Gadgetory

and good morning on monday march six from the cnet studios in New York's today it's time trips of 189 of the 359 podcast starring Ben Fox Rubin and Roger Cheng horny guys thank you for that intro morning gotta bring the energy up cuz got a very gonna be a rough week gonna be the worst week ever I'm glad to be back in New York I'm back yeah spent the week in barcelona barcelona still missing the the tapas and sangria and the gem own and the jamon jamon and did you bring us any phones I did not bring any phones I brought impressions of phones that we try it out but they wouldn't let us keep anything of course that's okay we'll get them later yeah yeah that's what that's what we're gonna be talking about today basically a post-mortem or final thoughts about mwc 2017 with our man on the ground yeah and then we'll wrap up with a great story from stephen shankland about quantum computing and what it's going to mean for future devices sexy stuff man quantum computing it is a Hannegan of it it's actually you know it's actually awesome it's downright back it's a little wonky but it's also very awesome and can have a huge impact on all of our lives so yeah yeah man so let's get to the show send in your questions and comments and we'll get to as many as we can at the end and without further ado alright let's get this recording underway and here we go in three two welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Roger Jane okay Roger welcome back from Barcelona and Mobile World Congress overall what was the most memorable thing that you saw at the show the most vulnerable thing obviously had to be the Nokia 3310 and just the history over this is a 17 year old phone slightly updated looks a little bit nicer I had a chance to try it out you know the biggest feature is as a what is one month withstand high time of course you can't do much on it besides play snake you can text you can call but you know it's obviously not a smartphone like an iPhone or galaxy s hey why the hysteria I mean we were excited over here talking about it but it sounds like at the show it was just getting frothy like people were really getting almost too excited about this thing you know there's a it's a it's a potent mix right there's a lot of nostalgia involved a lot of folks who had that phone originally really loved it it's also the fact that you know there wasn't anything that really blew us away some kind of luster and then with Samsung out of it really had the sort of vacuum there and then okay kind of filled that back and really well with this phone that just you know deserve you it tugged at our heartstrings right and for a lot of these lot of these industry folks who are they're all phone geeks we're all phone geeks we really got into it much of the detriment to his other phones actually no cash md global to start a building this nokia phones actually introduced three other android phones actual smartphones no one care about him so when you are holding the Nokia what was it like I mean it was like holding a candy bar phone like from back to the old days so you were not impressed it was just yah was it kind of heavy no it was light you know it's compact fit in my vest pocket it was you know a nice phone but it's a feature phone I can't do much with it I can't text I can't use GPS that I can't pull up maps yikes you know I'm sorry I can text but I can't I can't pull up games I can't you pull up app so just it's fairly limited yeah let's talk about the samsung factor so Samsung was the s8 was at some point expected to come to the show but then it wasn't so was it kind of looming over the show yeah I mean the fact that the essay wasn't around again kind of created this vacuum but also sort the worse the other way right everyone's talking about the 3310 you know LG g 6 came out there there were a bunch of phone I came out everyone sort of the overall thinking was well these are all nice phones but let's let's wait a little while it's like Khloe's cuz Sam Cunningham is gonna come out with something it's gonna come up with something big later this month right later this month so really that was the kind of the factor that was looming over the entire show was just like these phones are nice but we'll see what Samsung has cuz I'm willing to bet they're gonna blow us away yeah what about moto mods talk to me a bit about that yeah motor mudded the Moto Z and was kind of a stealth popular product there Motorola had a very small intimate press conference where they they talked about the future of motor mods you know this is the idea like these modular gimmicks like they snap onto the back of the phone to add your capabilities motorola introduced a whole bunch of new ones and really sort of a commitment to to keep this whole modular gimmick going which is really interesting because everyone else are dropped at google's dropped in LG dropped it now Motorola's really the only one embracing the idea of a modular phone yeah next up our colleague stephen shankland wrote about how quantum computing could one day superpower your iphone quantum computing allows a computer to store bits of data not just as zeros and ones but as both at the same time which kind of hurts my head to think about so I mean this is a huge impact on moore's law which if you don't know is sort of idea that computing processor gets faster and smaller after what for two years or so yeah it's remote every two years problem is that we kind of hit our physical limit computers aren't getting faster and faster smaller and so they're saying Quan computing will have an impact on this yeah it could potentially really amp up computing power to you know potentially crazy degrees but we're nowhere near that's actually happening so that wait for it but you might have to wait a long time quantum computing plus AI means for me we're finished we're screwed it was nice being part of the human race but I look forward to our future robot overlords if you want to read more about our story read more about these stories check us out on cnet I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Roger Cheng thanks for listening so in the chat already somebody was really excited Ahmed was really excited about the blackberry key 10 interesting it's it's like you know your blackberry it was almost an afterthought because they were the very first press conference at the show they kicked it off Saturday night with the key one and then all the other press conferences came and I think it got lost in the shuffle like no one was talking about it everyone's talking with 33 can I think the g6 kind of took the the kind of consolation prize like it was like the best smartphone of the show and then after that it kind of was a steep drop-off in terms of interest level like no one's talking about Samsung tablets there was some talk about the motorola stuff but blackberry khanna got kind of got a lovely we kind of forgot about it it's like I'm so shocked right I was a little frankly I was a little shocked by the interest level I thought that would be at least some if nothing else morbid curiosity about whether or not a company could bring back the blackberry brand but it kind of got lost in the shuffle we've had so many come back efforts with blackberry yeah this doesn't seem don't call it a Mac yeah he come yeah right in the ditch forever jay was always races right all along LL Cool J a great great man uh full disclaimer yes we do work for CBS technically and by the way not technically we actually were for see women are actually obligated to Pat LL Cool J's back by the way les Moonves if you're watching we really like you did you say Fuehrer Fuehrer if your or if your wife you are jeez care all right seriously I almost gone off the rails so quickly welcome back Roger welcome back Roger pervy ghoul says talk about the ex zs + XZ premium Exies and XE premio the sony phone yes you know what there is I mean they were impressive looking phones there they're not coming out to like the middle of this year they I think they were announced so expressly sol sana can say we've got the first phones with Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processes processors which are Qualcomm's newest flagship chip that's supposed to debut on the s8 first and actually hit the market for us but I think Sony oh I wanted just get out they're like we've got it we've got it and the songs not coming up for a while so yeah but still we're talking about Sony here so like they don't have a lot of market share and it's not as bad as blackberry but there's still struggling here's the thing sony because they do make premium phones and they've been trying to cut trim down their portfolio so they really only focus on premium phones that still hasn't sold well and their biggest gimmick for a while or feature was water resistance okay guess what everyone else decided to do too whoa but also what I'm interested in is you mentioned that LG g 6 got the consolation prize after the nokia candybar phone were you at all excited about that phone which could you see yourself using the g six or buying it you know what it was it was a nice phone it it does packing a screen that's larger than my iphone 7 plus into a body that is much much smaller which is kind of a neat trick the only thing is that i think samsung is gonna do it even better in a few weeks and potentially than I will do it Apple was probably do the same thing and they're they're basically I think they were listening the reading the tea leaves looking the trend of smaller bezels and i think that's that's sort of what everyone else was trying to do I think LG probably did it best at the show yeah so they got it out of the gate first you got it doesn't seem like they're gonna gain too much momentum off of that no and plus sir I mean they also use a dual camera system it was like a Apple but instead of a zoom lens ease a wide angle lens which I'm not the biggest fan of like I'd rather have the zoom than that wide angle vs. like wide angle minute normal angle lens yeah we have a lot of great comments in the chat but before that I want to say that I'm calling it in ten years come back at the bezel Wow oh and then out there were many people are crazy for it oh my god the bezel free web oh the home button so wonderful to get the home button back alright so josh wants to know what are your thoughts about the one plus four uh 1 plus 4 didn't show up at the show wasn't at the show than I don't know so I don't really have we haven't really happened we haven't we definitely a van in office so yeah so sorry sorry I'm let's see do you think the mobile skies wants to know do you think the Nokia 3310 is aimed at a non-techie market I think that kind of goes to that saying yeah absolutely so I think it's two more it's going for they're gonna go to the emerging markets countries where people not everyone uses a smartphone yet where it's sort of a pretty competitive looking feature phone I mean again it's a month standby time and 22 hours of talk time so if that's all you care about that's great they also said this might be a good sort of alternate alternate digital detox phone for you if you want to get away for the weekend mm-hmm slap your SIM card into that phone and you have a legitimate excuse for not being able to be reached via email because your phone doesn't have email right but then you have emergencies in vent other ways to get off the grid yeah how we are now yeah all right uh Vijay wants to know what are your thoughts on the huawei phones and the huawei watch to the huawei phone the p10 was I mean it's very competitive phone that's a you know the epic Carl Zeiss lens they were very proud of trying to get people to use that camera it's competitive own it's not coming to the US so it's not as much of an issue for us or it's not it's not a factor for us but you know I got a sense from the sort of looking at it from talking to people that it was a nice phone but it was sort of like in the pack of device it didn't really stand out from anything else as well and so for the watch I thought the watch was ugly that's it I think we've kind of come to that conclusion on a lot of the watches though yeah it's a I mean no the thing of it is is the original Huawei watch was actually pretty decent lookin I think one of my favorite Android wear devices and it kind of a nice mix of kind of classy and it looked like a watch without being overly bulky then the new ones kind of met the watch first gadget second you gotta flip the flip the grid on that one yeah going back to the key one George wants to know what about TCL from China how would they affect key one any thoughts on that I mean they've already so they've affected the the way these blackberry phones work the tech for in the d tech 50 which came out last year were both made by TCL mostly designed by TCL so you imagine that you're gonna start to see the same contine eighth flow throughout the next couple phones and I did report exclusively at the show that like that they are committed to as many as three phones three new blackberry phones this year sure what did you hear from them directly as far as how committed they are to this to the blackberry brand you know well into the future right I mean they're absolutely committed I think they're really excited to actually have a brand that people recognize right because they've been selling phones through alcatel their TV assaulted TCL neither these brands are like household name so to have the blackberry name in the stable I think they're really excited about that it's granted it's a it's a tainted name right yeah but it is a well-known it's interesting that one of your stories mentioned that they also own the palm name yes there's no plan to bring back but they bought the palm name in really the middle of CES 2015 and they've done nothing with it I've talked to their CEO who hinted that there there still are some plans but you know they're focused on the black bear named for now all right we got a double team here from bossom and Ahmed what about the note 8 i'm still unable to put up in my replacement s7 edge to create the phone but I'm emotionally hurt and waiting for no 8 and then the follow-up from ahmed is do you guys think that samsung can earn their customers trust back great question right questions considering you didn't really see much of them at the the old conference there yeah i mean they did have a big press conference at the end of sunday night where they've released to two tablets that no one's going to buy but i think the the essay will I mean look at the essay blows you out of the water I think that does a lot to earn your trust back I mean it's still one of the top two phone makers and it's not losing that position to anybody anytime seriously there is such a gap between you know Samsung Apple and everyone else writes not yeah they're not a huge jeopardy yet now the s8 start starts exploding that's a whole nother matter if that would be right what's up just right now this is sort of a wone office is kind of a freak bizarre incident if the essay kind of launches without a hitch I mean that's that kind of gets them rolling again and the know date they have confirmed the note 8 will come later this year so you can expect that if you're big note fan when does it usually come out what one in the fault okay you're gonna have to sit tight and wait for that yeah so we've grazed on this rumor before but the dot wants to know is Samsung releasing note 7 as a refurbish no absolutely not really tell you for sure that's all happening that makes sense I mean I mean I asked multiple Samsung people that the show got a lot of laughs and chuckles and like the rumor I think it was just ahead of mwc that rumor started percolated and that you know they're gonna refurbish it and bring it out again and under scratching our heads on the podcast being like well the decision was to handle these extra parts what are we gonna do with all these extra parts it was ok there's to argue different phone yeah that's that's it like those parts actually propriety I have to say the most interesting thing that happened at the Samsung press conference was a greenpeace protesters actually broke in and like made a huge stir they actually repelled off the roof of the building that way that was held dropped his giant sign one guy one really well-dressed protester actually like got up on the stage people didn't even notice who he was because he was so well dressing like a pass on yeah he looked like blow but he'll sign who's asking basically they're asking Samsung disclose how they're getting rid of these batteries that they've recalled right and there's also an environmental way it did environmentally isn't a landfill somewhere exactly yeah and like no one really noticed until the speaker like sort of gently politely asked the protester to like get off the stage like wait what this is that a we all thought this was some sort of like big stunt you know like Greenpeace is gonna make a thing will make their their statement samsung was gonna come into being a like yes we believe you know we believe in environmentally responsibly getting that was all part of it Harlan like the speaker went on scripted it was like what what's going on it was a fairly crowded room so it's hard to make out what's going on the front thanks yaks on bikes we only got a couple minutes left cnet do you think the 18 by nine screen ratio would affect the smartphone world in a positive way I hope so it's basically by the way it's not 18 by nine it's to buy one I know they were saying 18 by nine I asked LG instead of 16 by nine right that's a later basically yeah basically it's like yeah the easy way for idiots understand 16 x I'm an idiot I wanted I mean by nine I know I think it's a good thing I the whole like the idea of having like two squares especially your big Instagrammer that's kind of cool right having Instagram you have this grant photo there and you'll have kind of like that that equals square underneath the show that the options I kind of like that I know it's a buzz a buzzy thing around here from the production scope of things and the videos that we may coming out of seen it so we might see something coming down the pipeline I can't guarantee anything but I know it's been discussed nice as far as embracing that for our content as far as 18 by nine I still don't think that it's important enough as a differentiator to get you to buy a specific phone one or the other I think it's a nice feature to have if you have to be buying that phone already but you're right it's not it's not gonna sell you on a device which is about the people who live their career as social media aggregates and content producers and you know that that could be beneficial to them I think I know a guy who pretty much his entire life is running social media for a number of agencies so if he could embrace a new avenue Khanna but as far as like changing the industry I think it's still kind of in a gimmick line I would certainly my hope is that that 18 by nine ratio to buy one ratio inspires other handset makers the kind of fall that same ratio as well to kind of get in bad mode because it does look nice simson cinematic wise I have to say this seems really incremental to me I mean like you're talking about the difference between 16 by 9 and 18 by nine these are not huge changes in the phone market and it goes back to the fact of like that's why the Nokia 3310 was the biggest phone at mwc which is supposed to be the latest and greatest phone so I would like to see you at the standby time man I would love to see what this s8 has to show us at the end of the at the end of the month and I wanted to bet the essay you know might embrace some sort of aspect ratio that's similar like the whole the rumors are it's gonna be packing in a much larger display into a smaller body so maybe it follows that same aspect ratio sure all right so to end it on we got a great question from Yash what would you rate this year's Mobile World Congress 2017 in terms of rumors related and the excitement ooh in terms of number numeric scores ezzz actually asking like what was the actual payout here right but we don't get a bonus end of the scale do you know on a scale from one to seven I'll just say for me that this was a more enjoyable show than years past because the last couple years it's been a foregone conclusion that samsung will dominate the show with their galaxy s phone this year it was far less predictable right who would have guessed at the onset of the show that the 3310 was going to dominate everything you know it's just I like the fact it's competitive that there's actually kind of a it was a kind of wide open world where anyone could really take that spotlight and it was it was unpredictable you know that that's for me made it a much more enjoyable show but regardless we'll see how Samsung responds in a few weeks got today's going here stick around a CNN will have plenty more as a thing's actually materialized and I think that's a perfect place yeah those enough of the day thanks everybody all right get us get us out of here all right well go go for the clothes welcome back thank you if you liked anything you saw or heard here check us out on cnet we're also available on itunes tuna and stitcher SoundCloud feedburner and google play music see y'all tomorrow thanks everyone later you