Speaker 1: What's going on. I'm Rich DeMuro and this is Rich
Speaker 1: on Tech. This is the show where I talk about
Speaker 1: the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's
Speaker 1: also the place where I answer your questions about technology.
Speaker 1: I believe that tech should be interesting, useful and fun.
Speaker 1: All right, let's do it. Let's open up those phone
Speaker 1: lines at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Give me a call. If you have a question about technology,
Speaker 1: email is also open. Just go to the website Richontech
Speaker 1: dot TV. All right, we've got some great guests this week.
Speaker 1: We've got Lexi Savidi's formerly of cnet. She was at
Speaker 1: the Samsung event with me. She is gonna help break
Speaker 1: down everything Samsung, what she thinks of the latest phones
Speaker 1: and all that good stuff. And uh later, we've got
Speaker 1: Kim Cavallo from the Global Day of Unplugging. Are you
Speaker 1: ready to give up your phone for twenty four hours?
Speaker 1: Could you do it? I did this a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago and it was tough. That's happening this weekend? Well,
Speaker 1: I guess next weekend, I should say so. Kim will
Speaker 1: talk all about that and how you can help reset
Speaker 1: your relationship with tech. Well, I just got back from
Speaker 1: San Francisco, where Samsung held their annual Unpacked event. First
Speaker 1: time I've been to San Francisco like city proper in
Speaker 1: a while, and honestly, I was very surprised. The city
Speaker 1: is much cleaner than it has been in recent years,
Speaker 1: much more energetic, people are out. I walked the entire
Speaker 1: city day and night. The only thing I noticed lots
Speaker 1: of empty storefronts. So that stuff is going to take
Speaker 1: a while to come back. And that's not just a
Speaker 1: sign of San Francisco, it's a sign of just our
Speaker 1: times in general. You know, all these stores that we
Speaker 1: used to go to are just not a thing anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, we go to Amazon and we purchase stuff.
Speaker 1: So I think that's gonna be a little bit of
Speaker 1: a long runway for them to get all those stores
Speaker 1: filled again. But I will tell you, San Francisco is
Speaker 1: still such a fun city. Every time I go there,
Speaker 1: I just realized, like it's such a foody city. It's
Speaker 1: got so much history, it's got so much personality, and
Speaker 1: I love this now, the old and the new. So
Speaker 1: you've got cable cars, which I still think are incredible.
Speaker 1: The fact that you know, one hundred years later, those
Speaker 1: are still on the San Francisco streets, but now the
Speaker 1: streets are filled with these Waimo robotaxis. So you've got
Speaker 1: old meats new, and I think that's very uniquely San Francisco.
Speaker 1: So of course that's all the perfect backdrop for a
Speaker 1: major tech launch, and that was the Samsung Galaxy S
Speaker 1: twenty six event. Samsung did bring me there, but of course,
Speaker 1: you know, they have no bearing on what I say
Speaker 1: or what I do, no editorial control of what I
Speaker 1: say here, but they did show me the phones early,
Speaker 1: and of course I got hands on. I have it
Speaker 1: right here. Where is it? Here? It is? I can't
Speaker 1: see it, of course unless you're watching on the streaming show.
Speaker 1: But this is the Samsung Galaxy S twenty six Ultra
Speaker 1: and the cobalt violet color. So I guess that's kind
Speaker 1: of like a purple dark purply color. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: focus mostly what I say on the Ultra because that's
Speaker 1: where all of that's where all of Samsung's biggest innovations are.
Speaker 1: So first impression, if you look at the phone, you're
Speaker 1: gonna say, Okay, that looks like last year's model. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's familiar, but it is slimmer, and it's also easier
Speaker 1: to hold. They definitely rounded the edges and the sides
Speaker 1: a little bit, so I think it feels much better
Speaker 1: in the hand. They also moved from titanium back to aluminum,
Speaker 1: so that makes the phone lighter, makes this frame stronger,
Speaker 1: and apparently because it's aluminum, you can get the colors
Speaker 1: to be richer, so it does have like a kind
Speaker 1: of a richer color than in year's past as well,
Speaker 1: so the physical form of the phone is great. Other
Speaker 1: colors include sky blue, white, black, and then they've got
Speaker 1: some online exclusives. Then of course we move on to
Speaker 1: the processor and performance. So this has got a Snapdragon
Speaker 1: chip inside. Qualcomm is just killing it with their chips
Speaker 1: right now. They got them in phones, they've got them
Speaker 1: in computers, and they're fast, and they're optimized for battery
Speaker 1: life and speed and of course AI, and that's where
Speaker 1: you saw the biggest performance gains on this phone, all
Speaker 1: about AI. They also made the vapor chamber bigger. Now
Speaker 1: I know that's such a nerdy thing to say about
Speaker 1: a phone, but a vapor chamber is basically a cooling
Speaker 1: chamber inside the phone. The bigger it is, the more
Speaker 1: it can keep it cool under heavy use. Now it
Speaker 1: is going to charge faster, So we've got now sixty
Speaker 1: watts of wired charging on this so you're gonna go
Speaker 1: from about zero seventy five percent battery in thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: Then they also improved the wireless charging, so now you're
Speaker 1: gonna you're on par with the iPhone twenty five watts
Speaker 1: of wireless charging. So that's gonna be nice and fast.
Speaker 1: But for some reason, Samsung still has not built magnets
Speaker 1: into these phones, and I don't understand, but they did
Speaker 1: put them in this year's official cases. So these phones
Speaker 1: are ch too ready, I know, another nerdy thing to say.
Speaker 1: That just means that when you put one of these
Speaker 1: chargers that's a CH two charger on this phone, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get the fastest and most efficient wireless charging.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I always thought the Samsung phones charged fast to begin with.
Speaker 1: Now they're even faster, and I have zero problem charging
Speaker 1: these phones, keeping them charged even after a long day
Speaker 1: of use. Now, the camera lots of improvements in how
Speaker 1: much light these lenses capture, so the camera setup is
Speaker 1: pretty much the same. Still that two hundred megapixel lens.
Speaker 1: But the main camera now captures almost fifty percent more light,
Speaker 1: the telephoto camera about thirty seven percent more light. What
Speaker 1: does that mean. It means that your pictures at night
Speaker 1: and in low light are going to look better. And
Speaker 1: I will tell you I walked around San Francisco at night.
Speaker 1: I took a whole bunch of nighttime pictures and I
Speaker 1: am super impressed. The pictures take very fast, they look great.
Speaker 1: The processing. I mean, it's just I am super super impressed.
Speaker 1: And also they're using AI now a lot more. I
Speaker 1: know AIAIAI to reduce noise in the lenses per lens
Speaker 1: for better low light video. And I've got some low
Speaker 1: light video I took and that looked amazing. The selfie
Speaker 1: camera this is they've replaced their hardware image sensor processing
Speaker 1: with AI. So they've literally gotten rid of a piece
Speaker 1: of hardware that would process the selfie pictures. And they're saying,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, a I can handle that now. So that's incredible,
Speaker 1: and they're probably gonna end up doing that with the
Speaker 1: other cameras as well. The other lenses, wider field of
Speaker 1: view for the selfies, you can fit more people in
Speaker 1: the lens or in the picture, I should say, lots
Speaker 1: of AI tools. You can edit photos very easily. A
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff is built on Google Gemini, so
Speaker 1: it's very familiar. More ways to create stickers and little
Speaker 1: shareable images, kind of what Apple did with Image Playground.
Speaker 1: Document scanning. Oh my gosh, this got such a great upgrade.
Speaker 1: If you love taking pictures of documents and scanning them
Speaker 1: with your phone, this is so much better. Like I
Speaker 1: love how good the document scanning is. And now you
Speaker 1: can combine them into PDFs instantly, right from the camera.
Speaker 1: So this is great for receipts and anything else. They're
Speaker 1: going to organize all your screenshots into categories. So I
Speaker 1: took a screen shot the other day. This was so cool.
Speaker 1: Took a screenshot of a website and next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: when I went to that screen shot and maybe this
Speaker 1: was on the old phone but I just didn't never
Speaker 1: notice it, but it had like a link. I said, Oh,
Speaker 1: do you want to go to the original page that
Speaker 1: you took this from. I said, oh, my gosh, that's
Speaker 1: so smart. So that's neat. Oh audio eraser. If you
Speaker 1: ever have trouble hearing things when you're watching videos online,
Speaker 1: now the audio eraser with one toggle can boost the
Speaker 1: voice and reduce background noise. That's incredible. Works inside YouTube, TikTok, Instagram,
Speaker 1: and Netflix. They also do this thing called agentic AI,
Speaker 1: which they made a big deal of, where you can
Speaker 1: basically ask your phone to call you an uber or
Speaker 1: order you dinner, and AI in the background, no joke,
Speaker 1: will do all this stuff for you and then bring
Speaker 1: you to that final screen and you say, Okay, I've
Speaker 1: not been able to test that because I couldn't get
Speaker 1: it to work, but I think it's launching. When these
Speaker 1: phones work, it can screen calls now like the iPhone
Speaker 1: can to ask unknown callers, Hey, why are you calling?
Speaker 1: And then we have the number one biggest feature, the
Speaker 1: new feature the privacy display. So this is basically a
Speaker 1: privacy screen without needing to add a screen protector, so
Speaker 1: if someone's looking at your phone from the side, they
Speaker 1: can't see your screen. And so what they did was
Speaker 1: they built two types of pixels into this phone, wide
Speaker 1: angle pixels and narrow pixels. Wide pixels are on every phone.
Speaker 1: The narrow pixels light up when you're using this privacy feature,
Speaker 1: so you can leave it on all the time just
Speaker 1: for specific apps, just for notifications. I was on the
Speaker 1: airplane and I opened up my banking app and I
Speaker 1: was like, ooh, I don't want this person seeing next
Speaker 1: door to me sitting next to me. And I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got the privacy screen. Now. The only trade off
Speaker 1: is that the screen kind of looks a little washed
Speaker 1: out when that's active. So it's not something that I
Speaker 1: want to use all the time, but it's pretty cool
Speaker 1: to have all right. Pricing, so the price of the
Speaker 1: base models did go up by one hundred dollars this year,
Speaker 1: nine hundred dollars starting eleven hundred dollars for the Plus,
Speaker 1: but you do get double the memory. The Ultra price
Speaker 1: is the same thirteen hundred dollars. But here's the rub.
Speaker 1: If you get the base model, it's two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty six gigabytes of storage with twelve gigs of RAM.
Speaker 1: But if you bump up to five hundred and twelve
Speaker 1: gigs of storage, you get sixteen gigabytes of RAM. I
Speaker 1: think that's the sweet spot. So bottom line, I've just
Speaker 1: had this thing for a couple of days, but I
Speaker 1: will tell you I think it's the best Samsung phone
Speaker 1: I've used so far historically I've preferred the pixel software
Speaker 1: and the cameras, but now I feel like Samsung's gotten
Speaker 1: to the point where the software is so good and
Speaker 1: it's more powerful. I think it's probably the most capable
Speaker 1: all around Android phone right now, and I'll talk about
Speaker 1: it more throughout the show. If you want to see
Speaker 1: my review or my pictures, you can go to the
Speaker 1: website rich on Tech dot TV. All right, coming up,
Speaker 1: we're going to take some of your calls at eight
Speaker 1: eight eight rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight
Speaker 1: seven four to two four one zero one. Plus i'll
Speaker 1: tell you which password manager is raising prices. That's all
Speaker 1: coming up right here when rich on Tech continues right
Speaker 1: after this eight eight eight rich one oh one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Susan in north Ridge. Susan, what's up.
Speaker 3: I have a family member who got an iPhone seventeen Pro.
Speaker 3: She currently has a twenty eighteen vintage Samsung J seven vintage. Yeah, well,
Speaker 3: if you knew how how much we we tried to
Speaker 3: get her files from one phone to the other, which,
Speaker 3: from what I understand from online, is a challenge the
Speaker 3: Apple iPhone store. They didn't even have the cable the
Speaker 3: micro USB to USB c to transfer the files over.
Speaker 3: And when I went to Best Buy, who came through
Speaker 3: for me for the cable, I went back to the
Speaker 3: Apple store. They couldn't get the files transferred over using
Speaker 3: the move to iOS because the files would not come
Speaker 3: up on the phone. So they said I'd have to
Speaker 3: my family member would have to figure it out, and
Speaker 3: so I got tasked with trying to figure out how
Speaker 3: to do this. The phone she has says you need
Speaker 3: to use Android file transfer, which doesn't work on moving
Speaker 3: it from one phone.
Speaker 4: To the other.
Speaker 1: That never worked to begin with that program, I mean never,
Speaker 1: that's the worst. They should just erase that from the internet.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 1: It's horrible, but okay, keep going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I figured that out and so then but the
Speaker 3: new software that they will use doesn't work with the
Speaker 3: old phone. So, to make a long story short, since
Speaker 3: none of the you know it moved to iows didn't
Speaker 3: work either, is there an app or apps that I
Speaker 3: should consider to try and get the she only has
Speaker 3: photos and contacts and text messages on her phone. Is
Speaker 3: there a way like an app that I can use
Speaker 3: or buy to get these files moved over to her
Speaker 3: new phone. And if not, is there a way that
Speaker 3: I can I have an old MacBook Pro. It's High Sierra,
Speaker 3: it's really really old. But is there another way that
Speaker 3: I can get her contact, text messages and photos transferred
Speaker 3: to her new iPhone Pro.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the deal. If she's using an Android, all
Speaker 1: that stuff is in the cloud. Why is it? Why
Speaker 1: haven't you checked the cloud?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that she ever used the cloud.
Speaker 1: Everything is.
Speaker 3: But also on the phone, she got a notification that
Speaker 3: the cloud's getting shut down today February twenty eighth, or
Speaker 3: there's some sort of message she got.
Speaker 1: No, that sounds like a scam. They're not shutting down
Speaker 1: the cloud. I'm not that.
Speaker 3: But it's just the phone. There's gonna be something about
Speaker 3: it's not going to back up to the cloud anymore.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I mean, look, there there's lots of ways
Speaker 1: to do this. Why didn't the move to iOS app work?
Speaker 1: That's what I want to know. That's the thing I'm
Speaker 1: curious about, because that is I mean, this is Wi Fi,
Speaker 1: so I mean, there should be no reason why it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have worked. Who tried to do this?
Speaker 3: People at the iPhone store, and they had three different
Speaker 3: peace people try it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, then you know here's the deal. If three
Speaker 1: different people at the iPhone store couldn't figure this out
Speaker 1: in person, it's going to be really tough for me
Speaker 1: to figure out what's going on here, not in person.
Speaker 1: So to me, what I would do personally is just
Speaker 1: set up the new phone. You're looking at pictures. Pictures
Speaker 1: are very easy to transfer, so I mean you could
Speaker 1: just use any cloud service you can use. I would
Speaker 1: download drop Box to the old phone, upload all the
Speaker 1: pictures to Dropbox, and then transfer them over that way.
Speaker 1: You can use an app called Blip which you can
Speaker 1: install in the old phone and the new phone. You
Speaker 1: can send stuff that way wirelessly. I mean, there's just
Speaker 1: so many ways to do this that it's tough. Like
Speaker 1: the official way, since that's not working, it's tough for
Speaker 1: me to give alternatives because you're telling me the cloud's
Speaker 1: not working, the contacts aren't working. I mean, all these
Speaker 1: things should be in the cloud. The three things you
Speaker 1: told me. Text messages are tricky. I will tell you
Speaker 1: that because you can export them, no problem, but there's
Speaker 1: not a way I know of to import them to
Speaker 1: the iPhone. I'm also wondering why we need all this
Speaker 1: stuff on the new phone. I get the contacts, and
Speaker 1: I think that's probably the main thing that I would
Speaker 1: get on there. But if you get the contacts, if
Speaker 1: you go to OK, here's the thing. There's something that
Speaker 1: doesn't add up here. The phone is a Samsung. Samsung
Speaker 1: phones are linked to a Google account. So if you
Speaker 1: go to your Samsung phone and you go to your
Speaker 1: Google account there, make sure it's signed in. Your contacts
Speaker 1: are going to automatically upload. And you can check this
Speaker 1: out by going to Contacts dot Google dot com from
Speaker 1: a computer and you can see the list of contacts
Speaker 1: there when you sign in. That's number one. You can
Speaker 1: go to photos dot Google dot com from a computer
Speaker 1: and confirm that all the photos are uploaded to the cloud,
Speaker 1: and that's Google Photos. If not install the Google Photos
Speaker 1: app on there, let them upload to the Google Photos
Speaker 1: app and then you can install that app on the
Speaker 1: iPhone and transfer them or just you'll have access to them.
Speaker 1: That way. You can also do a Google takeout of
Speaker 1: the photos. Once they're into Google Photos, you can do
Speaker 1: Google takeout. You can export them that way and import
Speaker 1: them directly to iCloud if you want. Now the text
Speaker 1: messages are a little tricky. So there is a program
Speaker 1: called SMS Backup and Restore, and if you install that
Speaker 1: on the Android, you can at least create a backup
Speaker 1: copy of the messages. I don't know if you'd be
Speaker 1: able to import those to the iPhone. There's not a
Speaker 1: way that I know how to do that without a
Speaker 1: third party program, which would be something like amazing. The
Speaker 1: other thing, because it is a Samsung, you can just
Speaker 1: export everything from this phone to a flash drive. So
Speaker 1: if you go into your settings and I got to
Speaker 1: find where this is, Oh my gosh, of course. Okay,
Speaker 1: we go into settings and we go into I think,
Speaker 1: is it advanced features. Let's see here. I know it's
Speaker 1: on here somewhere. I'm gonna type in backup okay, backup
Speaker 1: data transfer. Here we go. So if you go to
Speaker 1: accounts and back up up okay, and once you're in there,
Speaker 1: you can actually export everything to a flash drive. It
Speaker 1: says transfer data for device setup or external storage transfer,
Speaker 1: so you can do either of those things. But there
Speaker 1: are there are just so many ways of doing this.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm concerned that nothing that you told me
Speaker 1: is working, so it's tough for me to tell you
Speaker 1: to try all these things, because if the basic app
Speaker 1: that Apple's giving you, which has moved to iOS, is
Speaker 1: not working from Google Play, I can't be guaranteed that
Speaker 1: all the rest is of this is going to work. Susan,
Speaker 1: thanks for the call today, appreciate it. Eighty to eight
Speaker 1: rich one oh one eighty eight seven four to two
Speaker 1: four one zero one. You know I talk about password
Speaker 1: managers a lot. Well, if you use one password, your
Speaker 1: price is going up. One password is increasing the price
Speaker 1: of its annual subscription plans on effect on March twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: twenty six applying at your next renewal date. So if
Speaker 1: your new renewal date is before that, you'll be okay,
Speaker 1: you'll get another year. But if it's after that, it's
Speaker 1: going up. So the individual plan goes from about thirty
Speaker 1: six dollars a year to forty eight dollars a year.
Speaker 1: Family plan goes from about sixty to seventy two, so
Speaker 1: it's about a dollar more per month depending on the
Speaker 1: plan you're on. Now here's the deal. This isn't a
Speaker 1: reason to jump ship. If you're using one password, you
Speaker 1: like one password, A dollar a month extra is not
Speaker 1: going to kill you. So stick with it. It's easy.
Speaker 1: With that said, if you're not using all the features
Speaker 1: of a paid password manager. So one Password is actually
Speaker 1: a fan favorite. People love this. I have not personally
Speaker 1: used it, but people really do love one Password. So
Speaker 1: if you're not using all the features though for a
Speaker 1: paid plan, then you know you should consider switching to
Speaker 1: maybe a cheaper or free password manager. I personally like
Speaker 1: Warden because they have a great free version. But let's see,
Speaker 1: so individual, you're getting about three dollars a month, generate passwords,
Speaker 1: auto save share items securely with anyone, use on your devices,
Speaker 1: get alerts for week passwords. So you know you're getting
Speaker 1: some features for that three dollars a month, and they've
Speaker 1: got a whole list of okay, all the different things
Speaker 1: that you can do there. Anyway, just be aware that
Speaker 1: when you see that email, it's probably real. Just be
Speaker 1: of course, on the lookout for the fact that because
Speaker 1: they're raising prices, you might see some scam emails that
Speaker 1: try to get you to log in or change things
Speaker 1: or whatever. Just be aware of that. So one Password
Speaker 1: raising prices effective March twenty seventh. Let's go to the
Speaker 1: phone lines line too. Vincent in Lynnwood California. Vincent, you're
Speaker 1: on with Rich Hell Rich.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 4: I saw your news letter this morning. Oh great mine,
Speaker 4: and you did a wonderful well fall out review of
Speaker 4: the Samsung.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Now I don't hear to talk about another smartphone now.
Speaker 4: I'm currently own a uh California issued uh uh Android
Speaker 4: okay for Ford g And this week I happen to
Speaker 4: see online that the state is now also offering an
Speaker 4: iPhone eleven to those who are yeah, use things like CalFresh.
Speaker 1: Or yeah, yeah, we don't. Yes, it's like a lifeline
Speaker 1: plan kind of thing. Yeah, I've done a story. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's like a lifeline plan. It's like a free
Speaker 1: phone line. I think it's uh, you know, it's through
Speaker 1: a government program. So yeah, so you So now they're
Speaker 1: offering you an iPhone eleven versus this dumpy Android phone.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, they call them government phones. Yeah yeah, and
Speaker 6: I'm guessing the iPhone eleven is like the yeah iOS
Speaker 6: equivalent of a four G.
Speaker 1: Oh it's even better. I mean, I if you're asking
Speaker 1: if you should get this, I would one hundred percent,
Speaker 1: one thousand percent yesterday get this new phone. Are they
Speaker 1: gonna charge you anything?
Speaker 4: Which still have many the resources I could you know
Speaker 4: use today.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the deal. I will tell you the iPhone
Speaker 1: eleven is on the lowest of the so iOS twenty
Speaker 1: six is the newest operating system on iPhone and iPhone
Speaker 1: eleven is the last phone that it works with that's
Speaker 1: compatible with SO next year or I guess the end
Speaker 1: of this year when iOS twenty seven comes out. Uh,
Speaker 1: the typically the oldest phone falls off the list, so
Speaker 1: it would not be eligible for the update. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing, Apple, still it's out security updates for a while,
Speaker 1: even if they don't update the operating system. So at
Speaker 1: bottom line, Vincent, even if you got this phone number one,
Speaker 1: you're going to be happier from the first second you
Speaker 1: have this phone. It's going to be faster, the screen
Speaker 1: is going to be better. It does support five G. Actually,
Speaker 1: hold on, let me just make sure it supports five G.
Speaker 1: I think it does. Oh, it does not support five G. Wow,
Speaker 1: I stand corrected. It's still four G. Five G is
Speaker 1: iPhone twelve or newer? But it doesn't matter. Look, the
Speaker 1: device itself is going to be so much better than
Speaker 1: this Android device that they give you, because I've seen
Speaker 1: the Android devices that they give out and they're just
Speaker 1: not very good. So the fact that they're offering an iPhone,
Speaker 1: even though it's older, it's going to be a world
Speaker 1: of difference, the camera, just everything. So I would say,
Speaker 1: get this tomorrow. What's the process for getting it? You
Speaker 1: just ask for it?
Speaker 4: Oh, you have to go online and just yeah check
Speaker 4: it out, and I sink they I no, I don't
Speaker 4: looked at it yet, So I don't know whether you
Speaker 4: can have a uh an Android and an i've phone
Speaker 4: yeah simultaneously.
Speaker 1: No, I would just replace the Android with this, so
Speaker 1: and I would just replace it with this. You're gonna
Speaker 1: have access to better apps, it's gonna be faster, just
Speaker 1: everything is going to be better. So I don't I
Speaker 1: don't think there's even a question about this. I'd say
Speaker 1: go for it, Vincent, You're gonna you're gonna really enjoy
Speaker 1: this phone. By the way, an iPhone eleven unlocked is
Speaker 1: about one hundred and forty three dollars used, so you
Speaker 1: know it's it's still iPhones just really keep their value
Speaker 1: for a long time, so that whatever Android phone they've
Speaker 1: given you for this free government cell phone plan, they're
Speaker 1: just not very good. They're very basic. The screens are
Speaker 1: not very good, the power, you know, the processor is
Speaker 1: not very good. Even you'll notice even the reception on
Speaker 1: the iPhone is going to be better than this Android
Speaker 1: phone you have. And I'm not knocking Android. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying specifically, the cheap androids that they give out for
Speaker 1: these government you know, these government subsidized phone plans are
Speaker 1: just not very good. And that's, you know, it's just
Speaker 1: the way it is. They're not giving you the highest
Speaker 1: end phones. They're not even a name brand. It's like
Speaker 1: a brand you haven't even heard of. I know the brand,
Speaker 1: I've seen them, but they're not like, they're not very common.
Speaker 1: It's not a Samsung, it's not a Pixel. If they
Speaker 1: would just give people a Pixel ten a or a
Speaker 1: Pixel nine a, that'd be incredible. But they don't. They
Speaker 1: give you not a very good phone. Anyway, Vincent, go
Speaker 1: for it, Enjoy. I think you're gonna like it a lot.
Speaker 1: Michelle wrote in on the website, Hey, Rich, I got
Speaker 1: an email about my LGTV account saying I can't log
Speaker 1: in with Amazon anymore and need to use my lg
Speaker 1: account instead. It looks like a phishing email to me.
Speaker 1: Is it legit Michelle, taking a look at this email.
Speaker 1: It is legit, and here's what they're saying. Basically, when
Speaker 1: you first signed into this TV, instead of creating an
Speaker 1: LG account, or in addition to the LG account, you
Speaker 1: signed in with Amazon, kind of like when you're browsing
Speaker 1: the web. It says, hey, sign in with Facebook, sign
Speaker 1: in with Google, sign in with Apple. You signed in
Speaker 1: with Amazon, which is not as common, but it's there,
Speaker 1: and so it's not a phishing email. They're just basically
Speaker 1: telling you you need to sign in with your LG
Speaker 1: email and password from now on. So it doesn't affect
Speaker 1: any of your subscriptions, your Prime Video, any of that
Speaker 1: stuff has nothing to do with that. All they're saying
Speaker 1: is that they're not using that Amazon login anymore. This
Speaker 1: happens a lot when companies just decide they don't want
Speaker 1: to have that log in support it anymore. So all
Speaker 1: you need to know is that you'll either need to
Speaker 1: create an LG account or you already have one, and
Speaker 1: so that's the way you're going to log in on
Speaker 1: this TV from now on. Good question, DeBie writes in Hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: years ago, a coworker went to CS and came back
Speaker 1: saying banking apps were easier to hack and we shouldn't
Speaker 1: use them. That was about ten years ago. Because of that,
Speaker 1: I never added my credit card bank to my phone.
Speaker 1: Has that changed, Debbie? If I told you how many
Speaker 1: credit cards I added to my phone in the past week.
Speaker 1: I've used online accounts and banking for years, if not
Speaker 1: probably since day one since it was available knock on wood,
Speaker 1: I've had no problems. The main thing is, obviously you
Speaker 1: have to use good hygiene, strong unique passwords for all
Speaker 1: of these accounts, two factor authentication, and the banks go
Speaker 1: as far as using new and unique ways to authorize you. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, I was setting up this Samsung phone and
Speaker 1: I was logging into my Chase app, and I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: I had my username, my password, and a two factor
Speaker 1: authentication code. And then guess what I've never seen this before.
Speaker 1: Is said, now take your credit card out of your
Speaker 1: wallet and tap it to the back of this phone
Speaker 1: to authorize the use of this app on this phone.
Speaker 1: I said, what, I would have never thought about. That
Speaker 1: a wild thing. And I also saw Amazon did the
Speaker 1: same thing. My mom was trying to buy something and
Speaker 1: it said, hey, you haven't logged in on this phone
Speaker 1: before tap your credit card to authorize your account and
Speaker 1: to make this payment. What now that I don't think
Speaker 1: the iPhone does that, but on Android it does. So
Speaker 1: banks use a lot of security, and adding your credit
Speaker 1: card or your debit card to your phone, I would
Speaker 1: actually argue is more secure than actually using your credit
Speaker 1: card or debit card in person when possible. Always tap
Speaker 1: to pay, always, always, always, always. Now, if you insert
Speaker 1: your card with the chip, that is just as secure
Speaker 1: as tap to pay. They're both the same. But I
Speaker 1: would argue that tap to pay is actually more secure
Speaker 1: because you first have to authorize your phone by unlocking
Speaker 1: it with your fingerprint or your face or your pin
Speaker 1: to authorize that transaction, whereas anyone could pop your card
Speaker 1: into a slot if they find it and make a
Speaker 1: payment or make a purchase. Good question, Debbie, Thanks for
Speaker 1: the email, the website, rich on tech dot TV, the
Speaker 1: phone line eight eight eight rich one oh one eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven four to two four one zero one
Speaker 1: coming up. Oh, we got a lot to tell you.
Speaker 1: Volvo is recalling a bunch of their electric SUVs, and
Speaker 1: we've got a new weather app from some notable creators.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what it does. It does rainbow
Speaker 1: alerts and sunset notifications. I'll explain coming up right here.
Speaker 1: I'm Rich on tech. Dave writes in from Colorado, listening
Speaker 1: on six thirty AM. Hey, Rich, I'm worried about dying
Speaker 1: alone in my home and no one knowing. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: we're just getting right into it on this this section
Speaker 1: of the show. I've been trying to find some kind
Speaker 1: of tech solution, kind of like the mortality sensor they
Speaker 1: use in wolf tracking callers that alert someone if the
Speaker 1: animal dies. So far, I've had no luck. Do you
Speaker 1: know of anything like that? Wow, that's an interesting question, Dave.
Speaker 1: Not really something I've thought about. But actually that's not true.
Speaker 1: I think about it all the time because I run
Speaker 1: a lot, and I just always think about and I've
Speaker 1: talked about this on the show. I know, but like
Speaker 1: me just laying in a ditch, like how long would
Speaker 1: it take for someone to find me and figure out
Speaker 1: who I am and alert my next of kin. That's
Speaker 1: why when I run, I typically put like an ID
Speaker 1: in my pocket or like it's so sad. This is
Speaker 1: the stuff I think about. But I usually, especially if
Speaker 1: I'm in like a foreign country, I will put like
Speaker 1: an ID in my wallet. And you know, the iPhone
Speaker 1: also has like that emergency thing if you you know,
Speaker 1: if you're there and someone knows how to access that,
Speaker 1: you should fill that out the medical ID, and so
Speaker 1: does Android, and so does Samsung. But I run with
Speaker 1: just my watch, so that would not work in my case.
Speaker 1: So here's my best solution. The Google Pixel Watch has
Speaker 1: a feature called loss of pulse detection, so if your
Speaker 1: heart stops, it will call nine one one for you.
Speaker 1: So that's not exactly a wildlife tracking caller, but that's
Speaker 1: probably the closest. Now, on the other flip side, they've
Speaker 1: got the fall detection on the Apple Watch, So I
Speaker 1: would imagine if you drop dead and you fell, your
Speaker 1: Apple Watch would recognize that and call nine one one.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, you know, we've
Speaker 1: all watched the TV shows. It's going to be a
Speaker 1: couple of days before someone realizes you're probably you're not
Speaker 1: going to show up to church or to work, or
Speaker 1: to some sort of event that you are scheduled to
Speaker 1: be at, and someone's gonna be like, where's Dave. Come
Speaker 1: to think of it, I haven't heard from him in
Speaker 1: a while. Let's go to his house and see what's
Speaker 1: going on. I hope that doesn't happen. But anyway, those
Speaker 1: are the solutions that I can think of. Maybe, you
Speaker 1: know when it's tricky when you live alone. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's this whole thing in the US where, you know,
Speaker 1: I've heard all these studies that you want someone you
Speaker 1: you want someone to live on their own for as
Speaker 1: long as possible because it makes them live longer. Right,
Speaker 1: But if you are never leaving the house, I think
Speaker 1: that's probably not good. Right, Like, if you're living by
Speaker 1: yourself and no one comes to visit you, and you
Speaker 1: don't leave the house, you don't do anything. I think
Speaker 1: that's a fast lane to your detriment. But if you're
Speaker 1: going out with friends and doing things and people are
Speaker 1: coming over, that's fine. But you know, you heard, you
Speaker 1: hear these stories of people as soon as they go
Speaker 1: to like assisted living or something like that, it's like
Speaker 1: it's the end is near. I'm not an expert in
Speaker 1: this stuff. I'm just telling you stuff i've heard. Let's
Speaker 1: go to Lee in Los Angeles. Hopefully Lee, you can
Speaker 1: brighten us up. Lee. What's up?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's like ninety degrees out here near Pomona, California.
Speaker 7: So if that's bright, oh.
Speaker 1: Well that's hot. We're having like summer weather in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: But apparently my friends on the East coast, my family
Speaker 1: have told me that it's actually pretty warm there after
Speaker 1: they got a cold spell. So anyway, what can I
Speaker 1: help you with, Lee?
Speaker 2: All my relatives are in Jersey and they can go
Speaker 2: through the snowstorm, so it's it's kind of bad out
Speaker 2: there anyway. First of all, thanks for your tech direcord
Speaker 2: for playing that kind of Crows song. I love that
Speaker 2: me too.
Speaker 1: Have you watched the documentary yet on an HBO Max?
Speaker 1: Not yet?
Speaker 8: Was it good?
Speaker 1: Uh? It wasn't good, but it was okay. I mean
Speaker 1: I watched on a plane. It was about an hour,
Speaker 1: and I enjoyed. What I enjoyed the most is that
Speaker 1: they interspersed the music the whole time. I also didn't
Speaker 1: realize that Adam Durretz dated two of the Friends characters,
Speaker 1: or I guess cast members Courtney Cox and then Jennifer Aniston,
Speaker 1: Like what who gets to do that? Anyway, go ahead, Lee.
Speaker 2: Well it's funny you brought up that dog caror thing
Speaker 2: for the old guys. I'm an old guy remember men
Speaker 2: in black.
Speaker 5: Hey, old guys, I'm on.
Speaker 2: A California Lifeline. I've had, I guess for eight years now.
Speaker 2: They give you a free phone if you're on food
Speaker 2: stachers up like that, and what happens I would safely
Speaker 2: currently that's one of the proscribed companies that Lifeline deals with.
Speaker 2: And what happens after about a year, your phone stops
Speaker 2: working and then you have to call the company and
Speaker 2: say why, and they tell you, wait a minute, you've
Speaker 2: ben switch to a different company. This has happened three
Speaker 2: times to me in the last two years, and it's
Speaker 2: starting to get really, really annoying. Contacted. This is basically fraud.
Speaker 2: I've called the coupany Lifeline people to do investigation. They
Speaker 2: ever get back to me, and all these guys that
Speaker 2: hand out the phones in front of the usually there
Speaker 2: they get once of people and if you don't qualify
Speaker 2: for one, they go, I've seen this happen. Hold on,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, and then they get in their little
Speaker 2: files and they find somebody that they gave one to
Speaker 2: and said, Okay, we got you covered. We're going to
Speaker 2: do this, and their phone starts working and mine's dead.
Speaker 2: What can we do to stop the fraud in that system.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the problem. I mean, you're talking about a
Speaker 1: lot of things going on here, and I think what
Speaker 1: happens is is the companies that hand out these phone
Speaker 1: you know, it's a government program, and then you've got
Speaker 1: the companies that actually distribute the phones, and I think
Speaker 1: they get paid and they get a commission based on
Speaker 1: how many of these phones they can get into people's hands.
Speaker 1: So the problem is once they get them into people's hands,
Speaker 1: guess what, they wipe their hands clean, they collect their
Speaker 1: little commission and they don't care. And so that's the
Speaker 1: big problem I think with this program. And so what
Speaker 1: can we do to solve that? I mean, do you
Speaker 1: want the government to actually do it all from start
Speaker 1: to finish and you only deal with them, then the
Speaker 1: program would cost even more. And this is you know,
Speaker 1: you got a lot going on here. It's not cut
Speaker 1: and dry, Lea. But I'm glad you brought some of
Speaker 1: that to the forefront so people can hear what's going
Speaker 1: on there. But at least the program's working out for you.
Speaker 1: That's that's the good news. Thanks for the call today,
Speaker 1: eight to eight Rich one oh one eighty eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one. Coming up this hour,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk more about the Samsung event. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: discuss with tech journalist Lexi Savid's. She's gonna talk about
Speaker 1: what she thinks of the phone and we'll compare notes.
Speaker 1: And then later next hour we've got Kim Cavallo from
Speaker 1: the Global Day of Unplugging. You know, it was in
Speaker 1: San Francisco this week and they've got those Weimo cars everywhere,
Speaker 1: like everywhere is a WAIM like. I don't think I
Speaker 1: saw a regular taxi ubers sure, but I will tell
Speaker 1: you I had a thought about this. Remember when you
Speaker 1: get to a town and you jump in a taxi,
Speaker 1: what's the first thing you do when you get in
Speaker 1: that taxi? You would ask the person, Hey, what's cool
Speaker 1: around here? What's a good restaurant, what's a good place?
Speaker 1: Where do people hang out? What do people do here?
Speaker 1: When you're in an autonomous car, there is no soul,
Speaker 1: no more soul, not to the car, not to the city.
Speaker 1: It is literally just a transactional agree between you and
Speaker 1: that car to get you to where you're going, and
Speaker 1: it navigates those streets, but it doesn't know what's opened,
Speaker 1: what's closed in a couple of recent years, doesn't know
Speaker 1: the hot spots. I mean, I guess it does because
Speaker 1: it drops people off there. That's just big data. But
Speaker 1: it just it made me realize that we are slowly
Speaker 1: eroding kind of the heart and soul of humanity with
Speaker 1: all this technology that's automated that I love, by the way,
Speaker 1: but it's like it's just slowly but surely changing the
Speaker 1: fabric of how we interact as humans. Autonomous cars, that's
Speaker 1: just the tip of the iceberg. What about the fact
Speaker 1: that every single person you know is on a different track,
Speaker 1: every single person. You're watching one show, they're watching another show.
Speaker 1: You're listening to one thing, they're listening to other. Remember
Speaker 1: back in the day, everyone everyone was tuned into the
Speaker 1: same thing on the TV, on the radio. It was
Speaker 1: all the same. We would talk about it the next
Speaker 1: morning at work or at school. What happened last night?
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously Who Shot Jr? Is probably the most
Speaker 1: prominent example of that, But for everything American Idol in
Speaker 1: recent years, all who won last Night? You know, award shows,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff is the only stuff we have nowadays.
Speaker 1: Anything that's live, whether it's an award show or it
Speaker 1: is sports. That's basically it. Everything else. You talk to someone, Hey,
Speaker 1: what are you watching, The last five movies they watch
Speaker 1: are completely different than the last five movies you watched.
Speaker 1: Where when I grew up, a movie open on a
Speaker 1: weekend and you either saw it or you didn't, and
Speaker 1: that was it, and you talked about it, and that
Speaker 1: went for everything, every single thing that was interesting in
Speaker 1: the world. We all did it and experienced it at
Speaker 1: the same time. Now it's anyone's guess, and it's an algorithm,
Speaker 1: by the way, that's directing ninety nine percent of what
Speaker 1: people are seeing, what they're feeling, what they're thinking. It's
Speaker 1: all driven by technology. Now, you know, I love technology,
Speaker 1: but this really makes me sad, the fact that there
Speaker 1: is almost zero shared experience in our world today. That's
Speaker 1: why I think that in person, being with someone, being
Speaker 1: at dinner with someone, being at lunch with someone, being
Speaker 1: out with someone, that's really the only way that we
Speaker 1: can connect anymore with other people. Because you go to
Speaker 1: work and it's like, oh, I haven't seen that show. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't talk to me about it. Please. You know, you
Speaker 1: can comment online, you can feel like you're part of something,
Speaker 1: but are you really now in some ways, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: You know, you have a certain you know, disease or
Speaker 1: a certain ailment, or you know, something afflicting you, and
Speaker 1: you can go online and find people that have the
Speaker 1: same exact thing and discuss it with them, or even
Speaker 1: you know, problem with your technology whatever. That's amazing. I
Speaker 1: think that's incredible. The connecting ability of technology is great.
Speaker 1: But have you ever seen, you know, someone that you
Speaker 1: you follow, one of your friends that you follow on Instagram,
Speaker 1: You see what they're up to, but then you talk
Speaker 1: to them for like five minutes in real life and
Speaker 1: you really get caught up with them. That to me
Speaker 1: is interesting. Anyway. I don't know why I brought that
Speaker 1: all up. It's just you know, when I go running,
Speaker 1: I think of these things. Let's see what else new
Speaker 1: app this week. It's called acme Weather. I know, funny name.
Speaker 1: It's like reminds me the old cartoons, cartoon characters Actmewather
Speaker 1: is from the creators of Dark Sky. This was a
Speaker 1: fan favorite app that was available on I believe iPhone
Speaker 1: and Android back in the day, and then Apple bought
Speaker 1: them in twenty twenty immediately shut them down and just
Speaker 1: integrated their technology into the Apple Weather app. People went
Speaker 1: nuts when this happened, as you know people do, and
Speaker 1: then they forget. But their main thing that they invented
Speaker 1: with dark Sky was you know how you get those
Speaker 1: notifications on your iPhone that says it's gonna rain in
Speaker 1: your area in one minute and you look outside and
Speaker 1: actually didn't, and then sometimes it does and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, that actually worked. That was their claim to fame.
Speaker 1: So now this new app, Actme Weather. There's a couple
Speaker 1: of unique things about it. Number one, they say, look,
Speaker 1: forecasts are not perfect, so we actually show multiple alternate
Speaker 1: forecast lines, so you can kind of see like, instead
Speaker 1: of just one trend of oh the weather's gonna be
Speaker 1: like this, now you can see various takes on what
Speaker 1: the weather might be. So that's number one. And then
Speaker 1: they do all kinds of crowdsourcing of what the weather
Speaker 1: is by you locally, so you can get hyper local alerts.
Speaker 1: There's of course doing the minute by minute precipitation notifications.
Speaker 1: They're bringing that back severe weather warnings. But here's the
Speaker 1: fun stuff. Rainbow alerts. When there's a rainbow in your neighborhood,
Speaker 1: you can run outside and ghost check it out Adams laughing, Oh,
Speaker 1: come on, who doesn't see a rainbow and immediately takes
Speaker 1: out their phone. They're like, oh my gosh. And I'd
Speaker 1: be lying if I said I didn't try to find
Speaker 1: the end of it, not for the pot of gold,
Speaker 1: but just to see where it ends. How come we
Speaker 1: can ever see that? And then sunset notifications, so if
Speaker 1: there's an amazing sunset, you can get a notification for
Speaker 1: that as well. Let's see, it's only iPhone right now.
Speaker 1: Android version is planned, and here's the deal. It's not free,
Speaker 1: twenty five dollars a year, two week free trials, so
Speaker 1: try it out. I downloaded it. It's cool. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it'll replace my I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm willing to pay twenty five dollars right now
Speaker 1: for a weather app, but yeah, I mean they're doing
Speaker 1: some cool stuff. By the way, I was in this
Speaker 1: is the thing. I was telling Adam this. Adam's in
Speaker 1: for Bobo today doing the board, and I was telling
Speaker 1: him saying, you know, half the fun of going to
Speaker 1: all these events, these tech events are actually just chatting
Speaker 1: with other tech people. And so there's this one tech
Speaker 1: person I know and She's always posting these great pictures
Speaker 1: on her Instagram and they're like these old school looking pictures,
Speaker 1: you know, like these they look like a retro camera, right,
Speaker 1: but it's a digital picture. And so I saw her
Speaker 1: and I'm like, hey, tell me what the app you
Speaker 1: use to take these amazing pictures. And she's like, what pictures.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, all your pictures on Instagram they
Speaker 1: have this great look to them, and she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: the best staff for that is called Dispo Dispo Dispo
Speaker 1: dot Fun. And again I tell you this, I think
Speaker 1: because I remember because this this app is like twenty
Speaker 1: five twenty dollars a year, but I will say I
Speaker 1: took like two pictures with it, and you have it's
Speaker 1: one of these apps that you have to wait to
Speaker 1: get your pictures. They don't They don't show your pictures immediately.
Speaker 1: Maybe if you pay the twenty dollars you can. We
Speaker 1: have to wait like twenty four hours or something for
Speaker 1: them to quote unquote develop. But I will tell you
Speaker 1: I took two pictures with this app, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: they do look pretty good. And I've tried so many
Speaker 1: of these little retro picture apps, but that one is
Speaker 1: really good, So Dispo dot fun if you want to
Speaker 1: check it out again. iPhone only. You know all these developers,
Speaker 1: they develop iPhone first and then I mean Dispo. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's been out for a while, and then
Speaker 1: they forget about androids somehow. There's a lot of Android
Speaker 1: users out there that want fun stuff like this. And
Speaker 1: Volvo is recalling forty thousand electric SUVs due to a
Speaker 1: battery fire risk the EX thirty. Have I test driven
Speaker 1: this EX thirty? Let's see I've driven some of these.
Speaker 1: Let's see Doug DeMuro has. Everyone always asks if me
Speaker 1: and Doug DeMuro, the car reviewer are related. We are not,
Speaker 1: but we have spoken about it. We've said a hair
Speaker 1: Are we related? Okay? EX thirty recall effects twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four through twenty twenty six model year Volvo EX thirty
Speaker 1: specifically the single motor extended range and the twin motor
Speaker 1: performance battery modules supplied by a joint venture linked to
Speaker 1: Volvo's parent company, Jili. Is it Geely or Gilie? I
Speaker 1: forget cells could short circuit or overheat. No widespread incidents,
Speaker 1: but they're proactively doing this because the batteries could be
Speaker 1: a fire hazard. Until repairs are completed. Here's the important part.
Speaker 1: Owners are being told to limit charging to seventy percent.
Speaker 1: Oh and just avoid parking or charging your vehicle in
Speaker 1: your buildings or enclosed spaces. Oh, that's easy to do.
Speaker 1: Just don't park your car near anyone else because your
Speaker 1: car might blow up. Oh okay, cool. Permanent fix involves replacing
Speaker 1: affected battery modules free of charge. Analysts estimate the recall
Speaker 1: could cost Volvo two hundred million dollars. Two hundred million dollars. Crazy.
Speaker 1: So you bought one of these cars. You thought you're
Speaker 1: doing something cool, and now you can't park your car
Speaker 1: near anyone because it might just burst into flames. But
Speaker 1: these things are relatively safe in general, the evs. I
Speaker 1: you know, you know, I talked about my car accident.
Speaker 1: I didn't even think about this until later, but you know,
Speaker 1: it was a pretty bad accident, and my car did
Speaker 1: not light on fire. It felt safe. But there are like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at like these electric cars,
Speaker 1: there's like directions on them because you can't cut them
Speaker 1: open with the jaws of life because they're electrified. So
Speaker 1: you gotta be like, I guess these emergency people are
Speaker 1: trained and like where they can actually cut these things open.
Speaker 1: You do not want to cut in the wrong place.
Speaker 1: But I guess gas cars. I mean they're filled with gas.
Speaker 1: So what's you know? It's all dangerous. We surround ourselves
Speaker 1: some danger as humans, and we live to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Eighty eight Rich one O one eighty eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. We'll get to the
Speaker 1: calls coming up right after this. Craig has been patiently
Speaker 1: waiting in Iowa. Craig, you're on with Rich. How you're going, man,
Speaker 1: I'm doing well. Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I just went blind about three months ago. I used
Speaker 5: to call you about my new I I sixteen.
Speaker 1: Oh, sorry to hear that, but.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I got glad phone, my fell and finally went
Speaker 9: out my only eye.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, Sorry.
Speaker 5: What I want to ask you?
Speaker 9: I had to out you ask somebody to delete my
Speaker 9: dot ification, delete my incoming outgoing, delete my test maggine.
Speaker 4: Any way I could.
Speaker 5: Do that on a phone by boy, I use my phone.
Speaker 1: My voice, okay, sure, it can't be the clean You're
Speaker 1: talking an iPhone.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have an I sixteen, you know, okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well I remember you you switched I believe right.
Speaker 5: You got it to the Ice sixteen.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, a year and.
Speaker 5: A half ago.
Speaker 1: So the good news is, and how you like in
Speaker 1: that phone overall?
Speaker 9: I if I want to download that, I had to
Speaker 9: have some I do. It can't degree and all that.
Speaker 9: If I call you or anybody or play KFI.
Speaker 5: Uh they on KF I oh by you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, it'll it'll do a lot of those things.
Speaker 1: Yeah by my voice. Yep. Well here's the deal. And
Speaker 1: you may have to have someone help you kind of
Speaker 1: toggle these things on. But the good news about the
Speaker 1: iPhone is that it's got a lot a lot of
Speaker 1: great accessibility uh features. Apple has put a ton of
Speaker 1: thought into accessibility. And once I talk about this, I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are people that that will call that will say, hey, Rich,
Speaker 1: there's this feature. There's that feature. But built into the
Speaker 1: iPhone under accessibility, they've got a section dedicated to vision
Speaker 1: for people, you know, with any sort of vision issues.
Speaker 1: So there's a couple of features there that might be
Speaker 1: important for you. Number one is voiceover, and voiceover will
Speaker 1: speak items on the screen, so you can tap once
Speaker 1: to select an item, double tap to activate the select item.
Speaker 1: And that's number one. So if you look at this,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's just so many I don't even understand
Speaker 1: all the settings in here because there's so many. But
Speaker 1: what I would do, Craig, is I probably get I know,
Speaker 1: there's a good institute, like you know, maybe like a
Speaker 1: institute for the blind or something in your area that
Speaker 1: can maybe give you some guidance on how to set
Speaker 1: these things up and sit there with you and get
Speaker 1: them set up. But that's probably what I would do,
Speaker 1: because you've got to figure out what you need exactly.
Speaker 1: But I think voiceover is probably a good place to start.
Speaker 1: Siri is also going to be your friend because SERI
Speaker 1: can do a lot of things on the phone and
Speaker 1: perform a lot of functionality like you've already figured out.
Speaker 1: And then you've got let's see here, read and speak,
Speaker 1: so you've got an accessibility reader that can read things.
Speaker 1: Speak screens you can swipe down. This might be a
Speaker 1: good one. There's speak screen, so you can swipe down
Speaker 1: with two fingers from the top of the screen to
Speaker 1: hear the content of the screen. So that's a good one.
Speaker 1: Speak selection. A speak button will appear when you select
Speaker 1: text Let's see she got that, And then you've got
Speaker 1: audio descriptions when available, automatically play audio descriptions, so I
Speaker 1: guess that will do something there. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: of these a lot of these features in here. There's
Speaker 1: just so many. But I would look into that that's
Speaker 1: going to help you. I don't know. Let's see if
Speaker 1: we go to voiceover on iPhone, so it's a voiceover
Speaker 1: is a gesture based screen reader that enables navigation without
Speaker 1: seeing the screen by providing audible descriptions. So the good
Speaker 1: news is there's a bunch of there's a way to
Speaker 1: like help you practice doing this, and you can even
Speaker 1: ask serious. You can say turn on voiceover and it
Speaker 1: will it will turn that on for you, Craig. So
Speaker 1: that's actually interesting. So you don't have to go in
Speaker 1: there and figure out where this is. You can just
Speaker 1: ask Siria to turn it on. And then once you
Speaker 1: have it turned on, there is a tutorial in there
Speaker 1: as well. So the thing is you have to you're
Speaker 1: probably going to need some instruction to kind of get
Speaker 1: the you know, get the hang of all these things
Speaker 1: because it's not pure just like voice. But we're getting
Speaker 1: closer to that. And I think that the AI is
Speaker 1: really I know, AI AI AI. But I think AI
Speaker 1: is probably going to be a huge benefit to the
Speaker 1: accessibility community because we're finally going to be able to
Speaker 1: interact with our gadgets in a natural language way. And
Speaker 1: we're getting close to that, you know, Gemini and this that.
Speaker 1: But but so far Siri is not necessarily there. And
Speaker 1: we've heard the trials and relations of Apple trying to
Speaker 1: make Siri better with AI. It has not worked just yet.
Speaker 1: But I would say by the end of this year,
Speaker 1: when Siri gets her smart upgrade to you know, to
Speaker 1: be more AI, it's going to be a huge benefit
Speaker 1: to people because you'll be able to say, like, hey, Siri, whoops,
Speaker 1: I just said it. You know, do this, do that,
Speaker 1: check this app. It's a lot of the stuff that
Speaker 1: you can do on AI apps like Chat, GBT and
Speaker 1: with Gemini, but it's just not there on the phone
Speaker 1: just yet. Now Gemini on the Android side of things,
Speaker 1: it's it's gotten a lot better. And like I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: with Samsung specifically and also Pixel, they're doing this agentic
Speaker 1: AI and that means you literally tell AI what you
Speaker 1: want to do and it will do it. And so
Speaker 1: on Samsung, what they what they said and what they're
Speaker 1: introducing is you can say, hey, Google, call me an Uber,
Speaker 1: and the AI is smart enough to figure out where
Speaker 1: you are Noepe and now it's telling me I can't
Speaker 1: book rides directly. Yeah. Like I said, I haven't been
Speaker 1: able to figure out how to use it yet, but
Speaker 1: it's coming out in the next couple weeks. But you'll say,
Speaker 1: get me a Nuber to the airport and it will
Speaker 1: literally open up. You'll you can watch your screen and
Speaker 1: AI takes over. It opens up the Uber app, It
Speaker 1: selects the IT types in the name of where you
Speaker 1: are and where you want to go, and then it
Speaker 1: brings you to the final page and it gives you
Speaker 1: an alert and says, hey, go ahead, make sure this
Speaker 1: is okay. And I guess you could say, you know,
Speaker 1: just do it, and then you can do the same
Speaker 1: thing with ordering food. All these things pretty amazing. Eighty
Speaker 1: eight rich one O one eighty eight seven four to
Speaker 1: two four one zero one. Coming up, we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about the Samsung event right after this. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: talking technology. I've been talking a lot about the Samsung event,
Speaker 1: and I've been playing with the phone since, uh, think
Speaker 1: about I don't know about it, maybe maybe three four
Speaker 1: days now, and so far I'm impressed. It's tough to
Speaker 1: tell from the outside because it kind of looks very
Speaker 1: similar to last year's model, but it definitely feels smaller
Speaker 1: in the hand, more manageable, and thinner. Of course, all
Speaker 1: that's canceled out when you put on a case, so,
Speaker 1: you know whatever. But here to talk about it is
Speaker 1: Lexi Savids, formerly of Seen It, now on your own
Speaker 1: doing your own YouTube channel. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 10: Thanks for having me Rich, It's great to be here.
Speaker 1: How is it being your own boss?
Speaker 10: It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 11: I got to say, you know, I get to put
Speaker 11: on multiple hats and get to talk to myself in
Speaker 11: sterne voices to say.
Speaker 10: Why haven't you met your deadline?
Speaker 11: It's fun, it's a great it's a nice change.
Speaker 1: And we were up in San Francisco, so just general impression.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's you know, Samsung brings a lot of
Speaker 1: people into their events and basically it's like a who's
Speaker 1: who of you know, from around the world of tech people,
Speaker 1: and so it's always to me. I was talking about
Speaker 1: this on the show earlier it's always fun to like
Speaker 1: kind of just talk with other people that are doing
Speaker 1: what you're doing, you know, because a lot of times
Speaker 1: we're doing what we're doing on our own. So would
Speaker 1: you like, do you enjoy that aspect of it?
Speaker 11: I love it because, you know, as you say, the
Speaker 11: camaraderie is very nice to be in a room with
Speaker 11: people who are you know, like minded tech enthusiasts.
Speaker 10: I love doing it. But also a lot of us.
Speaker 11: Are doing this either independently or you know, working remotely
Speaker 11: if you're working for a larger corporation, and so this
Speaker 11: is a chance to actually just get to see people
Speaker 11: and get to meet actual fans of the device as well.
Speaker 11: So it's not just tech journalists and media, it's also
Speaker 11: like really hardcore enthusiasts of the brand that sometimes the
Speaker 11: brand in this case Samsung invites out and you get
Speaker 11: to talk to people about, you know, the matter, the
Speaker 11: things that actually really matter to a lot of users
Speaker 11: that maybe you and I might not necessarily pick up
Speaker 11: on immediately.
Speaker 10: It's just so nice to have these different perspectives.
Speaker 11: And it always just makes me think a lot more
Speaker 11: about these devices too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also the world wide implications, you know, or
Speaker 1: so US centric, and you know, the city that we
Speaker 1: live in, the place that we live in. But when
Speaker 1: you think about the whole world, you know, there's so
Speaker 1: many people out there, and so many people use these
Speaker 1: devices for different reasons and in different regions, and you know,
Speaker 1: these companies have to appeal to all of that. So
Speaker 1: that's always interesting to me as well. So what do
Speaker 1: you think of the the S twenty six Ultra. You've
Speaker 1: been using it for a couple of days, Like me,
Speaker 1: what's your initial impression?
Speaker 10: The same as you. I am impressed with this device.
Speaker 11: So I was using the S twenty five Ultra pretty
Speaker 11: much the entire entirety of last year is kind of
Speaker 11: alternating obviously between all of the review bus the review
Speaker 11: devices that I use. But this phone is does definitely
Speaker 11: feel different, And it's interesting that you say that, yes,
Speaker 11: it's not that much thinner and lighter on paper in
Speaker 11: terms of the spex. You know, it's only four grams
Speaker 11: lighter than the S twenty five Ultra when you look
Speaker 11: at the spex, but that four grams makes a huge
Speaker 11: difference because of the material. Because we've moved from titanium
Speaker 11: on the S twenty five Ultra to the aluminum or
Speaker 11: the minimum as I say, on the S twenty six Ultra,
Speaker 11: and it just does feel a lot lighter in the hand.
Speaker 11: It sounds ridiculous when you say it's four grams on paper,
Speaker 11: but it really does make a difference to me. But
Speaker 11: as you say, the case can kind of negate that
Speaker 11: it depends. Samsung gave at least one of my review
Speaker 11: units came with the thinnest Samsung case with magnets. I
Speaker 11: don't know if you've got the same one, but if
Speaker 11: you're not using a first party case, that thickness can
Speaker 11: start to add up pretty quickly when you have those
Speaker 11: extra cases on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was sent a bunch of cases to try out,
Speaker 1: and so I put them all on when I first
Speaker 1: got them. And honestly, my favorite case is this case
Speaker 1: to Fi case, and it's it's the thickest case, but
Speaker 1: I love it because it's super rubbery and grippy, and
Speaker 1: so for me, it's all about a case has to
Speaker 1: add a lot of grip because these phones are so
Speaker 1: slippery when you use them without and I you know,
Speaker 1: I like to throw my phone around. I use it
Speaker 1: all the time, and you know, put in my back
Speaker 1: pocket whatever. But this casey is the thickest of all
Speaker 1: of them that I put on, but I really love it.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because it's the exact same case that
Speaker 1: I have on my iPhone as well. So now I
Speaker 1: should tell you what it's called, but I can't remember.
Speaker 1: It's like the case to FI. I think it's clear
Speaker 1: or something, but it's I'll link it up on the
Speaker 1: show notes. But what I love about it, Lexi is
Speaker 1: that it has and you can see this because we're
Speaker 1: video chatting, It's got this little stand built into the
Speaker 1: camera ring. So I love that because you can just
Speaker 1: prop up your phone. What do you think of the
Speaker 1: privacy screen? What do you make of that?
Speaker 11: Well, this is a big new feature and I really
Speaker 11: think that this is something that is hopefully going to
Speaker 11: be seen on a lot more phones going forward. You know,
Speaker 11: Samsung said that they were working on this technology for
Speaker 11: five years, and it was originally supposed to be in
Speaker 11: the S twenty five Ultra, but it just I guess
Speaker 11: it took that long to kind of get this implementation right.
Speaker 11: I think it's such an interesting technology because for so
Speaker 11: many years we've been looking at phones and talking about
Speaker 11: how great it is to have wide viewing angles, so
Speaker 11: you can see it from all sorts of different angles
Speaker 11: from the sides, maximum peak brightness and things like that.
Speaker 11: And now we're kind of going in the opposite direction
Speaker 11: in terms of privacy. We don't want to be able
Speaker 11: to see things from the side and so on, at
Speaker 11: least other people. So the privacy display is actually turning
Speaker 11: off individual pixels depending on what you, as the user choose.
Speaker 11: So there's kind of two types of pixels. Are the
Speaker 11: ones that are sort of facing forward that you can see,
Speaker 11: and then there's a wide angle pixels. So when you
Speaker 11: turn on the privacy display, it's these wide angle pixels
Speaker 11: that are actually turned off. And there's a couple of
Speaker 11: different levels as well. You can do it either on
Speaker 11: a peru basis. You can block kind of individual parts
Speaker 11: of the screen such as password input. You can block
Speaker 11: different apps so just like specifically a banking up, or
Speaker 11: you can kind of go the maximum privacy display mode,
Speaker 11: which is a really extra layer, I guess you would say,
Speaker 11: and it makes the screen look a little bit different
Speaker 11: as a result, but so.
Speaker 1: Far that's the thing. It's like that, so this is
Speaker 1: not something that I want on all the time because
Speaker 1: it's definitely the screen. It definitely looks different. You know,
Speaker 1: it's tough to explain what it looks like, but it's
Speaker 1: almost like washed out a little bit, but it's still
Speaker 1: you can see it head on. But especially when you
Speaker 1: have that maximum on, which gives you the maximum protection
Speaker 1: from the sides, it's a very different looking screen. And
Speaker 1: it's funny because I was like taking a selfie the
Speaker 1: other day with the protection on and it was like
Speaker 1: I was trying to I couldn't see the screen from
Speaker 1: like this side. I was like cracking up. I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes it a little bit tougher.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it does. It's kind of funny, I kind of
Speaker 10: call it.
Speaker 11: When you have the maximum brightness on it, it kind of
Speaker 11: basically washes out all of the colors. It really emphasizes
Speaker 11: the grays and kind of turns off the blacks completely.
Speaker 10: It kind of crushes the blacks all together.
Speaker 11: So you just have this kind of effect that really
Speaker 11: does look reminiscent of if you have like an actual
Speaker 11: physical privacy screen.
Speaker 10: Display on there. So it's really going to depend on
Speaker 10: the application.
Speaker 11: You're not going to have this maximum mode on all
Speaker 11: the time, at least I don't I'm definitely playing around
Speaker 11: with kind of working out if I'm going to set
Speaker 11: it to have, like, say, for example, a routine so
Speaker 11: when I get when I leave the house, for example,
Speaker 11: I can turn it on so I only have the
Speaker 11: privacy display on outside, like if I'm commuting and things
Speaker 11: like that, and then turning it off completely when I'm
Speaker 11: at home, because I'm not that worried about people looking
Speaker 11: over my shoulder and seeing what's on my screen when
Speaker 11: I'm on my pouch, for example.
Speaker 1: I've always been suspect of people that have the privacy
Speaker 1: film protector anyway. I mean just in general, let's be honest, Now,
Speaker 1: I get it, there's a million reasons why people would
Speaker 1: want that on there, and I'm kind of kidding, but
Speaker 1: I've never had one on because of the fact that
Speaker 1: when you look through it, it does change the way
Speaker 1: your screen looks in general, and you know, it's for me,
Speaker 1: like a Samsung, a Samsung screen, an iPhone screen, I mean,
Speaker 1: they have gotten so nice in recent years. I mean
Speaker 1: they are just beautiful screens. So my concern is that
Speaker 1: this screen was kind of taking a little bit of
Speaker 1: a step back because of this new technology. But I
Speaker 1: think in general, like, just looking at it without it on,
Speaker 1: it's fine, and it's funny every time notification comes in
Speaker 1: because I have mindset to just black out the notifications,
Speaker 1: and it's it's kind of cool because I look at
Speaker 1: the notification from the side and I can't see it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Oh, that's the privacy screen. What's your early
Speaker 1: advice to folks. I mean, I feel like this is
Speaker 1: the best phone that Samsung has made in a couple
Speaker 1: of years. What do you think?
Speaker 11: I think the privacy display is truly an innovation, and
Speaker 11: it's something that actually makes me excited again about talking
Speaker 11: about phones, because I think a lot of the excitement
Speaker 11: in innovation has come in the foldable realm, and obviously,
Speaker 11: as you know, Samsung has really been kind of doing
Speaker 11: a lot there with the Fold seven and obviously the
Speaker 11: Trifol that came out in the US earlier in the year,
Speaker 11: but obviously wildly expensive, like near mortals like you and
Speaker 11: I like not really going to be able to afford that.
Speaker 11: At least my bank ballance says, no trifle for you, Lexi.
Speaker 11: So it's nice to sort of see something genuinely different
Speaker 11: on I guess the candy bar or the slab style phone.
Speaker 11: Whether or not people really kind of latch onto it
Speaker 11: is another thing because I think, as you were saying about, yes,
Speaker 11: you can definitely tell the difference when that privacy display
Speaker 11: is on, but I think unless you're looking at it
Speaker 11: directly against a previous phone or another device that maybe
Speaker 11: a friend has, you probably are not going to really
Speaker 11: tell the difference. But you know, you and I, I guess
Speaker 11: we kind of like do a little bit of pixel peeping,
Speaker 11: a little bit at least I do. I put phone
Speaker 11: side by side and I'm constantly comparing them back and forth.
Speaker 10: As you can see. I mean we're on video chat.
Speaker 11: As you said, I'm holding up the two phones here
Speaker 11: and I'm looking at them side by side, and with
Speaker 11: the privacy display off on the S twenty six Ultra
Speaker 11: and obviously no privacy display on the S twenty five Ultra,
Speaker 11: I can notice a difference in the off axis viewing angles,
Speaker 11: and also a little bit in terms of just like
Speaker 11: that anti reflective coding as well. So there are going
Speaker 11: to be those subtle nuances. And again I'm just interested
Speaker 11: to see if this really resonates with people who aren't
Speaker 11: tech journalists, people who aren't covering this day to day
Speaker 11: to see if it's something that is actually some thing
Speaker 11: that you know you would upgrade for specifically this feature,
Speaker 11: or it's just because you are due to upgrade to
Speaker 11: a new train anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's gonna be interesting. And I feel like I
Speaker 1: feel like ninety nine percent of people that I speak to,
Speaker 1: and I talk to a lot of consumers, the upgrade
Speaker 1: cycle now is why tell me why I need a
Speaker 1: new phone. It's not like the old days where every
Speaker 1: time you got a new phone you got something amazing
Speaker 1: like this. You know, you got touch ID, you got
Speaker 1: face ID, you got Retina display, you got all you
Speaker 1: know USBC, there was five G. There were so many
Speaker 1: like new features that came along in the past ten years.
Speaker 1: Every time you got a new phone, you got entrade
Speaker 1: of those features. Nowadays, people are like, Okay, my phone
Speaker 1: does everything I need it to do. You tell me,
Speaker 1: you convince me why I need a new one. You can't,
Speaker 1: and so I will just upgrade when when my phone
Speaker 1: dies or when the screen breaks or whatever happens. So
Speaker 1: it's a very different world at this point until we
Speaker 1: get that holographic display that pops up out of your
Speaker 1: phone like Star Wars style. We're gonna leave it there, Lexi.
Speaker 1: How do people find you online? How do they follow
Speaker 1: your channel?
Speaker 11: I'd love for you to follow me on YouTube. You
Speaker 11: can subscribe at Lexi savds is my channel name. I'm
Speaker 11: also on Instagram and we'd love to love to see there.
Speaker 11: I make down to Earth tech videos for the real world.
Speaker 1: All right, Lexi savides s a vv I d ees
Speaker 1: finder on YouTube and subscribe. Lexi, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: coming on the show.
Speaker 10: Thanks again, Rich, it was a pleasure.
Speaker 1: All right. Coming up, we'll go back to the phone
Speaker 1: lines eighty eight rich one oh one eighty eight seven
Speaker 1: four to two four one zero one, and I'll tell
Speaker 1: you the new features that YouTube Premium Light is getting.
Speaker 1: Got two new features that make it a little bit
Speaker 1: more useful. That's coming up right here on rich on Tech.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Jerry in Hatfield, Pennsylvania. Hello, Rich, Hey Jerry,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
Speaker 8: Thank you. I'm going to go through a PSA for
Speaker 8: your listener. Now, are you aware of the new next
Speaker 8: gen TV coming out?
Speaker 1: I am, Well, I've seen the boosts and the.
Speaker 8: Okay, well I've been there's a guy on uh on
Speaker 8: YouTube lawn dot TV. He tells you all about it,
Speaker 8: how they how they want to encryptos the signal in
Speaker 8: order to charge you for watching over the air TV
Speaker 8: with your antenna.
Speaker 1: I mean I've heard talk of it, but nobody's done
Speaker 1: that yet.
Speaker 8: Well that's because they can't. Uh they went to TV
Speaker 8: plugged into the internet too, so it's an authorized received
Speaker 8: the signal.
Speaker 1: Right, well, yes, I mean, I mean this is.
Speaker 8: But but the TV is coming out of the next
Speaker 8: general the A at SC three point oh as they are.
Speaker 8: It seems there's a big boone doggle where the broadcasters
Speaker 8: want to make more money. They're going to put more
Speaker 8: channels on the air, but they're going on the crypto
Speaker 8: huddons in order to charge you money. Wow this yeah,
Speaker 8: hell lawn dot TV on YouTube and uh, the the
Speaker 8: seconds and the last one they put up there will
Speaker 8: give you more in depth about it. I think it's
Speaker 8: really a ripoff. And the FCC is allowing the people,
Speaker 8: the broadcasters that make up their own regulations about this.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I mean number one, I mean we are
Speaker 1: in a changing time, that's number one. And we understand
Speaker 1: that now now broadcast TV, broadcast radio, you know, these
Speaker 1: are amazing things and they're they're a public service number one,
Speaker 1: and so they are a public license. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, these broadcasters, they they want. They're competing now
Speaker 1: with streaming and that is no easy feat. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've looked at Netflix lately, or YouTube or
Speaker 1: Instagram or TikTok, it's just and you just mentioned a
Speaker 1: YouTube channel. I mean, so the content is just there,
Speaker 1: tons of it, unlimited, and this is what these broadcasters
Speaker 1: are now competing with. So I think what what ATSC
Speaker 1: and what you call next gen TV? That is their
Speaker 1: way of better competing with digital streaming services. And the
Speaker 1: reason why is because this gives them a lot of
Speaker 1: the same tools that the streamers have. So as I
Speaker 1: understand it, you can send out that signal, it's the
Speaker 1: same signal that you typically would send out, but it
Speaker 1: is much more identifiable. They can tell how many people
Speaker 1: are watching it, they can get data back, they can
Speaker 1: offer data. I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: that they can do with this thing, and what you said,
Speaker 1: a lot of it is things that have been talked about,
Speaker 1: nothing has been I mean, yes, you can. You can
Speaker 1: go on to the website. By the way, if you
Speaker 1: want to try this next watchnextgentv dot com and kind
Speaker 1: of see which channels are available in your area. It'll
Speaker 1: tell you. But here's the thing. Not a lot of
Speaker 1: people have the technology to decode these channels. It might
Speaker 1: be built into your TV, it may not be. Most
Speaker 1: people are using many people are using now some sort
Speaker 1: of streaming service to get their TV channels, and unless
Speaker 1: you're using an antenna, you would not really tap into this.
Speaker 1: So you have to figure out if you're using an
Speaker 1: antenna number one, number two, if your TV can decode
Speaker 1: these signals, or you may need a third party box.
Speaker 1: Remember when we went from the analog TV signals to
Speaker 1: the digital signals. Everyone needed that in between little box
Speaker 1: that were given away for free for a while to
Speaker 1: change an analog TV to accept digital channels. But some
Speaker 1: of the features of next gen TV, what does it offer?
Speaker 1: Better picture quality? Supports up to four K resolution and HDR,
Speaker 1: so that means better picture quality. Obviously improves sounds, so
Speaker 1: better audio. That makes dialogue easier to hear, which of
Speaker 1: course people want more consistent volume between the TV programming commercials.
Speaker 1: Let's see what else. Interactive features so on screen things
Speaker 1: like stats, polls, like your your news channel could say, hey,
Speaker 1: vote in our poll right now, and they'll show you
Speaker 1: the live results right on TV. I guess they've been
Speaker 1: able to do that, but you'd be able to do
Speaker 1: it with your remote right, not a third party device.
Speaker 1: Bonus content personalized program guides the Internet connection that you
Speaker 1: were talking about, So you can get all this with
Speaker 1: just an antenna, but if you connect to the internet,
Speaker 1: you can get more content, more features. It's still free.
Speaker 1: They're still saying no subscriptions uses that regular antenna. But again,
Speaker 1: like you were talking, the ideas that they could offer
Speaker 1: more and yes, some of those channels might be a
Speaker 1: paid you know, a premium plus service or something like that.
Speaker 1: But again, all this stuff has just been talked about.
Speaker 1: A lot of these things, a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: that you see right now. If you actually tune into
Speaker 1: one of these channels, they're just doing kind of the basics.
Speaker 1: You know, they've got the channel there, they've got the
Speaker 1: channel broadcasting. They're adding a couple other things. Cause I
Speaker 1: don't think that many people are taking advantage of this
Speaker 1: just yet. But if you go to that watchnextgentv dot com,
Speaker 1: you can check to see in your area if these
Speaker 1: channels are which channels over the air have this next
Speaker 1: gen technology? And it looks like a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of markets already are adopting it. Eighty eight Rich
Speaker 1: one on one eighty eight seven four to two for
Speaker 1: one zero one more Rich on Tech coming your way
Speaker 1: right after this. All right, let's go to uh Devin
Speaker 1: in u so Cal has a question about the new
Speaker 1: Samsung you're on with Rich.
Speaker 7: Hey, thank you for picking on my phone, Rich, longtime listener,
Speaker 7: first time.
Speaker 1: College Well, welcome, thank you.
Speaker 7: How are you doing today?
Speaker 1: I'm doing fantastic, no complaints?
Speaker 7: All right. Well, I've been wrapping an iPhone fifteen pro
Speaker 7: Macs and I've been hearing the privacy thing about this
Speaker 7: Samsung from your show. And my question is why can't
Speaker 7: they make a screen protector that does the same thing?
Speaker 1: Good question, That is a great question. And uh here okay,
Speaker 1: So it goes back to the way that they designed
Speaker 1: this new screen. So what you know, we mentioned they
Speaker 1: have two types of pixels now, so a typical screen
Speaker 1: has what's called wide pixels. Right, the light shines in
Speaker 1: all directions, front sides, you know, you can see it
Speaker 1: from every angle. The new innovation is that they built
Speaker 1: two types of pixels into this phone screen, wide pixels,
Speaker 1: which are your regular ones, and then the narrow pixels.
Speaker 1: So when they're activating that privacy feature, they're only turning
Speaker 1: on those narrow pixels, and that way you can have
Speaker 1: the whole screen Matt. Let's just say the screen was white, right, like,
Speaker 1: the whole screen was white, but right in the middle
Speaker 1: there was a box like a window. That box could
Speaker 1: be blacked out from the sides because they're only lighting
Speaker 1: up that part of the screen with the narrow pixels,
Speaker 1: so you could see it head on, but people on
Speaker 1: the sides you can't. And so for that reason, when
Speaker 1: you look at a screen protector that does the privacy,
Speaker 1: the film is basically is kind of blocking light from
Speaker 1: the sides, and so head on you can see it,
Speaker 1: but from the sides you can't. There's no way to
Speaker 1: change that or effect that, or to individually light up
Speaker 1: pixels on that screen to do just the top of
Speaker 1: the screen, just the bottom of the screen, just when
Speaker 1: you activate certain apps. So that is the big difference here,
Speaker 1: and that's the innovation is that Samsung came up with
Speaker 1: not just a filter on the screen, they came up
Speaker 1: with a way to light up just parts of the
Speaker 1: screen with those narrow pixels. That effectively makes them invisible
Speaker 1: from the sides. And so that is a fantastic question.
Speaker 1: But that is the innovation. And again we were kind
Speaker 1: of discussing does that innovation change the look of the
Speaker 1: screen at all. Well, you know, if you're looking at
Speaker 1: the screen by itself, I don't really see a big difference.
Speaker 1: I have to now look at it side by side
Speaker 1: with the S twenty five to see. But you can
Speaker 1: definitely tell the difference when you toggle this feature on.
Speaker 1: And it is a cool feature, and I you know,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things I think consumers will decide
Speaker 1: is this something they want or not. And if I
Speaker 1: look at my phone screen right now head on, I
Speaker 1: could see everything. If I turn it up or to
Speaker 1: the side, it looks completely blacked out. So again, those
Speaker 1: those narrow pixels are activated on my entire screen right now.
Speaker 1: You can have them turn on for just notifications, just
Speaker 1: when you open up a certain app. It's really quite interesting.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the call, Devin, appreciate it. Let's go to
Speaker 1: let's see here, let's go to William in Santa Clarita. William,
Speaker 1: you're on with Rich.
Speaker 12: Hi, Rich, thanks for taking my call.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I have a question.
Speaker 12: I've got both my iPhone and I've got a Mac
Speaker 12: computer as well. I'm looking at either a VPN or
Speaker 12: something on there because my phone, I get so many
Speaker 12: spam calls. I'm tired of that, and then my computer,
Speaker 12: I just want to protect that. I've noticed there's several
Speaker 12: different companies out there, like web Root I think it is,
Speaker 12: and Nord VPN and they all do similar things. But
Speaker 12: I'm wondering, what is there any company you recommend or
Speaker 12: any product you recommend?
Speaker 1: Well, I can I can tell you this. So there
Speaker 1: are a couple. There's the one I use, and there's
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of other ones. But I
Speaker 1: think you could. I can tell you what to look for, right,
Speaker 1: I think that's probably the most important part here, And
Speaker 1: uh hold on, let me. I'm bringing up my article
Speaker 1: what to look for in a good VPN. I did
Speaker 1: a story on this for KTLA, And you know the
Speaker 1: main thing is that I think number one, you want
Speaker 1: this to work on all your devices. So now you
Speaker 1: mentioned the spam call and stuff like that, A VPN
Speaker 1: is not really going to cut down on that. So
Speaker 1: to me, what I like the VPN for is a
Speaker 1: couple of things Number one if you want. So the
Speaker 1: other day I was shopping for luggage and I was
Speaker 1: not using the VPN, and literally every single ad on
Speaker 1: my phone, any website I went to, any social media,
Speaker 1: it all turned to luggage ads. Now that's fine because
Speaker 1: I was looking for luggage, and of course that's what
Speaker 1: they want to do. They want to market me luggage
Speaker 1: they know I'm buying. So if you want, a VPN
Speaker 1: could help you kind of avoid some of that because
Speaker 1: it anonymizes some of your searches. Now, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: you anonymous. And there's a lot of debate over, you know,
Speaker 1: how these things work and whether you can you know,
Speaker 1: you can't just sit there and like think that you're
Speaker 1: going to be invisible on the web because you're using
Speaker 1: VPN and people use them for various reasons. But it
Speaker 1: does confuse the computers because you may be connecting in
Speaker 1: a different area from a different type of connection. And
Speaker 1: so you know, on my computer, I've got where I
Speaker 1: connect to a VPN. I don't use it all the time,
Speaker 1: but I will use it sometimes if I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do something special or whatever, or on my phone. I
Speaker 1: do use it a lot for and the number one
Speaker 1: reason I use on my phone is because it blocks
Speaker 1: all the ads across my phone and it also blocks threats.
Speaker 1: So the one I'm using is nord and it has
Speaker 1: this thing called threat protection, and so I love it
Speaker 1: because when I activate that, everything across my phone, not
Speaker 1: only the ads are eliminated, but also any dangerous websites
Speaker 1: that you might visit. They're kind of their VPN is
Speaker 1: looking at that and saying, Okay, this is a malicious website.
Speaker 1: Don't allow him to go there. And so that's really
Speaker 1: good too. So that's you know, those are the main reasons.
Speaker 1: The other reason I love it is because when you
Speaker 1: travel to a different country, you can just connect to
Speaker 1: a server back home in the US and your entire
Speaker 1: phone and computer will work the way they work in
Speaker 1: the US. I'm not sure if you've traveled internationally, but
Speaker 1: when you travel internationally, your phone and your computer all
Speaker 1: of a sudden take on, you know, whatever country you're in.
Speaker 1: So if you're in Mexico, Mexico City, I was in,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, my computer's showing all, you know,
Speaker 1: results from the web that are different, and you know,
Speaker 1: different language whatever. So if you connect to a VPN,
Speaker 1: you avoid all that and you just it just says,
Speaker 1: oh Rich is connecting from the US, so let's just
Speaker 1: show him everything from the US. So what to look
Speaker 1: for in a VPN. Number one, I think that it
Speaker 1: should work on all of your different devices, So make
Speaker 1: sure that it works on your phone, make sure it
Speaker 1: works on your computer, make sure it works on your tablet,
Speaker 1: and that's number one. Number two, you want to look
Speaker 1: for audit results, independent audit results. So people use these
Speaker 1: to make their connections more private, and so you want
Speaker 1: to make sure that VPNs are auditing their connections to
Speaker 1: make sure that they are private, and so that's really important.
Speaker 1: VPNs can also slow down your connection, so you want
Speaker 1: to look for one that supports the WireGuard protocol, which
Speaker 1: is faster than the open VPN proto call. Look for
Speaker 1: one that has lots of servers, no bandwidth caps. And
Speaker 1: so what are the experts recommend. Molevad is one that
Speaker 1: a lot of experts like because if you in LA,
Speaker 1: they've got ads all over the US or ads all
Speaker 1: over LA from molevad m U L l V A
Speaker 1: D and they're very straightforward with their pricing. They explain
Speaker 1: everything and if you want to see like why they
Speaker 1: think they're the best, you can read all about it
Speaker 1: on their website. And they basically do a really good
Speaker 1: job of like saying, hey, this is why we think
Speaker 1: we're the best. And they don't fool around the pricing
Speaker 1: at all. So it's basically like some people don't like
Speaker 1: that because you can't buy like three years in advance.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, you can just buy. It's like
Speaker 1: five bucks a month, basically, all right, I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's see. The other one is surf Shark. Surf Sharks
Speaker 1: another one that people like and they always rank really high.
Speaker 1: And then the one I mentioned, nord VPN. I really like. Disclaimer,
Speaker 1: some of these have sponsored my newsletter, so just FYI,
Speaker 1: but I don't let things sponsor unless I really enjoy
Speaker 1: them and use them and try them out first, so
Speaker 1: just be aware. When I tried nord VPN, I really
Speaker 1: really did like what they do. But again, there are
Speaker 1: many out there. I think that these a lot of
Speaker 1: these VPNs are selling a promise that you know, hey,
Speaker 1: this is going to change everything about your Internet. I
Speaker 1: don't know, if you want to always serve for the VPN.
Speaker 1: I mean, some people do, I guess if they really
Speaker 1: want to protect their privacy, But there are some downsides,
Speaker 1: and especially when you visit websites, they may not always
Speaker 1: be localized for you because your VPN may be connecting
Speaker 1: to a server in a different area, and so these
Speaker 1: websites get confused. And then also they may see a
Speaker 1: lot of traffic coming to that server from that VPN,
Speaker 1: and so they question if you're a human. And so
Speaker 1: when you're using a VPN, you're going to see a
Speaker 1: lot of these things, these captures that are like, hey,
Speaker 1: confirm your human or hey, we've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: unusual activity from your IP address, so we just want to,
Speaker 1: you know, make sure that you are human or make
Speaker 1: sure you're real. And so if you get those and
Speaker 1: you encounter those, that's because you're on a VPN. But overall,
Speaker 1: I will tell you I've been using it more and
Speaker 1: more because I kind of like the protection. I kind
Speaker 1: of like the way it blocks ads. I kind of
Speaker 1: like the way it anonymizes or makes it a little
Speaker 1: bit more confusing to marketers as to who I am.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's why we're seeing a lot
Speaker 1: more people use them. They started out back in the day.
Speaker 1: People just wanted to watch their sports in different places,
Speaker 1: or they're you know, programming on Netflix from a different
Speaker 1: country or something. But so much of this stuff has
Speaker 1: gotten a lot easier. You don't necessarily need that anymore.
Speaker 1: But believe me, there are a lot of people that
Speaker 1: love using a VPN. William, great question. I will link
Speaker 1: up some of those VPNs on the website. Rich on
Speaker 1: tech dot TV. Okay, we got to go to break
Speaker 1: eighty eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four
Speaker 1: to two four one zero one. Coming up, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you about the new Instagram alerts if teens need help,
Speaker 1: YouTube Premium Light, I'll tell you what they added, and
Speaker 1: this new app that alerts you if someone nearby is
Speaker 1: wearing smart glasses. That's all coming up right here. I'm
Speaker 1: rich on Tech. I got to tell you I was
Speaker 1: hanging out and I've said this now three times during
Speaker 1: the show, but like half the fun of going to
Speaker 1: these tech events is really talking with the other people
Speaker 1: there and exchanging ideas and knowledge and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: That's all, you know, kind of not the main attraction.
Speaker 1: It's just what happens when you're there, And so you
Speaker 1: pick people's brains about stuff because there's lots of smart
Speaker 1: creators and people at these events, and so I'm always
Speaker 1: asking them like, how do you do this? What do
Speaker 1: you use for this? But one of the things I
Speaker 1: was talking about with someone is Gemini, and they were
Speaker 1: showing me how they coded an app on Gemini to
Speaker 1: help them compare photos for their camera tests and things
Speaker 1: like this, and I said, wait, what, I know my
Speaker 1: son and I have been coding apps on Gemini, but
Speaker 1: I didn't really think about all the implications. And so
Speaker 1: I've been trying to create this shortcut to do a
Speaker 1: couple things with pictures forever on the on the Mac computer,
Speaker 1: and I could not figure out how to do it.
Speaker 1: It just would not do it. All I want to
Speaker 1: do is a couple things. When you take pictures on
Speaker 1: an iPhone, they come out as ZIP files when you
Speaker 1: download them from Google Photos, and so I want to
Speaker 1: I wanted to take that, extract the picture and then
Speaker 1: optimize it, you know, kind of make it smaller, compress it,
Speaker 1: make it four x three, strip the metadata, add a
Speaker 1: water mark, and also change the file name. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of things to do, right, and you're sitting there
Speaker 1: in shortcuts, trying to figure out the flow of all
Speaker 1: that stuff. I could never get it to work. I
Speaker 1: put one line of exactly what I wanted to do
Speaker 1: into Gemini and I said, can you create this app
Speaker 1: for me? It did it in seconds. Now I have
Speaker 1: the rich On Tech Optimizer for photos. Unbelievable. You drag
Speaker 1: a photo or a ZIP file in there. It extracts
Speaker 1: the picture, It crops it to four x three, It
Speaker 1: scans it using AI to come up with keywords that
Speaker 1: are relevant in the file name, which is good for SEO,
Speaker 1: and then it strips the metadata, the exit data and
Speaker 1: the GPS, and then it puts a rich On Tech
Speaker 1: watermark on it. So if you look at my newsletter
Speaker 1: today rich On Tech dot TV, you'll see all the
Speaker 1: pictures in there are now formatted because of this AI tool,
Speaker 1: this app that I coded in seconds. And then as
Speaker 1: I go along, if there's something I wanted different, you
Speaker 1: just chat with the AI and tell it to change it. So,
Speaker 1: if you have not played with this, I get it.
Speaker 1: This is not a tech novice thing, per se. You
Speaker 1: need a little bit of tech. I guess not really,
Speaker 1: because I'm not a coder and I made an app
Speaker 1: literally made the best app I've ever used in my
Speaker 1: life right now, and it does exactly what I want
Speaker 1: and you can run it all from Gemini. By the way,
Speaker 1: so this feature is called Canvas. So when you go
Speaker 1: to Gemini, if you want to try making your own
Speaker 1: little app, just go to tools and tap canvas and
Speaker 1: that will give you. I mean, it says what, let's
Speaker 1: write or build together. I'm not kidding when I tell
Speaker 1: you I've been in technology and working with technology for
Speaker 1: you know, a couple decades now. This is unbelievable. The
Speaker 1: fact that I can sit here and create my own
Speaker 1: app that does exactly what I want it to do
Speaker 1: is just something that in the history of mankind has
Speaker 1: never been available before. It's mind boggling. And by the way,
Speaker 1: it's free. So if you've been thinking about something that
Speaker 1: you want to do on your computer, code it, try it.
Speaker 1: Make it. You got something you do every day? You always,
Speaker 1: you know, form out a picture this way, you always
Speaker 1: do something, whatever it is, music, whatever it is, try it.
Speaker 1: I cannot believe how good this is. And I talked
Speaker 1: about this a couple of weeks ago. The timer I
Speaker 1: use for this show now my kid made My kid
Speaker 1: is fourteen. He coded a showtimer that takes into account
Speaker 1: all the breaks, all the commercial time when we have
Speaker 1: to stop what we call hard stops, soft stop, what
Speaker 1: is it heartbreak? Soft break? You know some breaks on
Speaker 1: this show, I can go a little bit longer and
Speaker 1: we can still go to break. Some I have to
Speaker 1: hit at exact certain time. Somehow he got them to
Speaker 1: time out perfectly on this thing. My point is this
Speaker 1: stuff that you can do on AI. And I understand
Speaker 1: some people are oh, oh my gosh, but the actual
Speaker 1: benefits to people that we're finding are really incredible. So
Speaker 1: that's just one example. Anyway, if you've been trying to
Speaker 1: do something, or you know you want to create a
Speaker 1: little app. I've got like a couple app ideas that
Speaker 1: we created. We made like little prototypes of them. It's
Speaker 1: just unbelievable what you can do. That's Gemini Gemini dot
Speaker 1: Google dot com. And look at the canvas feature and
Speaker 1: just code your app. See what you can do. Speaking
Speaker 1: of apps, there's a new app called Nearby Glasses. This
Speaker 1: is an Android app that basically can tell you if
Speaker 1: someone nearby is wearing smart glasses like the Meta ray
Speaker 1: bands or the Snap Spectacles. The app works by scanning
Speaker 1: Bluetooth low energy signals. These are little tiny radio beacons.
Speaker 1: These smart glasses broadcasts so they can connect to apps
Speaker 1: and phones. It'll tell you, hey, someone nearby is wearing
Speaker 1: these glasses. The developer says. The goal is awareness, calling
Speaker 1: the app a small pushback against the growing always on
Speaker 1: surveillance from wearable cameras. Kind of interesting. I can see
Speaker 1: this being useful if you're in a job where you
Speaker 1: might not want to be recorded.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I don't know what kind of job that is, but
Speaker 1: you know there's jobs like that. YouTube Premium just got
Speaker 1: two new features Premium Light I should say background playback
Speaker 1: and offline downloads. So if you're paying eight bucks a month,
Speaker 1: you now get these two features that were previously locked
Speaker 1: behind the full premium plan, which costs much more each month,
Speaker 1: I think thirteen dollars a month, fourteen dollars, so this
Speaker 1: is eight dollars a month. Premium Light basically takes a
Speaker 1: lot of ads off of YouTube. It does not take
Speaker 1: ads off of two places that I watch the most,
Speaker 1: which is shorts and music videos, so you still see
Speaker 1: ads there, which you might as well. At that point
Speaker 1: just pay for the fourteen dollars a month, but Premium
Speaker 1: Light two new features. All right, coming up, we are
Speaker 1: going to talk about the day of on Global Day
Speaker 1: of on Plugging, could you give up your phone for
Speaker 1: twenty four hours we'll discuss coming up next now on
Speaker 1: the show. Kim Cavallo from the Global Day of on Plugging,
Speaker 1: happening March sixth through seventh. Kim, welcome to the show.
Speaker 10: Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Rich.
Speaker 13: I just have to say I admire and appreciate so
Speaker 13: much your show and your community because everyone's looking to
Speaker 13: you to you tell them about technology, and you cover
Speaker 13: all the angles from the healthy aspect to maybe some
Speaker 13: of the things for us to look out for.
Speaker 10: So I always appreciate you.
Speaker 1: So thank you well, thank you. And you know I
Speaker 1: am a tech enthusiast for sure, but I also see
Speaker 1: the downsides of all of this stuff. And that's you know,
Speaker 1: try to give people a you know, a rounded kind
Speaker 1: of look at all this stuff, you know, a well
Speaker 1: rounded look, because you know, we love this stuff, we
Speaker 1: all use it, but we also know that like I mean,
Speaker 1: I see adults, so many adults that are just so
Speaker 1: addicted to their phones. It's like, put down the phone
Speaker 1: for one second, please absolutely, And that's what you're saying
Speaker 1: to do. So explain what the Global Day of Unplugging
Speaker 1: is all about?
Speaker 13: Okay, all right, well, the globally of I'm plugging. It's
Speaker 13: an intentional call to action for people to not only
Speaker 13: reflect on their relationship with technology, but to gather together
Speaker 13: with other people to with their intentions of experiencing life
Speaker 13: beyond our screens, which is you know what you've just
Speaker 13: been talking about. It's always the first weekend of March.
Speaker 13: It's been that way for seventeen years. And as you said,
Speaker 13: this year, the official campaign launches at sundown on March sixth,
Speaker 13: and at last twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: Okay, so how do you participate? Like, what do you
Speaker 1: have to do? Is this like an official thing or
Speaker 1: is it just a personal thing or is it a mix?
Speaker 10: It's really a mix.
Speaker 13: I mean obviously, you know, the thought of shutting down
Speaker 13: devices for twenty four hours can be a total turnoff,
Speaker 13: especially right now. You know, so many of us are
Speaker 13: gripped by the news of what's happening around the world.
Speaker 13: I mean, you know, especially even today, and you know,
Speaker 13: we don't want to turn off our TVs or stop
Speaker 13: scrolling because we're so scared, and we understand that at
Speaker 13: Global Day of Unplugging. You know, some parts of the world,
Speaker 13: for many people, the smartphone and the Wi Fi are
Speaker 13: literally a lifeline, so you know, and I'm gonna admit
Speaker 13: something here on live Radio. I find it impossible to
Speaker 13: unplug unless my phone is out of sight. I have
Speaker 13: this horrible habit of picking it up to use the calculator,
Speaker 13: and then an hour later, I'm watching episode three about
Speaker 13: some celebrity breakup on TikTok, so I need global of
Speaker 13: them plugging.
Speaker 1: Well, you're not the only one, you, I mean everyone.
Speaker 1: This is and this is why notifications are so important
Speaker 1: to these these apps, because they get you in, they
Speaker 1: get you on your phone. Yes, and I actually have
Speaker 1: a term for this notification abuse because let's just let's
Speaker 1: for instance, DoorDash right, you want you want to leave
Speaker 1: notifications on DoorDash on because you want to know when
Speaker 1: your pizza gets delivered. But they abuse that privilege because
Speaker 1: they'll send you stuff all day long, every day. Hey, rich,
Speaker 1: these cookies are looking pretty good today. Why don't you
Speaker 1: order one? It's like I don't need that, that's like it,
Speaker 1: you know, And so a lot of apps do that.
Speaker 1: They abuse their privileges on our phone and they get
Speaker 1: us to look at it, and then we go down
Speaker 1: that rabbit hole of looking at other stuff.
Speaker 13: Yeah yeah, and really what Global Day of them plugging?
Speaker 13: I mean, it's for me and thousands of people around
Speaker 13: the world. You know, it's a communal moment. It's a
Speaker 13: time that everyone could observe in some way. You can
Speaker 13: plug for one hour, fifteen minutes, you could do the
Speaker 13: full twenty four hours. You can ditch all your devices
Speaker 13: or swear off social media for the day. I mean,
Speaker 13: it's we have two hundred plus ideas on our website
Speaker 13: to support the conversation, and we think of it like
Speaker 13: Earth Day. You know, on Earth Day we celebrate and
Speaker 13: protect the environment. On Global Day of Unplugging, it's our
Speaker 13: chance to remind each other that the real thing, the
Speaker 13: person in front of you, those connections are worth preserving.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that makes a lot of sense. So it's
Speaker 1: really a way of it's not necessarily saying, Okay, you
Speaker 1: have to take twenty four hours off your device, but hey,
Speaker 1: take this time to reflect on your relationship with your
Speaker 1: technology and how it's affecting you and what it's doing
Speaker 1: to your life and also just take that time to figure.
Speaker 10: That out exactly.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's interesting. I like that aspect because I don't
Speaker 1: think we think about this all the time, like how
Speaker 1: these things affect us. So what about research? I know,
Speaker 1: I was just talking about this, these alerts for the parents,
Speaker 1: you know, the parents from Instagram. What does research tell
Speaker 1: us about loneliness and connection when it comes to technology.
Speaker 13: So we do know that there's a strong correlation between
Speaker 13: high scho screen time rates, particularly social media, and increased.
Speaker 10: Feelings of loneliness.
Speaker 13: So if you exceed four plus hours a day scrolling
Speaker 13: on social media, I mean, this might seem obvious to
Speaker 13: some people, but it's strongly linked to increased loneliness and
Speaker 13: reduced well being for all ages. I'm really excited because
Speaker 13: after seventeen years, our team and partners are interested in
Speaker 13: learning more about the impact of unplug gatherings on a
Speaker 13: sense of belongingness. So this year, some participants who attend
Speaker 13: gatherings and connection with Global Data Plugging will be invited
Speaker 13: to complete a brief research and formed survey shortly after
Speaker 13: their event, and then we're going to follow up with
Speaker 13: a survey several months later. It's led by doctor Tracy
Speaker 13: Dennis Tawari from New York, the author of Future Tents,
Speaker 13: a book about anxiety. She's also a director of an
Speaker 13: emotion regulation Lab at the City University of New York.
Speaker 13: She's joined by Jamie Caruth, who's a licensed marriage and
Speaker 13: family therapist and also a data analyst.
Speaker 10: And so we're really excited.
Speaker 13: About this new research project and can't wait to explore
Speaker 13: what the data story is telling us about unplugged gatherings.
Speaker 13: So we'll report back to you at the end of
Speaker 13: the summer about that.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's as you'll collect data on how people feel,
Speaker 1: what their thoughts are, and all this stuff from people
Speaker 1: that are participating in this event. We're talking to Kim
Speaker 1: Cavallo of the Global Day of Unplugging Global Day of
Speaker 1: Unplugging dot org. They've got a whole bunch of unplugging ideas,
Speaker 1: she said, about two hundred plus. Let's see here, create
Speaker 1: a boredom box. Okay, upcycling, cardboard cars, living history day.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, this reminds me of my kid. Last night.
Speaker 1: He was I said enough time on the iPad and
Speaker 1: he said, okay, I'm off my screen. Now I get
Speaker 1: to do. What I really like to do is be creative.
Speaker 1: And he just went out and he started like doing.
Speaker 1: It's so funny because you know, left to their own devices, literally,
Speaker 1: kids will just be glued to the screen forever indefinitely, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: but if you let them be kids and play, like
Speaker 1: I tell my kids, you know, go look under rocks,
Speaker 1: like look for worms, like just go outside like touched
Speaker 1: r whatever. Yes, it really like they want to do that.
Speaker 1: That's that's also built into their system. It's just who
Speaker 1: doesn't want that screen that just has all the world's
Speaker 1: information and flashiness and games at all times. I mean
Speaker 1: everyone wants that exactly.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 13: Definitely, mobile technology especially it's disrupted childhood, the natural way
Speaker 13: that we you know, learn and grow when we're young.
Speaker 1: How do you gauge success of this global day of unplugging?
Speaker 13: So, you know, we we it's hard for us actually,
Speaker 13: you know, because we have a gathering form on our website,
Speaker 13: so we hope that people fill that out and tell
Speaker 13: us what their.
Speaker 10: Plans might be. And your plans might be.
Speaker 13: I'm going to go out to dinner with one person,
Speaker 13: or I'm going to plan something for my workplace or
Speaker 13: my entire school district.
Speaker 10: So there's a rain it.
Speaker 13: So we asked people to fill that out on our
Speaker 13: website and then at the end of March we put
Speaker 13: all that on the website as in forms of a
Speaker 13: pin so that we can see the impact of that.
Speaker 13: But to be honest, we also get you know, Google
Speaker 13: alert hits in the middle of the year that says
Speaker 13: that some incredible company had this great way of celebrating
Speaker 13: Global Day of Unplugging. They never reached out to us,
Speaker 13: they never filled out a form, and we didn't know
Speaker 13: what happened with it. So yeah, we really do want
Speaker 13: people to reach out to us and let us know
Speaker 13: what they're doing.
Speaker 1: All right, Kim Cavallo of a Global Day of Unplugging.
Speaker 1: I did it. I did the whole twenty four hour
Speaker 1: thing a couple of years ago. It was tough. I imagine
Speaker 1: it'd be even tougher this time around. But I think
Speaker 1: that we're seeing a definite since I've talked to you
Speaker 1: for a couple of years about this, a definite movement
Speaker 1: towards people understanding their relationship with tech is not always
Speaker 1: the healthiest, and I'm seeing more people try to disconnect,
Speaker 1: try to use retro things, try to stay. You know
Speaker 1: books this that versus the digital equivalent. So I think
Speaker 1: you're getting some you're gaining some ground here.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 13: Yeah, You've been so supportive over the years, and I'm
Speaker 13: glad you've seen that growth and we appreciate it and
Speaker 13: are so grateful.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks for joining me today Global Day of
Speaker 1: Unplugging dot Org. Check it out, make your plans for
Speaker 1: March sixth and seventh, connect with friends, do something just
Speaker 1: to ditch that screen for a little bit. Kim, thanks
Speaker 1: for joining me today.
Speaker 10: Thank you so much. Rich I have a great day.
Speaker 1: All right. Coming up, we are going to open up
Speaker 1: the feedbag. Where is it? Oh, we've got a lot
Speaker 1: here it is? Can you hear that? Lots in the
Speaker 1: feedbag today? These are your emails, your comments, your questions
Speaker 1: you send me throughout the week. We will get through
Speaker 1: as many as we can. Coming up right here on
Speaker 1: Rich on tech text Now, we've talked about this company.
Speaker 1: They offer basically free texting and calling through an app. Well,
Speaker 1: now they've launched eSIMs, so you can now install this
Speaker 1: on your phone instantly. So text Now can basically give
Speaker 1: you their phone line. Is they have a free essential
Speaker 1: data plan. So in the past you know, you could
Speaker 1: download their app and you can get free calling, free texting.
Speaker 1: But they also had this thing called Free Essential Data
Speaker 1: where you had to get a SIM card. Right, you
Speaker 1: have to pay them a couple bucks to mail you
Speaker 1: a SIM card, and then when you put that in
Speaker 1: your phone, you can get free calling, free texting, and
Speaker 1: free data for apps like ride shares, maps, banking. But
Speaker 1: here's the deal. Now, you can just go to their website,
Speaker 1: scan the QR code, get an eSIM on your phone instantly,
Speaker 1: and basically have a free phone line, free texting, plus
Speaker 1: limited data access and if you want more data, you
Speaker 1: can buy it three dollars for a day, nine dollars
Speaker 1: for a week, thirty six dollars per monthly unlimited. So
Speaker 1: again this is for people who are always on, always
Speaker 1: on Wi Fi, but want a little cellular backup for
Speaker 1: their you know, their most essential apps, or they just
Speaker 1: want to buy data. So it's not for everyone, but
Speaker 1: if you're looking for something like that, or you need
Speaker 1: something like that, text now check it out. Really interesting
Speaker 1: what they're doing there. And then this is silly. Spotify
Speaker 1: teamed up with Liquid Death to create an eternal playlist
Speaker 1: earn a cremation Earn with a built in Bluetooth speaker,
Speaker 1: so your music can keep playing after you're gone. Four
Speaker 1: hundred ninety five dollars, only making one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: of them. This is clearly a stunt, but they have
Speaker 1: a playlist eternal playlist generator where you answer questions about
Speaker 1: your eternal vibe, and that's what plays on this thing.
Speaker 1: So I do love my liquid Death drinks, but come on,
Speaker 1: that's kind of silly. All right, Time for the feedback.
Speaker 1: That's your feedback plus the mail bag. These are the emails,
Speaker 1: the comments, and the questions I get from you. If
Speaker 1: you want to submit yours, go to Rich on tech
Speaker 1: dot tv and hit contact. All right, First up, Candice,
Speaker 1: He says, Hey, Rich, after your interview with cybersecurity expert
Speaker 1: JP Castianos about voice cloning scams, I'm pretty sure that's
Speaker 1: what happened to my friend's family. They're just regular people,
Speaker 1: not high profile at all. My friend's dad got a
Speaker 1: call from someone who sounded exactly like her son, Luke.
Speaker 1: The caller said he'd been in a car accident in Miami.
Speaker 1: The woman he hit was pregnant. He needed twelve thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for bond my friend had warned her parents about
Speaker 1: scams like this, but before they hung up, the fake
Speaker 1: Luke gave them a number for a so called attorney
Speaker 1: in Dade County. Her dad actually called it, thankfully. The
Speaker 1: dad felt something was off and called my friend and Luke.
Speaker 1: While they were all on speaker, the scammers called her
Speaker 1: mom's phone again. I could hear him clear as day.
Speaker 1: He sounded exactly like Luke. That's when my friend said,
Speaker 1: that's not Luke. He's standing right here. The scammers immediately
Speaker 1: hung up. It was terrifying. Yes, voice cloning scams. That's
Speaker 1: why I have these very very guests on my show,
Speaker 1: so you learn about all this stuff that's happening out
Speaker 1: there and these voice cloning scams. You might hear it
Speaker 1: and say, oh, come on, that doesn't really happen. Oh
Speaker 1: sure does. Look at that. We just got an email
Speaker 1: about it, Mike and Oneana New York says, I just
Speaker 1: wanted to say thanks to your latest newsletter. I'm an
Speaker 1: assistive technology specialist at a university, and on my way
Speaker 1: to work, I was actually thinking about what voice to
Speaker 1: text apps might help our students. I open up your newsletter.
Speaker 1: There's all section on it perfect timing. I've already installed
Speaker 1: Typeless and I'm testing to see if it's a good
Speaker 1: fit for our campus. Keep the newsletters coming well, thank you, Mike.
Speaker 1: Gary says, I bundled my AT and T cell service
Speaker 1: to save some money, and the rep insisted on giving
Speaker 1: me a quote free Samsung S twenty five. I told
Speaker 1: her I didn't need it. The next morning, I got
Speaker 1: an email saying I'd be charged seven hundred ninety nine
Speaker 1: dollars in twenty three dot twenty three monthly installments. I
Speaker 1: spent over two hours on the phone trying to cancel it,
Speaker 1: and now I have to bring it back to the
Speaker 1: store to return it. I don't like that part. Maybe
Speaker 1: you can warn people about this on your show. So yes,
Speaker 1: the way these free phones work is that you get
Speaker 1: that charge for seven hundred ninety nine dollars, they credit
Speaker 1: you back over three years. Basically, they want you to
Speaker 1: have a phone line active on that device, and you
Speaker 1: got to keep that phone active for those three years
Speaker 1: to get that free phone. So yeah, free not always
Speaker 1: very free. Nick says when people when I hear people
Speaker 1: say AI can't do this or that, like have consciousness,
Speaker 1: I think we just need to define our terms more carefully.
Speaker 1: Every time we say machines will never be able to
Speaker 1: do something, history proves us wrong. If we avoid metaphysical
Speaker 1: or theological ideas like having a soul, I suspect AI
Speaker 1: will eventually meet most definitions we come up with. Even
Speaker 1: Google now labels some results as thinking before an AI
Speaker 1: overview appears. I'm sure the wording went through plenty of
Speaker 1: legal review. AI already has issues and they'll likely grow.
Speaker 1: I'm just not sure our thinking is keeping pace. Ooh deep,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 7: Nick.
Speaker 1: Mirian says, one of my AirPods stopped charging. I figured
Speaker 1: it might be dying and started thinking about replacing it.
Speaker 1: You told me to grab a Q tip and gently
Speaker 1: clean the metal contacts on the AirPod and inside the
Speaker 1: charging case. Well I tried that and guess what it worked.
Speaker 1: It's charging normally again.
Speaker 4: Yay.
Speaker 1: I saved you a bunch of money. Darren. You know
Speaker 1: what Darren was commenting about the air tags. We had
Speaker 1: a caller last week that said he put him on
Speaker 1: his daughter, but he can't they just show that she's
Speaker 1: at home. Darren says, if he has air tags that
Speaker 1: say they're home, they probably are. Also if his daughter's
Speaker 1: keychain has an air tag registered to him. He she
Speaker 1: would constantly be getting alerts that she's being tracked. My
Speaker 1: guess is she removed the air tag and it's just
Speaker 1: sitting at home. David. I heard you talk about Chrome
Speaker 1: os flex on the show and tried to install it
Speaker 1: on my Dell Latitude with sixteen gigs of RAM and
Speaker 1: an I seven. There's nothing this thing can't do. I
Speaker 1: even installed my full featured money Dance personal finance absence
Speaker 1: it supports Linux. It works seamlessly with my Microsoft three
Speaker 1: sixty five apps in email, I use my YouTube music
Speaker 1: and my wireless headphones without any issue. I can even
Speaker 1: install different browsers because of the Linux support. You really
Speaker 1: hit a home run with that advice. This feels like
Speaker 1: a Chromebook on steroids. Thank you, David. Joseph warns about
Speaker 1: getting a bill that looked like it was from his
Speaker 1: gas company. When he tried to click to log in,
Speaker 1: it says password was invalid. I checked a real bill
Speaker 1: I had saved and the formats didn't match. They looked similar,
Speaker 1: but not quite. Just a reminder, these fake utility bills
Speaker 1: look very convincing. Let's see here, got a couple more
Speaker 1: here before we have to go Gary and Connecticut, just
Speaker 1: want to say how much I enjoy your show and
Speaker 1: the helpful information you share. I heard you talk about
Speaker 1: AT and t air on the radio here in Connecticut.
Speaker 1: Since I'm an eighteen tea customer, sounds like a great
Speaker 1: way for me to save money. Thanks for the tip
Speaker 1: and keep up the great work AT. In Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: I've been listening to the podcast. Really enjoy the show
Speaker 1: and Pocket shut down. I was looking for an alternative.
Speaker 1: You mentioned insta paper, but I actually ended up switching
Speaker 1: to read Wise. It's been great. You should check it out.
Speaker 1: And Marta says I love your show. You bring a
Speaker 1: wealth of information even for those of us who are
Speaker 1: not very smart about technical gadgets. Thank you for all
Speaker 1: your knowledge and help Well. Thank you Marta and michel
Speaker 1: Leane in San Diego. I listen to you every week
Speaker 1: on your podcast. Your show has become such a pleasant
Speaker 1: part of my weekend, and I've learned so much from
Speaker 1: you and your guests that's helped me personally and professionally.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Well, let's end it on that, because that's
Speaker 1: about as good as you can get. Wow, thank you.
Speaker 1: That's gonna do it. For this episode of the show.
Speaker 1: You can find links to everything I mentioned on my website.
Speaker 1: Just go to rich on tech dot tv. You can
Speaker 1: find me follow me on social media. I'm on Instagram
Speaker 1: at rich on tech, so if you're not following me,
Speaker 1: please follow me there. Next week, we're gonna have all
Speaker 1: the details from Apple's big events happening in New York
Speaker 1: and other cities. Thank you so much for listening. There
Speaker 1: are so many ways you can spend your time. I
Speaker 1: appreciate you spending it right here with me. My name
Speaker 1: is rich Demiro. I'll talk to you real soon.