Gadgetory

and we're live has your twittering improved now that you have more characters to tweet apples face ie defacing more sibling quirks the Sprint t-mobile mergers off the tail is off the table not off the tail a Harry Potter AR game is coming next year and Apple is back in the security spotlight as the FBI struggles to unlock the Texas shooters iPhone plus we've got a special guest this week MS Laura Fagan joining the show to share her thoughts on all the mobile news that's fit to print we've got a lot to talk about so make sure you're charged and ready for episode 2 7/8 of the PocketNow weekly a recorded November 10th and Pacific this weekly podcast is where we dis the second discussed those gadgets that make your lives mobile smartphones tablets and wearables it's all the stuff you wished existed when you were a kid and twittering was just the thing Disney characters did when they were smitten with each other i'm juan carlos back now senior editor pocketnow.com joined as always by plucky podcast producer mr. jules Wong out on the east coast how's it going buddy boy it's very cold out here I don't know how fast how why this has changed so much like it's not it's not winter nothing I know I know it's it's it's like 68 degrees in Southern California right now I I might have to wear a hoodie today it's absolutely likes man yeah that's that's really there long story for you you should I mean Californians we're not used to this kind of inclement weather speaking of inclement weather you know what you guys missed preshow why we're putting 5 minutes late this week we had this massive burnout all three of us had problems with hangouts that we had to sort and we had to adjust settings my microphone wasn't working and as you can see unfortunately Laura does not have a lower third because I believe it's Andrew Wallace's fault absolutely produce on Twitter I think has infected her with a virus that prevents her from having a lower third on Google Hangouts but for whatever reason after we were done sorting all these problems we started talking about our various collection of pocket knives and a handy tool kit because that that is pertinent to our brand oh yeah absolutely it is very much on topic I will throw out the the plug for the Kelvin dot three six which is a a hammer and it's like a socket set and it's got a flashlight and it looks like it came out of the movie gremlins and when you really want to be in oh and the tape measure I always forget the tape measure and when you really want to be intimidating it's got like a flip action for your screwdriver cuz you know pulling it out like what's why would you put a review for that like I should actually do a full a full like the long-term review of the Kelvin three six you should also just see what tech you can disassemble with us and put it on that scale see I could get pretty far because it does have an attachment for like sort of a razor blade on it this this podcast not sponsored by the Kelvin dot three six nobody will properly introduced online and an author in her own right producing her own tech commentary on YouTube at ms Laura Fagan I thank you for joining this week's episode of pocket net weekly and thank you very much for having me greetings from H p.m. Irish time and to be fair boys it is close to zero degrees Celsius here so from what I can understand metric wise it's it's sounding quite toasty over your side a warm three degrees oh no I was saying sixty-eight degrees Celsius in California no North American of me I do apologize well for now from now on I believe that we should just move on to Kelvin and you saying absolutely was funnier track because this podcast will not be if this is this is a lull and which which makes it more enjoyable in one sense but it's also kind of a we're all just burnt out it's been a really slow that with us if you want to hate and love and and just give supportive back Pat's reach-arounds whatever you can do that's right going onto Twitter hi we'll take converting back pots right for Laura I don't know about you but maybe just like a professional handshake with eye contact I really I really like where this is headed already and I do weekly so we already have a couple people tweeting in hashtag P and weekly one Andrew Wallace apologizes profusely for infecting you with the missing lower-third disease Peter hatin is already jumping on Andrews case for infecting you with the missing lower-third disease and Peter Hayden already has some choice words for the Twitter story that we're going to be talking about later so already some really fun conversation striking up now for the live broadcast if you're joining us after the fact um you can still send us a traditional slower I mean like I love that we used to call it like snail mail because now it feels like email is that kind of slower communique but yeah yeah takes so long to get through the pop3 servers like it's true that's true and and it's podcast at pocketnow.com is that the you know i think i think i think it i think it's it's um like go with what i said and we are gonna be doing a listener mailbag at the end of the month so make sure you get those sent in we're gonna be having some we're actually we've already got a couple choice emails pick that already and we will be covering your questions later but we do have some stories to jump into this news from the week jules you want to been on this first one oh yeah the fun poking poking a stick it at the iPhone 10 in the new face ID that we're gonna talk about in the two segments so let's just go through what just went on in in order because we can just lays around and talk about this so um face ID it's the new hot thing that you're looking at if you have an iPhone X iPhone 10 we're not gonna get used to it shut up Apple anyways if you're looking into it and you have a brother or sibling or somewhat a sister other person that looks kind of familiar to you there's some sort of genetic code base with you it's not even like a evil twin you don't have to have that it's you at some point if you use the same phone for a while then hid will actually recognize both faces and to some point now it's it's temporary data apparently and well I really wish that we had the video going on here because we have a couple of videos from the kind of brothers and also I believe are the some so on that's why the Ciroc brothers who have been able to show this off in terms of you have to have you have to be able to have like both people have had to have unlocked usage for a good while before on faces it's not like it log faces permanently it's just temporary this apparently is more of a control so that if your face gets misaligned in any way if maybe I mean we've heard of acid attacks from people who have been I don't know that that's why the features designed I don't think I mean yes we have heard an accident I don't know that's what Cooper Tino's focus was for face ID for this system so okay first of all let's just jump in real quick I I think we're all tired of the the face ID twin test videos we've seen varying outcomes to these tests I think Mashable was one of the first out of the gate with their twin test where they trained they in the video they show someone training one twin with the phone then they obnoxiously have the twins like change seats not just pass the phone back and forth but like I'm gonna sit in the chair that you were sitting in now for no good reason just for the dramatics of doing this test and then the other twin is able to unlock the phone they're able to do it with glasses on glasses off and this is part of the comment area that I think Apple made a point of addressing where if you have family members that look like you then it's highly likely that the face ID isn't going to be as secure as you know you random stranger picks up your phone and isn't isn't able to unlock it because they don't look anything like you first of all I think we can all say we're tired of people trying to do this twin test and seeing different outcomes and obviously how you conducted the test is very important but when we're starting to see some of these other like what what the what the can of brothers are doing you know because they're not twins they're just closely related that's where you know we do want to start talking about the system that Apple uses to learn your face and hopefully that that's a system that's being improved over time yeah and I mean face ID has is still relatively new and even though that this is arguably the most advanced implementation of a dot matrix projection you know that the Galaxy phones also do that nowadays but to a lesser extent Lessard complication Laura I was wondering what sort of experience you've had in terms of being able to interact with this kind of thing and perhaps manipulating its - yes what phones have you hacked and so you know so here is my firing history from 2009 all the way-ay-ay on the line - and you just keep keep vamping and i'll get well I suppose I don't have any direct I'm currently a proud owner of a notion myself so when it comes to iris scanning and all that I have found more hits more misses than hits in terms of that so I don't actually use it as my primary source of unlocking but funnily enough I do come from a very genetically inclined family I have three sets of sisters on who are cousins either side who all look pretty much identical to each other and they all use iPhones so there has been they have actually been kind of contacting me being like so what about this whole face ID thing is like is like blah blah blah I'm gonna manage to get into my phone and that's actually been a legit concern because you know they're the kind of people who swap clothes and don't kind of tell each other so so there is a legit concern amongst them being like you know I don't want you you know I love you but no I don't want you dead for all of them I guess no that's not that's pretty much what I've been saying I'm like you know wait I know it's over like touch ID because supposedly face ID is supposed to be more secure than touch ID how fun factor of 200 or 20 or something I don't know two hundred twenty twenty yeah I mean I think they said it was well according to Apple I think touch ID is supposed to be secured a 1:1 to fifty thousand in the population and face ID is supposed to be secure one-to-one million in the population major disclaimer unless you have family members that look like you then that rate drops significantly apparently but I think that there is something interesting about biometric security using fingers as opposed to using your face where conceivably I mean in your in your situation there Laura I mean like you know siblings could try and get into each other's phones because you know what face your sibling used to train the phone you don't necessarily always know what finger someone used to train the phone so even I den twins even assuming identical twins had identical fingerprints they could be using different fingers to lock down and that's actually one added piece of security that you don't have with your face which is a very weird thing to say really if you think about a shoe III you know Laura if I were to try and like you know pack your phone with a face on lock I'm pretty sure I know what face you used took it's betraying your phone you know where the dots have a line basically and speaking of that no day do you still have the case that will I share our fun story about going to the Samsung all the anecdotes we can to fill out however long this podcast is if we can be slightly lined up with the excellent guests we have yeah I I'm not I'm not filler myself and myself and Mark who is my husband we went on honeymoon and obviously because I'm a bit mental I decided that I was going to go to New York to see Jill's for the first like I know that's mental so we were do I think we were due to meet Jaime after Samsung store her but he got a little bit delayed so we decided to go in ahead and we found that there was a create your own case booth and there was no kind of entry point for any sort of credit card details or anything like that so we just between myself mark and Jules we drew the most random crap on this case thinking that it would come to nothing that I just get an email to be like okay here's the cost of the case and myself congeals went to sit down and then suddenly there was just this guy calling my name and like the three of us were just like should should we should we even acknowledge that we're here cause like a couple of your things broke and we were kinda certain that we were gonna get kicked out at this point with the case and we're like oh if we knew we would have actually probably doesn't something nice memory at the moment I saw oh this is great case okay and one part of the the signature got clipped by the camera port because you know unacceptable you see and this is this is why you can't even use Samsung phones anymore nice grapefruit juice at the cafe well not that glad to hear that definitely buy a thousand dollar phone based off of that four dollar purchases yeah absolutely how you base all of your purchasing decisions from here on there I think I've exhausted the comedic potential of face ID I'm just gonna put it out there in general the general disclaimer from here on out we're done with face I detest videos if you're trying to shoot one now just scrap it and move on to some other more relevant talking point and I think the tech community will appreciate that better um we do actually want to switch to Samsung for our next story this one is very exciting for me because it's my favorite Samsung of the year and it's funny because I include these kinds of stories just to appease Kuan and just yes literally just the me story and it's because the Galaxy s8 active will no longer be an AT&T exclusive the only galaxy Verizon no I'm fine with it would the only galaxy of the year did not have curved glass on the front the only galaxy of the year to not have curved glass on the back or any glass on the back and the galaxy with the largest battery of the year is now officially coming to t-mobile and Sprint and I think that is a baller move it's about time the active lineup showed on other carriers other than 18 t yeah that's it's a great thing especially when AT&T has had that exclusive a year on year on year and every so often we got a little hint of of a galaxy active like we got that with the sport yeah the sub sprint had to get outs or something like that you know Galaxy s5 active sports from 2014 and you know now you can just go full measure of course it's kind of a shame that this is the year that had to happen because of the note eight and how close those things were together with the launch at AT&T so now it's whole whole first half of the year strategy was pushed back in in an obnoxious way because like the note feels like it was still fairly on the timetable I mean just leading right up to two Aoife but I wonder if maybe part of the reason 18t wasn't making as much noise about this phone is because that they only had a limited exclusivity on it that's interesting could be the other way around I'm not sure could be oh well one of the things that I think well I know this doesn't really carry on from the carrier conversation but it is something that I've always been curious about and I'm willing to be start to be to be you know corrected on this but like the additive lines for the oh yeah well I'm sure you will any opportunity to tell someone they're wrong say my name in front of a mirror three times the active line have not made a steady appearance within Europe and that completely baffles me like I don't understand that in like of frickin active durable phones in Europe hasn't there yeah I mean the only ones that I kind of see that you would even get imported are like branded ones from like from people who make like construction equipment oh yeah and so that doesn't make sense to me I mean a good anecdote and he's gonna kill me for saying this but my one of my best friends moved across to England to do and construction as a surveyor and uh and he's really into a stack so I would be as the good best friend I would give him like dual SIM phones and stuff that you can't regularly find here and he's broken every single one of them while on the job or out on a run so something like an active would see somebody like Cory absolutely down to the ground for somebody who just religiously smashes and what been safe if you did not just mention Corey's name there and you'd be okay yeah Cory we're calling you out in your phone breaking yeah I know I I literally it was his birthday and I got home M 2016 J - there's such a horse I'm talking about Cory Oh for his right if I went to the trouble of getting someone like like I don't know like an honor six and they smashed it I mean like come on now for him for his offenders of abetting I was just continuing the mahkum get a case dude and a screen protector no man maybe a deep slick raps or whatever the game's phone can you sponsored it's not I mean you know it's better just make it get it I'm just thinking there's a market of Cory's right there when when the because no I agree when the first when the first active came out part of this conversation they still kind of fixate on like dude bro manly man construction job site kind of stuff I think it was with the UH the galaxy s5 active I think is the one where they switched from the metal back to the to the poly car back to the refined band-aid it still had the just the camo print with the grippy texture on the back it looked like armor not not like that I thought it was like the shiny shiny metal thing and not the polycarbonate of the five no no yes four had a medal back yes five just went to the hard plastic bag it was still a removable battery that which that was a mistake I think it was just the same back that they used for the for the s6 active - sorry I'm deep in the weeds you guys don't care about this um but when the s5 active came out that was I I would I I sold so many of those to family and friends for parents it's like the first time you pick up a phone it was one of the first times I think anyone had seen a phone that you could you know it looked kind of like a chunky galaxy it looked like the galaxy in a case the back fit together much better than the metal back which would pop open really easily and you know I'm at an event with family and friends and a kid like handles my phone and then I just take it over to a sink and I wash it and that was like revolutionary like no-one had ever seen but you know what the crummy thing is was I remember when I was sent out to the s7 active briefing from AT&T and they returned it was it was one of the promotion they were starting to promote it as kind of they didn't have an s6 active which you know people were kind of bummed so I have yes all right I don't know six active is the one that looks the best cuz it came in the blue camo print I'm a kind of sewer of galaxy s6 active now you guys talk I'm gonna go get it to myself okay I like the s7 active was what they were promoting the finishes done that and it wasn't just like there's a camera and stuff they also had a golden one and they were starting to you know talk to you know promote it to moms and yeah in there you know with their prams and strollers well I mean it's it on on a serious note while one goes to you know collect his camo collection and yeah yeah well you know I think we just roll with with the punches of what we got one yeah but it's all seriousness kid kid proof Tech is a real is a is a real thing like and it's a real problem so yeah you still have one major issue I mean Galaxy s8 active is my favorite galaxy of the year still have one major problem where I would recommend people throw a screen protector on them and that's kind of tricky to find because of the way that they always do the hardware buttons and the front face and wait no I don't think the s8 active has the front buttons no that's all software now but still because those phones aren't as common there are fewer options for front screen protection but you genuinely feel like you don't need to leave the house with a case because the whole back of this is just reinforced and durable plastic it was one of the things that came up during I don't know um Laura have you had a chance to check out a pixel have they made it to your neck of the woods yet no so any won't we don't get any sort of M carriers who generally can really have it so it is it is an online thing only so it is a case of talking amongst people to see it in the wild I mean you do get the razor phone so which was no bigger surprise to anybody except me that it will actually happened to come to my network as well so I was very pleased about it yeah that's that's that that's a pretty good coup for you guys yeah hopefully gonna be getting to play with one next week so I'm looking forward to that but the port for ringing up the pixel is the pixel I think does his wonderful job of demonstrating that a plasticy feeling phone can still feel like a premium device but they arrived at that with this really easy to chip paint kind of like LG g5 style and at this point like I keep handling you know you know durable phones rugged phones are always made out of this sort of grippy textured armor-plated plastic I've gone back to my Lumias my old Nokia devices and all of these things like I would love to see a flagship man you again I come out with something other than glass on a premium device maybe it doesn't need to be plastic I don't know that ceramic really fixes this problem we're gonna be talking about a phone that uses Kevlar for the backplate later in this review there are so many other opportunities we have to come up with something that's lifestyle durable I finally got to handle an iPhone 10 and I did not like the hand feel of that gadget on something that requires hand moving gestures on a slippery glass backplate at $1,000 didn't feel like a wise investment to me when I know I'm gonna have to cover that thing in a case anyway and it was kind of shameful with the whole oh it's the most reinforced glass I ever hint people were still it would like people had to do a spiteful spiteful dropped us just to say you know it's the glass it's not even the glass it's you know we're making aluminum even aircraft grade aluminum whatever whatever claims are trying to make for that well the iPhone 8 plus slid out of my pocket from a height of less than two feet and landed softly into mud with concrete underneath it and it was enough to dent the frame and cracked the glass on the iPhone so this wasn't even a drop from waist height I finally got it replaced we finally um got the Apple care all taken care of and got it swapped out that's a whole other story that maybe I'll just write an editorial on that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence on an eight hundred and fifty dollar phone when a similar drop with you know one of my galaxy actives would have been like like you wouldn't even have a blinked like it wouldn't it would have been a complete non-issue and and it's that kind of stuff like I I love what we're doing in terms of design I would love to see any other manufacturer addressing lifestyle durability seriously and with the consumer focus in mind indeed and it's while we're talking about multiple materials and pixels and what no wait no that's next story damn it I thought we've got a segue and said like something proper but instead breaks I and this is gonna get segways we can expect right now actually you know what well let me throw this one right out to you while we're sort of explaining this this this next story Laura you you're using the note eight now obviously the microphones are completely alright like you can't can't make phone calls or record video with audio or anything I mean that that's that much is obviously true no it was a rescue as much as that was a point out of what I just did not overtly moving right along see so lots of people this issue has been coming along since the end of September at the earliest which has been some people have not been able to make calls some people have not been able to talk their microphones I'm picking up people are saying that they can't hear them and it's because suddenly unless they're on speakerphone which uses multiple mics I believe but you know that main receive and will not receive it but the microphone that you use to talk with is not working and took a little while started to wonder and then then it actually worked because the the way that you you fix this problem for some people is how you can fix it intend oh yeah I know 64 which I still have somewhere lying around here those lovely old game cartridges you blow into the the gap you blow into the USBC port microphone part and and suddenly it gets fixed now I'll joking aside Laurie you've been using your note a for a little while I mean have you faced anything like that I know date is no longer a daily driver from touch touch would now I have not had any issues with phone calls I'd like so yeah it's it's interesting people well only we do have this note so we're talking about a device that's got an IP 68 water and dust resistance rating ingress protection but there is still something to be said like a microphone works by having some kind of hole in the device that vibrations of sound can interact with a membrane designed to capture those vibrations and so I don't know that you can create an ingress protection rating that properly addresses the fact that you know lint can get into dust other material can get into that because oh I'm sorry Jules good because I was just gonna say you we wouldn't expect em to take your no date for a swim pull it out of the water and instantly be able to use the charging port or one of the microphones because we understand water is gonna get that hole and we need to let that kind of drain out before you can use something like a mic well before you go completely nuts on the hole dust issue because apparently some people have had some software triggers - like turning off the microphone privileges for the google app so it's not exactly clear what's going on but to say at the very least that if on the microphone port is a solution a bodge to this then because we when we sent over these stories to you I'm getting the sense that this is probably a couple different problems with a couple different phones I don't know that I'm seeing anything here that makes me think that there is one consistent issue with voice activation software or with microphone blockage that I think people need to be overly concerned with and now an I'd agree I mean there is just too many reasons why something like this would happen that you'd need to kind of have a solid process of elimination before you could really identify if there is something else going on with this I mean you could just be you know you could just have a tissue in your pocket along with your phone and a little bit of lint get into it and and you're suddenly wondering oh you know why this wasn't my mic working obviously you know and so I mean I think people do have to be a little bit savvy now if the solution works the solution works and that's not to be sort of you know but I do think that I am as always good common sense should be applied to little bit take a look at some of these issues and make some acknowledgement of this because the report keep coming in onto these threads and both Samsung as community forums and as well as the usual reddit twitter those sorts of places so there's a completely in agreement with you there and now that is one of the situations that I think a number of companies have performed fairly poorly over the last year or two and that's you have a fan base in your you have a base in your community I should say not a fan base you've got a group of people in your community of consumers who are voicing concerns over potential issues and this seems to be the year of companies staying really quiet about problems until they are either echo chambered to extraordinary levels on the internet or until we see like a fairly catastrophic disaster rate of things falling apart in a particular community Samsung last year had some major issues with the note and I feel like any kind of negative press surrounding that name of phone for Samsung should be dealt with with extreme prejudice not left to people sort of speculating in forums or in red posts or something like that so I completely agree with you there giuls it's just I do this is one of the other concerns I've got where the people who are most apt to be discussing their phones right now seem to be mostly on the train of I had this problem with my phone and this is the signal that's getting amplified above anything else and it's really hard I think for people who might also be having a similar problem or concerned about issues to weed through internet echo chambers to get into good information on what might be going on but that's exactly why this conversation needs to happen top-down yeah you you shouldn't be relying on internet forums for your first wave of support and it is kind of disturbing because I think we've all dealt with this we're in our circle of family and friends and other people that are joining conversations were in online where someone's like oh yeah hey have you heard about this problem with my phone my phone has this problem and then I'll ask them well did you reach out to the manufacturer and they said no more common than it'd be in this age and I think people have just been programmed to I go to the Internet to complain and people either mirror or argue with my complaints and somewhere like step 37 in my diagnostic process is contact manufacturer when maybe that should be more like step 5 or step 6 not like way at the bottom of your list I think it just goes to show that the overall communication system is broken there if you're first because obviously these people and I'm lumping myself in and this most of us when we have an issue with our phones we want it fixed you know sharpest you want a favor we want to fix immediately so most of the time going on googling what might be the issue is the quickest way of resolving it rather than trying to find a number for your local you know manufacturer customer service waiting in the collar line then being put on hold and then having to go through all that when a five minute Google could do the same thing and I can also imagine from a customer perspective it's also quite frustrating to get finally get to the end of that chain be talking to somebody and the person on the other end of the line is also just googling wash you're googling as well I know for a fact at least for here and the process of fixing a phone here that that is broken even if it is within your warranty we're not automatically and allowed a swash it has to be sent away for testing and that can take weeks so equally like they're not making this process easy enough for people to actually get the resources out there and also on the note line that looks something that I want to touch back on what you said earlier I mean I think there is a bit of hesitancy on the Samson's parish to even utter that there might be an issue with anything to do with the notes because it's sold so well because like even like they had aviation authorities being like if anything even looked like I know Devon like you were you know you and your luggage were effect on strong-arm about that plane yes so I mean I mean but that's it that's another real P or disaster and so maybe they're trying to fight their battles on this I'm not defending it right you know and I agree I I this is this is where I disagree with Samsung staying quiet not that I disagree with you I completely agree with you they are very likely to be trying to keep any potential noise under the radar as best they can but this is also why a simple statement for them saying hey you know if you're having problems with voice-activated bixby or Google assistant that's one consideration and if you're having problems with microphones in phone calls that's a different symptom of potentially a different problem and we're here to address those concerns for everybody in this community please reach out use this customer service number or this email address and we'll try and get it sorted and then Samsung's made an official statement they've addressed individual problems which are all kind of being lumped into the same conversation and it's a non-issue people get on with their lives I heard the note eight had this thing oh no no Samsung is dealing with that that was one person's mic and you get on with your life I think it actually starts to add up and look worse than it might really be if you slow play it or you try and keep that story under the radar because then a bunch of people are just commenting in this thread and that thread starts to balloon well to be fair it's either the noh8 line and rather damning of Samsung in general this issue actually also affects s eights as well si so this is like the first I've been hearing I've got the si plus in the note but after the initial review burst they're not phones that I turn to for my daily driver is often so I'll I should maybe pull my nope eight back out for a while and see they're pretty high-end yeah from this world's top phone manufacturer like honestly it's kind of a it's kind of a shame that we have to be talking about this but your point to when we're talking about the resources for customers to get support this is part of what should be rolled into the price point on you know the device this expensive I mean if we can't expect the company to have avenues for consumer outreach easily accessible then what's really the benefit of owning this phone over it's hilarious that I'm gonna say premium mid range or mid range err in the five to six hundred dollar price free like that's now the middle of the market five hundred dollars you can buy a heck of a lot of phone for five hundred dollars and get pretty much the same support um speaking of support issues problems people might be looking at I want to shift gears into our next story where again this has been not the smoothest lunch especially in the way that geeks like to dissect devices the pixel to excel not utilizing the full wattage allowed by the adapter there's a quick charging technology on the pixel to excel it doesn't seem like the phone is really pulling everything that it could no again no official word from Google as to what's going on but yeah III wonder is this maybe a conservative I can serve your wants to temperatures or if this is a feature and not a bug support this is what USB power delivery which you a dual has been really advocating as part of adhering to USB C spec for Android so there's that part of the story and even with USB power delivery we're supposed to get anywhere from five to a hundred watts just you know from that and in this case 80 watts google says was the most optimal and that we shouldn't even with a 27 water whatever higher wattage charger we would only get at most 18 watts but to not even deliver on that on the build advertised rate it's kind of a shame I keep using the word shame in this guess they don't know why in any case the the whole like it the person who was researching this I believe was Nathan K he doesn't say what his last name is but he took a really a very detailed approach into looking at this and found that there were only two power stages where one was a constant voltage when was a constant current and he compared it to other phones which had more of those stages excuse me and it would be more time efficient I mean when we're talking about 15% to full this was a two and a half hour cycle which is not good now there is that it's terrible but it's not it's not great there is that temperature factor to it and you guys talked about this before but when we're back with the 6p than with the Snapdragon 810 and Hilda 3.0 I think that was a pretty runaway kind of a deal and it turns out that we're looking at pretty healthy temperatures nothing above 33 degrees Celsius in any case for the pixel to excels so there's that wait between like efficiency in terms of time and power and power exerted and longevity for the battery because at some point that start coming down a bit so well and he kills electronics it's one of those things where for a lot of phones that charge fast I wouldn't mind a slow or trickle charge setting by at least when you're doing that you want to be clear with the consumer that if we're gonna do this like maybe if it's set for overnights hey this is a feature it's gonna charge a little slowly during the overnight so that it saves on battery and and that's that's again I mean it's one of the biggest problems that I think a lot of manufacturers face is conveyance and describing to consumers just WTF is actually happening inside your super powerful pocketable computer I I wonder if part of this isn't the fact that we're utilizing the actual USB spec and not qual comes variant of a fast charging solution I'm not sure if good because Google has to be you know is taking authority it's like hey this is made by Google I would just hope that they deactivated the quick charge or not have not included a quick charge why control it with this story shows is evidence that we're you know it's using a Qualcomm chipset but it's not using Qualcomm's system for power delivery I don't know still USB powered I mean it's still like that the basic spec of things and if that's not if that has control over itself then what we're doing here all that matters is that if it's not putting out 18 watts this is this is the BS situation well but that's that's what I that's that's what I mean is how we're measuring this and we're saying is if it's not utilizing the maximum wattage of this system then what we could be looking at is USBC power delivery getting in to say we're measuring the consistency of the power delivery we're measuring the the heat of the gadget and they have likely they have different thresholds and ratings and qualities for those metrics than what Qualcomm might use for their quick charge spec and I think that might be one of the differences because I don't know what other weather I honestly am not aware of what other phones are currently using PD over qc3 yeah yeah that's one thing but at the end of the day this is a consumer matter where you know if you're charging for however long you when you're building you know half an hour this much power it's make sense this is I'm still saying I'll chalk this up to a bummer that this phone doesn't seem to charge as quickly as some of the competition might but again it's if we have reasons we should be able to discuss what those reasons aren't especially looking at this data I mean that the block is off is efficient it looks it's like power delivery might be more conservative in what it allows the the device to actually harness especially when it's on and you know elements like radios and CPU or actively being used to that's I'm saying is it looks like that could be the reason for what's even worse if you take it on four-hour drive if you use it for GPS purposes and you have to keep the screen on oh yeah - six watts which is barely enough to keep it above the zero points in terms of charging activity true I'm glad we had this conversation things like I you know I'm having a hard time this this is all kind of coming back to the tone of what we've been talking about in technology this entire year I'm having a hard time on this one trying to gauge like if I should even be upset by this you know we've gone through screen burnin burnin issues with the OLED supplied by LG I'm a little concerned about the durability of the coding that Google has selected for the paint there seems to be in consistencies in how digital audio is managed through the headphone adapters that Google's supplying between the pixel - in the pixel to Excel and there's a part of me that almost wants to say like the battery is not exploding it's still charging relatively quickly if it's not the fastest I'm not too concerned with that the phone staying cool wallets wallets being charged you know oh I'll call this one Mulligan Oh mothers to me is that my like if I need a quick charge to get me through the rest of the day from like 6:00 to 2:00 a.m. for some reason just 10 minutes on the charger that better not run down to zero by the time oh yeah so I mean and again like it is so funny I can't remember who I was talking about this with a couple days ago but we were just like reminiscing and how scary the situation was on my blackberry Prive where while it was charging so you like Android tries to do that thing you know you're you're on your home Wi-Fi you're charging your phone that should be the safest time to run updates or to update your apps and anytime the Wi-Fi radio was engaged on that phone while it was plugged in it would still drain faster than the phone could charge while the phone would get screamingly scary hot to the touch and like again I'm looking at this pixel txl going you know what it's not that bad whether or not it's charging as fast as it possibly could be rated to charge when we two years ago we had phones that would be like scary hot space heaters in your pocket I'm almost willing to call this one you know like a mulligan for 4gu but you know what's gonna get hot in your pocket starting next year right are you a fanboy of the galaxy active series but you're also a fan of them what well you called this I like I like a phone of 2017 because it is objectively the sexiest phone objectively you're you be wrong to object that that's a double negative right there so long as it gets a positive meaning yeah III think in terms of pure design this is the phone that I think has approached closest for me those symmetrical design accents that I really like to see manufacturers pay attention to the way people pro the hawala we made 10 Pro I'll hold it up again in its plastic in its bumper case again a glass back phone but they supply a bumper case in the packaging because glass is not a very lifestyle durable material to make a consumer electronic portable device out of um no III got a lot of hate on that I literally called it in the title and people were fighting me on it and you're like oh I think you meant iPhone 10 and you're like well the iPhone 10 is a good-looking phone I hate the camera placement I hate the vertical stripe on the camera placement right at the upper edge of that where it's really easy for a fingertip to kind of walk in on your shot and any phone with a unibrow instantly loses loses the debate on most attractive gadget of the year I don't care how into Adventure Time or Batman you are those little ears on the sides of the screen you lose good day sir I said good day so anyways it's gonna be on a TNC apparently we have heard from funky Huawei and ex Dae that talks about this we're not sure if to make tenants the the regular may 10 is going to be brought about to the US but we do have firmware dumps with services from AT&T on this and in all likelihood we'll see it announced at CES 2018 all right now you talk about the ads because actually you know Laura I was just gonna ask first I mean so wow it was a company I was really happy to see lots of general consumers using in Germany um when I went out when I went out for Eva that the huawei brand like I was in a two or three cabs where drivers were using them as their play just there navigation phones devices is this a company that's that's made it to your neck of the woods in any serious way and it's like it's actually it's actually really funny that you mention us because a lot of the startups around in Dublin most of those kind of in that scene who always are a big thing because they're seen as being real kind of bang for your buck both aesthetically and internally and it's funny because when a couple of my tech friends are in the scene knew that I was coming on today they were immediately like are you gonna be talking about the Miche you're gonna be talking about me so it's really it's really interesting to see the shift in dynamic from like the main players to to this year so it's certainly gaining and they're just kind of knocking them out so it's very it's very funny to see like you know the p-series and also the mate series and these kind of what we would have previously referred to as kind of spurious brands kind of unknown brands just slowly taking up more and more shelf space in so it's really interesting to see and iPhone in black like I'm glad that there's you know variety and it's not just kind of CTE has it had had its chance this year with AT&T by the way we had we had a couple of we had a scoop with Andrew Wallace last week about the axe on em our axe on eight I was wondering if you wanted to brag a little bit also about your yeah Ziqi you won't reply to any of my messages but apparently they're all into like talking to you so yeah I mean I'm obviously I'm obviously just special obviously you're special it's obviously like it's it's the fact that oh she's she's Irish like it's it's up it's obviously last it's your it's your accent I think that yeah it is yeah but yeah and I was talking to them to Trajan they did confirm gosh and the axe on em will be coming to Europe and and over in the next kind of course the next while which is really exciting for me and because I personally kind of fell in love with us handset when I saw so that would like like when I the stuff that I kind of dreamed of when I was kind of growing up like that was this that I could do like that I could have that kind of functionality because it reminds me partly of my childhood of like you know the the old kind of Nintendo DSi s it has that kind of profile and there's just there's there's there's little there's nine year old Laura inside of me who's just very excited if you're watching like feel free to just I was wondering if you were having dreams of the Kyocera echo because you know did I did fire it up it does work but nothing really works with it anymore but I won't argue with little childhood Laura in your heart so yeah we'll be happy that you will eventually get the I just kind of wrap up Huawei's a story here right now this is exactly the kind of move that I think we've been talking about in certain circles where it still doesn't mean that I don't hope to see hallway try and aggressively put more boots on the ground when we see the honor brand showing up in targets but then there's the inconsistency of honor eight and to honor nine launches where we had the honor eight in North America then the honor nine never really made it here and now there's talk of an 18 t partnership I still call that progress but I would like to see them work just a bit more consistently on how they're communicating with potential customers I'd love to see any manufacturer I really hope any company takes me up on this just steals this idea from me because I think it worked really well for Samsung is to start putting little like pop-up kiosks in shopping centers you know like go to a popular mall and put up a stand and say hey we've got a really great phone you should check it out and just any opportunity for consumers to actually handle these things it's really difficult putting this hand this phone into someone's hands and them not having some kind of reaction and you usually very very positive this that's exactly the kind of I think of outreach that accompany the third the world's third largest manufacturer of smartphones should be trying to look at if they're really trying to crack open North America is how I feel about that yeah I totally agree I think particularly I mean I am I come from a slightly more frustrated stance because we don't I mean we're a very small island in you know on the edge of Europe and we don't get very many opportunities to engage with new tech as it is outside of our carriers but it's very difficult to import anything because we've got this whole thing with batteries and so I would love to see more things like that kind of go on the road you know and for there to be kind of different use cases and different you know different ways of exploring dec that's what I want these conversations about brands like essential you know when they put up little pop-up come meet the essential phones it was like in San Francisco that's not the people who you needed to like it's all on this phone I needed to see one of those in like Des Moines no I was thinking of Cedar Rapids I really I was gonna say set it up a Cedar Point and you know I'll fly out to Ohio let's do this I am game before we get to our sponsor plug we do have a number of tweets coming in just on the various stories that we've covered in the first half of our news block here from Rolla not olap or using the pn weekly hashtag our phones have pretty much every single detail of our lives maybe two-factor authentication for some app settings and pin plus fingerprint or password plus face on lock should start to become the norm I think that's actually a pretty good idea I think on a note there could be something really compelling about like a fingerprint and an iris scan if you really want to lock that thing down yeah question from answering policy who who infected your computer Laura he's asking you specifically is there any kind of strong carrier influence in Ireland or is the unlocked market really how more people go about buying their phones and average consumers would mainly stick to carriers and that would be your sort of day-to-day and if you're in any way sort of a tech head you have to venture across the border that is just how it works and but keep in mind like in terms of carriers we only have three so you're quite limited for choice in terms of your options and three three three and three carriers total three major kind of carriers and within that kind of a context that means you know you're sort of being a little even a little broader if someone has something specific that they want to shop it's much more likely to be an import situation absolutely I mean most of the carrier's would stock the same thing so yeah so so so your choice is limited your choice is very limited if you stick to it carriers and if you're in any way interested at all you know that it is it is employ or bust so and let's see from Peter hatin Peter Hickman actually dropped a bunch of tweets but one of them talking when we were talking about the active positioning positioning of phones like the active line were always really interesting here in the UK where the Sony Xperia Z line was new I remember kiosks and shopping malls where they would throw phones into a jug of water because people just didn't believe it was waterproof yeah I mean like now water resistance is sort of an expected feature on a high-end handset but there is still something really interesting about demonstrating that yeah actually showing people that this stuff works the way it does Panzer Z doesn't want people to forget and we were talking about your thousand-dollar iPhone 10 that the glass replacement is five hundred dollars if you crack that thing and you don't have yourself some Apple care yeah it's like it's read repairs like - something - in the height - hundreds and then all of the repairs are five MD ish nope no thank you and so we do have a couple others just to wrap this up uh-oh where did I lost it oh and Panzer Z also confirmed the essential pH one and the iPhone 10 also use USB powered delivery spec not Qualcomm quick charging or any other type of proprietary charging and while deserve one Andrew Wallace is asking what do I like better the glass backed may 10 Pro or the aluminum backed mate 9 and Andrew Wallace has the mate 9 so just for the sake I'm gonna say obviously the mate 9 is way better like you're missing out on anything at all more puzzle that the attached to the lower third he communicates all through hieroglyphics and gifs now addameer Frank a phenomenal tech reviewer that you should be following on YouTube at NIMH bug Damir Frank one only thinks that mate 10 Pro is the sexiest because he hasn't touched the may 10 yet or has he I'm not sure I only have the may 10 Pro I've not touched the regular May 10 yet but I don't know that my opinion would change too drastically when it comes to design now if we're talking about feature set and expandable storage and a built-in headphone jack I would definitely feel different about the features in both phones but when it comes just to the aesthetics and what we would like praised a company like Samsung or LG for I really feel Huawei has done the best job this year not these phones are less attractive for the may 10 existing but I think Huawei actually has done the best job of addressing balance and consistency in a symmetrical design and I'm sure that's probably been carried through on the regular May 10 it's just I can't comment as to that phone as I've not held one yeah yeah so with that thought bubble I guess pops and a stream of new stories await us but before that happens take a few moments to talk about our smarts today we absolutely show and I'm gonna just kick over to my script here they actually wrote a great script for us this week so I'm just gonna read it how probably best I'm not gonna try and ad-lib on this because I feel like a blipping has not been our strongest test but you know what you don't have to worry about with a privat hope is dreams Jules talking about acid attacks um no this sponsor is a privy technology is a great thing because it makes our lives easier for business owners the advancement of technology can be a double-edged sword since cyber criminals are using the same technology to cause data breaches as well as creating ransomware and phishing schemes fortunately defending your business with high-tech security solutions doesn't have to be complicated thanks to a privilege sir vyses designed to protect your business from cyberattacks app River has you covered whether keeping spam and viruses out of your inbox or shielding your network from both external and internal web threats app River has proven technology that will keep your business ahead of the cyber curve all without any additional hardware or software and they also offer enterprise grade encryption and Office 365 to keep your business productivity dialed in and all of this comes with a free fully functional 30-day trial so you can be sure you're getting the technology your business needs plus all a prefer services are backed with around-the-clock phenomenal care customer service from real app River employees who were experts at solving your problems all right visit up River calm slash weekly to get started today that's a PPR IV er calm / w ee que le ly / weekly so that you can get started on your fully functional 30-day free trial make sure that you've got your business protected and we thank app reverser for supporting the PocketNow weekly indeed we do and I want to give at this opportunity a shout out to MP our reporter Danielle Kurtz Leoben one of my favorites with it reporters out there in commenting about the the Twitter the new Twitter character limits of 280 ad um okay team 5 character Twitter let's do this starting now and she then correct she had to correct herself because wait wait has more than five characters guys I take it back she also went through a whole bunch of other Smash Mouth stuff including of course the obligatory somebody once told me roeme I had the sharpest ticket but we would be talking about it's okay we are we are the backup squad I can always back you up on some Smash Mouth yeah yeah we're gonna get a quick summary of these stories and then choose a couple to really go and definitely about because we are Jules go go go running through so yeah Twitter is rolling out to everyone and not just to a select group of people the 280 character limit after a few several weeks of public testing and found that only a few like maybe two percents of tweets ever really go beyond 190 characters so I mean there's some savior to that there's some there's some release or relief to that as well Niantic labs is working on a Harry Potter game this mean made official by Warner Brothers an ion took no real details about Harry Potter Wizards you Knights have been released just yet but it'll be on the ilk of Pokemon go ingress where it's a real world roving AR game of some sorts we'll look forward to that in the first quarter or excuse me sometime in 2018 three years on from CES 2015 because 2018 has not happened yet and we're still talking about the saygus v2 aired the phone that apparently the Snapdragon 800 won't die we got some documents from the FCC that we looked at and they were promising they've been updating the promises every so often and have been going on Twitter rants about this and that and what's been happening and apparently were still dealing with these last twenty fifteen or even twenty fourteen specs because what we saw inside was a snapdragon 800 when the original phone was supposed to have an eight no one so i mean make of it what you will but that's always a little quirk that we like to keep checking in on every so often um one of the reasons why I included this story in here is because um of HTC and that is is gonna be one of the new colors in Korea for the Galaxy s8 and si+ it seems that these colors keep coming around in trends and will cycles because we're talking about blue blue blue for all the Galaxy phones as of recently deep sea coral whatever the heck you want to put an adjective to so red being the new big unique color trend of 2017 is something that I would get behind and this serious story here in which Apple said that they contacted the FBI right after one of its special agents held a press conference on their investigation of Texas masked shooter who killed 26 people and apparently they're trying to get into their iPhones they cannot at this points hoping to find some motive or some information on that phone The Washington Post reported that was an iPhone and Apple coming with that late response now if it were a touch ID iPhone we don't know what mano it is as of right now but if it weren't uh chori enabled that would be more than 48 hours so they would have to have a passcode touch ID would be deactivated they would have to have the passcode and this sends us back into the position of having to see what the government wants to take with an encryption and they're going to demand a backdoor that Apple code in a backdoor for all this just like we did just like we had to talk about last year with the San Bernardino shooting dinner shooter and all that happening so let's let's save that one because I want to spend a little time talking about that immediately I think one of the most important stories we have to talk about since we have Laura on the show is how you probably feel like you missed out on your Samsung because they didn't get the pretty red one because that's what girls care about or like flashy jeweler phones right Wow Wow that's that's that stereotyping there it's true right so you know I don't I don't they they're they're pretty snazzy they're cheap but they're snazzy but like I said red is a universal but on a more serious note I was quite kill to debate the fact that and I didn't get my coral blue because blue is my favorite color so especially showing them off in public those are the phones that people react to the most like with my my honor eight I got so many questions from people like and like I be in line at a grocery store and people would ask like what phone what case I had on my iPhone but they were genuinely interested in what this shiny blue thing was yeah I mean I think it's just because we've sort of grown with this trend of just being you know generic black slobs so it is it's quite refreshing and it's quite refreshing that we are getting more options but I I will admit that I am one of the kind of the girl ones who you know because I am from Ireland and we don't get these nice pretty things or do we do we get them about a year and a half too late when you've already bought your hands and there was no bloody way of knowing otherwise I do I sound annoyed think I sounded annoyed sounds super bitter but not annoyed actually supercilious get as they say oh no oh actually one of the things that I wanted to ask you guys is is how profoundly have your lives changed now that twitter has opened up the character count because I don't know that I don't know that like so I think I'm getting the same number of tweets I'm literally getting tweets with just a ton more information in them people are asking questions and are in conversation yeah I only had I only have two tweets that I've personally made one was lamenting the lack of notification about this whole thing that you had to find out by looking at the circle instead of the the number after hand of character Carol and also one a reminder that your misery on Twitter's genis a quoi is irrelevant to the company's interests and that your complaints on 280 have no meaning Wow well very very there you go thank you but you have just been told I guess that's the final I'm what do you think are the funniest things that you've seen because I've seen some really kind of hilarious ones like that somebody somebody somebody retweeted a literal game of connect of like Connect for that two people were playing and it was the most hilarious right I've ever seen there's always these category categories that you can use like oh you're lamenting the actual 280 you're using this to document something of some absurd measure or you're just like the whole you know make character emoji houses and funny stuff because you have more canvas I don't know that I've seen anything so like jaw-dropping or hilarious but I have seen people getting a lot more aggressive with their they're sort of a see symbol art you know like more elaborate stuff per tweet and so I mean that kind of stuff I always think that's kind of cool when someone's sort of like expanding on the limitations of a platform I don't know that 280 characters is really gonna change my world much except like it'll make me have to read through more stuff when someone yeah me online but I I don't know it's I was kind of hoping to see like more this kind of past what it was exclusive it was something people were talking about like oh my gosh I got you know 280 characters and that's really exciting and now that everyone has it I think aside from the commentary on people talking about now that we have it and then shrugging it really doesn't seem to have changed much at all in turn what Twitter is used for how it's being used for people to have conversations I agree entirely I don't think the content of my feed has changed at all other result of it it's just gotten a bit more lengthy well any was bad for me because I see lots of just headlines and everything that's still under even a hundred characters so oh yeah there you go and given that URLs URLs take still 23 characters each you can put in a few more links if you want to you like that's pretty much the most useful thing that you get out of that mm-hmm I agree so what there's I don't know a this Niantic story Harry Potter AR game coming out fine I just wanted a title like none of these other stories I could like really yeah and does it feel like it's kind of a non-story like yeah they're making noise that they got this property and then they don't actually have anything to share mmm it's a shame so they're working on this with the WB Studios port port key games which is their little division now that's set up with that and I guess lamentation going on cuz okay so it's a new game what does this mean for us pokemons go people because that was their big appeal that sent kids flying around roads and jaywalking in all that and people were really like up and hip about that and now some of them are worried well does this mean that Niantic and going to abandon us does this mean that several servers will be more crowded because you believe a very wide appeal kind of thing going on too with the Harry Potter franchise so I'm always continuing to wonder if they're biting off more than they could chew yeah yeah I definitely think I think a number of people are having concerns there lor were you ever into the Pokemon go yeah I was I'm one of those people who are who is a part of several raid groups in my local area and in town I'm one of those and so I I mean this more concerns me than it does anything else I mean you know kind of we if anybody doesn't know what happened with the whole neon tech kind of world series when they were and releasing their stronger is like everything crushed and it was a disaster and I'm not confident that you want to be you know making both the Pokemon people mad and like the like the two kind of core fandoms of Harry Potter and Pokemon you don't want to know that's just that's just a bad time particularly if they're suddenly going to be competing for space in the same occasion yes like then you're not going to really know and then it's just going to be like a load of random strangers walking towards like big groups and it's just like I wager you Pokemon person or you re powder one unlike a pleaser does not know gonna know what to do about that like community of pokemons go sort of maintained because I saw obviously like a steep drop-off in just this sheer quantity of people who were playing that game but do you still encounter people that like that are that are still hiking out there for for Pokemon go not like like there were it would be a regular occurrence for people to just stop kind of buying in the streets as they were walking okay oh I've got to get this yeah yeah I was guilty of it myself um but there is less of that now but more like any of the kind of core groups at least that I've seen I mean the one that we have in our in our local area is about 20 strong and I mean the one in the city it's over like 200 strong nice for the ones that actually happened in the city so what you think for the cup but there's always going to be a core kind of group of fans and people who kind of keep something going regardless right but I'm I'm really worried about how this is going to be applied both as a Harry Potter fan and how it's going to affect me as a Pokemon fan - I I really kind of unstruck my mad with my imagination I struggle to see how this is going to work because it makes sense in a Pokemon capacity that you go out and collect you know Pokemon while you're outside because that's what you would do if you no actually actually lived in Kanto and what but in Vermillion City yeah but like if but Harry Potter is based like around the whole mythology of England and I'm struggling to kinda see how like there there are certain landmarks in that I'm struggling and maybe the crossover is sort of more of the mythical beasts you know sort of additional storytelling world possibly Rowling created - but then we'd have to get rhettandlink into that - like maybe maybe we will finally get an actual augmented reality dueling platform so instead of it being the real world hiking exploration which Pokemon I think encourages that kind of real world I think there could be something really compelling if Niantic could create a real world dueling system yeah that is built on a real AR platform it's going to be bolstered by the iPhone 8 well they I don't know that I I'm not sure because I'm not a player pokemons go I don't know if that ever did make officially I know I've seen like they're there if there are a lot of features like there once you see all the coverage of you know t-mobile and Sprint offering up charging stations and and Starbucks also and then you get like free data mm-hmm for life if you play pokemon go I once you turn into whole unlimited data plan kind of thing that certainly seems kind of silly and then just like Android wear app engine C is talking about waiting for his Android wear Pokemon go app which was promised right and deal hasn't come and there was also like a band that I've had that was supposed to have Pokemon go integration it's funny to see all that kinda look started to play did yeah and just inflated you're kind of also worried now well that has come to not and maybe like ingress and I don't think anyone has anything to worry about what I was trying to make is we've seen like a couple little tests I don't think we've seen it in an actual release yet someone please correct me if I'm wrong but I think we've seen some tests of using AR kit to augment Pokemon go I don't know that that's actually made it out yet where your your your characters and your your captured critters will actually interact with the world in a meaningful way and and if it were to I think it would also show up on Android first on a Samsung device or on a pixel because again you would need support for a our core yeah that being said shifting over to something like wizards and duelists and that kind of thing we could create with a RK in a arc or a dueling system for people to combat each other directly in real world locations in a way that even lenovo still requires a lot of additional hardware for their jedi experience you know putting on the headset having some sort of point puck that lights up for the headset to track the the lightsaber that has to interact and be paired with the visor in a very special way if we could create an experience akin to that looking through a phone screen and the only the only purchase someone needs to make to use that is a piece of software and the phone that's already in their pocket then hopefully that wouldn't overly step on the toes of Pokemon go like they could continue iterating for Pokemon go players creating a totally separate experience for Harry Potter fans yeah and moving them would be I'm hoping that that's what they do well my hope would be that they take the tools that are being out there that are being offered out there right now and start incorporating them into their platform which is still being used they still that it's gonna be the same Niantic kind of thing going on well yeah the whole map based thing and whatnot and it does it I'm not sure if that you know in terms of many interactions you know it could be the same but but if it is the magical creature collecting game then yeah I will be first in line to be upset that 9sec is is sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel of their ideas from every left google they should never left X I think I think many people would even just agree that coming you know coming out of the trees was a bad idea but we should never have left the oceans last story obviously the news that we're kind of getting into those sort of murky political waters where law enforcement is needing to access data on a locked device and it's causing another round of people to talk about backdoors for encryption on mobile devices and giving law enforcement the keys to access that kind of content and this is one of those sticky situations because again the way that the story is being reported on as the story unfolds I find it very troubling that a situation happens like the the shooting in in Texas and they pick up information they pick up the equipment that this person used if that devices an iPhone that the first thing the law enforcement didn't try to do was contact Apple or use you know one of the fingerprints of the slain assailant to try and unlock the phone before a period of time had passed where we are now into the passcode lock window on on an iPhone again if you if you regularly unlock your phone you let the phone sit overnight you're probably going to have to put in a passcode you won't be able to use touch ID to unlock the phone and this is one of those opportunities where law enforcement if they really want information or they really want access to that information they need to be doing a better job of contacting companies to try and support that situation Apple should be finding out about it from a press conference two days after the fact exactly and I mean this arguably sets them up for another battle in the courts about this just as we have with the San Bernardino case interesting comments from the Department of Justice's raag Rosenstein is a inventor I'm running the place deputy attorney general when you shoot dozens of innocent American citizens we want law enforcement to investigate your communications and store data there are things that we need to know as a matter of fact no reasonable person questions our right to access the phone but the company that built it claims that it purposely designed the operating system so that bring the phone with and with an order from I don't know if it's my connection in yours jewels but robots yeah you did a little bit ok so so I mean getting getting what we could hear from from that statement you know again there's the political posture / what right school do consumers have Laura in your neck of the woods have there been any similar situations where there have been appeals to tech manufacturers or you know calls for companies to break the locks that they allow consumers to have on devices and honestly no and we and or at least I can only really talk for Ireland but not even regularly in the news right here of anything as unfortunate as what wants to be happening over I mean we like if we zoom out of the region and talk about the UK which has been crafting gregandanna messengers they've been trying to talk about that in terms of terrorist communications and how the like the currents of you know the fighters trying to recruit people in the country going to Isis they've been trying to crack down on telegram on whatsapp and have also been demanding a back door to their encryption guides so it's it's something that I don't think just because of that kind of reprieve that we have however HAP's happenstance it is because we're talking about many many shootings where many investigations need a phone yes the case that this is all just yeah this is all just not fun and games but I I do think that's good one I do think that at least from European perspective it's a bit different and right now we don't have or at least we are currently only in the process of getting and certain we're on currently dealing with those issues now about data and things like that and so I think for me well yeah so so we're only kind of at the cusp of kind of really getting into those details in the first place and I know that we are really pushing for kind of at least within tech community in Ireland we're really beginning to start to push to you know to have the proper legislation in place and to get our MPs and the people who represent us really in that mind frame because because we come from a lot of our MPs would be quite older and wouldn't necessarily see the value of having this kind of foresight and into situations like this so the only kind of controversies that we would be hearing of would be the ones kind of overseas where we're hearing of police departments in Scotland Yard or wherever looking for looking to talk to the likes of whatsapp or other groups like that but we are still in the kind of the very sort of infancy of even beginning to work out what that means for us here so although I mean I'm even just doing a search for Ireland encryption debate I'm seeing a number of people that are actually trying to raise discussion around this especially as it pertains to I'm sorry I'm having to I'm reading this in real time the retention of data Act of 2011 and that how that is potentially in breach of current EU law and it sounds like there are some rational points being made that this type of data retention and this type of accruing of consumer data is unconstitutional which you know again that you guys are actually getting to join this conversation not in the context of a very hot blooded and recent tragedy um I think more in just the relationship and how the EU is sort of operating throughout Europe right now as a governing body setting setting a tone for the conversation at least seems I don't know it seems to me that your politicians I think are engaged in a slightly more rational debate on the merits of containing consumer information or citizen information while there are people on both sides of that debate yeah it seems to be a bit more informed as to the actual legal precedent as opposed to making these here in the United States I find often that when someone is in favor of breaking encryption locks on consumer devices that it's a very emotional plea that they're making and sort of ignoring the context of we're building a backdoor into your device that law enforcement can get into and and you know often that's sort of bridged by the sentiment of if you have nothing if you're not doing anything wrong then you shouldn't have anything to hide it seems like the conversation happening over there in Ireland right now is a little bit more nuanced yeah and and i think that just purely comes from the fact that it's a it's just a very slightly different angle of the conversation that we're currently talking about so it's literally it hasn't it hasn't come up and it probably should because you know as kind of technology advances these are unfortunately the realities of the world that we live in right now so I mean eventually someone's gonna get noon if your information has not been compromised by a data breach of any sort you're wondering about your personal privacy what you can do to at least protect your own files and transmissions and that was what was making all of us worry about that crack attacked the Wi-Fi 20 PA into it about it's a shame that Android which had the password in its November 6 level patch it that is not going out to everyone the pixels and nexuses are not going out getting that this month so it's in terms of priority I think that's all we really like talk about in terms of you know our own bubbles right going back to some of the political part of it because I know we don't want to truly get into that but it seems like with our current political situation with the legislature being made up mostly if Republicans and even but well it's like a fifty to forty eight splits in the Senate and something you know so it seems like with this administration trying to push for more encryption I mean I think more encryption of backdoors are something relief exploits there's something shared between the two administrations and I think this has more support in general from both sides which is kind of concerning this is this is one of those things where I like I think it's pretty clear that I IV R on the liberal side of most political discussions this is one of those situations where a lack of technical knowledge is serving to cloud the conversation on both sides of the political aisle this is not a situation where I've been overly impressed with liberals ability to join the conversation in any meaningful fashion even though Republicans are in power right now I I don't really feel like I need to blame them when we're also talking about law enforcement agencies when we were talking about the FBI the CIA the NSA and how they are accruing information on citizens and how they are trying to find to end roads around consumer protections of their personal information not like I want to go and start throwing on my tinfoil hat but I feel the biggest problem in this discussion is usually a lack of awareness as to what the realities of building a complex operating system structure ecosystem of products and then building in the security that we need to actually protect that thing there was a Joe Rogan podcast months and months ago during during the sort of the heat of the San Bernardino case where he had a former CIA operative on on his show to talk about and it was hilarious because in the course of one podcast he was saying well it should be really easy for Apple to create like a one-off system image that could defeat the security and allow people to get into the device and then in like 20 minutes later into the conversation he's like oh but like all manufacturers have issues with security problems and with data and corporate espionage and and how people can get information out of an apple or a lenovo or a samsung and so you can't really keep anything safe so if Apple were to create systems that could defeat their own security they technically would also be in breach of the very contracts that makes the iPhone an acceptable system for government agencies to use as a product for interacting with government government sanctioned information technology IT departments so not only from the government perspective or from the consumer perspective Apple needs to design locks that are extremely difficult to break if we're going to live in a data first and data centric community and I feel consumers should have the same access to protecting their data that a government would also utilize for protecting sensitive information on these mobile devices but which is more important in the moment right now America first or data first I think that's Academy I mean that's that's the economy it's the economy that they want to you know of the debate that that's that's exactly the problem is which you're gonna try and boil it to boil it down to a thumbs-up thumbs-down black or white issue and that's that's not the case because yeah it's not out to Apple in a timely fashion and and if this were a touch ID enabled phone for example if if consumers had that information or if law enforcement had given that information to Apple we probably wouldn't even be having this conversation because they would have just tried his finger prints and the phone would have been unlocked I'm looking at this as an authoritarian reach because if I would assume that the FBI knows what it's doing and that you know even under the you know if you associate the Trump administration of all this then you'll get a part line vote from GOP members even the conservative ones that would be against a reach of authority like this one which is discont well but this but this is also why this is a so why i'm i'm not one to overly place too much too much too much onus on whether or not someone has an r by their name or a d' by their name because this should be a conversation where both sides could find some agreement in personal liberties and freedoms if you want to have the libertarian conversation versus some sort of social democrat or socialist conversation i the big problem is a lot of heart lawmakers are just wofully ill-equipped to join a tech-savvy debate that to me becomes the most egregious problem with these types of things because it's always we always sort of stop the conversation at this sort of heightened emotional level whether or not the FBI quote knows what they're doing when they wait two days and they don't get to the pin code I think the FBI is just as much a bureaucracy as any other function of government or law enforcement and again I'm not placing motive necessarily on that specifically I I don't feel qualified to comment on that specifically oh no it was disappointing aspect of a little bit more tech-savvy knowledge and information joining the discussion at the highest levels of government would do us really well right now because we should be able to start having proactive conversations about consumer technology but instead we always seem to fall in this trap of having reactive conversations about law and technology after something terrible has happened when we're sort of least equipped to join that conversation rationally yeah and especially given the special concern stances that were in again Donald Trump is president and there are unprecedented dennah moves where that has not been seen in previous administrations before which has thrown some wrench into the whole works of things that's Jane I know fan of the Trump administration by when it comes to walk about the library no but when it comes to law enforcement we we've seen just as much technological overreach from law enforcement regardless of the administration in power the NSA didn't just start setting up data collection centers on citizenry because a Republican was in the White House that's been going on for a while and the San Bernardino case didn't happen under Trump's watch we've been seeing this for a while and this is a long-term issue not a conservative or a Democrat but but the point is here is that there's been a vacuum of legislation because if you can't get a visitor through and if they find a point where maybe this is something in in the remote chance that this is something that they can do something on see a rush to action on this III agree that that is that that is a potential threat I I think the the problem is is just like anything else that's the hypothetical that we could discuss the reality but we're not really good to worry now yeah again the reality of the situation as it stands right now is again I think law enforcement has done a terrible job of addressing the situation they didn't act in a timely fashion to get technical expertise to the table and now they're reactively saying oh the phone's locked we need Apple to break it when this could have been circumvented from the beginning if again this were a touch ID enabled phone and we could be talking about a great working relationship between Apple and law enforcement which is what we should have been discussing from the beginning not oh no now FBI is reacting to the situation days after the fact why doesn't Apple just break this lock this one time from people who don't understand how encryption works it I'm gonna I'm gonna say we should probably table the rest of this for future discussion too because we were already running really long ago the reason why I wanted to talk about this first because I want this story to be constrained doesn't matter the show's over why are you going back to talk about how they like we were king of the non sequiturs in this one I don't think good one story in front of this would have changed the overall runtime unfortunately there were a couple I wanted to get to I instead I'm just gonna say thank you everyone who is throwing in comments and stuff and keep them coming this is something that hopefully we can read ress when we get to the listener mailbag episode at the end of the month we can expand on this topic a little bit more because I know there were a lot of opinions that we couldn't get to Laura thank you so much for joining us sort of a rambling podcast and I think you you held it together really well since the hosts weren't well somebody somebody needed to mediate between you two that's the only reason why I'm here your task exceedingly well I'm gonna go ahead and jump into our script here guys folks this episode of the PocketNow weekly has come and gone the show is over but the conversation continues on Twitter where Laura is at miss Laura Fagan Jules is at Point Jules and I'm humbly at some gadget guy pocket now is around the web on Twitter Instagram Facebook Google+ YouTube and our home site pocketnow.com for Spanish speakers definitely check out yes pocketnow.com shows like this cannot exist without your support sharing the weekly with your friends who love mobile technology and dropping reviews on iTunes stitcher Google Play and wherever podcast reviews can be left and be on the lookout as the pocket net weekly will be coming to a number of new services including the Spotify so if you want to get fast fix in more markets more locations once again okay spectacles you can also get your copy of the pocket now weekly once again we want to thank this week's sponsor app River definitely used that promo link as you can sign up for your free month long trial protect your email but ultimately there would not be a show if it weren't for our listeners and subscribers who have kept us on the air since 2012 the PocketNow weekly we'll be back next week with all kinds of delicious technology goodness so make sure you tune back in you're a wizard Harry