been happy with that I don't know the question is I mean clearly they spent all the resources on the redesigned iPhone 10 and 10 spent a lot of time talking about the iPhone 8 right so yeah it's right there there are some nice additions to it but I agree with you that it's it's not as much as you might have hoped for and I mean look I think Apple and you know I don't know I don't have any insight to their what they're thinking about this but they probably wanted i phone tend to look completely different from the iPhone 8 they want to they wanted to create that gap so hmm you know you either get the standard upgrade the boring upgrade or you you pay up for like a wildly different awesome flagship phone and having that separation probably helps with what's their pitch to sell yeah I don't know I guess I I think that with for a lot of people they might just decide to go for you know an older model and iPhone said yeah and save money I think that's for a lot of people who don't really care about the latest and greatest like that flows happens fine phone greatest objective it's a very very good phone and for most people they're not gonna notice the difference in processor speed I don't you know like weather all cheering about the 7 as much as I hear about the SE that's true if they really want to save money there's DSD well not only that but like it's just but it's a nice phone it's a great although on that side yeah that's all sevens got portrait mode which is like a killer app that a lot people and it's cheaper now right hundred dollars cheaper than it was a year ago so it's a more reasonable option for people who don't necessarily need the best from ample portrait mode whispers doesn't care about portrait Mike it looks super awesome your kid is awesome anyway true but it okay I like Ted full I think you sound I'm kind of short I think you should come back and see this episode uh no oh he's not gonna watch this go nah no dad isn't a podcast yeah what's a podcast that's what he's gonna say yeah through it all right so real quick before we move on to we might need to speculate a little bit here but let's talk about shipment dates do we have any speculative concept about when the next shipment date would be after launch day and do we have any idea what the International schedule is going to be specifically Asia and that's coming from eg Studios we don't Seifer like the announced countries we don't have any updates in terms of shipment date yeah that's anybody hard to say but I want to adjust to address it absolutely yeah yeah it stay tuned when we learn more you'll learn more yeah if you're dying to get one of these phones you'll probably be able to find it on the secondary market if you can't get it from Apple but you but expect to pay up a lot more yeah especially because of the limited supply so what's on cuz I was actually really interested in historic I'm just super interested personally as someone who's you know apartment living for some time yeah okay so never lived in a building with a doorman or anything like that so a lot of times I have anything I need to live or sent to the office yep and then I had a lot of people do they have to haul at home but it'd be awesome to be able to just remotely grant that access when I know I've got stuff coming and I do it so here's here's the thing that's that's interesting that you mentioned that because that's that's a big use case sorry for saying use case that's a big reason why Amazon wanted to provide this in the first place this is such a thing as porch pirates yeah things get stolen all the time ecommerce companies like Amazon Walmart you name it they get the thing all the way to your door and then it gets stolen like that's the most frustrating thing ever oh yeah you get an angry customer calling up so if they could actually create the peace of mind for customer and also ensure that the package gets delivered safely inside your door that's that's a win on both sides do I do you really want the delivery guy to come to your home so that's the other thing I've been I've been paying attention to like some chatter on Twitter and reddit and it seems that a lot of people are like hell no I don't like this idea it's too much trust given to any retailer and it's similar to how a lot of people respond oh you're not trusting the retailer you're trusting the delivery guy right right but the delivery guy arguably is like working and trained by the retailer and most the time it's like guys from UPS post-office right in this case it's it's a specific group that they were a little vague about who exactly is doing the deliveries but they said this wouldn't apply like a karate or s it wouldn't be FedEx UPS US Post Office they've it was these are like nerve and Amazon employees I don't even know that they're Amazon employees again they were a little vague about it they said that these are delivery people that you would normally trust to see get your deliveries taken so the way that I read that was these are generally third-party partners that Amazon works with to do their deliveries but it's not mean that it's limited access do you think that would have a negative impact on like Prime turn around the whole like two days are using a cell point there their argument is no and obviously Amazon has done a lot with its logistics to make sure stuff gets to you as fast as possible so maybe they're doing it through Prime now or a handful of other services that they have but no you're not getting it through USPS FedEx or UPS so let's talk about the benefits of this as opposed to somebody just manually setting this up on their own if somebody just put their own security webcams not hard and then you were able to bluetooth key lock what what what is the benefit of this Amazon specific application as opposed to just DIY it yeah the the way that it works with Amazon key is it's a whole kit that's set up it starts at installing over you they install it for you for free if you want them to and the way the app is set up is that once the package gets scanned outside the house and the delivery person knocks on the door then the camera turns on and starts recording and after the package gets delivered your door gets locked back up you get a video you can either watch it live or you can go and watch the video after the fact to actually see here it is it gets delivered and then the person leaves and you even have a specific on the app this is how long the this is how long your door was locked for or unlocked for how much it could be as much as like a minute your door was unlocked so it's just an extraordinarily detailed rundown of the entire procedure it's a little bit more other than like outside of a DIY like this is this is a little bit more structured and tightly controlled you get more notifications and how much is the service the service itself is free Oh once once you pay 250 that's basically it if you wanted to get a subscription for the security-cam so you have more access like longer access to video clay you can actually yeah exactly then you can pay for that that starts at $7 but and by the way this is us only for our international watchers yeah thanks only yeah I'm logistically speaking I don't know if that really necessarily would help me in an apartment situation just because I don't have carte blanche to have things installed and drilled and mounted we say my reception lobby area not to mention where my apartments located that wireless camera would never stretch the Wi-Fi well you would do it outside your door like if you don't have a door which defeats the purpose because I the front door of my building is locked locked right more useful totally house yeah if you have a it's generally for people that have a front door one of the things that they told me to if you're really kind of creeped out or uncomfortable with the idea of giving a delivery person access to your front door yeah then you could do it on like a side door to the garage like I have a detached garage so arguably I could do it with that where you just put it in the side door of the garage I'm like the worst thing that they could steal would be my lawnmower which would be a bummer but still you know like it's not like giving them access the and and again like I think that a lot of people were creeped out about this they have to recognize the fact that there's a video of the delivery person showing up and this is directly connected to Amazon so not only would that person probably get fired but they'd probably get arrested too so they're like cynic assuming Amazon then would be liable it's something yeah and and you know I'm not I'm not suggesting that something like that couldn't possibly happen you know every system has its issues but I think Amazon at least attempted to do a good job of setting up enough of a structure for this to ensure that something like that would be far less likely to happen James favor and hold on who do we have here Jessie gaming brought up a the elephant in the room let's talk crack let's talk Wi-Fi hacks does his smartlock have a problem with security even more with the Amazon camera is this going to be susceptible literally anything that's Wi-Fi connected could be susceptible to security hacks we've seen it a million times or yeah exactly if you have a DIY set up with a nest cam and smart locks like August smart locks I mean all that stuff is susceptible to hacks I mean that's that is a price you're paying for the the convenience such a game with some of these smart devices if you're not comfortable with it I would suggest like sticking to a dumb old-fashioned lock right yeah not having this kind of convenience it's something I'm like I would go back and forth on I'm not sure if I necessarily want to give up my my privacy for you know for the the chance that hackers consists or unlocked my door yeah in addition to that I would probably say broadly speaking the bigger companies that provide smart door locks and cameras you know tend to have a better software that is less hackable everything can be or at least offer updates it's less that they have better software I think they're more cognizant of the security issues right and probably send out updates more frequently I think it's yeah it's the ones I like the third-party unknown yeah like the much cheaper you know security cams and we've seen it as far as like you know being able to hack into the baby cam Network stuff like that it's it's not as secure as if you were gonna buy something from Google or Amazon I think that's about the right place to leave off for the day you want to send us home yeah if you like to anything you saw or heard here check us out on CNET our podcast is also available on iTunes TuneIn stitcher SoundCloud Feedburner and google play music great discussion today everybody yeah good stuff see y'all Robin yeah see you tomorrow bye you