Hands on with Samsung's latest foldable phones TCL strays from Roku but not too far. My favorite Google search term revealed, Plus your tech questions answered?
What is going on?
Imridge Demiro and this is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about.
It's also the place where I answer the questions you send me.
I'm the tech reporter at KTLA Channel five in Los Angeles, Hollywood, California, to be specific, and.
Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome.
So last week I talked about on the show how the downloads basically doubled and I wasn't really sure why, but it's happened and it's a thing, So thank you to the new listeners. I don't know what what made the change. I suspect it has to do with Facebook showing the podcast to more people, but I'm not really sure, but I'll take it. I mean it's you know, I thought it was a fluke for one show, but two shows were winning, so good deal.
I love that. Thank you for listening. Also got some comments.
About the way I do the show, so you know, I read the questions and then give the answers, and I of course think.
That's a little a little hokey.
I would rather either have someone reading the questions or perhaps you know, ideally have live callers, but you know, the way that this podcast is produced, that's just not possible right now. And so, but I did hear from I've heard this couple of times actually that some of you like the way the questions are done because I read them, so that means that they're done in a faster way than like someone who's calling, because usually when people call, there's a little back and forth. You know,
you're chit chatting where you're from, how you're doing. And I personally like that. I like to get to learn, you know, a little bit more about the people that I'm talking to.
But I get it.
If you're just trying to, like, you know, extract information from my brain to yours, like I get it, this is a good format for that because it's basically just an hour of me, you know, listening to these questions and answering them and just kind of getting them done in a fast way. So I will continue to do the show this way. Who knows, maybe it will evolve at some point, but right now we'll keep it the same. What else what else is going on in my life before we start the show. My mom is in town.
So if you follow me on Instagram at rich on Tech, you know, last week I told you about how I had deleted my social media for a while. I'm back on and I'll tell you it's not the same. It's like I feel like, you know, every time I'm on it now, I'm like, oh am I wasting my time?
But I really do enjoy it.
I enjoy kind of especially my Facebook page. I mean it reaches a lot of people, and it's kind of fun because you can see when something is popular and something resonates with people, like almost instantly. So if I put a post out there, especially video posts, you know, if it's not getting shares and views within you know, five minutes, it's basically a non starter. Like I've rarely seen things that go viral after a couple of days.
I mean, yes, sometimes it takes a couple of days to percolate, but there's always that initial interest that kind of drives it. And I've noticed with with various posts on Facebook, if they don't really get that pick up immediately, then they're not really they kind of I call them a stall you know, they just kind of like, yeah, they're just there.
What else this week?
Twitter change the font and the look and the feel, and so I'll talk more about that later in the show. But and we got some Samsung stuff that's happening. All the new foldables actually have the the Z. Hold on, let me get the full name, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip three five G. I mean, who doesn't have that on their Christmas list?
I've got this in my hand.
And they sent the Flip five G and the Fold five G, and out of the two, the Flip five G is definitely the more the device that I would rather I would see myself getting right, I'm not sure if either of these devices are for me, but I do like the idea of this, this Z flip, So I'll talk more about that. Actually, let's just get into it. Let's get into the first story of the week. Samsung
had their unpacked event. This was a virtual event like they've been doing like it seems like things are gonna be done for a while now, or I guess for the foreseeable future. But they had their So it's funny because I was reading on Twitter, someone said, hey, do you remember the last in person event was Samsung Galaxy Unpacked in San Francisco in twenty twenty. And I'm trying to remember because I went to two events that month, and one was the Toy Fair and one was the
Samsung event, and they were right after each other. They were both in February of twenty twenty, and this was right before sort of things got locked down, and I remember thinking for the Toy Fair, like, oh, should I go. It's New York City, you know, who knows what's going on. They were sort of the epicenter at the time, along with Seattle, and I said, you know what, I'm just going to go, and I went and it was fine.
But then the Samsung thing, I can't remember if it was before or after, but it was the same thing. It was like, we know, there's this thing out there, but you know, just be careful and you know whatever. And at this point we were still all touching phones
and you know, in this big auditorium together. But that was the last one of those two were the last in person event that I went to, and both of those shows, I mean, the Samsung event and that was for the launch of the twenty But anyway, everything's been virtual since then. So let's talk about the devices that Samsung unveiled, the Galaxy Z fold three and the Z Flip three.
The fold three is.
Basically remember the phone that had the problem with the hinge where it was like messing up. There was getting you know, dust and debris behind it, it was breaking the screen. People were peeling off the screen protectors. So this was Samsung's first foldable device. It's got that big screen inside, like a seven point six inch screen, and then it's got the exterior screen, which is a lot bigger these days than it was when it first launched. Also, the
device overall is just thinner. It's you know a little more sleek. It's a little bit more lightweight, but it's still a very heavy gadget, and it's still a very big gadget. So you know, I love just showing this stuff to like my family when I get home, Like, like I said, my mom's in town, and my wife and my kids, and you know, I just let them kind of touch this stuff and see what the reaction is. And you know they're all like, ooh, that that's big phone.
That's a heavy phone. But then with this little Z Flip three, which looks like a standard Samsung Galaxy that literally just folds in half. That's the more interesting device because people they like the form factor because it reminds them of the days of the Motorola Razor. Ironically, Motorola came out with the foldable Razor a couple like two or three years ago, and I don't know how many years ago. It was definitely back before coronavirus because it
was in person. I remember going to the event, the launch event in Los Angeles, and so it's funny that Sam Motorola themselves were not able to bring back the razor flip even though it had a foldable device. But Samsung kind of took that idea and ran with it, and their Flip three is actually really really compelling, and it's a phone that I think I'm not quite ready to recommend just yet, but it's definitely one of those devices that is like it's the future.
You know.
It's like, foldable phones are a thing, and when people see this thing, they're like, Okay, that's pretty cool. If it's in my pocket, it's small, it's easy I find.
Well, let me just go through these a little bit more. Okay.
So the fold is that, you know, they improve the hinge. The big news is that they made both of these devices water resistant, which I think is a pretty big deal.
This is not an underwater camera.
You're not gonna take it, you know, in the ocean, but if it gets wet, a little splash, whatever, it's gonna be just fine.
It's ipx eight.
Samsung hid the selfie camera on the fold, which is kind of hokey because you can definitely see it. It's actually kind of weird. It's also only for megapixels, so it's not a very good camera. I mean, this is the thing about Samsung. They always take a couple of steps forward, and then there's always something about their device that's like a couple steps back. Like when you think about the Samsung Galaxy S twenty Ultra. When that launched,
it had a hundred times zoom. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. But the step back it took is that a zoom wasn't even very good at a hundred times, so you didn't even need it.
But the actual.
Regular camera had so much fringing around the images because it had such a small depth of field, or a shallow depth of field. I should say that it was almost unusable, and it's still almost unusable to this day. And I've noticed with Samsung devices they still have this problem where they're just not as crisp around the edges of things like text, especially as the other phones that I test specifically, like the Pixel and the iPhone, and so I guess it's just a deal with their lenses.
I'm not really sure, but I definitely even notice it on these new devices, Like I took a couple of pictures and like gosh one plus has the same problem.
It seems.
I think it's just these bigger lenses they're using that just seem to you know, they take great pictures when you're a you know, big picture, like a wide angle or like a you know, just a scene, but when you get really close up on something, you have to be a certain distance away for that item.
To be in Let's see what else.
The Fold three now supports a stylist, which is really cool.
You can write on the screen.
Samsung did not send me a stylist to test, so I can't really say how well that works, although I can say that I know use my finger on it. And it's interesting because Samsung had to take two digitizers and place them next to each other because there's that crease in the middle. And they made an algorithm that lets the screens or the digitizers figure out when you're over that little area that doesn't have any digitizer in it.
So they it and it works just fine. If you run your finger across the whole length of the phone, the line looks perfect.
So they did a good job with that. Let's see.
Okay, so the Fold three is two hundred dollars cheaper than last year. It starts at eighteen hundred dollars, and again this is for really early adopters. I see the idea behind this, and I think that for some people that literally only want to carry around a phone, they don't want a tablet, and they don't want a computer, eighteen hundred dollars is actually not a bad price for all three of these things in one.
Personally, I have a tablet. I like to use it.
Maybe I would use this, I don't know, Maybe I should try using this for a little bit. But you know, I also really like my computer as well. So I think you can go computer and fold, which means you have the fold, you have a regular phone, and you have a tablet.
And you have a computer.
But yeah, anyway, so especially if you're traveling, like on the plane, like this would be really cool because you can watch movies on it. You can get a lot of work done on it. I just it's just a little bulky for me, and maybe it's gonna take some more kind of like using it to really get.
Used to that.
All right, let's talk about the z Flip three. So this is the more pocketable of the two. Like I said, it's reminiscent of the Razor. Let's see, Samsung made a bigger screen on the outside. The last one was pretty much unusable. This one is much more usable, and you
can do things like check your notifications. You can take pictures with the with the cameras on the outside, and it flips and it's you know, it's a little bit of a The thing that I've realized in using this the past day or so is that it's like just a little a couple of extra steps with this phone because you're flipping it open, and it takes a little bit of like thinking and thought process to flip it open. I don't really think it's very easy to open with one hand like the razor.
Wise back in the day.
This is much much meteor of a device, so there's like a lot going on. It's heavy, it's top heavy. Well I wouldn't say it's heavy, but it's definitely top heavy when you open it up, so you have to be cognizant of that so you don't let it fall over. The design is perfect, I mean, I think they did a really nice job. I think that the goal of this design would be that these phones would eventually fold on top of each other in a flat way. Right now,
there's a little bit of a gap between them. And if you notice, I haven't really talked much about the cameras on these things because Samsung did not make a big deal out of the cameras. The cameras are not very they're just okay. They're not the best in class cameras that Samsung has to offer, So they don't really make a big deal out of the cameras because they're just they're fine, I mean, and I'm impressed.
With the picture quality. It looks good.
I took a bunch of pictures on the little the Little Flip yesterday and it looks nice. Or over the past couple of days, summer it's hit or miss. You know, some some are better than others. But I think the iPhone overall, iPhone twelve is still a better, better device
for pictures, and probably the S twenty one Ultra. They also announce new Galaxy smart watches that you know, there's a whole bunch of stuff with these smart watches that they have brighter displays than are designs, longer battery life, They have a new sensor to measure body composition. Spotify offline is coming to them. Samsung will track sleep better than before, takes a measurement every minute, They track snoring,
they do body I said, they do body composition. They're also gonna wear They're also gonna run Google's wear os, which is interesting.
They're doing the same thing.
It's wear OUs by Samsung, so it's the same thing they skin the Android for their phones and now they're skin wear os for the watches. But overall, I think that these where Galaxy smart watches finally seem to be a worthy opponent to the iPhone. It just seems like the Android side of things is really really picking up with that. And finally, Galaxy Buds too, are their new earbuds. These are one hundred and fifty dollars and they're smaller,
they're lighter. I love the design, they sound good, their you know, price is pretty good for these things. And the only problem I found is that they just did not stain my ears no matter what. I took them on a run, and they just it was one of those things where when you're running and the you have that sensation of the earbuds like almost falling out of your ears the whole time. That's really annoying. And that's
exactly what they felt like. So I actually had to go home and replace them with my AirPods, which the air POD's kind of like, I feel like they magnetically adhere to my ears, you know, like sometimes I'll get that sensation of them falling out, but it takes a really long time, whereas with these Galaxy buds too, I just kept popping them back in, and because they're touch sensitive, every time you press them to put them back in,
you're pausing your music. Yes you can turn that feature off, but it's one of these things where it's just, you know, I don't want my earbuds to be a big hassle. I want them to be simple. I don't want to really think about them very much. I want to concentrate on what I'm doing and not keeping these things in my ears.
So for those reasons.
I don't really like the buds too, but you know, your results may vary. I think the challenge here is, you know you have to buy these things without putting them in your ears. I guess you can return them if they don't work. But that's kind of a quick roundup of the Samsung event exciting stuff. I think these
foldables are just continuing to progress. I'm not in a place to recommend them just yet, but would I wouldn't have a problem with people getting the Flip or the fold I think they're both in a place where they're very good phones. Just know that you are getting kind of an early technology that's not all there yet. But yes, there are some really cool aspects to this stuff. All right,
let's get to the first question. JV says, Hey, Rich, We're looking to upgrade from a fifty five inch television to a seventy five inch and was wondering what would you make the best model would you recommend? We've seen a lot of qleds, O LEDs, Mini LEDs uhds. We put our first fifty five inch TV thirteen years ago. A lot has changed. It has two forty refresh, which we especially like when watching car races. It can connect to Wi Fi. It was about twenty five hundred dollars.
We've seen a lot of eighty inch models coming out. Your input is always appreciated. Thank you for your time.
JV. All right, JV.
So, I mean, look, the bottom line is it sounds like you are someone who really likes a nice TV, a big screen TV. You want a seventy five inch. I mean there's a couple of sets I always recommend.
So number one.
If you're thinking about all these different display technologies, I mean you definitely want to get a four K obviously. I mean that's like, you know, standard Now. When it comes to q LED versus O l ED, I mean, O LED is obviously going.
To be a better overall picture quality.
When it comes to the color, QLED is going to be better than your standard LED, which you know at this at this size, you're definitely gonna want that. Ql ED is mostly a Samsung thing, but the Mini LED is coming up in the world because it the way Mini LED works is that the brightness comes from many more places behind the TV, which means you can light a scene better than before. So let's just say a little tiny speck in the screen is a moon and
the rest is black. That moon would be really bright and the rest of the screen could be really a deep black because the mini LEDs are just lighting up the tiny portion behind the moon, whereas with a stand under LED set, it's you know, lighting up basically the whole set behind it or in different zones, and so you know, the black might look a little bit more washed out in the rest of the scene. So that's
a very simplified explanation as I understand it. So many LEDs are definitely coming up in the world as something that you probably want to get with your set. With that said, I think that you know, if you want the best TV, I think Sony is still going to give you like the best quality overall. I think if you want an O LEED, you got to go with an LG. I think they're really the best. When it comes to the oleads, I believe it's the c X is it. Let's see here, yeah, cx O lead and
then let's see what else. And I don't even know if they make the CX in a seventy five inch though let's see, oh they do they make it in seventy seven, and that's going to be three thousand bucks, So I don't know.
That's a little bit that you.
Probably might be able to find that cheaper somewhere.
That's on LG's website.
The other TV I really like is the TCL six series, and I think that those are a fantastic set. They do make them in seventy five. The only thing I don't know is the let's see here, I don't know. Oh wow, they make it in an eight K, now, so I mean, yeah, if you really want to get fancy, you can go with the eight K.
Who I mean, what are you gonna watch on eight K? I don't know. Uh, let's see do they have it says variable refresh rate? It doesn't.
Okay, let's see what the specs are for this thing for the uh so I know you said you like that, okay, uh, okay, refresh rate from forty eight to one twenty, So I mean you're not gonna get that too forty But honestly, I don't think a lot of TVs have that, to be honest. So I mean, anyway, so I think that the LG is the best or Sony is the best. Overall, I think LG is the best for O LEDs. I think that TCL is going to be the best for your.
Bang for your buck.
And then Samsung, I mean they make great QLED sets, so I mean Samsung is always there and there's always a promotion on those, so I think that that's a good way to go as well.
But good luck.
I myself am looking to upgrade to a TV, a new TV as well. So actually I'll just go into the next story because this is the TV that I'll probably be purchasing. So TCL I just talked about them, you know that they make those. They kind of made their name here in the US.
With the Roku TVs.
So TCL big brand from China, but they really have probably one of the top selling TVs that I've seen most recommended by everyone. I mean this TCL five series and specifically the sixth series. I mean, so many people just love this TV because it's a great TV. It offers a lot of features, and the price is always right, and it also has Roku built in, and so they sort of made their name on selling these TVs here
in the US. And they've been very successful at it and now which is kind of a surprise to me, but I love it. They are now working.
With Google to make basically a Google TV version of the same thing.
So it's like the same sets, the five series and six series, but it is going to have Google TV software instead of the Roku software. Now they're not getting rid of the Roku software. You basically get to choose.
Now.
Personally nothing against Roku, but I would choose Google because of a couple of reasons. Number one, I love the Google software. It's basically if you had one of those Google with Chrome Cast TVs or Chrome Cast.
With Google TV, whatever they call it.
If you have one of those, that's basically what it is, and so you get this great personalized home screen that what I love about Google TV is that it takes the recommendations from across everything and puts it all on your home screen. And so what you see when you log onto your TV, I say log on when you turn on your TV is a home screen filled with all the content that A you might like and B is streaming on your services for the most part, and
if they're not streaming, it'll tell you right below. It how much it costs to watch that show, whereas with Apple TV and some of these other things, it's like it's a I call it peck and shoot.
What is it? It's like a hunt. You know, you gotta peck.
I forget what the term is, but it's like you're pecking all around to like see things. You gotta you gotta go into like this app and see what's on. You got to go into that app and see what's on. You gotta, you know, go into this and see what's going on there and how much does it cost and then do a comparison on Apple TV. So with this you kind of get all the information front and center,
and that's what I really like about it. Now, the controversial part about this TV is that it does have a microphone built in so that you can say hey G and do all of your smart home commands and also just say hey G, resume what I'm watching on Netflix or whatever, or hey G play you know, I don't even know any of these new TV shows, but play it on, you know, on my TV or whatever. You just say play. You can do music, you know, whatever you want. It's got Google assistance, so that's really cool.
The other feature that I really really like is the ambient mode, which basically uses your Google Photos as your screensaver on this TV. Now it says when no one is watching TV, ambient mode. So I'm curious. I've kno gone hands on with this thing. I'm curious if you can set that ambient mode to basically be on twenty four to seven, because that's what I would like. I would like my TV to be showing my Google Photos
all the time unless I'm actually on my TV. So I'm wondering if there's like a timeout you can set that would basically just leave your TV on all day with your pictures because I love it. I mean, that's Google Photos is just so smart, it's so great. I'm a little biased because I pay fifty dollars a month to use it, but you know, so I'm all in and I just love how it surfaces great photos from my library, and I just love the idea of this TV turns into like a giant picture frame. And yes,
you can do the same thing with Apple. You can do the same thing with your rote well maybe not Roku, but you can do the same thing with your Fire TV. And you can do the same thing with a Chrome cast, but that generally involves either a timeout or it generally
involves a switching of an input. Like for me, I've got my Chrome cast on my TV, but I'm using Apple TV primarily, So anytime I want to see my pictures as a screen saver, I have to switch to Google TV and then it times out after like I don't know, half an hour, and that's it.
My picture my TV goes to sleep.
So anyway, TCL five series, they have them in fifty inch, fifty five, sixty five, and seventy five. The sixth series is in fifty five, sixty five, and seventy five coming soon. I've got my eye on either the sixty five or the seventy five. The sixth series and the sixth series is thirteen hundred bucks at best Buy, And so that's a pretty good deal for the fifty sixty five inch TV. The seventy five is not available. Oh let's see, do they have a price yet? Oh wow, Yeah, they don't
have a price yet for that one. But that is going to be an exclusive at best Buy at least for launch. All right, let's get to the next question. Hey, Rich, I watch you all the time on Katla, I'm hoping you respond. I looked online and then thought to myself, seriously, the only opinion I would trust is rich I.
Well, thank you.
I'm a Samsung user and I haven't till Friday to migrate all my pictures since they're closing their cloud. They are suggesting one drive, but I've read the reviews and I'm really iffy about sending all my pictures and videos. There is there a service you would recommend? Or should I just go with one drive and take my chances? Or do I just move my stuff to SD cards and store them that way. I'm not too tech savvy, therefore,
I am lost. Please help? Thank you, Christina. Well, Christina, yes, you are referring to the big warning that has been on all Samsung devices for so long. Now move to one drive. Move to one drive. Let me see, I've got this Sam song right here. Let's see what the exact messages.
Okay.
So I go to my pictures and it says start syncing with one drive. Keep your pictures and videos safe and available on all your devices by automatically adding them to the cloud. I click get started, and I got to sign in, and there's my roadblock. But so what do I recommend. I mean, yes, you can easily go with one drive and that's gonna be just fine. But I think there's better solutions out there, because you know, there's one drive is fine, but it's primarily like a Microsoft.
It's not.
It's gotten better at the photo situation, but I don't think it was built primarily four photos. Yes, you can store them there, but I think and it'll be fine if you want it the easiest way that's integrated with Samsung, then go with the go with the one drive. I mean that's you don't have to do anything extra except just sign in and sign up and you'll be fine.
The storage for the one drive right now is five gigabytes, so and then you can at plans that start at two dollars a month, So one hundred gigs is two dollars a month. Five gigs is free, and you can pay seventy dollars for the year to get a terabyte, which you may not need just yet. The other option, obviously is Google Photos that gives you fifteen gigabytes. That's what I would recommend because I just think Google Photos, the organization of Google Photos is what I think is
the benefit of it over anything else. I mean, if you just want to back up your pictures, there's a million ways to do that.
But I think if you.
Want your pictures organized and searchable and just the AI that they have is just so ahead of everyone else, I think that that's the way to go. The other option, if you want, you can try something if you just want pure backup that's really inexpensive and unlimited. You can do Eyedrive Photos and that's that's ten bucks for the entire year, and that will back up all the photos and videos on your device in full resolution for ten dollars a year. You or me correctly, it's that's it.
It's one time, one time fee of ten bucks a year, so you can store as many as you want. And we did a story with them, I Drive Photos. It's called and it seems legit. Uh, you can do that. There's no real like, there's no real AI or searching. I mean they may add features as you go along, but it's basically just a way to quickly back up
your pictures, you know. The other option is that you can use Amazon if you you know, don't have too many pictures or if you don't have too many videos, I should say Amazon Photos will let you back up unlimited, but it's you have to be a prime member of Amazon,
which a lot of people are. And they also do not include more than five gigabytes of video, and so if you take a lot of videos and you go over that limit, you're gonna have to pay and it's like sixty bucks a year whatever they're you know they So I think I think overall the best is something like Google Photos because you get a lot of features for that, even if you have to start.
Paying over the fifteen gigs.
But the SD card thing, A lot of people like that, but I think it's way too silly when we live in a world of cloud storage, Like why why have to remember to plug something into your phone every you know, every so often to back it up. I mean, yes, you can save a lot of money doing that, but you also need to back up that drive as well. So for all those reasons, I think that Google Photos
is probably your best. And I would say maybe something like the Amazon definitely look into that if you don't have a lot of videos, and the Eyedrive if you just want something that's really simple that'll back up your stuff but not really have to think about a lot. All right, let's talk Apple. The new iPhones kind of sound like a snoozer. This is Mark German from Bloomberg Technology. This is the guy with the inside scoop on all things Apple all the time. He's got a good source
inside Apple. But people are telling him that the new handsets are kind of not that exciting. We didn't expect exciting handsets. This is a an off year.
You know.
Apple is usually on a every other year cadence with their with their major upgrades.
And so this time around, video is gonna.
Have portrait mode, you know, it blurs the background. It's gonna have a new pro res mode which lets professional video takers kind of affect the video more so later after the fact once they shoot it, which eh, I don't need that.
Let's see what else? What else? What else?
Same sizes five point four, six point one, six point one, six point seven. That's kind of boring too, same thing.
They're using, the same exact outside. They're just gonna change things inside a little bit faster, a fifteen chip, smaller notch, new refresh rate, so it's gonna be faster refresh rate, which I know a lot of the techies like but I think they're gonna do the same thing that I've seen a lot of these phone manufacturers do, where it's a variable refresh rate, where it just kind of kicks in when it thinks it needs to.
Launch.
Is going to be virtual, and phones might be delayed to October again this year like they were last year. But all these things, I mean, I think that the iPhone twelve and twelve pro are pretty much the perfect phones at this point. And the iPhone whatever that's going to be called thirteen or twelve S is there's no way it's the fourteen. That's just there's no way they're doing that. I'm not gonna skip thirteen, but I would. I could see them doing twelve s and then fourteen.
But I don't know.
I don't know what the deal is with the thirteen number around the world. Maybe it's not as U I don't know, maybe people don't care. Maybe the superstition thing doesn't really matter with phone numbers. But maybe they'll go twenty like Samsung did. But that's kind of what's happening with the iPhones. I don't think it's that exciting, but you know it's there. It's gonna happen and I don't
really see the big need to upgrade. I think for most people the fact that the the older phones will go down in price will be better.
Now.
Apple could do the tricky thing that they've done in the past, where they stop selling the iPhone twelve lineup and they just make you choose between eleven and this new model. I hope they don't do that, and I don't expect them to do that because the twelve is such a good phone that I and it's the first phone that has five G I don't think they would make people step down to the eleven if they want
to save some money on the previous model. Next question, mister Demiro, I have this pop up that keeps coming up whenever I'm on any of my apps on Android.
It must be a bug.
Do you know any good programs in the app store that will help me get rid of this pop up ad? Thank you, Luise. Yeah, Luis, you definitely have an app on your phone that is serving up this ad. It's called malware, and you downloaded or somehow something got downloaded to your phone that is serving.
Up this advertisement.
And because you're telling me it happens on any ad, I don't think it's coming from one specific.
You know it's not happening in one specific app.
So what I would recommend you need to do is go through your phone. Go through There's a couple of things you want to do. First off, you want to swipe up or just go into your you know your what do they call that with all the all the apps in the bottom. You're not your home screen, your app library, I know those Apple calls it?
What do they call it? On Android?
Anyway, you want to swipe to see all of your apps. Okay, So however you do that, whether you have to click a button or just swipe up, or however you see all of your apps. Go through there and look through every single app, and if you don't like an app you don't recognize it, press a hold on it until you get something that says uninstalled.
Or if you're on Samsung, you'll see a little eye.
Click that eye and then you can look for uninstalled. And so that's what you want to do with all those apps. So right now I'm looking at this Samsung. It's got one, it's got Samsung apps. It's got calendar, camera, clock, contacts, Facebook, Galaxy Store, game Launcher, Internet, Samsung Free tips, and YouTube music. There's nothing really on there that would be serving up rogue ads. So if you see stuff like games, like you know, I would even go so far as to
one by one. If you have a bunch of games that you play on your phone, and you know you would, I would put them in a list of order of what I really want to play to the least I play, and start picking them off at the end. So the ones you least play, uninstall, restart your phone, and then
see if those ads keep coming up. Now, if once you go through all of those things and the ads still come up, then you want to go into Google Play, go into your tap your little icon for your name, and then look at your list of apps, and then uninstall any app there that you don't recognize if there's more there. And then finally you want to go into your settings, settings and then apps. And so let's see where are the apps on this phone on Samsung. It
is under I don't see, oh there it is. It's under apps.
Duh.
So it's under apps. And then you can see all of your apps, and there's a way to sort them by name, size, last used, and last updated. So if you go through all those apps, and same thing. You see a lot more apps that are not listed on your main screen, and so you can go through there, tap an app and you can just say for the apps that are installed, this phone doesn't really have any extra apps. Okay, YouTube music, it'll say uninstalled at the end,
so at the bottom. So I would go through and do that for all of your apps and restart your phone, and you know, hopefully those ads stop.
Now. If that does not work, you got to do the nuclear option, which is to format your entire phone.
So back up your phone, use Google one to back it up, and then basically or Samsung, whatever your phone is, you know, back it up, make sure you've got everything backed up, and then you can go in to.
Let's see is it general management? General management on Android?
Just look for the reset you want to do reset and it's factory data reset, and you want to make sure that you get everything cleared off that phone, and then that is that is the final option, and once you do that, you will be able to hopefully surf the web and do whatever you're doing without these ads popping up. Because it is definitely some sort of malware that is triggering these ads and believe me. On Android, it's it's very possible that that thing kind of happens
on iOS doesn't really happen as often. It mostly happens when you're surfing the web because there could be you know, ads that are serving up pop ups and things like that. But generally on the iPhone, unless it's jailbroken, you can't really ads like there. There's not an app that can sit there and serve up things when you're in other apps. It just doesn't work that way. Everything is sort of sandboxed.
So that's that's kind of what's happening. Hopefully you get that figured out and let me know if you do.
Okay.
This was a segment I did on KTLA about Google searches, which was pretty popular. You know, you take for granted that you might know how to search Google. We've all been doing it for so long now, probably like what twenty three years. Oh my gosh, Google started in nineteen ninety eight.
Wow.
So I talked about some of these ways that you can Actually when Google started in nineteen ninety eight, you probably weren't using it as much because we still had these other search engines. Let me see if you remember some of these let me let me bring this up. Okay, Alta Vista. Do you remember that one? Do you remember Excite? Oh my gosh, I used to think Alta Vista all these hot bot do you remember that one? Oh my gosh, do you remember info Seek? Do you remember Lycos? How
about Desia? How about Yahoo?
I mean we know that one.
Amazon. Remember they used to have a search engine. I think it was called Amazon nine or something, or a nine open directory, and then E groups. I don't remember those, but I mean I used to think that, like you know, so probably when Google first came out, we were still using some of these alternatives.
Yahoo I never really used. It wasn't very good.
Excite. I'm trying to remember if it was Excite or Alta Vista that I liked. One of them was better, but I can't remember at this point.
But those.
So I'm thinking that Google kind of took off even though it started in nineteen ninety eight, probably didn't take off until a little bit later, because you know, it took a while for people to switch and say, oh, come on, you can't get better than Yahoo. Who can make a better search engine? Well, sure enough, Google pretty much did because they put everyone else out of business. So how to search Google to find things that are you know, more relevant, to find things faster, to really look.
Google is really good at search and it's very fast, and you really don't have to know how to do this stuff. But if you really are looking to narrow down things and really looking for specifics, then some of these things will work. So Number one, the minus sign like a hyphen. So if you type in a search term and then another search term and the minus sign, you know Google will will not include any results with that term. So let's say you put pizza minus pepperoni or pizza toppings minus pepperoni.
It will give you a bunch of pizza toppings that are.
Not pepperoni, right, because Pepperoni's probably gonna come up first ninety.
Nine percent of the time. Quotes.
This is one that you probably know about. If you put something in quotes, it's gonna find that exact phrase. So if you're looking for something really specific, like a part number or an old gadget that you had and you want to see just that exact thing, put it in in quotes. If you want to see results from a specific website, you can say a search term and
then you type in site colon the website. So, for instance, if you want to see all the times that I've mentioned Samsung on ktla, you can just type in Samsung site colon ktla dot com and it will only bring up my posts that I've made on ktla dot com that are about Samsung. And that's a good one. Now, let me just give you a quick tip for searching anything.
If you're ever looking for something that I mentioned, you don't even really have to do that what I do whenever someone's like, rich, what was that TCL phone you mentioned two years ago? And I'm like, let me see. Was it the TCL ten series?
Let me let me see?
So I type in TCL whatever the keyword is KTLA DeMuro, So TCL KTLA DeMuro and you might want to put TCL phone. But the first thing that comes up TCL makers to TV maker. Tcl's two hundred and fifty dollars smartphone is actually great. So again, it's just a very easy way to find anything that I've mentioned.
Now, this one's really good, especially for the kiddos.
If you're looking for let's say, coloring sheets or like math work sheets. I don't know if you've ever tried to search these things, but if you do, it's a nightmare. Ninety nine point nine percent of the time when you search for something like, you know, multiplication times tables PDF, you will get a whole bunch of random stuff. And you know, it might be like you know a lot of images that you click, and you go into these images and you click, and it's a never ending circle
of nothingness. It'll bring you to Pinterest, it'll bring you to these websites they are trying to sell you stuff. So what I find is that if you say file type PDF at the end of your search, then you will get exactly what you're looking for. And so let's try that same thing again, multiplication tape times tables, and I'll put file type PDF.
Now, Oh my gosh, so much better.
If you look at all the results, there's a little PDF indicator and every single one of these results are an actual downloadable PDF. That is just fantastic. So in my book, that's a huge win. It's just so much better. Look at I found exactly what I was looking for. This would have taken me so much longer to find when if I was doing it the other way. Actually, in fact, I'm gonna download this for my kids and they need to. It's funny they don't really, I don't.
I think they still do, like the memorization for math for the one to one hundred, but it's they do things a lot differently. I know, if you're a parent, this is this is old news. But the way they do math these days is very different than when I learned. So my kids are always like, yeah, Dad, you're you're teaching me the wrong way. So I know, but I still try to force it upon them. I'm like, this is the way it was done.
Okay. Uh. My favorite search term in the world.
And I got to give a hat tip to my brother Justin for this one because I used this in the past, but I didn't use it as much as when he kind of sent me something about it and I was like, oh, yeah, you're right, that is the best search term. So he really got me to use it more often than I did naturally. But now I use it pretty much on a daily basis. And you're ready for this. It is the best, uh, And I'm sharing quite possibly what is the most key knowledge you need to know about searching Google?
And are you ready?
I wish I had my drum roll, but it is the term versus. So if you are searching for just about anything, Let's say you see an ad on Instagram for all birds. Those are the sneakers that I like. Go into Google and you're like, oh, I wonder what people buy besides all birds. So type in instead of waiting for, you know, an ad to pop up, which
is something similar. Just type in all birds versus vs and then just wait, press the space bar and just wait and let autocomplete do its magic, and autocomplete will show you all birds versus Rothi's all birds versus Adams, all birds versus VESI, all birds versus ultra boost And so I don't know if that last one or sneakers, but that is a such a.
Great, great, great search.
So let's say you're thinking of going to Paso Robols and you're like, well, where else do people go? Paso rob l e s versus Oh versus Napa versus San Luis Obispo. Or is it San Luis Obispo versus Sonoma versus Santa Barbara? So I mean, these are It's just it works with anything. Let's say you got a meal kit. You're thinking, I'm getting a little tired of my blue apron and you say, what else is out there? Blue
apron versus? Don't You don't even have to search. You just type blue apron versus and then here it comes, Hello chef, all right, sorry, yeah, hello fresh, Hello chef, Green, chef, sunbasket, every plate, dinnerly gobble. It is such a great search.
It is so useful.
And if you search rich DeMuro versus, uh, it actually comes up as Rich DeMuro versus Dug DeMuro. And this is a guy who reviews cars for a living, much more prominent than I am. But he is a big, big car guy, and a lot of people ask me if we're related, and I don't think we are. But anyway, the versus search, definitely try it. The other couple searches are reverse search. So if you go to images dot Google dot com and you grab drag a picture in there,
Google will find similar images on the web. This is handy if you're researching just about anything, you know, I mean, it's just a great search. One example I can give is if you're dating, and not that I am, but if you you know, find someone's profile picture, you can drag it in there and you can see some of the other places their.
Profile picture might be.
You can narrow down results by time, So once you make a search, there's a little drop box, so you can hit the tools drop box and then you'll see a selector for time. That's handy if you're trying to find something that was just posted recently and you want to exclude other stuff. This one's interesting if you want to find stuff that was just posted to social media. So let's say you want to look at the beyond chicken, beyond chicken, beyond orange chicken, right, and you want to
see what people are saying about it on Instagram. Just type beyond orange chicken at Instagram and now most of the results this one's not perfect, but most of the results will be from Instagram or Facebook. You can do at Facebook, you can do at Twitter.
You know.
So it's just an easy way to kind of restrict the results just to social media, which is also really cool. Let's see anything else that's about it. So I thought those were search tips were great. I presented them on KTLA. That story did really well, so that was a fun one to share. I love doing segments like that. Oh we got no phone calls.
All right?
Ken says a comment on your Ring Doorbell segment. By the time I Ring Doorbell used to connect, I would miss seeing the delivery truck, the delivery person at my front door, and the picture of the delivered package. By the time I ring connected, all I saw was an image of the porch poacher driving away and a stolen Corolla.
Oh wow, this's actually happened to you.
I think I found the solution for slow connections that you might want to share with your fellow oh my fellow listeners. Okay, Ring has a companion app I downloaded from the app Store called rapid Ring, which made a significant connection difference in the connection time. Just thought you might like to know. Oh, okay, So I looked up this rapid Ring app and I was like, I can't really recommend a third party app that connects to your ring because that's like a privacy night mare.
But when I looked up this rapid.
Ring app, sneaky, sneaky Ring. So this rapid Ring app is a light version of the Ring app and it enables a live view faster, So that's interesting. It's a companion app to the original Ring app that allows for a faster response to notifications. Or to enable a live view faster. You can use the Ring app and the rapid Ring app in conjunction and don't have to worry about interference. Just use the same email and password that you use for your regular Ring app. Huh, so do
you need the regular Ring app? I don't know. I need to see. I'm gonna trick this out because here's the thing. So it's available for iOS and Android and it's basically a light version. So I don't know if you've seen the Ring app lately, but it's gotten.
A little bit bloated.
They've built sort of the Neighbors functionality into their they built you know these companies, they once they have something that's successful, they try to build a million and one features into it. Because you know, Ring tried to get you to download the neighbors app that didn't really work. Neighbors is sort of their version of Nextdoor that didn't really work.
So what do they do?
They say, Oh, actually, we're just going to build it into the main app. And this happens all the time with mobile apps. Once they have a hit, it's like we've got the initial download, now let's just build one thousand and one features into this app because people will come here and they'll use it well uh uh ah, And most of the time people just still use the core functionality and it takes them a while to discover
anything outside that core functionality. In Ring's case, I guess they realize that all this extra functionality sometimes detracts from the things that people want to use the most, which is just answering the dang doorbell.
Right.
You just want to see when someone rings your bell, and you want that live view immediately. You don't want to wait an hour to sift through a thousand feature to kind of see what's going on.
So I'm gonna check this out.
I'm gonna download it and see if I can use it by itself because I only really use the Ring app for the live view and also to see my I guess to see all the Ring cameras I have. I don't know, maybe it doesn't work with all the different Ring cameras. Like I love the Ring cameras on my Ring app. They're all on the same page, and so I think that that's like I love just opening up my dashboard. Well, let's see what else is on
this app. Okay, So you've got neighbors you've got devices, you've got history, you've got settings, you've got control center, what's new, neighbors deals.
I mean, there's so.
Many different things, lights, history, chimes, locks, water valve, thermostat delivery, Oh my gosh, so many things when all you really want to see is your cameras.
So thank you. That's a great tip. Great tip.
Can so if you're trying to get a faster connection to your ring video doorbell, check out the rapid Ring app. It is official, it's available for iOS and Android, and there you have it, all right. I mentioned this earlier in the show. Twitter has got a little bit of a redesign. There is definitely something different. This is according to a cnet article. But if you've been using Twitter, you noticed things have changed just a little bit. The
number one thing I noticed was the font. It's a brand new font and it's kind of kind of strange. It's like, it's very classy looking, and the specific name for the font is called.
Chirp.
They designed their own font. In the past, according to cn AT, the company has used sf pro, Roboto, and Helvetica. New Twitter also said all Western language text aligns to the left, a change that should make it easier to read as you're scrolling through. Now I'm trying to figure out did Twitter not align to the left when like what I always thought Twitter was aligned to the left?
Am I missing something? But I've got the chain. It looks fine.
I don't know. I mean, I think that the uh the I don't know. It just looks it looks a little bit different. It looks a little bit different. I mean, the font is definitely a change, and I can't say whether I like it or not. Seen that had a headline that apparently some people are getting headaches from it, but I don't know. The site colors are also now higher contrast and less blue, so I noticed that photos
and videos stand out more. There's also fewer great backgrounds and divider lines, so there's increased space that makes things easier to read. Also, one thing I did notice, when you go to follow someone, it used to be in blue, like big blue bold when you look at someone's profile whether you're following them, and that's gone. Now it's just
kind of let me find a person that I'm not following. Okay, so now when you're not following them, it's in black, and then when you follow them it's just clear, which is kind of weird. I don't like that, but those are the changes. If you notice them, great, If you didn't,
you'll definitely notice them now that I mentioned them. I mean, it's one of these things everyone's always up in arms about, you know, changes to anything, but as soon as they happen after a couple months, you just kind of forget about it.
All. Right.
Let's see, Hey, Rich, I just bought a brand new TV that was on sale this is Bob for a ridiculous price at best Buy, and I want to know what your thoughts are on purchasing the five year extended warranty for two hundred and fifty dollars. Do you think it's worth it? Samsung Class eight eight H series O LED four k UHD Smart Android TV XBR fifty five A eight h at best Buy. Got it yesterday for thirteen hundred dollars.
A Bob, Bob, Bob.
What do I think about extended warranties? I think they make a lot of money for best Buy, They make a lot of money for Apple, they make a lot of money for Samsung. They make a lot of money for everyone. Now, when it comes to your phone, I'm not.
Gonna judge you.
If you want to buy an extended warranty, that's just fine.
I get it. It's expensive, it's a lot of extra money.
I would I personally would rather see you take that fifteen or thirty or whatever amount they're charging you every month and put it into a savings account and you'll be surprised. By the time you drop your phone, you'll have a couple hundred bucks in there, and you can get it fixed by just paying for the repair outright. And by the way, there's no there's no deductible because you know you don't have to pay for that. You're just paying for the whole thing. But you have that money.
So that's the way I like to do things.
Now.
With a TV, I'll be honest. I mean, let's be let's face it. We put our TV on the wall. It sits there. We don't move it. It's not being shuffled around. It's not going in and out of our pocket. It's not moving around. These TVs are built like tanks. The two TVs in my house, one's about seven years old, one's about eight years old. So I mean, they're just
they don't really break. Now, yes, I can say all this and Bob, you might not purchase the warranty and you might have your TV crap out in the next two years. But now, if it's in the year, it's going to be covered under a standard warranty. If you buy a TV at Costco, I think they extend that to two years. At Best Buy they don't do that.
But the reality is.
Two hundred and fifty dollars on top of a thirteen hundred dollars device is nearly a twenty percent surcharge. So if you think about it, if Best Buy handed you a coupon for twenty percent on top of this TV, would you use it?
I think not.
Now yes, you could say, rich, well, I'm getting five years of worry free time.
Well number one. The first year is included, so it's really only four years.
Number two. You know there might be a deductible. I'm not really sure how Best Buys warranties work, but anytime that I've used you know, when I bought my house, you know they had this thing you had to get this like home warranty, and oh my gosh, when you had to get in a clients repaired under the home warranty number one, it was.
Like an eighty dollars deductible. Number two, they sent the.
Guy who could care less about repairing your stuff because he was doing a thousand of these in a day, and so you know he'd do the little flap in the toilet eighty bucks please, and it took forever to get an appointment. So I kind of like the free market here. If you know, if your TV breaks, you can bring it into a store, you can bring it into best Buy, geek Squad and the repair might be less than two hundred and fifty.
Dollars if you ever need this.
And by the time you buy these extended warranties and all the little gadgets that you purchased a Sono speaker here, Bluetooth speaker there, your iPhone, you're whatever, you get pair of headphones. They try to sell you on everything. You buy it best Buy, they try to sell you on this extended warranty. And you're at the checkout and they're like, hey, this bag of twizzlers you bought, would you like to insure it for a year for one dollar and twenty five cents.
You're like, no, I just.
Bought a bag of twizzlers for three dollars. Why would I pay two dollars to insure it? Now, I'm just kidding. They don't actually offer it to you one of the twizzlers, But you know what I mean. You buy a coffee maker for one hundred bucks, They're like, hey, do you want to protect this thing for five years? For twelve fifty sounds like a great idea. You're like, oh, twelve to fifty, big deal. That's no big deal. It's twelve
dollars and fifty cents. But think about it. That is twelve point five percent surcharge on top of that device. And when push comes to shove, if you ever need to fix that coffee maker, send it back in.
It's going to be a hassle.
You probably have to pay some sort of deductible and you're dealing with a company that does not care about you. I'm not talking best Buy. I'm talking about the warranty company. It's just a nightmare. You're on their terms. Whereas you can sit there in a year and a half and say, ugh, I bought this coffee maker a year and a half ago. Do I really want to send it out to Iowa for repair? Do I really want to bring it into best Buy? I don't know, maybe they just swap it
out a Best Buy. And you know, I'm totally wrong about this, but I just feel like these extended warranties have gotten so crazy, and I think that the only one I'm not gonna recommend it, but the only one I would recommend is if you're gonna get one. I think that the cell phone is permissible because it's in your pocket, it's all the time. Maybe a laptop if it makes you feel better. But a TV, come on, it just sits there and it does its job, and it basically does its job for a very long time.
So for that reason, Bob, the long answer to your question is no, I would.
Not do that.
All right, let's uh, let's just get to a couple things before the show is over. Norton is Norton LifeLock is buying a VAST. So wow, there goes the recommendation that I used to make all the time. I used to recommend a VAST and AVG as free software to.
Protect your computer. That's going away.
I guess, well, I don't know if it's going away, but now Norton LifeLock owns it, and Norton their business is selling subscriptions to these to these software that that protects your computer. So I thought a VAST and AVG were a nice alternative. But now Norton LifeLock is purchasing in a deal worth more than eight billion dollars, so I don't know what that means. They didn't really elaborate on what they're going to do with the free software that a VAST and AVG offers, but I just figured
i'd let you know because that could change. If you got one of these displays, one of these Nest hubs, you can now see air quality information on the ambient screen. So it's going to show the air quality index on the clock widget for the clock and weather widget for US users, or you can also ask hey G, what's the air quality near me. You can also get alerts when the air quality drops to unhealthy levels. In Los Angeles,
this is a major problem. Air quality is often horrendous, especially if you want a run out side or do anything that requires breathing in a lot of air outside, which is pretty much living. So I think this is a smart thing to have this on your smart display because here, for me, there's two things I look at on my Google Nest every day when I want to take a run, well, only one thing, I guess there is two things. I look at the time, and I look at the weather. And if the weather is like
hitting ninety five to one hundred, I'm out. Anything under ninety five I'll pretty much still run. But now I think the air quality is a smart thing to include because it's on a scale of zero to five hundred, and then higher values mean the worst air. And there's colors good, moderate, unhealthy for sensitive groups, unhealthy, very unhealthy, and hazardous. Especially with all of the wildfires we've been having around here, the air quality has been pretty pretty bad.
So good for you Nest for putting this on there, and Google it will be rolling out over the coming weeks. Google loves to roll things out over weeks for a time. It's so it takes. When you're waiting for something, it seems like you forget about it before it finally makes it to your device. All right, finally, let's do one last question before we go here. Nancy Rights, Hey, rich
I love to watch you on KTLA. What is the easiest way to port text from a Motorola Z three to a new phone which will also.
Be an Android?
Thank you, Nancy. Two recommendations. The first is Google One. They recently added text messages. It's a freeway to back up. You just install Google one the app on your phone. It will suck up all the text messages from your old phone and bring them to your new phone. The other one I like is called SMS Backup and Restore. This will do the same thing, except it's even easier. You can export to variety of places, whether that is a drop box, whether that is Google Drive, whether that's
an SD card, whether that's an email to yourself. But you can simply simply back up and restore these text messages from one phone to another. It is dropped dead simple. And I paid the five bucks to get the plus. I don't really know what that gives you, but you know, if you think that this is worthwhile, maybe go for the five bucks. And I think maybe that gives you automatic backups at a regular time, so if you want
to continue your backups regularly, you can do that. Well, that sound does mean it is the end of the show. That's going to do it for this episode. If you would like to submit a question for me to answer, just go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com. Slash rich on Tech hit the big blue send email button, or you can go to Richontech dot tv look for the email icon, hit that icon and send your question off to me. Now, I know some of you are a new listener. A couple of you are listening right
now and you're saying, Oh, I'm a new listener. I would love it if you would rate and review this podcast. Write a quick line about what you like about this show, and that will help others know why they should listen. Especially now because this podcast is shown up a little bit higher in those Apple Technology Top podcast charts. People might be noticing it and saying, what's this rich on Tech thing from KTLA.
Then they click it they see it's.
Got a lot of good reviews, but not just ratings. Written reviews really do help, so write a line or two about why you like it. You can go to rate this podcast dot com slash rich on tech to help you do that, or just follow the instructions inside Apple Podcasts. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on Tech everywhere. Please give me a follow, and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free KTLA Plus app on Apple TV, Fire TV and Roku. Scroll to the tech section and
watch all of my TV segments on demand. They are fun. We put a lot of work into them. My name is Richdmiro. Thank you so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. As my wife said, wow, your podcast is really long. Thanks Lynn, I do appreciate you spending it with me. Stay safe, I will talk to you real soon.
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