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 holy crap it's been a long day welcome to the 359 episode 440 I'm BVG and we got Roger Shara and Jess here to answer all of your questions about this damn phone damn phone so yes this podcast a little bit different today it's running a little bit late obviously but it's gonna be dedicated to the galaxy no 9 I'll probably stay quiet for most of this thing and let the experts actually talk about it but as usual if you have any questions about this phone anything samsung related or mold related just and sharra know everything about phones but give any questions even the comments section but I will pick out the best and we'll get them in three minutes or 59 seconds we'll see about the best hang out everybody will see you back in the chat in 3 minutes and 59 seconds from 3 welcome to the 359 I'm Roger Chang and with me our special guest shark Tipton and Jessica dole cart they are here to talk about the Galaxy Note 9 and really all things Samsung cuz it wasn't just about the note 9 today right correct so first of all we should get to the phone let's break down the flagship product this is no 9 what are some of the highlight features ok so I've got the note 9 right here the highlight in any note is going to be the stylus and what Samsung did and this is really the standout feature of the phone is not only can you write and draw like you normally could but there is a Bluetooth antenna in here so it is Bluetooth enabled which means that if you like long press or short press on this button depending on which app you're in it will do something so maybe you launch the camera app switch around the camera take a picture so this this basically extends the functionality beyond what we normally see other than that we see a lot more storage options and a much larger battery but essentially some features are the same as the galaxy s 9 including the camera setup yeah well I guess the other thing that stood out to me was the the price right thousand dollars starting starting and that's 12 128 gigabyte version there's a 512 gigabyte version that is 1250 and yeah they both like with a 512 SD card you can get a whole terabyte of storage but I mean that's those pretty big numbers right yeah I mean it really is especially when you consider that flash storage is so cheap right now like you could buy micro SD cards like I was just looking like a 64 gig one you can get for like five bucks on Amazon and you know that's one of the nice things about Samsung phones as you can expand the memory but you can do it really cheaply so you know kind of the the memory as the big selling point for why it's more expensive is a little shaky to me and I mean look the iPhone 10 is a thousand but it was a big design change over the previous generation this phone you know I Fontana also includes cutting edge technology with a 3d front-facing camera we don't see this in here we have an iris scanner and that's great but that's been around in generations and the phones just get more expensive so I think what we're looking at is really a shift and in what you know the appropriate price for a high-end device should be and Samsung is trying to make a claim yeah well that's that sucks for all of our wallets yeah so but going through some of the other features you talked about the battery which is the other kind of big point they were focusing on it's 21% bigger capacity yeah it's 4,000 milliampere what there you go so I mean you think that's enough to get people to like is that a big enough feature that people care about I mean people complain about that all the time right I think that the major driving points for purchase you've got the camera definitely you've got screen quality but these days it's just don't be bad battery life is huge so there are a lot of people especially now that you can't remove batteries and swap them as you could you know I'm 10 15 years ago and there really is a demand for phones with long lasting batteries of course there are a lot of things you can do this phone has fast charging it's got wireless charging you can top up your phone every day it'll go from zero to completely full and probably around to two and a half hours so there there are ways to extend battery life but I think I think people are just really worried about running out because the phone is such an important part of our daily lives I mean what would you do without your phone if it went dead you're eight I'd go back home charge my phone the day of the train schedule like you know right actually I wouldn't be able to make it home yeah yeah I think a lot of people get very worried yes absolutely and the other big feature the improvement of the camera the intelligent camera right yeah okay the same camera setup this is a little bit of AI software this is software that we've seen on other phones including some high-end phones from Huawei it's not new this is something that a lot of phones are going to be picking up basically it sees a cookie and identifies it as food and changes the settings so this is potentially useful I wouldn't say it's a make or break in any way shape or form I also thought when we were just playing with it you know and I haven't used it since you have this but when we were just playing with it earlier it seemed that it was slow like it took a little you know it was like you had to wait a beat before it figured out what it was instead of just being able to take the picture I mean and you'll find out more when you do it more but yeah and you can't swipe it away like you can and Huawei phones it's either on or it's off okay for all of our Samsung Galaxy Note 9 coverage checks on CNN I'm Roger Cheng I'm sure I sit in and Jessica doll court thanks for listening I mean at least Scott wasn't on the show to then it'd be like six hours over anyway thanks everybody for joining us for the recording of the audio podcast I'm jumping into the chat now like I always do and pulling out your questions and comments to keep the conversation going needless to say we have a lot to talk about the phone but there's actually more than a few people in the chat who want to hear more about the watch changing gears here for a second yeah there was a Galaxy home speaker and the galaxy watch shows I cancel we're back on one chart I can take over oh there you go I mean it wasn't a huge surprise but we did rise to see like a ton of leaks coming ahead of time well well this is a public day like they did that they leave their own watch she did but scratch what I just said I mean the thing that was intriguing to me they were they were promising multiple days on a single charge with an LTE battery or that part wasn't clear to me but they said several days on a single charge which I was like that's that's impressive if they can pull that off right no I mean yeah but I mean I mean I guess if you're doing sleep tracking with it but but realistically like you're probably gonna be taking it off anyway you're not using your watch with the same you know constant resource claiming as you would for a phone you just don't hit a watch as well but the problem is like the watch is smaller has a small battery and it's never really like this Apple watch really can't last more than a day maybe a day and a half right about doing things with that though there is an LTE connection yeah I am kind of curious if that claim would extend to using data that's yeah that's where you go and your run cuz this thing once you put LTE data only it's you know last like 90 minutes maybe so no one stopped of course yeah that's like so I have to wonder how or if they were able to figure out balancing LT usage and longevity on that you know also it'll be great to see the watch in person I haven't seen it today I came right back to the office but it sounds at least like it's very similar to the gear watches yeah yeah yeah that the rotating dial and they made a big deal about it being circular yeah it's interesting that they I guess they basically have scrapped the gear name the gear name is a failure now and it's just it's galaxy watch decide yeah but so what's their home thing isn't a Galaxy home yeah yeah so maybe you know they're just trying to like ya know that yeah you're just kind of weird they're like last year it's just their perfect marketing thing right it's a galaxy of devices but why didn't they do that before when we have like a galaxy fridge or a galaxy dishwasher maybe Farah they do have a galaxy suit no they did make smart suits did they really yeah all right yeah they had him at CES like last year they before okay like I know when I was in Korea few years ago and I saw a galaxy suits they were not smart well those are just more like Brooks Brothers yeah they're just like nice really kind of expensive surprise suits yeah all right Brian give you questions yeah can I leave this seat I've been here since 10 o'clock this morning no no we're almost done here you're there forever we've got a couple of good comments our wallet says the galaxy note looks so good it might rip me away from the Apple ecosystem strong I would say wait till next year yeah like I think the biggest Samsung changes were gonna see here next year you know like in squid now agree as to the Galaxy S Pen yeah with like the in under screen mean however you call it a fingerprint reader that like works on the front yeah like 5g you know this foldable phone you know even when we talked to a Samsung exec after the keynote like that's what he was saying you know that they have tons and tons of innovation coming up right so you know if you think the note 9 is great you might want to just you know Samsung give it welcome or a longtime partner we've seen the Galaxy phones coming out first to market with Qualcomm you know next generation processor so it's very possible that Samsung will also nail an exclusive with the Galaxy S 10 having you know the first Qualcomm ultrasonic fingerprint reader and display and that's something that I would kind of expect I would be more surprised if that didn't happen I mean I wouldn't be surprised if they end up with the first 5g phone right the 5g mass-market phone yeah I mean I think it just I think it's just gonna be a race with that yeah but give it you know it's like the timing look the latest timing Qualcomm has given me four phones is like second quarter which would fit you know if like the s10 is usually like March right usually launches towards the end yeah right you know so that would be I would say you know there might be like a one-off 5g specific phone that no one wants to buy like that Motorola thing with there's literally zp3 with a moto mod that won't be available until sometime in 2019 when you put this big honker on the back of headphone it's just you know that that seems like a play for a Verizon to be able to claim that it was yours to a 5g thing but it is not a 5g enabled phone and keep in mind that those first 4G phones I don't know the very first one was the HTC Thunderbolt and that was a terrible terrible phone it was a basically built to demonstrate the LTE connection and other than that it was a terrible phone Brian what do you got moving on Cody Williams wants to know with that 4,000 milliamp hour battery what is that what's the benchmark they they tout the all-day battery but what about for a heavy user where does that fall off start to happen with usage yeah I think that's a great question and it's one that I can't wait to answer seen it has a pretty rigorous battery test with video drain and we'll kind of hit that thing two or three times until we get some pretty consistent answers basically what we've seen for the Galaxy S 9 Plus which is sort of comparable I guess the most comparable in terms of screen size and then the modern processor the Snapdragon 845 is that you're still going to want to charge it for a charging cycle you overnight but really it just needs two hours at some point during your day so if I were to wake up at 6:00 in the morning and have a late night and stay out until 1:00 in the morning I would not feel confident that my phone would last you know you start seeing those double digits so the single digits on battery reserves and you start getting very very nervous and let's face it I'm not ever gonna use like the power saving like I am the person who's turning off all the connections and dimming the screen and okay I could get home in 30 minutes I'm not worried so it I want to see if it's gonna push it to that next level but at some point within probably a 24 to 36-hour period you know you're still gonna want to recharge your phone apec asks is Android we're getting a refresh or updates or the watch is just gonna fade away I don't feel so Tony's actually this was actually another Tizen watch oh good so point that out yeah so this is not actually Android wear so Android wear is getting rebranded its wear OS I believe and we'll probably hear more about it like whenever Google holds event they usually hold one in the fall probably October I probably October yeah so we'll hear a little bit more about that then but yeah as you said that this Galaxy watch is not is not Android wear or wear yeah yeah they just yeah Samsung does its own thing for its watches fridges that stuff for sure Wes Joanne is that pesky Bigsby button still there yeah it is here on the side where it has been and you know I don't have a problem with a button being there my problem is that it only works with 6p I think if it were to map to anything else of my choosing then that would be great we've seen convenience keys on other phones and I think that they're really nice except when you accidentally press it to launch the thing you don't really want to watch and that's maybe how it's pesky but but otherwise it's not the buttons fault right it's the fact that Samsung is restricting the way that you use your phone I think it's interesting though I mean bixby something we didn't talk about but that you know they've made some changes to Bixby for the notes and you know one of the things I thought was interesting was that you'll be able to do things about having like something I've always thought that's kind of awkward about Apple it's like open this song in Spotify open this you know you have to be very explicit about or like call an uber call a lyft you know you have to be very explicit about what service you want to actually do that task and with Bixby now you'll just be able to say make a dinner reservation and you know I don't know actually open tables a partner but you know theoretically open table would just like find it and do it for you and and you know or like Ticketmaster if you're like Oh buy a ticket to this concert you don't have to say using the Ticketmaster app right um which is weighted has been yeah and I mean in that but that's kind of how it's been for everybody I think is just like you know for these smart assistants to know what what to do you actually have to like tell them what to use right and you know we do they're Samsung's working with a bunch of partners on this and they'll have an SDK so everybody can kind of tap into it so it'll see if it gets to like overcrowded where it's like you want a bike ticket to something and it's like StubHub opens so does like to you know like who knows but i think that's something that could be actually really handy and a little more natural way of interacting as opposed to play this song on Spotify well I'm curious mother do they explain how they would do it if you've got multiple apps that do different things like they did not uber and lyft and there they are theoretically partners with Samsung if you call for a cab or call for a car like doesn't know which one you write no and I mean that was exactly but you could set it the way that when you open something you're asked do you want mr. Pro browser I would imagine it something like that and we've got it in beta on this review unit so it's not rolled out yet so that's something I'm definitely gonna be looking at in the days to come it's a powerhouse of a phone I mean it's a beast I just wonder why they have to keep that big speed but it's the appendix of cell phone features right like it once upon a time it did something valuable but nobody remembers what it was I mean it was just like the camera you know like I mean what would you map it to if you could remap it for me I would remap it to play Hall & Oates on spot so you couldn't have a convenience key through Android with the power button so if you double tap the power button that's the camera so you I don't have that so what is it can you remap that one or is it just the camera the volume button so I by default it's double-click the volume button to open the camera and that and that's Android wide I mean it is really like the vision was to open the camera that way but you know when you look back at some of the previous Samsung phones like some of the active phones not the essayed active but before then like it's five active six right well those all had a convenience key that way to open like the s health app by default but you could still reprogram it to open something else so knows how to do this and it was the exact same I don't think anyone has an issue with the convenience key itself I think people have an issue with the fact that it's just big spilling I can remap it but you can how can you remap the pen but not the not the phone I mean they want you to use bixby like you know if they're if they're like letting you avoid it and you're never gonna use it and I mean I'm frankly like they they want VIX be like AI as important everybody has to have something there and for them it's mixed me and they are trying to make it better and they want to make sure people are using it because they can't you know can't learn if it's not being used that's a good segue to the galaxy home right I mean it's a big speed powered speaker they want to get in just they want to get into homes they want people to fall in love with Bixby like they have with their already in homes is the pay but no one uses them right no but I mean like they're like the one of the biggest refrigerator makers they're the number one maker I know like they've this like they've kind of like they should have had this speaker before anyone else Franklin like they they they're so like dominant in in just like our home you know they are the world's biggest TV maker right there are like very big in home appliances like we all you know I have like iPhone owners like Apple fanboys have Samsung appliances or Samsung TVs because they're the best and or you know among the best I'll let cats Myer determined I'm Sam my forte but you know it was kind of it seems like they're just so late with this yeah that and Samsung knows how to do audio yeah and they just bought Harman yeah like really knows how to do okay Jay said there there is I wonder if it just took a while for everything to come together I wonder if Samsung just thought nah people will just talk to their TVs and their fridges yeah I mean like frankly Bixby is still new you know when it first came out it was just an interface to tell your phone to like turn on a hot spot or like whatever you know and it wasn't until I don't know several months later a year later I'm not even sure how long almost a year later I think when we finally saw it moved beyond just the phone so like you know it's it's taken a while I think that's why the speaker is so late right they yeah the assistant wasn't ready it wasn't that the speaker the to build everything from the ground up right that was kind of the highlight of the keynote for me was I I wish I could have experienced it to really get a better judgment but sound demo the sound demo cuz I mean I'm a sound guy so go figure it was good but also like Herman literally does concerts so right here you know they're so they're speaker is you know an AKG speaker which is is a Harman brand and in kgs good quality stock it's good quality stuff like Samsung gives you that like the you're the headphones that you get bundled with your phones are now AKG headphones and the over the you know they have a bundle with the note that you're getting AKG headphones so but I mean you know in setting up like a demo of something like Harman like outfits concert halls right like if anybody like that yeah totally but we didn't get a lot of information of that we're supposed to get more at the Samsung developer conference yes which is not a public event you know I mean not that this was a public event but yeah I think it's I think it's an October October yeah we'll get more information if interesting how they rolled this out just like Apple rolled it out like they teased this yeah Apple teased the home pod no they teased the galaxy yeah later yeah I mean it's funny like we went to try to see it and we were late getting to the demo area and they'd like removed all of that and we weren't even that late yeah I know 15 minutes yeah we waited 15 minutes to do some other interviews by the time we got to the demo area they like remove them all yeah and they were not are they hiding they were not functionable I mean to be fair like the prototypes cauldrons I mean that's a perfect kind of segue I want to make sure that all of you were aware of what Jeff Bakalar did today yeah yeah just making sure that that's all in your eyes I mean if they were able in fact to amplify the entire Barclays center with consumer-grade speakers that would truly have been like 106 them yeah but that could have been hokey or maybe kind of bogus I don't know like that that's a big amphitheatre it I don't want to call conspiracy but let's go ahead and take some more questions before we call it a day here's one from life improvements I wonder if big speed will ever be on the watch oh that's a really good point actually I would put money on that yeah yeah yeah it's why they need to have ties it right unless they put a skin like a Samsung experience skin over where OS but it doesn't seem like they really want to move away from their own platform no Scott my it says built index has got me excited could be an unnoticed game-changer I'm with you on that one sir where do I lost I lost a question I wanted to see Djibouti butI Singh are they bringing all of the colors to the USA no you get to have this one which is ocean blue with the bright yellow S Pen or you can have the lavender purple which is also really pretty and then globally you get a just a basic black version or metallic copper I like the copper all in action I thought it was funny that they didn't really go with like a neutral color you know like zero a black or silver or like yeah then you're like whipping out this like you can't really be discreet with the yellow stylist if you're like if you're an owner you don't hardly to lose in the air pods well but there's no find my pen actually if I threw this off the table right now I would get a notification that says well I think air god that's just too weird like they were last connected to your phone so it kind of doesn't really help you it's like oh yeah I knew where they were cuz that's when I had them in my ears but know how like now I need their pod you can't store them anywhere conveniently um so what samsung said was that the blue and the purple tested best for the US market and we don't know about other markets I don't know why they don't just offer all four all of them right manufacturing by all of them the channel distribution you would have like boxes of the least popular color like Moses lucky you you get the copper one I feel like we'd like moved from you know there was like the time were like the galaxy s2 it was a different name at every carrier and like everything you know it was like yeah and you know and then they've tried really hard to move to just the one device which was like something that really helped them and I going back to pricing that is something that is kind of interesting about the note 9 pricing is like you don't really think about this if you're buying iPhones because they're basically the same you know it's the iPhone 10 is $1000 but the note is or the Galaxy devices are different prices at every carrier right at the beginning like from the from the get-go right so it's so confusing and this time with the note 9 it's the same price everywhere no we would have ranges of like well if you go with US Cellular it's 680 but on Verizon it's 750 and you're just like wait really there's a $70 yes so like I wonder how long it's gonna last like within a month in a month or two I see promotion yeah yeah yeah and how soon and how much are we going to see the noh8 discount well they already discounted the note you know it did happen it was like down to like 750 this is why they're the reporters and I just push the buttons I don't know how much they would discount it more though cuz they don't want to make it too cheap where you you look at the two and you're like holy this is excuse my language this is $500 this is so good and then we bring on your guests anyway I don't even know what we were talking about that's like oh yeah yeah I feel like if they cut the price too much it would almost force you to buy that cheap well favorite is is it's not Samsung's call right a lot for a lot of cases it's just trying to get rid of yeah because I mean I don't know how many people would actually buy their fight the phones directly from Samsung problem you know they sell them on their website but it's not you know it's not the same as like getting it you know at an Apple store right we got just enough time for a couple more quick questions let's talk about the s-pen everybody's really excited about the s-pen I know I as is a huge fan of it here in the office the big num one two three can the note 9s pen work with the note 8 Zhang wants to expand on that and ask if they're going to sell the s-pen as an independent accessory so it could work with other previous notes that's a great question we don't have clarity on that all the S pen's will work in terms of pressure sensitivity in writing I dunno there is a Bluetooth antenna in here I imagine but am not sure but my guess would be that it is specific to some sort of circuitry in the note 9 because if there's an antenna here you know there has to be a receiver and also the charging because it's charged by the phone yeah you know and I don't think like the note 8 would probably have the capability of charging it that's a very good point yeah you - wait is it the device is it a wireless charger is there contact no it's charged when it's like plugged in but I mean where's the contact on the pen is it the button there's nothing here so we need to kind of like dig into those we I mean we did not get a lot of time to go really technical into the specs of like how does it work exactly and what is the circuitry like and blah blah blah but I send it down to Kentucky for cracking over but I would wait for that every note going forward is going to have something really similar yeah and this s-pen is not a lot bigger than the note 8's penny either so so you're not getting it might be big enough that it doesn't actually fit I didn't try but that is a possibility it is a little bit bigger but not a lot so what does happen if you say lose the s-pen that comes with your note can you get a replacement unit and a hat you have to go straight to the manufacturer to get that sent to you on like a serial number type thing you bought it you can buy replacements I mean it happens things happen okay I was just kind of curious like if it's that married to the original phone what happens when you do have to replace it it's to that specific phone like you can probably just get a replacement it's like you can't buy probably buy more yeah yeah okay can built-in decks come to the note 8:30 on that and also I can't remember what they said about that there were some things we asked about that we're coming into something yes some some element of it was specific to the note no but so I think like yeah I I don't want to go on record saying that and that's something that I think we need to revisit I never liked the doc so I do think that it is really important to be able to just plug in directly and use it I have had problems with lag when I've used decks in the past it has not been my favorite way to use it I would probably just rather you I mean I'm a I'm a creature who lives everyday on my laptop we write we're all in our laptops so for me I don't think like a natural use case has ever popped up but it's something where I would want to see a lot of improvements with the responsiveness in order to even think that that is you know a great idea that everyone should use that right does the note 9 SD card allow for app installs and running them or is it just for pics and vids so can you use can you use the SD card to install applications on your phone or is it just for media transfer should work the same way that any SD card the whole thing like you can only do the apps external card right because I even in like my Amazon fire tablet you can't put certain apps on an external good question we'll have to do some tests do you think you will be able to use the galaxy watch as a camera remote just like the Apple watch I will have to try it out for us they didn't really give us a there hasn't been too much on the watch yeah yeah I imagine that as a feature they'll probably show up since Samsung's really great making sure it's got features similar to what Apple offers I thought it was a good wishlist item there yeah comments for sure and then before we let everyone go want to give a quick shout out to hunt early thanks to hunter for pointing out that it's a rare occasion that the 3:59 happened at 3:59 whoa Wow I didn't think that yeah but yeah we're out of time I'm completely cooked cuz I haven't seen here pushing buttons talking about phones all day and I don't care anymore right now so yeah wrap it up right yeah all right 3:59 podcast is available on itunes tune in stitcher Feedburner google play music google podcast the amazon echo and of course cnet.com I'll see you all Monday good bye bye bye bye you you