Gadgetory

the 359 is sponsored by USB technology the USB implementers forum reminds consumers that USB if' logos are displayed on certified USB products so the next time you're shopping for a reliable USB charger cable or device look for the logos get the whole story at enabling USB org good morning and welcome everybody to the 359 podcast it's episode 4:45 my name is BVG and before we get started with the show today we want to wish an eternal happy birthday to the ever-present American sci-fi and horror author HP Lovecraft 129 years young today forever in our hearts Cthulhu forever and always welcome we have got done bed bugs Rubin and Roger Chang your hose hey I'm happy Monday we've got a great show for you we're gonna be talking about a couple stories from Friday do a little bit of review obviously we don't have our show and then but one plus coming to t-mobile the scoop from CNET and we've got this guy from this guy we've got Amazon reportedly making a PVR we'll break down why they would want to do this I'm still not really sure but I'm the lastly a look at our in-depth profile on the new Microsoft as always if you have any questions leave them in the comments section Brian we pick out the best and we will get to them in three minutes and 59 seconds stick around y'all we'll see you back in the chat and three - welcome to the 359 I'm Roger Chang I'm Ben Fox Ruben one plus fans can rejoice t-mobile will be the first US carrier to officially sell the one plus 60 when it comes out in October its first reported by CNET well done me by yob truly but this is this is a huge deal for oneplus they you know they've made a lot of progress selling phones online and kind of building up an Asian cult following but this really gives them a chance to push themselves into mainstream awareness have they had a major carrier partner in the past or is this really one of the first ones you've had carrier partners around the world not in the u.s. though so this is the very first u.s. carrier partnership okay and how significant is this phone is this they're like big flagship of the year what's the one to buy if you're a one plus one plus tends to sell two flagship phones a year one of them in one of the beginning and one at the end this is sort of the second flagship you know they had the six earlier this year this is a 60 that's sort of the name of convention and yeah it's I mean it's it's their flagship phone and the the six was very well reviewed so I imagine the 60 will will similarly you know have a lot of the bells and whistles that people are looking for nice so what does this mean for t-mobile is this a good thing for them is this so I've seen like carrier kind of exclusivity partnerships in the past like for instance like sprinted one with essential yeah I don't know that it was really that successful for either one of those companies do you think that this would be more impressive or significant for the likes of t-mobile yeah I would say this definitely has more of a shot associating the essential we came out of nowhere there was no real you know history or track record there Sprint obviously the fourth largest nation carrier has been struggling so that was a poor match I would say oneplus has a fairly devoted following already they've got and there you know Android enthusiasts sort of know the name even if it's not in stores t-mobile's demographic slant pretty well with one pluses fanbase and really this is a phone that is optimized for t-mobile's network and that's the important thing because you could use one plus phones for t-mobile previously but you couldn't get access to their fastest networks that's a spectrum and so t-mobile is in the middle of upgrading their network now with new bandwidth new spectrum that's supposed to be better and faster coverage this new one +60 will presumably people to tap into it and I'm guessing if you are a big one plus fan but not a t-mobile customer you can still buy this online right so by the global allowed phone it only works on 18 t if it doesn't work if you don't 101 of those ones all right so Amazon is reportedly making a DVR reportedly play but well I wouldn't be surprised I wouldn't be surprised so they Amazon has really been focusing a lot on streaming services they've been followed they've been selling the fire TV streamers for a long time and now they're really trying to push more into live TV because it seems surprising to a lot of folks that are cord cutters or cord Nevers but people still watch a lot of live TV so it would make sense to provide a DVR what's interesting about this report is that apparently it's going to be like a standalone DVR that would connect to your fire TV so like I guess that's good if you already own fire TV but if you're somebody like me that would have to buy both of them yeah I kind of feel like why don't you just package them together so would be my question to wait to see it's it's still it's still a rumor story so who knows if this is actually going to hit the market or not but it wouldn't it doesn't really surprise me that they would work on this they're really trying to like dominate the living room and take over Home Entertainment and we're hearing rumors of an event later this year for new echoes do you think it will come out that soon or is this further right it's possible it's definitely possible that they would do something like that I mean like September and October tend to be like those like launch times Amazon's done events in the previous two years so maybe we'll see it fairly soon I'm not really sure all right lastly check out our in-depth profile on the new Microsoft our own ensure and Connie Guglielmo our boss got a chance to sit down with CEO Satya Nadella to talk about how the company is transformed over the last few years I definitely recommend it it's a good read it's a great video that goes with it for more of those stories check us out and see it I'm Roger Cheng I'm Ben Fox ribbon thanks for listening thanks for joining us for the recording of the audio podcast everybody now I'm gonna jump into the chat and pull out all of your great questions and comments I'm definitely myself interested in this new DVR program that Amazon is developing I'd like to see what kind of hardware they can implement onto that we have no hints on that already do we guys you're talking about how it's likely gonna be workable if you already have a device maybe but there's nothing confirmed I like that in the article they have already nicknamed it and it's called Frank that's right that's a weird name I don't know I don't know where they come up with their names like sometimes it's like somebody's dog or whatever they just come up with like goofy goofy name so but yeah it's I don't know it I had to remind Roger that TiVo still existed or not I don't really I do have live access to live TV via a directory week now subscription like I barely even watched that like most the time I'm watching Netflix a prime video so yeah like the idea of a DVR I'm like yeah that thing I watch live TV when it's football season so it would be a very specific use case for me where I'm sorry for using the word use case but it would like I would use it if I'm like away at something on Sunday and I have to like catch the game later and anything I may do that I can't have I can't record it like I can't ignore the outside world likewise if I know the score yes if I know how it ends I don't want to watch anymore I agree by its if you look at the broad portfolio of what Amazon's been providing also like the fire TV cube for instance does a lot more with live TV where you can tell Alexa to like change the channel via voice so they're they're kind of like moving into that space already because it's an area that they hadn't really been providing a lot of features for right and in that in that regard that's why it doesn't really surprise me that they would be working on something like this it doesn't seem like it's out of left field or anything right it is a little curious that they would opt to do this as a standalone device like it just yeah does it I feel like it's a feature for a you know a set-top box not like its own thing I agree which is why I would say like wait and see and well you know this was still like the initial story and as we get closer to perhaps something and perhaps Frank launching then maybe we'll get some more indications about what exactly this they keep the codename that would be my friend Frank oh that's like Frank Costanza just lost his job like that's really novel about in a chat let's get it going hashtag fire Frank on Twitter all right so let's take questions and comments now first up from Shawn Vega Velez very excited for t-mobile and oneplus news now we can see in per more than one person making big decisions in general the comments section is excited that oneplus and t-mobile have been partnering up to give the big carriers and the big boys the the and the iPhones a run for the money sudeer also says it's time for oneplus to replace the big ones step by step I mean yes to a certain extent but oneplus is an Android phone so like Google's still benefit so in many ways from oneplus is I would say it's time to the pixel phone that's that successful I would say it's Samsung if you're talking on Android phones like Samsung's really the one that you know I guess potentially could stand to lose something I mean they they make the super premium phones with all the high-end specs oneplus phones have a lot of those same specs they don't have all the bells and whistles like that they're not water-resistant but they use the same high end processor usually packin with lots of RAM a gorgeous display there are a lot of features there that are fairly comparable for a price as I reported right now it's tentatively set at $550 and you know that that still could change given the you know negotiations are still going on with t-mobile but do they realize that all the phones are selling for $1000 now what's the matter with them that's the thing like if you're offering a phone with like a lot of the same high-end specs but it's $550 as opposed to $1,000 that's that's gonna turn some heads yeah right yeah and oneplus obviously as you said has you know kind of like a background and in phones unlike essential so people are gonna trust those phones if they've been regular cost yeah they've built up their reputation over the last several years he started with the idea these flash sales then those initial phones were like they're only sold online for like I don't know like a few minutes and you had to get an invite like it was really hard to get I was early I remember that's what made those phones kind of like interesting and sexy like our colleague Juan had it yeah years ago when I bumped into him in Barcelona I was like oh you have a 1 plus where did you get it that's amazing so I guess now you can get it at any old t-mobile store but really be able to so but but like kind of like that thread I think continues where they've been able to keep people following so yeah yeah yeah so the essential struggle because it it did have the backing of any room it was a huge name and in google is a father of android but like there wasn't really a track working with his phone it was also fairly pricey at the time relative to now it's not that wasn't $1000 but it was like $700 or something so it was expensive for a brand that we weren't really familiar with it comfortable with oneplus stuff we has a track record at least yeah that goes to show you how hard it can be to really break into phones so yeah you know one place managed to do it so let's talk more about t-mobile from Joseph Gauss do either of you guys have t-mobile or do we know anybody here who does have t-mobile at the office I know somebody does I just can't I have a team you have t-mobile phone okay so Joseph GAO's question for you Roger do you experience longer range on the LTE band 12 on t-mobile and experience better in the building penetration in buildings here in New York on the LTE brand thank you hey that's nice no one ever says thank you enough well it's it's hard to tell what one is working well or not and which you know obviously which spectrum that we're getting I would say over the last two years or so since I've been on t-mobile the the in building coverage has been better but it does vary market by market and dramatically and so I know they spent a lot of time focusing on improving coverage in New York and that's why you've seen more in building coverage and just generally the speeds are a lot higher now but they're still areas are struggling I I commute in from Long Island my trip through on the Long Island Rail Road coverage is pretty spotty but that's also in the case for Verizon phone as well yeah spot as it covers they are spotty so there are still places where struggles obviously the the 600 the 600 megahertz spectrum that they're deploying now my phone doesn't have access to it if you have an iPhone you don't have access to it but I know if you've got a gs-9 if you got an LG g7 those phones are compatible and you do see a lot of coverage benefits in building and just a better capacity great answer coming up next from Jacob Lombardo do you think there may be some intervention from the government from one plus actually can cleaning the deal with t-mobile this administration hasn't really allowed for a lot of overseas companies to go into the u.s. that's a good point to be brought up that's a very very good question I would say well there'd be interest well no I think there are there are less issues because oneplus is owned by a company bkk that also owns these other phone brands pop own vevo I've never seen any red flags come up from that company Huawei and ZTE have had sort of a long-standing reputation for concern in the u.s. in regards to like how closely associated they are with the Chinese government to the point where some of the leaders were former military and so that there was a lot of concern about those companies I've never heard of anything with bkk or with these specific divisions and really oneplus is a fairly small brand it's it's you if there were no no Huawei is at this point I believe now they the number one number two phone brand in the world so it's massive oneplus is still relatively small it gets most of its business out in China and so I can't imagine that US government's gonna waste too much time I feel like it's gonna fly under the radar in terms of regulatory scrutiny at least for now maybe even becomes this huge behemoth in the market folks will start looking at them a little more closely but one pulse is still really small next up from our old buddy Michael Brown is it safe to say that oneplus has sold more phones than the Google pixel ooh that's a good question great question all of those numbers sitting in front of you at all times guys I am disappointed I've seen some third-party information that it's like in the US it seems that and correct me if I'm wrong here the iPhone and and you know Samsung Android phones tend to split the market in the US and then Google pixel gets a small you know kind of band of that like a very a very small sliver of it's super hard to say I would say you know the fact that the pixel is sold through Verizon probably gives it the advantage if you're talking about like lifetime sales and I would say maybe one plus might have an edge just because it sold more phones there are there this is the whatever fifth or sixth generation of oneplus phones where we've only had two generations of pixel phones but if you're talking about just like from a unit to unit basis I would say probably the pixel does look better just by virtue of the fact that it is sold through Verizon and having the nation's largest carrier backing your phone definitely gives you a leg up right I think it's safe to say though that they're both relatively small compared to I phone samsung yeah yeah just kind of the fact of the matter yeah from Danny Green I don't know if we can really answer this one yet since we don't have it in our pockets but this would be a good request for a good compare/contrast episode coming up how does a 1 plus 60 compare to the Samsung Note 9 we should put those side-by-side well when we actually see them they're not out yet know that I know only one of them has a stylus right where is it those nine is the one with the stylus the oneplus 60 it's it's sort of I feel like it's probably more comparable to a galaxy s 9 like the note 9 is like sort of like way up there in terms of like specs in terms of battery it's got sort of the latest and greatest although all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a smartphone so it may not be a fair comparison but I generally like the oneplus ones because they're experiences up a cleaner a little bit less bloatware involved we'll see if there's bloatware once there's like a t-mobile version all right so I'll find a way they'll find a way yeah it's too early to really answer this still from Andre but do we have any of the specs for the 60 and do we have any launch date now it's still too early I just I was told October there are some details of her the phone but I haven't been able to confirm them all so I don't really want to share them right now but I mean I think there's gonna be a notch just like the six I'm not there this will definitely have a notch alright I'm no longer a fan this is I'm out I've gotten used to my my iPhone 10 notch okay I think this notch is smaller so there's that I so let's kick these questions in the back of our heads when we finally do get the oneplus 60 what's the specs on the camera have they made significant improvements since the one plus six and will they finally get wireless charging es wants to know if they're gonna do Cheeta is a chi or ki I keep forgetting it's Chi Chi is there gonna be cheap charging so let's be on the lookout for those when they come through yeah from Josh boy doesn't the oneplus only produce a limited amount of phones and will this change when they're bundled up with t-mobile I imagine it will change you're right they typically do sort of limited run of these phones it's not that limited I mean that imagines over a million and that's totally a gas I'm not too sure what the numbers are but imagine for t-mobile they'll have obviously a dedicated stock remember they're building they have to build a phone specifically tuned to t-mobile's network so they'll have a good stretch there a good sort of inventory of phones specifically for t-mobile customers at t-mobile stores from oh go ahead sorry are those phones gonna be different than the ones you buy online then yes like you're gonna okay I got so there's a global unlocked phone that kind of runs across all networks and there's gonna be one that's specifically tuned to t-mobile's network gotcha next up from Michael Brown again why are smart phones expected to be cheaper than computers aren't smartphones technically more capable I think it's really just our brains our lizard brains are kind of locked into it's smaller it should cost less although although you know nowadays it's like you don't you pay for premium for things to be smaller yeah that's a good point so I would say like that's going away right the idea of that we're paying a thousand to twelve hundred dollars for a phone that's the same price as a laptop now more than most laptops we're kind of getting past that point where we're expecting phones to be cheaper right like there are folks who spend a ton of money on phones almost every year so yeah my problem with that you're you're right but I think that there's a bit of a disconnect that the phone makers have been able to successfully trick us into thinking that because usually people end up replacing their phones a lot faster than they replace their laptops yeah granted they do get all more where you're with them all day all of that but like I have a MacBook Pro at home from like 10 years ago right I spent $1300 on it then and that still feels like a lot of money right so I don't know I I kind of feel like those are those prices and we've talked about this on the podcast before those prices do feel pretty steep and it's unfortunate the Mac prices are the phone price and it's almost as if like if they've already broken through this level if like $1200 like okay yeah did that I don't know so that's that's hard for me to deal with but whatever I just look at it sort of a logical perspective like how much time do I spend on my phone which is my computer and it's kind of a toss-up but I mean I like pretty much live on like my phone right so yeah so in that in that regard maybe it's justified it just feels like a lot of money it's painful yeah I mean it's something we all have to think about and that we all have to continue to additionally pay extra period premiums to expand on that lovely notch there we go that's a shout out for you Sony iPod I'm not a fan of the notch either did not remain to see your turn the mining art yeah yeah I guess so yeah I mean it's something I like the notch I just got Rogers just complacent he's just that did the notch is an instability just apathetic it's the same thing with ear pods ear pods are everywhere in New York City yeah there's just like and people are very used to them and we made fun of them we do call them cute God was a meme for a while Scott our own Scott Stein became a meme because no longer how ridiculous now he looks like he was that he's on the band guard of the the new trend yes a notch equals premium phone now yeah you can't make a good phone without it having a knotch I don't sir Samsung yeah let's take a question from faoud from how is the note 9 so much better when taking into consideration the price difference when the improvements are and he's using air quotes negligible I don't think what you were talking about earlier said it's necessarily better it's just that it's solely gonna sell more because of its business well I mean it is better Lloyd I guess it depends on the perspective you're looking at it from like if it depends on what phone you own right now you're upgrading from like a note 5 or whatever then that is a huge upgrade for you if you're if your phone is 2 or 3 years older or 3 years old that note 9 is gonna be a huge upgrade but yeah there are other there definitely other more cost-effective alternatives out there it may not get you everything you know four thousand milliamp hour battery or stylus but it will look at the job done it won't have to cost a thousand bucks so that's why that's why it's important we see phones like the oneplus gonna come out there and and be a viable option so you don't have to spend a thousand dollars on the phone yeah and we'll see what the consumer demand is gonna be for the note 9 so it's a thousand bucks starting right right and the Galaxy S 9 kind of had like lackluster sales whereas the iPhone 10 seemed to be doing reasonably well so we'll see it's still very early and we'll see how the note 9 actually sells if it doesn't sell well after the Galaxy S 9 you might expect next year it's Samsung might start lowering its prices either those other prices or at least offering more kind of breakthrough innovations because to your point I will say like yeah that the upgrades of this phone from the previous year or the s9 are fairly moderate and a little disappointing it's perfectly frank so yeah but you're the I guess they're trying to target folks who aren't necessarily upgrading every year you think that's maybe the better strategy these days I know a lot of people are just kind of married into this context like newer better all the time I myself like I I'm never in a rush but then again I'm not you guys I'm not the tech team I'm not the tech culture necessarily I'm the button pusher you're getting you're getting to different types of customers so I I'm speaking for you for a second here but I feel like Roger does you you buy a new phone almost every year yeah yeah whereas I had an iPhone 6 for like three three and a half years I kept that thing chugging a quarter I am probably closer to you than they are to me because that's not really sustainable have yeah but like so I have an iPhone 8 for work and admittedly I don't really see a market friends between that and my iPhone 6 maybe it's a little bit faster but that's the problem is is that the trip makers claim that they're like this this is the fastest processor we've ever made it's got more dude engine probably true but you just don't feel it it's that's an official term right in the keynote look at all the due date exactly so there's a graph chart there's a doodad count it's caught up to like 10,000 now yeah but even even then I I phone sales continue to do really well so like I can complain all I want but like people are still buying the iPhone 8 even though it looks it looks the same as the iPhones I think people are starting to veer towards iPhone 10 though because they are looking to buy something different which is exactly why in September in a couple weeks we're gonna see basically all of them are gonna look like I phone tons we're gonna see three phones they're gonna look like I front at least it'll all be named iPhone 10 is super good I hope one of them is named Frank let's hope one of them's named Frank it's a heartbreaking day because there's so many great questions still flowing in from Shaun from Caesar but we got him move on because we're just about out of time and I need an excuse to do this so we're gonna talk about the Amazon Frank danger is if the Amazon DVR does come to life ahead and it has over-the-air tuners will they make the tuners upgradeable to the new ATSC 3.0 is super specific question that I do I can tell you that I understood one of the words in that question so well look it I mean this is so rumored so we have no idea what the details on yeah and the feature sets to the in that regard the feature sites are still very up in the air so that's that is a very hard question it's a great question though yeah I love seeing bench struggle with it kudos to you one more from Philip Vaughn does the Amazon DVR work offline to watch your saved shows I'm trying to remember from the report apparently you are able to watch on your phone so you can do like your watch on the go you use the diva that's streaming though right that's not you would stream it well you would put it in the DVR it would have storage and then you would be able to loud is that what you're talking about I think so I believe there could be a DVR cloud feature to it we allow the live TV server have that built in now right so is it is it gonna be that much better I don't know it's it's they're gonna have to find something to make it more useful for people especially if it's gonna be a standalone thing and you know trying to convince people that our TiVo customers like oh yeah you should use this instead now is this truly a step forward cuz Huey AG points out isn't the DVR a life limited product as everything is trending towards on-demand even for traditional programs like sports and news and et cetera yeah that's why some people might find it surprising that they would work on something like this that being said I think Amazon is just trying to have a comprehensive portfolio where they're trying to do living room entertainment however you do it and there is going to be a segment of the population that is going to stay with cable they're gonna stay with live TV for the foreseeable future so there's no reason why Amazon shouldn't try to find ways to capture those customers get them into their ecosystem and then once you do that you sell them more echo devices get them to be prime customers it's all those monkeys shopping exactly so if this is a way to get you to buy that first Amazon device then they that is exactly what they're gonna do so everybody out there once again in the chat get that hashtag running hashtag fire Frank apologies to anybody out there named Frank whose job we just cost we gotta wrap it up for the day we are over our time and yeah we got a jet so thanks everybody Roger you want to take us out yeah 3:59 is available in iTunes tune in stitcher feedburner google play music google podcast the amazon echo and of course Cena comm we'll see you all tomorrow good bye thanks everybody you