Thoughts on Samsung's new Galaxy Buds, another foldable phone, license plates, get emojis, Amazon Day plus FedEx has a new delivery bot that drives all by itself.
What's going on. I'm Rich Damiro.
This is Rich on Tech, the podcast where I talk about the stuff that I think you should know about. So I'm Rich Dmiro, the tech reporter at KTLA five in Los Angeles. Thanks for watching me there. But this is where I talk about this stuff that I think is really interesting, all from a consumer perspective, all the little stories throughout the tech week that I think are interesting and you should know about. And plus I take your calls. That's the fun part of this show is
I will take your calls answer your questions. So if you have real questions about real tech, I Am going to answer them, or at least attempt to answer them, because sometimes you know, I don't know what you're gonna ask me. Maybe I don't know the answers, and so I will do my best to do that. But here's the deal. We are entering an era where the foldable
phone is actually a thing. So I was at the Samsung event last week I think it was, and then this weekend in Barcelona, Spain, they're having the Big Mobile World Congress, by the way, a show that I've always wanted to go to that I've never actually gone to, even though I'm obsessed with cell phones, I.
Know how does that work?
But Huawei introduced something called the may X, and I'm guessing it's the Mate X, not the Mate ten. I don't think they're using iPhones naming conventions here. But the Mate X is a foldable device, so it's a phone that also folds into or folds out to become a tablet. So when it's folded up, it's got a six point six inch screen, and then when you open it up, it becomes a tablet that has a eight inch screen.
And this a little bit different from the one we saw from Samsung because the Wahwei actually opens the opposite way, so the screen on the Wahwei is on the outside.
So imagine a book.
The cover of the book would be the wahweh, whereas with the Samsung device, the pages inside the book would be the Samsung. So the screen is on the inside of the Samsung, it's on the outside of the Wahwei. So personally, I think both are kind of crazy because either way, I feel like we're at a loss here. If you get a grain of sand in between your
screens on the Samsung, well you've got a problem. And with the Wahwei, oh my gosh, I mean your whole phone is just exposed to the elements at all times. I mean, you can't put a case on this thing, right, So I'm gonna be curious how these things are gonna hold up over a couple of weeks or months or even a year of use. But Huawei does say it's the world's fastest five G foldable phone, and I thought this was interesting when it's folded and you have it
in camera mode because there's screens on both sides. The Huawei shows a viewfinder on both sides, so even subjects in the frame can contribute to the creative process.
What does that mean.
There's a screen on both sides, so the people that are taking people you're taking a picture of can actually see how they're composed in the screen as well the person behind the camera taking the picture. So Huawei may X going to be twenty six hundred dollars when it launches. I don't have a specific launch date just yet, but it will be this year, and I can't wait to get my hands on these things.
I don't I.
Love the idea of having a device that works in two ways, because a lot of times when you travel, I don't like to bring my iPad because it's too much work. You have the iPad that like basically is good for watching Netflix and that's about it and reading a magazine whatever. But for the rest of the time, I'm using my phone in my computer. So I kind of like the idea of a device that can unfold, but it has to be the right form factor, like
a regular phone that also folds out. And I think these guys, I mean, i'd say they're getting close, but these are very first generation products. So it's just something to watch for the future. Mike from Chicago, you're on with Rich what's going on? Hey?
How you doing?
Man?
I have a question about car mounts for your cell phone. Okay, So I recently ordered a wireless car charger mount for the for my car, and it seems kind of chinsey like when I put it on there and it's charging, it just loses power when it's saying it's charging. Do you recommend any certain ones for that kind of thing, because the ones that I've been trying have been giving me no luck.
Yeah, here's the problem with these things, Mike, is that they your phone is basically consuming power faster than this wireless charge is able to recharge it.
So, especially if you're.
Running GPS, if you're running Android Auto, you notice that the power is just not coming through the phone as fast as it's depleting it, right, is that what you're experiencing?
Well, kind of, because I'm not using like any apps or anything. The only thing I'm pulling off of it is maybe iPhone music.
Oh w interesting, Okay, I like.
I literally just got this like two days ago, and it took like three weeks to come because it came from China.
Oh okay, all right, we'll say no more. That's there's your problem, right there? Is there a how are you plugging this into your car? How is the power going in?
At first, I tried just the USB port, right, because the USB port goes straight from there to the car mount, right, and then from there it's supposed to wildly charge your car. So then I was thinking, Okay, maybe that's not giving.
It enough power.
Let's try the I don't know what that's called the like the you know where the car chargers normally go right socket that's made for that, yep, yep. So I switched I got it like an adapter, and I switched it to that.
And like as I'm driving, I'm.
Like, okay, my phone's at seventy three percent. Let's check it. In ten minutes, it's at seventy serious, like it says it's charging, but it's okay.
So I just.
Don't know like where to go, where to look.
What, you know what I mean, Well, a couple things, So this is I don't I'm not a huge fan of wireless charging for this reason. I think it's it's very hit or miss. It's it's kind of slow, it's very inefficient. Now it's at.
Work, yeah, it's fine.
You know, you leave it sitting on your desk and your phone is just kind of sitting there and it's trickle charging.
But a couple of things I would look at.
Number one, I would check I think you're on the right path of going through the what used to be called the cigarette lighter.
To you know, to the charger.
Right, there's two things this, this wireless charger could be a slow charger. You can look at see kind of like what the wattages on the packaging if you still have that, and see, yeah, that could be the problem. Number one, that it's just not fast enough to charge the iPhone at a good rate. The second thing is the USB adapter you're using in the cigarette lighter could be not drawing enough power from the you know, it's
not transmitting enough power. So I know that I've I've experimented with these things in the past and there's definitely a difference. Like in my wife's car, I have a charger for my phone and I had to experiment with a few different of these cigarette lighter you know, USB adapters to see which one actually charge my phone at
a rate that was acceptable. So that's what I would say is go on Amazon and see if you can find like if you're going to seven to eleven at the checkout, those are not gonna work, Like those are
so slow they're not really gonna work. So you have to find one that's like either quick Charge three point zero or some sort of like look for like Qualcom quick Charge or you know, a higher wattage that that signifies that this thing is much faster than just the standard like one point one, which is like the trickle charge USB, Like you want something that's basically like if you look at let's see USB cigarette.
Well, because I have I have a wireless charger like next to my bed that Verizon gave me when I bought my excess mm hmm, and and that thing's amazing, like it works fine.
Right then you know the one in my car doesn't work so well.
And then also I have a hard time finding amount for my car with this phone being I don't know, on the rather larger side. Yeah, like every time I put it in there, like sag down.
Well, because you're using you're doing the vent, the car vent. Yeah, yeah, those are okay. So the best, the absolute best mounts in the world for your car is from a company called pro Clip USA. The problem is they're really expensive, so I'm talking like eighty bucks for your for your mount.
But here's the thing.
Every single car they have gone into that car and they have figured out the perfect place where you can mount this thing where it attaches to sort of a part of your dashboard, like more so than just a you know, a peel and stick kind of thing. So pro Clip USA that's the best place if you're going to keep your phone for a while, and you're keeping this car for a while, it's definitely worth the investment. And second, you can actually get a mount from them
that when you put your phone in there. You have an iPhone, you said, it literally will snap in. The base has the little lightning port, so when you put your phone in there, it snaps right into the lightning port and it's charging. It's charging nicely. It's such a clean setup. That's what I recommend. I switch out phones kind of a lot, so I used to use these a lot, but now I kind of I don't as much. But they are the best setup. And I was just
buying them every time. I'd switch phones every six months to a year, and I'd spend eighty bucks ninety bucks on these things, and it got kind of expensive. But that's those are the best, So I would check out that if you really want a good, clean install, those are.
The best you can find.
And that was pro Clip pro Clip USA.
And by the way, they do go on sale every once in a while.
The most I've ever seen is twenty percent off, usually on Cyber Monday Black Friday. The best second best you can get is fifteen percent off usually on like a holiday like Saint Patrick's Day Valentine's Day, and then ten percent off. You can usually find a code for that sometimes, but definitely sign up on their mailing list and see what you can get for you know, a discount code, but pro clip USA. Look all right, Mike, thanks for calling in from Chicago today.
Hey, hey, thank you man. I've been watching you since before when you did WWG and stuff.
Oh wow.
I appreciate everything you do. Thank you very much. I keep up to date, so.
Thank you cool, thanks for watching. Appreciate it. By bye.
So last week on the show, I talked about Samsung's new Galaxy S ten. I've been using the heck out of the ten plus. I will say that I really like the Galaxy S ten plus. I think this phone. I can highly recommend it already I've used it for about a week. I can one recommend it as a fantastic Android phone. So I will have a full review on that next week on KTLA but and probably here
as well. But I figured I talk about the Galaxy Buds because at the event I also got a pair of the Galaxy Buds, which are sort of Samsung's answer to the air pods, And I hate to compare everything that way because it's not just like Samsung said, oh my gosh, they did AirPods, let's do ear pods or Galaxy buds. But the reality is, look, we need these things. It's it's a good form factor that just have something that pops in your ears. The Galaxy buds actually feel
very futuristic. If the AirPods were kind of like little headphones that were cut off, like the wires were cut off. Galaxy buds almost feel like something out of the future because they're so tiny and you just pop them in your ear and they almost like magnetically snap into your ear. So I hate anything that goes in my ear when it comes to headphones, I really don't like a lot of them. So I like things that sit on my ear,
not things that pop in my ear. But I will say the Galaxy buds I really like, and they work really well. The pairing is super easy. You pop open the case on the Galaxy buds. Immediately your Samsung phone says, hey, we notice you've got some Galaxy buds in nearby. Do you want to connect? Sure you say yes, shows you how much battery you have left on them, and that's it. Next thing you know, you're off and running. You're you know, literally, for me, I was running. So I tried these things
at the gym. I tried them on the hike, and they did not fall out of my ears. The only exercise that I thought maybe they might fall out of my ears on was when I was on like some sort of bench and I was I don't know what you call the exercise, but I was basically flying back and forward like lifting almost like a sit up. That's basically it, but upside down. So and yeah, I don't know what that exercise is. I just saw someone else at the gym doing it, so I was like, oh,
maybe I'll do that. I'm sure it's good for something. So yeah, I have no idea what I'm doing there. But anyway, I digress. But that's the only time I felt like they might fall out of my ears, but they did not. So on the hike they did not fall out. They sound really good. I'm not an audio expert, but they sound really nice. They've got this enhanced ambient sound, which actually I really like because I can hear what's going on around me even when I have these things
in so a lot of these earbuds. You put them in, it's like sh and like you know, suction cups your ear and that's it. You can't hear anything else. And it almost sounds like it's really a weird sound. You sound like what's happening inside your head. I don't like that feeling. These do not do that for me, So I like that. The case also doubles as a battery, so it holds a charge for seven hours. So the Galaxy Buds, you put them in there and they recharge
a little bit. So if you put them in there for fifteen minutes, they'll give you an hour and a half of time of use. And that's about an hour more than I would work out. So they also give you six hours of Bluetooth streaming, five hours of calls. And what I like is this is the best part to me is if you have a new Samsung Galaxy S ten, it's got that wireless power share on the backside, so you can flip your phone over lay your Galaxy Buds case with the Galaxy Buds inside on the back,
and now you can charge your Galaxy buds. As long as you have a little charge on your phone, those will charge up, no wires necessary, So that's really cool. So you basically get wireless charging of your Galaxy buds right through your phone. So how does that matter, Well,
basically ninety nine percent of the time. Well, the AirPods, I'll be honest, I haven't had a problem with those, But in the past, every time, without fail, all these Bluetooth headphones I'd bring to try out at the gym, I would forget to charge them, the battery would be dead, whatever, and I'd.
Get to the gym and that's it. It's like I had to go back to my wired earbuds.
Well, with these, as long as you can, you know, maybe give yourself fifteen minutes of leeway at the gym, you know, fill up your water bottle, whatever you can get at least a little bit of a charge on your Galaxy buds and not all is lost, because I will tell you I will leave the gym if I cannot listen to something on my phone.
And also the other thing I do.
I don't know why I do this, but every time I pack my gym bag, I always forget one crucial aspect and I don't know what it is. I need, like a checklist, like Okay, you've got your socks check. You've got your undergarments check. You've got your shorts check, you've got your shirt check. Oh, you've got your sneakers check. I don't know why I cannot remember to get these things.
Plus you need, you know, your headphones, your phone, a little water, maybe a little protein bar, little pre energy, little post most energy, little recovery.
No, I was kidding.
I don't know about any of that stuff. I check and double check my gym bag, and I still manage to forget stuff. I don't even know how I do it. So now I actually two things. I'll admit I have bought socks at the gym I think three times.
And I actually now.
Keep a spare pair of socks in my gym bag at all times, because for some reason, those are the things I forget the most. And I wear dress socks to work, so I can't just wear my socks that I'm wearing to work. I think I worked out in my dress socks once out of desperation, because I was like, I'm not going home anyway. The Galaxy buds go on sale for one hundred and twenty nine to ninety nine. They were giving them away with pre orders on the
S ten. But I just read today that those are no longer a thing, so I hope that's not the case. I hope that was just a fluke in the system. But one hundred and thirty bucks, I think it's worth it. I think we're gonna see more discounts and promotions with the Galaxy Buds than we ever saw with the AirPods. So the Airpod's kind of held steady at one sixty for the two years they've been out. I think Galaxy Buds we're gonna see that price go down to ninety
nine bucks. I'm just predicting this and or some promotions with the carriers where if you buy the phone there, they're gonna give you a free pair of Galaxy Buds. So be on the lookout for those. Caesar from Long Beach, you're on with Rich?
What's going on?
Uh?
Nothing much?
Rich?
You know, let your show? I watch it every day. Just always wanted to get more information regarding DVD's movies that I have and to put it in my computer. I recently started using Plex, where I download my computers into my computer. I guess Plex is like a server that makes a computer into a server, and you can access your movies everywhere you go with your phone, cell phone, laptop,
so forth right. The only issue that I've been having is, well, first of all, I need more memory because I only got like one hundred movies in there, and you start ticking sticking out my memory.
Yep.
But I just wanted to see what would you recommend for me. Well, first of all, the movies are in my computer, and my computer have to be turned on all the time.
Yes, did my.
Computer mess up if I leave it on? Could my monitors stay on for a while? And I don't know if that's going to mess.
Up my monitors or yeah, I means.
Is running day and night.
Yeah, it's definitely not not an ideal situation. But computers are designed to stay on for long periods of time, so you're not going to necessarily kill your computer. I have a little mini server in my place I bought a couple of years ago. It's from Synology. So if you really want to get serious with this and have all your movies on there, that's probably the best bet.
That's what most people do. Or you can run an old computer as your server if you have one, But snology is kind of like the leader in that space. You basically buy this little box that it's like two hundred bucks, and then you get a hard drive or two hard drives preferably, and then the cool thing about the Synology is it also serves as a mini backup drive.
So I have my entire or Google Drive.
Syncd up to that, and you can have your entire drop box synced up to that. So this way, if anything ever happened with Google Drive, I have a complete backup right here in my office. So that's one option. Now to answer your question, I would.
The name of the name of the.
Unit Sinology, s Ynology, and it's not very expensive. You can look online if you type it in. If you just literally type in Synology into Amazon, it will give you, like the the latest model that most people are buying. It's like mine's a couple of years old, so I'd give you that one, but it's not it's not really the popular one anymore. But if you get that, you can install PLEX on it and then you can use that as your server. And so it's like basically a
mini computer. And that's about it. So you have that going twenty mine's going twenty four to seven. Unless the kids turn it off and then that's it. And then I figure that out when I go to drag something to it and I'm like, oh, it's not there, and I realize that it's turned off. But otherwise, with a computer, you're not gonna have too many problem with the computer being on. I think that the energy consumption is one. The secondary thing is your monitor being on all the time.
There isn't an issue with screen burning if you don't have a screen saver. But at the very least I would just go into your settings on your computer and just have it to your hard drive and your CPU either stay awake with you know, network access, or you have the monitor just turn off and the computer stays on. So just go in and tweak those energy settings and
you should be fine. But yeah, the way it's working is everything's coming off your computer, so your computer has to be on for that connection to be made between your device and your computer where all the files are are housed.
Okay, so I know it gets a little complicated.
But the plex thing is a lot of people like it because they have their own stuff. They also some people share other people's plexes as well.
But you know, there's there's a lot of ways you can do it.
There's a lot of good solutions for it as well, Like there's if you want to have your own collection of something plex, lets you do that, right.
I love it because, like I said, I have thousands of movies on DVD, and I hate looking for a movie that I always wanted to watch and all of a sudden, I know I have access to it on Plex. Like in Christmas time, you don't.
Want to be looking for your Christmas movies and then you know and putting into the DVD player and so forth, and so.
I have stolen too much time. So plex friendly looks there.
That's so funny because that's like literally the only time I use my PLEX is when I is during Christmas. I'm like, all right, I know I have Doctor Seuss or whatever the Grinch you stole Christmas. I know I have Christmas Vacation on there. I've gotten some of them over. But it's like it really pains me when I bought these things to like buy them again digitally, you know, So I just made them digital and now I have them.
Yes, Because I was also doing voodoo for a while, buying two dollars for the movie that I have sometimes, you know, the screen is not what I want on the Pleux, so I gotta go to Vudu. Yep. But anyway back to the plex, like just one more thing. So what you told me, I mean they told me about the NAS. Is that something good I can use also? And they ask or NAS or.
That's that's what I'm talking about. That's that's the NAS. Yeah.
The NASA's synology is called Network attached storage. So it's basically a hard drive that has a network connection and the hard drive there's a little bit of a CPO in there, there's a little bit of software that runs on there. But that's what a NAS is. That's what snology is, and so there's several of them out there. I think synology is probably the most popular. You can build your own, you know, there's a there's a you know, there's a lot of ways to do it, but that's what that synology is.
Okay, all right, Persfect, thank you so much, answer my questions.
All right, Caesar, have a good day. All right, same to you, Bye bye.
Her.
Amazon has a new feature available to all Prime members called Amazon Day. This is something that I have literally been talking to my wife about for years saying how convenient this would be and how smart this would be, and I called it.
I didn't have Amazon Day. Mine was like Amazon sweep, right.
So the idea was that you would order stuff throughout your week, and I need everything I order immediately, right, Like, I understand that Amazon's really fast, but I would say, only one percent of orders do I actually need the next day or the same day, right. The rest I
can just wait for. So my idea was, I think it's really inefficient for them to keep delivering stuff to my house, right, So I thought it would be really cool if all throughout the week, if I ordered stuff, I would just get all my orders at the end of the week, like on Friday or Saturday.
Right.
Well, now that's an option. It's called Amazon Day, and all the stuff you order throughout the week, you can pick the day that you want it delivered. So I love this idea because a lot of times I don't order small, stupid little things on Amazon because I'm like, oh, that's such a waste of resources, of driving of you know, I only want to place an order for like something that's five dollars, like a kitchen utensil.
Or tool or whatever.
Well, now you can do that and at the end of the week, they'll just kind of group everything together that you ordered and ship it to you. And the other side of this is that you know what day you're getting your packages, which is really cool. So again it's called Amazon Day and Amazon Now clearly there's a benefit to Amazon because guess what they can now you know, have less packages going out on any given day, and that saves them money to group things they don't have
to ship things separately. But for me, I actually think it's just a smart idea. It's good for the environment, but it's just also smart, like not every package you need on the next day or the same day, And so you do have the option if you're ordering something like let's say you need razors, you ran out and you need them like the next day, well you can still get them on your Prime. You can you know, specify every order if you want it to go on your Amazon Day or if you want it to go
you know, on normal shipping or whatever. But I think this is great, great option. It's like one of those things that like Amazon is so big that just by offering this they will save literally like a million trees a month.
Or something.
Just by offering this, not everyone's going to take advantage, but it is for prime members only. But if you want to set up your Amazon Day where you get all your deliveries on the same day Amazon dot Com slash Amazon Day. Alan from Panoramic City, You're on with Rich what's going on and the baiting.
Between an iPhone and an Android? And I don't know what is better for me?
What do you want to do with your phone?
I want to play games, take a lot of pictures. I have the Samsum S seven Edge right now. They're starting to give me a lot of problems. And I play a lot of games. I surf the net a lot on the internet, you know, we read a lot of things, talk play music.
Well, I mean the difference. I mean, if you already have an Android and you're feeling like it's after a couple of years, not really living up to its potential. There and the S seven, you know, it was a good phone, but the software on the older Samsung's has definitely left a little bit to be desired.
For sure.
I think that you would be fine with switch to an iPhone.
Are you?
Are you opposed to the iPhone in any way? Is it's what's your hesitation about that?
I just have little hesitation mainly, you know a lot of mixed reviews about it, and I don't know what to believe and what not to believe.
Well, I mean, look, the difference between iOS and Android is Apple kind of controls everything that you do, and so you know, they control kind of how the phone works, the software, what you can do with that software, what you can customize, what you can't customize. But the reality is, I think that for ninety nine point nine percent of people, they're not really concerned with that. Like the iPhone works
all the time, like it just always works. It really, it's simple, it's it works, It has the best software. When it comes to apps and things, you can do a lot. I mean, all the stuff that you're telling me you want to do on it is very standard iPhone tasks. Right, You've got a lot of accessories for the iPhone, and I don't think you're going to see the same kind of slow down and issue that you see with your Samsung with the iPhone. Now with the
new Samsung, I think that it's good. But I've been testing this new one, the s ten, and it's great. But the iPhone is is also a fantastic device. I mean, if are you looking at getting the newest iPhone like the ten R or okay something like that.
Yeah, yeah, sorry, you're rough.
What do you think of the Android LG.
I like that one. I've been testing that as well. I don't like it as much as the iPhone ten R. I'll tell you that, I think that the ten R is is is a better device.
So I think.
The ten R is the x R. That is they just call it. It says X but it's ten. I know, yeah, yeah, it's it's the same thing. So that's fine. The LG, you know, V forty is cool. The the thing I like about that is that it has a bunch of cameras. You've got the three different cameras on the back so you can do the wide angle photography, which is kind of cool. The iPhone ten R only has one camera on the back, so you get but it's it's a
great phone. I mean, the ten R really is a nice device, and I think that some of the headaches that you've had with your Samsung you will not have with the with the ten R. It just works, It charges easily, it's simple, it does wireless charging comes in a bunch of different colors, if that's of interest to you. The screen is nice and big, the battery last forever.
That's what I want, my edge. I can't even leave it on for you know, anything, for time at all without nothing, you know.
Yeah, yeah, I agree, And that's that's that's a problem with some of the Samsungs in the past.
The battery.
The battery got better on the S nine, but the S seven was was not very good when it came to battery, or the S six was really bad.
So I don't know.
I mean, if you're willing to switch, I think take the chance and see. Right now, Apple is giving a little bit of bonus cash for the trade ins on the iPhone ten R. So if you go into uh to the Apple webs and see you can you can go on there and see how much they'll give you for your phone. They're giving you a little bit more than he normally would, which is still not a lot. You're not going to get a ton for the S seven,
but you will get you know, I don't know. I mean I can look online and see, but you know, at least we'll get some sort of trade in and that phone is seventy seven hundred and fifty dollars, So you can go to the Apple Store too and trade it in there. So let's see, so your device is, let's see, let me see what your smartphone is. You have the let's see Samsung Galaxy S seven. So let me just see here Samsung, which model Galaxy capacity. I'm guessing that's a thirty two gig do you know?
Yeah, for sure it is thirty Okay, so.
S seven edge you said, or yeah, okay, all right, is your smartphone in good condition? You get one hundred and twenty five dollars for that phone, okay, So I mean that's not bad. I think that's actually a pretty good amount for a phone that's going on three years old, right, three four years old? But I don't know, take take a chance. I mean, see what you think of it. I think the ten R is a really solid device. I think it's it's the best combination of what Apple
has to offer. I wouldn't go anything below the ten R because the camera's not as good on the previous models. So the ten R has a really good camera. And I think that you said you like take pictures, so I think that'd be good, and you got the big screen.
I just got to so I like to take pictures. Oh yeah, I was told that all the Androids now are switching the USB connections so that my existing USB portion everything won't work. Is that true?
The there's well, okay, so your phone does use US B, but it uses what's called micro USB, and the new phones use what's called USB C so and the iPhone uses lightning. So with the iPhone you will have a different connector. So you we'll need to get you know, yeah, I wasn't.
Sure about the Android.
Yes, I got to replace. Yes you would.
It uses USB C which your phone uses USB, micro USB or USB A. I believe that is so you wouldn't You wouldn't need new courts for that anyway, so combine that, you know.
Yeah, okay, great and answer my question. Thank you very much for your time.
All right, Alan, appreciate you calling in. Thanks so much. Have a good day.
Thanks.
So.
Back in the day, we had phones with batteries that seem to last forever. Well, part of the thing was that we didn't really use our phones as much. Well then we had smartphones, and of course the battery is
a daily struggle for many of us. Things have gotten a lot better with fast charging and wireless charging, and just you know, the batteries haven't really changed, but the capacity has well now Energizer well, through an exclusive agreement with Energizer, this phone company is making a Energizer phone called the Powermax P eighteen k pop. And they showed it off at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, and I get it. It's a smartphone whatever. It's got five cameras,
a six inch screen, it's got Android. But the feature everyone's going crazy over is it has an eighteen thousand milliamp hour battery, the highest capacity battery ever seen in a smartphone, so you get weeks of battery life on a single charge.
So eighteen thousand milliamps. Just to give you an.
Idea, a phone like maybe like the Galaxy S ten probably has about a four thousand milliamp battery, maybe thirty five hundred iPhones maybe three thousand something like that, two thousand for the smaller one. So you're talking almost six, you know, four to six times the battery in a regular phone. Now this thing is thick, it's about three and a half times as thick as an iPhone. So nobody's buying this device for the phone. They're getting it
for this crazy battery. So the battery lasts up to ninety hours for calls, one hundred hours for music, and you can watch two days of video on a single charge, and in standby mode the battery will last fifty days. Now you might be wondering, well, Rich, how long is it.
Gonna take to actually charge this batteries.
It's gonna take like a week to charge it. It doesn't say how long to charge, but it does say when a full charge is necessary. Users can recharge their device quickly thanks to the fast charge function. I thought I read somewhere that it yeah, I think it's going to take eight hours to charge this thing. But the reality is the Energizer phone is just kind of fun.
It's almost like one of those novelty things. It might have specific use case scenarios, like for certain businesses that just want a brick and you know, maybe security personnel or I don't know, someone that just needs a phone that just the most important thing to them is how long the battery is gonna last. That's who's gonna buy that phone. I don't have a price on the phone
just yet. Or when it's going to be available. But again, it's the Energizer Powermax P eighteen k POP with an eighteen thousand million battery.
Yeah, I have to see this thing.
Just go ahead and look at the picture of this thing online, because would you carry it around? This thing would really kind of I think this thing would weigh you down. And I think you'd also get flagged at TSA for having a battery that big in your phone. But on the flip side, I travel a lot and I do bring a lot of those backup batteries, so it's kind of the same thing. But anyway, there it is the Energizer phone with the largest battery. Definitely fits
their brand. Speaking of big Western digital brand, sand Disc now has a one terabyte micro SD card. The card holds one terabyte of information, So this is an unbelievable amount of data on one tiny little card. You've seen micro SD cards, they are tiny. This is going to be four hundred and fifty dollars for a one terabyte card. Now here's the thing that's very expensive. So it's cool that you have a terabyte on a card, but this
is this is prohibitively expensive. Not just prohibitively expensive. It's also exponentially expensive because if you go on Amazon and look up prices for a smaller card like a one to twenty eight, you can get that for like forty five bucks, and sometimes on sale even cheaper. So if you look at two fifty six, I think that's even like fifty bucks, So five twelve that's kind of expensive. That's one hundred and ninety nine dollars. So that's a lot of money as well, but still much more reasonable.
So the reality is you can pop one of these cards into I don't know can you pop it into I think the Samsungs go up to five twelve capacity. I think that's their max for the card, but I think theoretically you can put the one terabyte in there.
But the fact that you can.
Have a one terabyte card in your device, I mean, my laptop has a one terror I don't even think it has a one terabyt hard drive. I think it's a five hundred gig card drive. Let me see what do I have. I gotta I gotta look in my Yeah, my hard drive is not even a terabyte. It is five hundred gigabytes. So my hard drive on my computer is five hundred gigabytes. Imagine if you could just have a little oh my gosh, if we can dream for a second here, if Apple would ever give us some
slots on our laptops. Imagine having a little micro SD card slot on your laptop. You just popped one of these one terabytes in there, and now that's like a drive that you just have there at all times. I mean, that would be fantastic. And my dream is to have I've got two giggle two terabytes of storage on Google Drive. And the funny thing is, I cannot organize those two terabytes of data because I have no place to download them. I can never download two terabytes of data to my
laptop because it only holds five hundred gigs. So I'm sitting here. One of these days, the storage will catch up the storage on my laptop, my physical storage will catch up to my cloud storage, and I can finally go through and organize my Google Drive. Right now, it's just a whole mess in there. I've got duplicates, I've got stuff thrown in there because I can't organize it. I can't run any program that does a ddoup or.
You know, just anything. I can't get in there and organize everything at once.
So I'm looking forward to the days of more storage on our devices. They're there, they're just very expensive. Tasha from Inglewood. You're on with Rich.
Hi, Rich, I have a question. I have an iPhone AT or ten however you want to say it, and I, if I'm on the phone, I can't send a text message or answer emails or anything like. It's not allowing me to access my data. And I call them today customer service, and they said, it's a certain type of plan. It's like a data plan that you can do with certain phones. But it's weird that I can never do that.
But when other people have other things like T Mobile and AT and T whatever, they can be on the phone, receive text messages, send text messages, phones and emails. But I always get it to where it didn't go through.
Tasha. Are you on Sprint? Yes, okay, that's why.
So the way their network is devised, and or at least the way it used to be, is that you cannot use data while you're on the phone. That's just the way their network switches over.
So if you're using.
A call through their phone, like a you know, if you're on a voice call, you cannot access data. That's just the way their network is set up. Verizon used to be the same way. They're not that way anymore. But Sprint is I guess the last holdout since you're telling me this, but that's that's the reality of their network. That's just the architecture of how it's set up. Now, if you are in a Wi Fi area, that should
not be the case. So if you're if you're on your phone and you're in Wi Fi at home and you're on a call, you should be able to send or browse the web while you're on there.
Is that not the case?
Well, I haven't tried that yet. I was actually on the customer service and they pretty much told me the same thing that you said. You know that if I'm on it, you can't use your data. But when I saw that you were alive. Well, maybe he knows some hack or some you know, way to get around that, but I think it's pretty much the same thing that the rep told me today that there was nothing we could do about it.
Yeah, there's not.
It's just the architecture of the of the the network that they set up. I'm guessing it's interesting that you're saying this because I would have thought that they would have switched over like everyone else, because now it used to be a big differentiator between AT and T and Verizon and Sprint is that on AT and T and T Mobile you could surf the web while you were on the phone, and with you know, with Verizon and Sprint you couldn't. That's because their networks were a little
bit different. But I thought when everyone switched over to LTE that that would change. But I guess Sprint must still be using something else for their calls, which is really interesting to me. I wasn't aware that was still an issue with them, but yeah, it definitely that's the way their network has been set up historically. So, and you have a new phone, which I was going to say it could be your phone, but you have the brand new ten ar you said, right, or the ten Yeah,
so it's not your phone. Basically your option is I would just try it and Wi fi see what happens. So when you're at home, if you're at home right now, you know, get on the phone with someone else and try to surf the web and see if that works. If you're in your WiFi as well, that should work. But if you're out and about in the city and you're trying to you know, it's I could see where it's a problem. If someone's like, hey, you know, let me look up this restaurant while I'm on the phone
with you and you can't. You're like, oh, never mind, let.
Me call you back, right, Or if I'm trying to receive or spend the text message, it's like I have to hang up, spend it and then call them back, you know, And that's just you know, nonproductive for me.
So yeah, that's definitely, that's definitely not ideal.
Yes, it's not good at all. Okay. I just thought, you know, you, being the genius that you are, that you know a way around it.
Well, you can carry around a hot spot with you everywhere you go and U and only use I message and you know that would help you. But that's I don't think that seems very reasonable, Tasha.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Okay, Well, it was a pleasure talking to you, and thank you for confirming what you know they told me. I just thought it might have been them just saying, you know, just keep me as a customer right land the conversation with I'm about to go to T Mobile, and I am.
Oh, well, there you go. This might put you over the edge. Now your phone, make sure it's compatible with T Mobile. If you want to take it over there, you can. You can check that. You should be able to check that on their website.
So I actually tweeted the other day. I tweeted John the other day and they get me back within a half an hour. It was like, let's do it.
Pretty much the other.
Tasha, I don't know.
The other one that you might want to check out if you're going to a different carrier is Visible.
Have you heard of them?
Visible?
Yeah?
So Visible is run by Verizon. It's forty bucks a month for unlimited everything, and you can literally sign up through your phone. They will send you a SIM card, you pop it into your phone and it's forty dollars unlimited.
So oh wow, Yeah, that's a really good deal.
The only thing that you need to know is they limit your speed to five megabits per second, so if that doesn't mean anything to you, So basically it's fast enough to do all the stuff that you need to do, but it's not the fastest. Like you know, on T Mobile you'll sometimes get really good speeds in certain places like super Fast, other places you may not have service. So I find that T Mobile is definitely a little bit hit or miss. I think it's gonna be better
than Sprint, but not as good as Verizon. So just just check out Visible and just just google Visible and see what it's all about. You could you can search Visible ktla and see what my story was on it and you can learn more about that. But definitely check it out if you're gonna switch.
What do you think about this respect your mobile service?
I think it's good. It runs on Verizon and hot spots. So if you have Verizon, if you have Spectrum Internet and you're not planning on giving that up anytime soon, you'll you know, you'll save money. It's like, I think it's what forty forty bucks a month, forty five a month or something. Historically you needed a certain phone to use it, So just make sure that your phone is compatible with their service, because that may not be. But I think if you're if you're gonna stick with Spectrum Internet,
it's not a bad deal. It's definitely not a bad deal. It's just some of your calls are routed through their wireless hotspots, which can be hit or missed sometimes so but I think overall you'd probably have a fine, a fine experience with it. But I check out Visible before I did Spectrum Mobile to be honest.
Okay, well I do thank you for the information.
All right, Tasha, I have a good day.
FedEx is testing a new robot. It's called the FedEx same Day Bot, and this didn't really do so well. I posted this to my Instagram page if you want to see a little video of it. People thought it was interesting, but I think we've seen this a lot now. Amazon has something similar. We've seen them playing with the drones. And the funny thing is we've seen a lot of companies kind of experimenting with this technology, but we never really see it implemented. So FedEx getting into the game.
They've got this new same day bot, and what they're thinking is that this bot is going to be delivering packages, but more like same day orders. So now, the big thing with all these companies is that they're all doing same day orders and deliveries to compete with the Amazons
of the world and the Postmates and the Amazon Prime. Now, so FedEx is going to try this out with AutoZone lows Pizza Hut, Target, Walgreens, and Walmart, and you would place an order at one of those places and they would use this bot to get the order to your house. And it says that on average, more than sixty percent of merchants customers live within three miles of a store location. So there is an opportunity they're saying for on demand,
hyperlocal delivery, and I agree. I mean, half the time you're ordering stuff like I ordered razors the other day on Amazon because they were twelve dollars cheaper on Amazon than they were at CVS. I went into CVS and it's like now I did a price check and they're super expensive. So the reality is if one of these companies can offer me a cheaper price that competes with Amazon, and I can have it delivered in a couple of hours by this little robot, of course I'm on board.
Right now, we are in the early stages of delivery right Amazon is owning the business, but that cannot go on forever. These other companies are getting very smart about hey, we've got the stock right here, literally within three miles of your house. Why are you ordering something from Seattle that's being shipped from Louisville that is now coming to your house on a FedEx truck when literally it's a mile down the road and we can cut out that
whole middleman process and get you this thing. The problem is a lot of times it's more expensive, and it's actually cheaper to order from Amazon even though the product is coming from miles and miles away. So that will change over time as the economy sort of shifts here. But this little same day bot is being developed by the same guy that invented the segue, so it's got some really good smarts inside. It can go over you know, they showed it going over a pothole. They showed it
climbing stairs. I also saw one of these things on display at CES if you want to check out that that was called the Animal, and that one was pretty cool because it actually took the package out of the top of the Actually it kind of slid the package out of the top of the device that like leaned over and popped it out. That was really cool. FedEx has not shown how this thing gets the package to your door, like how you get it out of it.
It opens up so you can see what's inside, which would lead me to believe it can only have one thing in there at a time, but they showed it on Jimmy Fallon and he just reached in and pulled out a package, actually pulled out a pizza, which personally, I think is probably the coolest possible Back to the Future solution of these things, because to me, a hot pizza being delivered by a robot to my front door
is like absolutely mind boggling. The only thing better than that, in my opinion, is that rehydrator they had on Back to the Future where she put the tiny pizza in, pressed a button andh it was like, you know, became a big pizza.
That was so cool to me.
So FedEx is going to test this spot this summer in select markets including Memphis, Tennessee, pending final approval from the city, but it seems like at this point robots delivering packages to your home will be a thing in the future, just like foldable phones. Just want to make you aware of a little, tiny addition, but very useful addition to the Google Home app.
If you have a Google.
Home, this is they're making it so it's much easier to control all your devices. So they've redesigned this app a thousand times since it came out, and according to Android Police, where I saw this, you can now control lights and plugs from different manufacturers and integrate them right into your routine. So you can do all that stuff already, right, But what they're adding now is the ability to change the color of your light. So the first time I
saw this was actually on the Google Home Hub. I thought it was really cool because it gives you a look at all the devices in your home, and when you press a set of lights, it gives you a whole little pellette where you can choose the color for those lights. Well, now they're doing that on the Google Home app, which is really cool because it used to
be where every light was different. If you had a Fillip's Hue light, you'd have to open up the Hue app to change the color, right, if you had a Lifix bulb, you'd have to open up the Lifix app to change the color. I've been testing these new c By ge bulbs, which I love, and the you had to you actually use those through the Google Home app, but you couldn't change their color except with your voice.
So now everything is available with your voice and also the color palette, so again if you go into the Google Home app and you select one of your light bulbs, when of your smart light bulbs, it will now pop up a little color palette at the bottom. It says change color. You can now tap that and you'll get all the colors that that light supports, or not all of them, because the Phillips bulbs support sixteen million colors
or something insane like that. So according to the Android Police article, you get forty two different shades of the color. Some of the bulbs I have only changed, like from white to kind of bright white to candle light, so whatever it sort of supports in a smaller way, you'll get that selection. But it's really cool because theoretically you can change all the lights in your house, no matter what brands they are, all at the same time now
using the Google Home app. So not sure if you're a Lift or Uber user, but I'm a big Uber user and my wife and I always have this debate. She loves Lyft and I always use Uber and she's always telling me, oh, well, this week I have fifty percent off my rides in Lyft, or ooh, this week I have ten percent off my rides or ooh this week I have a free upgrade to premium. I never
got any discounts from Uber. I mean they just it's like the price, it is there, it is Back in the day when they first started, there was lots of promos with Uber, and that has quickly dried up. But according to an article in tech Crunch, through the Information, they say that Lyft has been doing discounts and it's been working. So apparently my wife was not the only one getting these discounts. Through discounts, Lyft got an additional
four percent of the US ride share market. They now hold thirty four percent of the market, which was actually bigger than I thought. Uber claims the remaining sixty six percent according to this article. But these discounts seem to work, So of course, after I read this article, I was like, well, maybe I'll give Lift another chance, because some people say they like the drivers better or the cars better.
And I did so.
I took Lyft the other night to a little gathering eye into and sure enough, the next morning, I got a discount ten percent off all my rides on Lyft for the next.
Don't know a week or so.
So I love discounts, I love promos. I love a little bit of good competition. The thing that is keeping me using Uber is that Uber has Uber rewards, and I'm really trying to get to that tier where I finally get some better drivers, because once you get to a certain tier, they pair you up with better five star drivers.
So that's what I'm trying to do. That's my goal.
But if I'm using the discounts in Lyft to get cheaper rates, I miss out on my points for Uber. So it's a little competition between these companies. But I guess my bottom line to you is if you like discounts, try out the lift app one more time and they will probably send you a little discount off your future rides. Finally,
you've heard of personalized plates. Now get ready for emojis on license plates over in Australia Queensland specifically, they are going to allow drivers to get a ojis on their personalized license plates. So I don't know what I think of this. I mean, it's cool, and I didn't know emojis.
Were like here forever. I guess they are.
But to begin with, before you you know, think that they're just going to put the worst possible symbols on their license plate, like that little what is that chocolate chocolate frozen yogurt, you know that frozen yogurt swirl something like that. Right to begin with, there's only gonna be five symbols available. They include the laugh out loud, which is the crying face crying laugh emoji, the winking face emoji, the cool sunglasses emoji, the heart eyes, and the standard
smiling face. And you got to pay for this anywhere between one hundred and sixty and five hundred dollars in Australian dollars. No idea what it is in American dollars, but that's a lot. I mean you're going to pay a premium. And of course, you know people are debating if this is good or bad. I think it's fun. I mean, if you think about it. In California, we do have a version of this. We are allowed to put on their like a heart. I've seen a hand. I'm not sure what else there is, but there are
a large selection of personalized options available in California. Every state's a little bit different. But the reality is, I don't think it's worth it. It's a lot of money. I'm too cheap to buy personalized plates. I'd love to have them, but every time I pay my renewal for the DMV, I'm like, Nope, not paying a nickel more for that, No way, especially because the rates in California just went up by like one hundred bucks last year. So I think it's cool. I think it's fun. It shows off
your personality. I always love I love deciphering personalized plates when I'm out there on the road, I'm like, do they mean that they are a risk taker or a rug maker? You know, like you see these little letters and you're like, you can't really tell exactly what they mean.
But but I think the emojis are kind of fun.
But anyway, five emojis to start, and I don't know, I think it's funny for the police officers that have to write up reports when these cars, you know, get traffic tickets or whatever. It's like, oh, the winking face emoji seven to seven, nine to.
One four.
Got into a car accident. We got to write that one up. So anyway, now, you know, if you go to Australia, well look at that. That's gonna wrap up today's show. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast.
Do appreciate it.
Love the feedback on the podcast, the ratings, the reviews, all that good stuff. So if you're on iTunes, definitely give it the old rating and review. Lots of you have done that. Thank you so much. I think we're right at four and a half five stars something like that. Thanks to everyone who's purchased the book. I know I sound like a broken record, but I really, really, really appreciate it. The book is titled one hundred and one
Handy Tech Tips for the iPhone. It's available on Amazon, and it will help you learn your iPhone a little bit more. And speaking of the book, and four and a half stars, five stars holding steady, it has gotten a lot of reviews on Amazon, and it's holding steady at four and a half stars, which just means so much to me because it means that.
All the hard work that I put into that book and.
All the thoughts that I had about helping people with that book really worked. So there's a couple of one stars on there. I'm a little suspect to those because some of the one star reviews are kind of funny to me because I'm like, ah, that doesn't make any sense. But the five four and a half five stars do appreciate that if you've gotten a copy of the book, if you leave a review, that would be great. If
you tell your friends, that's even better. Now, some of you have been watching this on Facebook or on Instagram as I record this live. If you want to subscribe to it, you can do so in any podcast reader or any podcast app. I should say, just search Rich on Tech hit that subscribe button.
It's totally free.
And what I do is I come up with this show, so you get the phone calls, you get the daily or the weekly tech tidbits, and usually the episode comes out on Friday, where I just kind of talk about all this stuff I think you should know. I will tell you my theory as a tech reporter. Right, there are lots of tech folks out there, and I'm friends with a lot of them. I love what we do.
But the reality is what I try to do, and this is something that's a little bit different than a lot of other folks out there, is I try to just tell you the real deal. So I'm not sitting there as the you know, expert star reviewer of the Galaxy S ten. Right, You've got plenty of people that sit there and you know, look at the specs and analyze this and figure out. You know, DxO Mark is
going to look at the cameras. But like I'm telling you, as a real person, as a person that has seen a lot of different devices and a lot of technology, is this app worth it? Is this phone worth it? Is this something you should be concerned about? Is this a good deal? Is this not a good deal? That's where I'm coming from. So I love giving you guys my opinion on this stuff. But again I'm coming from
a place of I'm a consumer, you're a consumer. I'm just trying to arm you with the information because you're busy at your job every day. I understand that I'm busy following all this tech stuff every day. So when I talk about an app or if I tell you about something, it's because I think think it's interesting and I think you should know about it. I think you should at least be aware of it. So that's my theory behind what I do. Not everyone's like that. A lot of people a lot of flash, not a lot
of substance. And I'm not throwing shade at my fellow tech reporters, but I'm just telling you, you know, if you see me as someone who is. You know, you see me making mistakes here, you see the audio levels are messed up, you see this podcast evolving. It's because I'm giving you. I'm showing you the behind the scenes process of what it takes to actually be a working
tech reporter in this world. So not everything I do is going to be perfect, Not every picture I take is going to be great, Not every live show I do is going to be one hundred percent, you know, buttoned up. It's because I'm showing you what it's like to actually do this stuff, and I'm learning as they go along, and I'm also kind of imparting the information that I think you should know. So that's my spiel.
I'm sticking to it. If you want links to everything I talk about or see the stuff I talk about, go to my website rich on tech dot tv. I do appreciate, however, you guys listen to me. I'm Rich damiro I'll talk to you real soon.
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