Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Roger Chang I'm Joanie sauce we kicked off a new package on 5g today and our leadoff story takes a look at what 5g will actually feel like when it launches and this is my story and I took care to basically try to poke holes and all the hype around flat G basically don't expect it to change your life right away coverage is gonna be spotty or non-existent your phones might run out of batteries really fat or another power really fast there might be problems with canta feet getting on to 5g or getting kicked back down to 4G basically all the problems we saw when we transition LTE will probably see with 5 G's right it's gonna change eventually so yeah look this is the assignment over 5g is I think justified in terms of what it can do for us over the long term when this thing actually gets built out and there's a bit more mature but this story's really Unruh minor that with all the hype there like early on that things aren't gonna go as smoothly as everyone says it well what's the expectation for when we'll reach that point of that maturity that's pseudo maturity like like let's say prematurity but not like clunky ok doesn't actually work I would say 2020 is probably the better timeframe t-mobile has said that they they're promising a nationwide network by 2020 nationwide ish by 2020 and that'll that'll definitely get a compass with faster if they comply with Sprint AT&T and Verizon I'll probably be not that far behind and then most of the Asian countries will start building out or will build up most of their networks at that point so I think that's the point where like you can start to actually get excited with 5g ok all right next up ro Stephens Jacqueline had a nice breakdown on how Google uses computational photography to boost the ability of the single camera on the pixel 3 for instance he uses AI to make better portrait photos takes a bunch of HDR shots and combines them for better low-light photos under night shot and it's got something called super high res this is basically making up for the lack of an optical zoom lens uses data to kind of fill in the blanks so cool sup but is this enough Joan to convince you that only one camera is all you need on a phone you know how I like multiples of cameras on phones that Samsung for camera for shooting Gary but I think that sounds great I mean it sounds really cool the ability to do all these fans know is the computational photographer you what also enables the stuff like the wide selfie mode and like the the thing that'll fix when you are blinking in the middle of your photo no be so the wide selfie mode they actually will have a second camera on the front that is a wide selfie cam so that's not that's not complicated you can't really use data for that but for in terms of fixing things fixing blemishes yeah that's what that probably what Google's Banga tricks all about and then lastly Joan you were covering Netflix earnings last night and there was some concern that there was gonna be a blip or well yeah last quarter with earnings you know it's always about expectations and yes and it anything the only thing that people ever care about with Netflix is how many subscribers did you add yeah three months ago Netflix said we had a subscribers just not as many those we said we wanted and everyone freaked out and so last night people were really worried that maybe this was Netflix standing on the brink of a downturn especially cuz other companies and technology haven't been doing so great but Netflix said you know how he said you have this many subscribers we actually like did a lot better than that and so everyone freaked out but in a mighty way yeah it's interesting that that they're seeing that kind of success give them like the sheer number of streaming services that are launching now like yeah Netflix is just sort of that core that no one really gives up right I mean people always say if you're gonna have a streaming service the mindset that consumers have is like you're gonna have maybe two maybe three and one of them is gonna be Netflix there you go for a full coverage truce on a CNN I'm Roger and Joe nice offer thanks the same I missed that chime it's weird recording the podcast there's no chime at the end I make it ourselves we actually like I feel like it's not done until I make that noise you are a dog and a Pavlovian no way that being said it is good to be back and thanks getting everybody for your patience will give me the quick and dirty version so when we do the video show like this that you can see there's a lot of technology here in play and when one thing goes wrong you see there's a domino effect and long story short we use this device called the TriCaster which is a very compact consumer friendly level TV switcher to do all the broadcasting multi-camera work this that yeah thing boom boom that died it just straight up died Monday morning and as I was setting up for the show catastrophic hard drive failure so I spent the last two days recovering redundantly backing up rebuilding all the projects and I've got this thing back on life-support and I see in the chat right now some people are talking about that there's maybe some sound issues so we might still be experiencing a couple things so I'm on it now we do have sound now right tell me so anyways thanks again everybody now is the time to continue the best part of the show the QA so send in your questions and comments about all the stories we covered already I have one thing why do we have to give a crap about 5g I remember 3G and 4G and it was fine why is this such a hubbub to trying to get a faster network yeah it's actually question I think that's if you if you're not really if you don't follow the wireless industry that's a very natural question to ask I would say that the jump from 3G and 4G was pretty momentous when you think about what that gave us we went from you know like a dial-up connection or phone to a broadband connection equivalent or our home what that led to it was things like uber and live streaming service and netflix on your phone yes netflix on your phone all these services really new services that didn't exist before the advent of 4G so the thinking is with 5g it's not just about speed it's about the responsiveness something called latency the lag time between when you ping you know when you touch your phone and and one of things networking comes back to you that's still like at this point like it's less than a second but with 5g it's more like a millisecond and that kind of responsive network is great for like self-driving cars talking to each other or remote surgery telemedicine the idea of like streaming VR games your head and actually playing games and having it be responsive yeah vibe 5g is critical to power some of that stuff and really the what we get excited about is the unknown is what fives you can actually unlock and again that's this is when 5g actually gets into that as you're saying that prematurity level not enough people using it enough people using it there's enough coverage companies and creators can start testing it out exactly exactly like it really days it's gonna be a lot of like one-off experiments for instance magically 18 T's working of magically because I sort of set a small 5g hot zone in their headquarter to kind of test out how I'm just streaming AR is gonna work on the glass right and you can imagine with 5g like those glasses over one don't necessarily need to have all that data there but you could have all these experiences flow through wirelessly right now so uh I'm excited for most part when what's the transition from 3G to 40 what year was that I was like oh eh oh 10 no 2010 so back nine or 10 years ago and it was kind of brought it took a while right there was like Verizon a big splashy launch of multiple cities and then like for a while the stories were all just like four G's now available in like these five cities and that that went on for about a year and then I got you know I got to the point where we took 4G for granted you started to see a lot more or these apps get developed that that really could exist before right so it's too bad that we're not rolling cameras all the time because what you guys missed is before the show I had that exact question for Roger because to me I just thinking like it's just it's just faster right and he got to sit me down and explained it to me like a child so if only we could have gotten a Dante put it way way more entertaining another aspect of the 5g implementation people are kind of cute about is cloud gaming is that really gonna be a potential thing what can you say about that yeah I imagine I mean you know game at all I haven't looked into it personally with gaming but I have looked into video and retro reality and so like anything that needs to be real-time rendered and done simultaneously with multiple users 5g is gonna make a huge difference it's gonna unlock a lot of potential so yeah cloud gaming is one of those things group video experiences that all happen on a phone in one place I think like like crowd mobs or what does it call flash mobs but like via like there's crazy ideas of what can happen when you have a mobile device with that kind of fat pipe yeah and the idea is that that mobile device doesn't need to do all that like computational crunching for that VR game I think all that can be done in cloud and then because that latency can be shot to your phone super fast and there isn't there isn't a lag time I was told that you know we all have Google photos the one thing well maybe not everyone but I do and I use it pretty religiously the one annoying thing is when you you scroll that further through like older photos it still needs a couple seconds to load depending on your network connection with 5g assuming you've got a better fashion and that latency the idea is you can pull up your photos from Google photos faster than you can from the photos are stored in your own phone because the latency is so minimal that is like all theoretically like sort peak speeds optimal conditions so we'll see if that actually happens but like it's an interesting idea that like these cloud services that are still there so lag for this cloud service is now a lot of that lag time gets diminished with o.j something that just occurred to me as well the reason I didn't really pay a much attention to the big transition from three to four I didn't work for seeing it at the time so I wasn't surrounded by it yeah hot topic of conversation so maybe that's that's why I'm feeling a little over burnt on on 5g because I keep hearing you guys talk about I'm like who cares anyways next question coming in from our buddy Ricky B is 5g going to help get better signal inside of buildings that's something I can get onboard because the signal in this office is yeah yeah so I mean it doesn't help penetrate brick walls any better than they are in fact particularly with millimeter spectrum they're really super high frequencies radio airwaves that that carry that superfast high-capacity 5g Network that actually has real trouble penetrating building it's because it runs at a higher frequency even trees mess it up treat like if the leaf blows by like you're gonna see a bit of a disruption so make it sound so there are a lot of workarounds that these carriers have been using but I would imagine inside in buildings you're still gonna be relying on Wi-Fi or if you have 5g it's gonna be sort of tethered to like some land connection so yeah it's more I feel like it's more for outdoor coverage or if you've got if you got 5g indoor you'll need to have like specific radio setup and that's I don't know that's I don't know if you'd want that necessarily like a little small cell sitting you're sending the office somewhere but yeah well thanks for bringing us all the good news next question from Timothy do well the characters increase their prices for 5g that is a fantastic question and what I'm still trying to get the bottom of spring has already kind of teased the idea that that 5g will be considered a premium service and might charge more but like Sprint may not exist in a few months when they get taken over by t-mobile or if they get taken over by t-mobile and so and I've talked to and the CEO who said that is now kind of moved on he's no longer with the company he's there's a new CEO and they've kind of had they haven't really talked about what the pricing scheme might look like the rest of the carrier's haven't said that much about it I know Verizon's home broadband 5g service it's fairly competitive it's like 50 bucks if you're a Verizon customer seventy if you're not a Verizon customers so I think early days it's it's it's going to be kind of how 4G was the you know it'll be sort of the same plans but you get 5g you get that capacity and think once we start running into the capacity castrates the carriers will will start raising prices then next question coming in from Sravan Servan is there any 5g network anywhere right now you mentioned Verizon who else is on that docket so right now it's just Verizon and Verizon use this is like pho 5g technology which they use this proprietary version of 5g that that no one else in the world agreed to they just are kind of did their own and that's kind of how they got out there first 18 t says they're gonna have the first mobile 5g industry based 5g network layer this year in 12 markets but I imagine it's gonna be like two or three blocks in each of those markets like it's gonna be fairly limited they're gonna just sort of test up the capabilities I like this question from Mike Shaw he's asking who's really gonna buy this so let's break down the marketing strategy a lot of us are pretty satisfied before G of course everybody's gonna want bigger better faster that's inevitable but is it really something that is going to be appreciated or is it gonna be kind of niche what do you think the adoption is gonna be like on 5g that's a really good question I I mean it's part of the problem is that everyone's doing it so it's one of those things where like if you don't get in the race then you're already kind of behind so your friends jumped off a bridge like if everyone's offering 5g I don't think it's like I said I don't know if they're gonna charge you extra but it's definitely an incentive to say well maybe I want to switch to t-mobile because they've got 5g as opposed to just 4G so that's I think that's sort of the motivating factor we got a little bit of an off topic question coming through people are curious I didn't even know about this considering I had my face buried in the TriCaster for the last 48 hours but apparently YouTube went down do we know so I actually I email emailed YouTube this morning because last night they weren't sharing what was the cause of it and I emailed them this morning and they told me that they still don't have anything to share on why it happened but it was a it was a big deal how long was it about an hour oh and so that's been not only YouTube's proper like watching your unboxing videos and other stuff like that but also like YouTube TV their live TV service and YouTube music their music streaming service maybe their TriCaster went down to the fact YouTube only runs on one old tripod yeah yeah that's what I kind of want a vision it happened right as I was putting my kid to sleep so I missed that window of outage yeah I didn't panic at all yeah when I went back onto YouTube it was fine everything was good yeah so I was a happy camper from Joseph Gauss when do you think like what year is 5g gonna really become commonplace commonplace I say the end of 2020 early 2021 depending on these guys are super competitive and they're there they're racing to build these networks out as fast as possible and I mean t-mobile's making a lot of promises because I because I think they want to get their deal with Sprint done so they're promising the moon but I imagine like given the track record of the folks at t-mobile like they've built out their 4G network pretty fast so I imagine like yeah 2020 2021 you'll get you'll be able to access it it won't be like completely that's that promise of that high-frequency millimeter wave spectrum that's not gonna be everywhere but they sort of talked about using using kind of lower bandwidth spectrum for 5g to get to more places and I think you'll get you'll get some of that the the millimetre stuff that's kind of they'll probably be in bigger cities there'll be pockets of zones where things are super super fast but you'll get some someone's of 5g elsewhere bye-bye end of 2020 I like some of this chatter in the chat box right now or there's I wouldn't call them conspiracy theorists but maybe heavy skeptics where they're questioning how are you really going to validate if it's truly 5g or is it just some marketing ploy that's a fantastic question that for like for GE got complete messed up by at marketing terms at t-mobile particularly like they they just decided to turn like they they called some version of some advanced version of 3G they just decided one day it's now 4G and like everyone kind of like first they crapped on it then they'd like joined in and then then the term had no meaning and hey that's kind of like our show what the 359 we got we were like five seconds behind oh I think we were pretty good today in the beginning remember when we first started doing the live show and how many people were like what the hell is this crap and now we actually have like a moderate amount was the amount of people kind of like us well yeah it's very much very modest anyways we're talking about what what's the question oh yeah 3G and then 4G got muddled in terms of like oh yeah yeah I mean this time around it's a lot clearer I think everyone agrees as to what 5u looks like what the standards are so it's not as it's not gonna be as confusing they are like I said using the plan to use 5g on different bands of spectrum and that'll that'll actually have a huge impact on how fast the the network speeds are gonna be but generally they're gonna be 10 to 100 times faster than what you're getting now so either way it's gonna be good I've got time for a couple more questions this one's also from Mike Shaw is 5g going to put internet in DSL out of business whoo yeah probably probably not I mean that's what Verizon is up in for but it's like I said that spectrum is pretty finicky and it's gonna require a lot of infrastructure to build out so I don't know how scalable it is I imagine that in some places 5g might be a good alternative when you can't like lay down actual like fiber copper but it's not gonna I don't think it's gonna completely displace like in like landline infrastructure broadband service like that so I think they're gonna complement each other I think that's a good way to put it I mean I still think I want to have a hardwire into my home yeah so yeah I'm just gonna put that out there let's talk about rollout before we say goodbye Scott is excited for the employment implications of 5g as an alternative for Wi-Fi in rural areas where you can barely get Wi-Fi do we see that as a future option what kind of coverage can we expect and how are they gonna roll this out they can start picking select locations big cities how are they gonna do this because last time I checked goggle Fiber fell flat on its face oh yeah well Google Fiber Google really wanted this so expensive it was actually put fiber down and yeah just in terms of the the markets it's gonna be I don't know that they you know imagine some of the larger markets will get foggy first for and in terms of it being like a home broadband replacement like if you're if you're in like a rural area you're not getting cell phone coverage now I'm a little skeptical like they're the carriers are promising 5g will help with that I'm a little skeptical about it we're actually launching another series on rural broadband coverage starting next week well we'll kind of explore this topic and 5g will well obviously be involved in the mix but it's tough if you're if you're in a rural area where there isn't a lot of infrastructure now I mean chances are even with 5g like 5g still requires radios that are hung up everywhere and so if if it's not there now there's less likelihood that'll be there with 5g like it'll still be a problem for sure so we got one more for the road this is an interesting thought have there been any studies put into health impact any research about and people are always gonna ask you know oh you got your cell phone in your pocket you got the cancer or something like that you got the cancer okay that was probably insensitive what kind of studies or information we have about the effects on well-being with 5g waves yeah there I mean there was a report out earlier this year about it there haven't been any I think traditional health studies because just because those radio Airways aren't out and being used as extensively as is sufficient for a study there's always that there's always concerned that I think having that many radio airwaves flying around you is not a good thing but at this point there hasn't really been like a lot of concrete proof that you know these signals are affecting you in a materially negative way like I guess it's it's it goes down to more practical things like don't put your phone to your head all the time like though having in your pockets probably not that much better but your brain isn't in your pocket yeah exactly it's not affecting your brain so that's that's a big deal but it's yeah there there aren't a lot of clear answers there's obviously a lot of concern about it and 5g serve we have to wait and see once he's down watcher deployed what what potential ramifications there are with that but it's still it's a little early to say all right and that's a perfect way to end the show on our big grand return after the little little break we undertake thanks everybody for joining us we'll be back one more time tomorrow and then resuming regular schedule next week actually yeah until something else blows up in here thanks again everybody for your patience and we'll say goodbye now yeah the 359 is available on iTunes tune in feedburner stitcher google play music google podcast the amazon echo of course cnet.com we'll see y'all tomorrow bye folks but you