Gadgetory

good morning it's Monday September 12 this time for another episode of the 359 podcast with Ben Fox Rubin and Alfred a good morning guys what the hell are we talking about today hey all right there i am so we're going to hopefully not scare the hell out of everybody with this latest podcast but there's some pretty unpleasant news in the world of technology and we're going to try to get to as much of it as we can in four minutes I'll also pretend to be Roger for today because he's working from home so Roger will be back tomorrow as always we'd love to hear your questions so sending your questions and me and Alfred and Brian will try to get to as many as possible at the end of the show but I guess that's about it anything you want to say I offered before we get started it's gonna be a great show looking forward to talking about Samsung and it's a never-ending list of problems than it's been going through this weekend yes yeah absolutely so without delay let's uh let's get moving on the podcast see you guys in four minutes send us your questions will be back in just about 3 minutes and 59 seconds starting in three two welcome to the 359 where we talk about the top tech news of the day plus whatever crap we want to throw in I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Alfred ring okay so first up the bad news for Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 just keeps getting worse on Friday the US Consumer Product Safety Commission said it's working with Samsung on an official recall for the smartphones after about three dozen incidents of the phones overheating or exploding and over the weekend the New York Post said a six-year-old boy had to be rushed to the hospital after an 07 burst into flames in his hands boy that's bad can samsung regain its credibility with the note 7 even after recalling these devices Alfred uh as good as the samsung note 7 is I don't think it can i I think it's the you know it's the hoverboard all over again we're essentially it was the big thing everyone was really into it and then I started blowing up and then you know you don't really see them anywhere now and they were hoping so that would be horrific for samsung I mean like this is one of its two main flagship phones of the year that would be pretty bad for these guys especially because they were just starting to gain momentum on you know their phone business everything was starting to look really good for these guys that that seems to be the biggest problem is that you know they can't really really can't catch a break with this it's it's actually a pretty good phone and the thing is that you know for this separately explosions yeah and I don't know how many samsung you know note sevens are out there but I mean I've it's it's happened enough that you know that they have to recall it that even you know the federal government is getting involved in a sense of you know we got to put the stop says you can't bring it on planes you and it's happening everywhere and it's just died so they're actually the recall is for 2.5 million notes Evans that they had sold within the first two weeks there are about thirty five incidents that it occurred before then so it's a small number but it's enough for it to be a really big deal and the thing is they could have just recalled you know the ones the model that you know they were exploding but the thing is I feel like Samsung wanted to just play it safe and bring back all that we think they had to yeah so next in our scare the hell out of you about technology podcast episode Tesla is updating its autopilot software for its high-end electric cars making the self-driving feature safer following a fatal crash a few months ago the system will rely on more radar instead of optical detection and include more visible warnings and on the dashboard and sharper application of the brakes in an emergency so Alfred do you think this is enough from Tesla to get you comfortable and get into a self-driving car absolutely I oh really I love auto pilot I tried it before I'm looking forward to trying it so if anyone out there wants to get me in one I I'm just a huge fan of self-driving cars in general I can't wait until they're I can get one on my own I am also a huge fan of this but I still feel like the technology still has a ways to go and I think that fatal crash was a very unfortunate example of that but I think autopilot had been out for a long amount of time before that fatal crash happened and you know for for you know however many Tesla models are out there and then just one crash I mean I feel like it was bound to happen at some point again ha it was horrible it happened to him but I think with these updates I think we're seeing a step yeah in a better direction for it totally so with the last 20 seconds to have let's try to lighten it up a little bit by just making fun of apples air pods Alfred would you be caught dead wearing these things um dead yes because i think the moment I put it on somebody would i'd tell mighty to kill me for it Yeah right it's a great opener i guess you know you could really i don't know like start a conversation with folks so anyway I gotta wrap up so if you want to read more about these stories check us out on cnet I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Alfred aim thanks for listening and that's a cut on the audio recording for the podcast ok sorry for depressing everybody in this night but hopefully we helped some people because you should not be using your Galaxy Note seven at all well yeah you have one put it down do not charge it don't use it don't do anything with it they told everyone to shut him off my friend that hasn't note 7 the one that was his first smartphone oh yeah i texted him earlier today's like hate are you still using your note 7 I haven't heard back so probably isn't yeah but this is a good example of like what happened with that six-year-old is that we just kept kind of have to keep repeating the fact of like do not use this phone because apparently somebody was still using it even after the federal government on Friday said put the phone down stop using it all together we're gonna do a full-on recall on these things just like completely shut it down right like don't even reset don't even charge it yeah just like put it in a corner what maybe not in this very flammable area right or it is it also waterproof I think it's water first put it in like a tank you just put it in the toilet that way if it blows up at least you know let's hope it doesn't blow up but that's not the worst idea I've ever heard you're gonna return it the same song anyway so all right do we have any questions no real questions but John says that Samsung should just implement a global recall not locked on the regional restrictions which i think is a pretty good idea that's interesting I don't really know how the recall is going to work so I wouldn't anticipate that there would be too many restrictions they're really just trying to get these phones out of here one of the things that I wanted to get you in the podcast but we didn't have that much time was like I'm really curious and I hope Samsung starts to answer these questions as to why this happened in the first place I mean like they've been making smartphones for years now they're the top smartphone seller like why did this problem happen with their flagship phone with the batteries i mean it's primarily that I feel like it's one of the factories that like made the batteries for them and they can't figure out or I mean they know which ones it is but they're not like name it because like 35 cases out of you know two million something smartphone right it's a needle in a haystack yeah some ways yeah I mean if it I feel like they're sophisticated enough to know which ones it is but I think I feel like they also just don't want consumers to you know look fine figure out there's a model it's a bit of a headache for them so I think they're just going with the router let's just call them all back I think this also relates the lithium-ion batteries just like what's with our board so but like everybody has lithium-ion batteries I think like they're in a bunch of other people its technology to its the really cheap ones that are the ones that are exploring that's how they turn up with the hoverboards mm-hmm also where it basically if you if you got you know a premium hoverboard those weren't exploding but if you got you know like a really cheap one on amazon that's why they had to you know recall those in the sense of oh you can get it for a hundred dollars and everyone was doing it because it was really easy to get them for christmas yeah we don't know it's nice to see that some hoverboards did not explode now that's really very pleasant so hey so while we're at it do we know who actually manufactured that samsung battery do we know who's really at fault here because I mean there are some hardcore Samsung fans out there and I'm curious to see who's trying to fight the system here who's braven to try to hang brave enough to try to hang on to the phone but also who's really the troublemaker here so as Alfred said it appears it could be possible that this is from a third-party manufacturer that supplied the batteries to Samsung we don't know we don't know I think there's still a lot more that we have to peel back from the onion and I think Samsung still has to answer a lot of questions as far as being gung-ho and holding onto the phone I think we're way past that at this point you really just should get it replaced I mean like even if your phone has not been causing you any problems whatsoever this is one of the more serious recalls that I've seen since starting to cover technology so like it will not hurt you to get the phone replaced but it could to keep that phone so with strongest recommendation possible I would say just turn in the phone if you really love the note 7 just get the new one it probably won't explode yeah I don't understand anybody that feels like they should keep it just because you're getting a new one either way it's not you know what do you have to go maybe a week or so without it I don't know what the replacement you know rate is but that would be horrible the fact not have your smartphone for a week I'd have to like talk to my family members this movie but the fact is it's a it's a new smartphone anyway if somebody offered me to replace my phone right now for free I would do it immediately it's it's a no-brainer except for the fact that like most people have only had their notes Evans for like two weeks so that's like pretty close to his fresh out of the boxes you could get and it is also like a huge inconvenience to get a different phone I think one of the other interesting shoes to drop is how many people are going to walk away from the note 7 altogether and I don't know go to an iphone go to a different samsung phone or go to a different manufacturer so this only spells trouble for samsung i would say Anthony says one interesting thing is how did Samsung know only a certain amount are infected is it possible that they knew somewhere that they were going to explode and then if so why released them at all so he's really going to the conspiracy theory end of things I think that that would probably be some form of criminality if they were at least any form a phone into the market that they knew would explode or had the possibility to explode the way that they do testing on phones these days is supposed to be extremely rigorous and so if this was a giant screw up on Samsung's part they will be scrambling to fix for quite some time into the future I mean like even when they release the next note people are going to this this whole story will resurrect itself next year too so this is going to continue to be a black eye for these guys I would say interesting conspiracy theory though ghost Davis says so you can't take it to the store I was told you have to wait for them to send one in the mail okay I don't actually have an answer to that question we can look into it and try to respond in the comments afterwards yep I don't know yeah I don't know all the ins and outs of the specific recall so but thank you for the question and there are still plenty of people who are very very interested in the phone I mean it on paper it's got great specs so even with all the danger hand i'm curious to those watching listening who's still like I don't care once they fix this I'm still all in yeah this thing got fantastic reviews I mean like between this and the s7 and s7 edge samsung had like a really fantastic lineup of flagship phones so it's it's very unfortunate i would say that's what i was saying earlier it's a shame because it actually is a really good phone the one thing that i am curious about though is you know why is this only affecting the note 7 i'm not sure that as a different kind of battery that the you know galaxy s7 has any active but it is weird then in this flagship lineup that they put out that it's it's only with the note 7 yeah that's why I'm thinking that there is a possibility it might be some sort of like third party and battery manufacturer but like it's a flagship phone so it really shouldn't have a cheap battery in it and that's why I think it's like pretty problematic that it would end up with like a cheaper one if that is the case or if that is the issue but I don't know like the way that a lot of these things are logistics possible that some bad batteries ended up getting into the max I mean like they make them with so many different parts from so many different manufacturers that that is a possibility what about third-party chargers not only the third party battery being at fall but there's comments and discussion about people improperly for lack of a better word charging these phones which is causing the problem I think that even if you got a third-party charger that real shouldn't be an excuse on samsung to have an exploding phone you know like that charger must be like what what sort of third-party charger is there that's actually going to cause your phone to like really overheat and explode also if you're getting the phone fresh I mean they usually come with chargers I don't know anyone that is using with the third-party charger you know within the first two weeks of its release yeah I think one of the interesting things that I'm seeing from the comments though is that if people really are that gung-ho and excited about this phone then maybe there is a chance that it resurrects itself after the recall because if people really like it and it really is this like you know best cutting-edge samsung phone then maybe maybe people will continue to buy it afterwards right now I don't see it that much but who knows some people are concerned that there are still phones out on the shelf that haven't been purchased yet that could still be at risk I would assume that Samsung's recalled yeah across the board now they're recalling those yes yeah I think they're smart enough to do that I would imagine but these are really good questions and i would say that there are definitely questions that we should be asking Samsung as well as far as like what caused this why did this happen in the first place I mean like I'm sure that's something that they're looking into as well yeah it is scary though like the just the thought of this and how even though it is relatively isolated when you think about the grand scheme of the Samsung sales like how prevalent it is we haven't seen anything really like this ever have we from Samsung in general with this much danger and a piece of tech that was so highly coveted I would say that this is probably the most prominent in recent years there there have been smaller incidents I mean like one thing that comes to mind is antennagate which was a couple years ago with the iphone they built the antenna into the iphone that if you were holding it the wrong way it wouldn't make a phone call properly or something like that and they would have to fix those but that wasn't a safety issue that was like more of like a features issue and they were able to fix it so yeah this is like a much much more serious safety issue I would say but yeah some of these things like they pop up every now and then but they're very infrequently like this much of a safety concern yeah that might be it for today we've got a lot of fantastic listeners and fans contributing but no new questions coming through at this point I want to just maybe call today yeah and I'm sorry to sound like a broken record but if this helps anybody I'm gonna say it again if you have a note 7 stop using it don't charge it and you know follow the recall procedures you should not be holding on to that phone that's that's about it all right all right let's write all right so if you liked what you saw or heard check us out on cnet com we're also on iTunes feedburner google play soundcloud tune in did I get everything got it oh my god alright and Roger will be back tomorrow I think with Alfred will try to figure that out and yeah thanks for watching see you