Hands on with Samsung's new S twenty two lineup. Apple tackles unwanted air tag tracking, Everything old is new again. We Sports comes to the switch plus your tech questions answered. What's going on? I'm Rich 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.
If the podcast sounds just a little different this time around, it's because I had some technical difficulties. My podcast board is giving me some feedback, so rather than have you listened to that, I got a troubleshoot, see what's going on? But I've already spent a couple hours doing that, so I just want to get on with the podcast. So here we are in a temporary setup and we'll see if this, hopefully should sound okay. Big week this week
for Samsung. They finally unveiled the S twenty two lineup, the S twenty two, Ultra, S twenty two, S twenty two plus not necessarily in that order. So I've been playing with the Ultra now for a couple of days And this is an interesting thing because I rarely switched my simcard into a phone that I'm testing. I used
to do it all the time. It became kind of a pain, and so I stopped doing that, And with this one, I decided to do it because it's been kind of a while since I went all in on Android, and I really just wanted to kind of see what the experience is like. And so took my simcard out of my iPhone thirteen Pro and I put it into the Samsung Galaxy S twenty two Ultra. And so far, it's been interesting. It's definitely it's weird because I've still kept my iPhone nearby at all times, but I do
that typically with all Androids anyway. I always whatever Android i'm testing, I always have a iPhone with me. But it's been kind of weird because the texting thing is definitely a thing. So being off of IY message, you know, having friends say, Rich, what's going on? Why are you texting me with green bubbles? It's just so like weird. It's so like predictable that if you text someone with from an Android, it's like immediately they say something to you.
So Apple's done a really good job of training people to be like, what what is this green bubble? But I'm trying to get through it and we'll see otherwise, the phone is pretty good. Let me go through some of the specs on this phone. So you've got three different phones. You've got a six point one inch screen on the S twenty two, six point six inch screen on the S twenty two Plus, and then a six
point eight inch screen on the S twenty two Ultra. Now, if you want the absolute best of everything, of course you have to go with the S twenty two Ultra. So the big news on the S twenty two Ultra is the fact that it has a stylus. So, as we know, Samsung has killed the Note line up and this has become basically the Notes. You've got these two lower models and then you have the upper model, which used to be the Ultra. It's still the Ultra, but
now it's basically the NOE Ultra. So it's got the stylus inside, which is something I think I like, but I don't really need. I'd have to get back into the swing of things of using a pen with my phone, which is just something I'm not used to anymore. So that's definitely a consideration. Fingerprint reader is super fast, the cameras are excellent, and you've got a whole bunch of
different cameras on here. You've got a twelve megapixel ultra wide, you've got one hundred and eight megapixel wide camera, you've got a ten megapixel telephoto with a three time zoom. Then you've got another ten megapixel telephoto with a ten times optical zoom, and then your front facing camera is a forty megapixel. And then of course the sweet spot is really you don't want to go with the eight megabyte or the one hundred and twenty eight megabyte based
storage model. Editor rich here, you know I meant to say one and twenty eight gigabyte model. Well, one and twenty eight megabytes would not get you very far in this day and age, because that only comes with eight gigs of RAM. You've got to jump up to that two point fifty six to get that twelve gigs a RAM. That's the sweet spot. And then it goes five to twelve with twelve gigs, and then one terabyte with twelve gigs, and then you have a five millionamp five thousand million
hour battery inside. So everything that I've seen on this phone. It's just a powerhouse. It works really well, it's snappy. Software needs a little bit of tweaking. There's some lag here and there, but it's not a deal breaker. But overall, I've been very impressed. I don't know if I can stick with it because there's just so many things I like about the iPhone. And it's not just the iPhone. It's like it's the entire ecosystem that the iPhone is
a part of. Whether it's the Air Tags, whether it's the Apple Watch, whether it's I Message, whether it's some of the apps that I use on there. So it's it's gonna be really tough. When it comes to the night mode photography, Samsung made a big deal about the night mode photography, and you know, it seems like the night mode is definitely better on this device. Like the photography at night is looking like it's brighter than the iPhone. Is it always better, I don't know. I mean it
just looks brighter, that's for sure. So I'm gonna have to test that a little bit more. The video looks really nice. Prices start at eight hundred dollars for the S twenty two, then you've got the S twenty two Plus, which let's see how much that one is. That's nine one thousand dollars. And then you've got the S twenty two Ultra, which starts at twelve hundred dollars, and they're
gonna be available on February twenty fifth. So again, there's been a lot of interest in these phones because Samsung just continues to kind of tweak and evolve, and it seems like they're doing a really good job with that. So I've seen much more interest in these phones than I have any previous Samsung models, So I guess I guess they're doing a pretty good thing. All right, let's
get to our first question of the podcast. Lisa, Hey Rich, I'm wondering if you can give me a recommendation on security. Is it better to go through an agency or do ring or one of those systems. Lisa, you know you're talking to a tech guy that is looking at disruption of all industries, and the companies like ADT I personally
just would not use because it's an old school company. Now, I'm sure ADT does some really good things, but the reality is their entire business is getting into a really long contract that's very expensive, giving you the hardware at a loss and then making it up on the back end with an extremely long contract that costs a lot of money. Whereas system like RING or Simply Safe or any of these other DIY systems, you purchase the equipment and then they make a reasonable amount of money on
you over the years. So personally, if I was to go with one today, I would go with Ring. I think that they're doing the best job of you know, the different hardware they have, the different software they have, they continue to push the envelope. They just came out with the glass break sensor, so I think they are overall the best system that you can get. Otherwise, I'd say my second favorite system is probably Simply Safe, just based on the fact that it does what you need.
It's simple, like they said, simply Safe. Although they are raising the price by three dollars a month to twenty eight dollars a month, I think they have a cheaper plan that you can go with. But I would with today's day and age, with all the software, bells and whistles you want, you probably don't want the cheaper plan there. But that would be my recommendation. So personally, I've been looking to upgrade my ring system to do kind of everything.
I just haven't had a chance to do that, but that's kind of on my list of things to do, so that's what I would go with. All right. We talked about air tags and unwanted tracking, and I actually did a story about this on KTLA a while back. And I'm not going to say it's because of my story, but Apple definitely is a being the ante when it comes to air tags and unwanted tracking. So couple things that Apple is doing. Number one, working with law enforcement.
They say that, you know, these things are rare. These are Yes, we're seeing them in the news all the time. But it's a sexy story, right. I mean, you know, you pop an air tag on someone, you can track them. You pop it on a car, you can steal it, you pop it on anything, and you can watch where that thing goes. And yeah, it probably is that easy. Actually. So they're saying that every air tag has a unique serial number. Every serial number is paired with an Apple ID.
Could you set up an entire Apple ID with you know, fake information? Yeah, probably if you want to be re elaborate, but most people are not that smart. So they probably would just not realize the depth to which Apple has your information when you set one of these things up.
And they're saying they are working with law enforcement to make sure that law enforcement gets the information, and they say they have successfully partnered with them on cases where information used traced an air tag back to the perp who was apprehended and charged. So they're doing that. The other thing they're doing is a new privacy warning. When you set up an air tag, it's saying, hey, look, this is a crime in many places, so don't even
try it. They're doing unwanted I guess some people are getting unwanted alerts from their AirPods, and so they're going to stop doing that as they're going to say that air tags, our AirPods have been traveling with them instead of an unknown accessory. Let's see what else is interesting, Oh, precision finding. You'll be able to use precision finding with an air tag so that you can find exactly where it is. If you have an iPhone eleven, twelve or thirteen,
it's going to display an alert. You know, these air tags are supposed to chirp when you are coming into contact with an unwanted one. So they will chirp, but that chirp is going to now also put a notification on your phone so that you can figure out where this thing is easier. They're also going to tune the air tag sound to make it loud, so if you are if you have one of these unwanted air tags nearby,
it's going to chirp louder than it did before. And Apple says they are going to kind of revisit the algorithm that that tells you when one of these unwanted tags is near you. So the old one used to be between eight and twenty I don't know. It just was a random amount of time that if an air tag was traveling with you, Apple would notify you at some point, but that time was not necessarily etched in stone.
So now they're going to use a better algorithm to kind of notify people earlier that one of these things is traveling with them. So you know, this has been in the news a lot. Apple is kind of tackling it head on. And air tags are amazing, Let's be honest. Ninety nine point nine percent of people are using them for really awesome stuff. Like me, I've got them on my keys, I've got them, you know, in my backpacks, some my luggage, and it's amazing. And so that is
the ninety nine percent scenario. Yes, there are some people out there that are using them for bad reasons, and hopefully some of these changes will will kind of cut down on some of those problems, all right. Mark says, Hey, Rich, I saw your episode on New Televisions this year, and you mentioned it's not worth getting an AK television due to limited broadcasting in this format, so much that there is none. However, I've owned in a Samsung eighty two inch Q nine hundred R for two years. It's the
best TV and reception I have ever seen. Even though even so, I told Direct TV to cancel my four K subscription because I cannot tell any difference between their four K broadcasting and what I could see on regular channels. On the eight K set with twice as many pixels as a four K set, the reception seems so much clearer and brighter that it appears to be broadcasting in four K without the use of four K specific channels.
Regard Mark in Houston, Texas. Mark, You know what, here's the thing with all this stuff, I think it really comes down to your eyes, what you like and how it looks to you. So, for instance, I have a four K set. I pay for Netflix in four K, and I will tell you I cannot tell the difference between Netflix and four K and HD. Now maybe the maybe I don't. I just don't know what to say about it because it's one of these things where, yeah, I'm sure there are use cases where if you're watching
a four K football game, it probably looks amazing. But if you're watching, you know, a ten ADP football game, does it look that much better in four K? I don't know. Like, let's put it this way. The super Bowl, which is the biggest event, is happening this weekend that is not being broadcast in four K. Clearly the NFL has done their homework and they're saying, yeah, if people don't really care, people don't really notice. It's not that noticeable. So I think it probably would be with four K
with the with the big game. But you know, nobody's broadcasting in four K. I mean it's very very limited. If you look at any of the you know, major cable services, I don't think there's any four K channels on any of them. So, yes, Direct TV had like one or two four K channels. One was just playing a whole bunch of nature stuff last I checked. The other one is doing sports events. But it's one of these things where if you're on YouTube it's four K,
you know, it definitely looks good. Is it the best like thing in the world. I don't know. I mean, it's just one of these kind of Yes, it looks better at the end of the day. But if everything is all aligned, right, if all the stars are aligned, the transmission is in four K or AK, your cables are all good, your TV is tuned, and it looks great. But the reality is most of us are just watching
random stuff. And I've even you know, you go into I guess the best example is you go into any car dealership in America or doctor's office, and the TV screen looks horrible every time. It's just like it's just not good. But most people just don't have it set up in a way to make it look good. I should tell a story. So I was one of the first people to feature a four K TV on the Today Show? And was it four K or is it
just HD? Actually? Sorry, this was going back just to HD, and I remember being in the makeup room, and the makeup people were like, you know, we're broadcasting in HD now and it doesn't even look that great. And I said, well, you know, you have to switch inputs to the HD input. We and I helped them switch inputs and it was like whoa, oh, actually that looks really good. So and this happened at a Super Bowl party a couple of years back with a friend of mine. I said, you know,
your TV is not even an HD. He's like, no, yes it is. And I said, no, you really got to switch a couple of these things on it. And we went to the HDMI and sure enough, it was like one of those minutes where wow, you just realize this looks really good. So anyway, I think that's what's happening with AK and four K. It's just there's so many variables, but when you have everything lined up, yeah,
AK probably does look pretty good. I'm sure your TV looks great because it's up sampling these things or upscaling, and so yeah, if it works for you, I think that's really all that matters. All right, Remember we Sports that was one of the best games ever. It was just such an exciting time for Actually this was one of the other things I did on the Today Show.
I was one of the first people to show off the Nintendo we and I'll never forget I bowled on live TV and I got a strike, which I just could not believe and it was just so great to do that, and so it was really fun. But anyway, WE Sports was really one of those games that kind of just really showed off why the Wei was so
different than anything else we had ever used before. I mean, we had the power Glove, we had other things that were kind of you know, motion sensitive ways to play video games, but the WE, not the WEU, the WE just really encapsulated it with it just nailed it with WE Sports. So according to this article in The Wirecutter, they sold more than eighty million copies. And when Switch came out, they came out of a couple games that were similar using the motion controllers, but nothing like WE Sports.
And now I'm happy to report that Nintendo Switch Sports is coming along and it will have basically very similar gameplay to the Wei Sports, except you'll use the Joycon controllers. So they're gonna have soccer, tennis, volleyball, badminton, bowling, and more. They're also introducing a leg strap, so you can put those joycon on your leg and you can play some of these games with that. It's gonna be forty dollars
for the game. It arrives on April twenty ninth. They're also going to have online gameplay, and if you want early action on that, you can try it on February eighteenth through twentieth. If you're listening to this, if you're a Nintendo Switch Online member, you can play out some of those games. So Nintendo Switch Sports, I think, is gonna be amazing. Definitely something I'm gonna play with my kids. I mean, so bring Back Bowling is just like, I mean, that was like the best game on the Wii. I
don't care how many games came out afterwards. We Bowling was just it was one of those games that anyone can play. And I don't know if you remember this, but I'm sure you do. So many people were like crashing their controllers into their TV screen because they were throwing them and it was crashing in. It was like, of course, a big news story. I'm sure it only happened like five or six times, but it was one
of those things that sounded so great. So that it was it was definitely a big story for that to happen. So Nintendo switched Sports coming soon, definitely going to be a popular game for sure, all Right. Valisa via Instagram says, I'm trying to find a good photo background change app for Android. Do you know one? I'm trying to change the background in my picks have a great day. Yeah, I do have one. And I think I mentioned this on the show before, but it's called Pixar pic Art
And this is such a cool video editing app. It's so easy, you will love it. It's not free as far as I know. I think there are like some some uh you know, you got to pay to upgrade some of these things. Let me see what it says. I mean, there might be some free options that you can use, but if you really want to step it up, you got to pay. But it's available for Android and iOS and uh let's see. Yeah, so they've got let's see a weekly five bucks, monthly twelve dollars, yearly fifty six dollars.
Awesome photos. I love looking in the If you go to the app store page for any app, you can look at what the in app purchases are and this is what is brilliant about Apple is that it's so transparent to see like what people charge. And so what I usually do if anything's charging like a yearly fee, just look and see all of their different you know, fees and see which one's the cheapest, and you know you can end up getting. So what I do is I always do the free trial and then they try,
of course to get you to subscribe. But what you have to do is hold out just a little bit and they will eventually email you or put an app purchase notification with a better deal. So's that's a little trick. So on Android, it's on Android, it's on iOS. Sorry series asking me something, But it's on Android. It's on iOS, and it's a great if you're just trying to remove the background, it's super easy. It is a premium feature on here. But they also have so many other features
as well. You can edit videos, You've got just so many little features. It's you could spend all day on this app. So again, it's called pix Ar pic sa Art available for iOS and Android, and I think you will like that app a lot. All right, So you know that I've been driving the Tesla, I drove it up to San Francisco, and so I like this story. This is Washington is going to your mark five billion dollars to create a national network of EV charging stations.
And I know this is a government program, So say what you will about that. Tesla somehow has managed to build their charging infrastructure. I don't know if they get government funds or not. But if we're going to get these evs to be used in a big way and get rid of some of this what do they call it, the charging range anxiety, that's the word I'm looking for, range anxiety, then we have to get these charging stations everywhere.
And so this five billion dollar pot is going to hopefully get states to put these stations in along the freeway, along the interstate. That's the number one thing. And so what is the stipulations of this program. Well, the stations have to be installed every fifty miles, no more than one mile off the interstate. And then the stations have to have at least six hundred kilowatts of total capacity with ports for at least four that can deliver at
least one hundred and fifty kilowats each. So that's that's a pretty good amount and one hundred and fifty kilowats is pretty fast. I think Tesla goes up to two fifty, but even when I was at a two and fifty charger, it still was just charging at one fifty. So one fifty is pretty fast, and that's faster than a lot of these random outlets you find all over the place. So you know, this is from the Wall Street Journal.
This is what apparently is gonna happen. It's not gonna happen overnight, but every fifty miles, I think is a good clip. You know, you can find a gas station every exit on the freeway. So now we'll see if if these being everywhere is going to make people say, Okay, I think I can deal with, you know, with having an electric car. I personally have been living with the electric car now for I don't know, six months, and it's just great. I really love it. The range anxiety
is just not there. It's I'm I'm definitely aware of my range on my car, and yeah, I'm basically always at like a quarter tank or a half tank, no matter what I mean, that's just where I'm at. And so it would it be nice to have a range of five hundred miles. Yeah, probably, But the reality is most of the time, the only time that it's really a problem is when you are on a road trip and you are parking overnight on your road trip. So if you go somewhere, getting there is gonna be just fine.
You're gonna be stopping for your charges. It's when you get to your destination that things get a little tricky because, like I explained in a video I did about the Tesla, it's when I got to my hotel in San Francisco that all bets were off. Did the hotel have a charger yes? Did it work for my car? No? So that means I had to go find a charger for my car. Same thing when I went to visit my brother in Visalia when he was visiting there. You know, he was staying at an Airbnb and there, you know,
could I have found a plug to charge my car overnight? Maybe, but it was kind of a pain and there wasn't really one, not readily available unless I opened a window or something. And you know, your car charge is slow, but it's overnight, so it's not that big of a deal. But again, so we had to drive and find a supercharger. But the way that this is all set up right now,
the priority is being given to the interstates. Get people on the freeway, and then they'll figure out how to charge their car once they get to their destination, which you know, is not that tough. There's a whole bunch of chargers all over the place. It's just a matter of finding them. And yeah, it's a little inconvenient once you find them to you know, to continue to do that.
So you know, but overall, I think the cars are going to really the the evs are just they're here to stay and it's just going to continue to get more and more. So all right, let's talk about Apple. This is a really interesting move by Apple. So they are basically opening up the NFC chip on the iPhone to turn the iPhone into a credit card reader for
any business. So if you are a small business or you've ever tapped on one of these little Square things, remember when Square first came out, it was a card reader that would stick into the headphone jack on the phone. And then when phones lost the headphone jacks, they did kind of a bluetooth play and so you would just get this little reader that would bluetooth to the phone and the reader would have NFC on it and you can TAPLE. Now Apple is enabling all iPhones, or at
least certain model iPhones. I think it's iPhone Tennis and above. They're going to basically flip the switch where those will be able to take payments via tap to pay. This is a huge, huge deal. I cannot tell you how big of a deal this is because it allows any small business in America with an iPhone to instantly accept credit cards. Now you can say, Rich, they can use Venmo, they can use They've already been able to use Square.
It's not that big of a deal. They probably have a checkout terminal, but you don't have to invest in any extra equipment or hardware. That is a huge deal. So let's say you run a hair salon and you have an iPhone. You can now take payments through that iPhone, no problem. Now, I think this gets a little tricky
with that scenario because it's not the best case. Thing is is that if you have a hair salon and you've got a bunch of people working there and you're not there, and you've got the only phone that accepts the tap to pay, Yeah, that's kind of a problem.
But we'll figure this out. But the point is, if you're a retailer, you can, you know, maybe get one simple iPhone now and that handles all of your billing or all your credit card payments and it doesn't need to be attached to any sort of sort of special equipment. So now, the other interesting thing about this is I said in my tweet that this was kind of war on Venmo and Square. It may not be because Square could theoretically just use the framework that Apple is providing
to activate this. So Apple is not doing this in their own software. They're actually going to open this up for third party software to enable it. So that means that Stripe can come in. That means that PayPal can come in, That means that Square can come in. Anyone who wants to accept credit card payments via tap to pay through an app that they build can now do it. And we'll see Stripe is the first one they announced.
We'll see if Square and these other reta other payment processors bite on this system, which I think they'll they'll have to because otherwise they're gonna be left in the dust. And when it comes to Venmo, of course, PayPal owns Venmo. PayPal will probably do this through the PayPal app. Venmo will continue to be Venmo, which you know, most people know Venmo through just using their you know, their user name,
which I think is not a very good system. So if you have a QR code you can scan it, that's much better because you know you're getting the right person. I can't stand typing someone's name into Venmo. I know everyone does it, but it's just kind of like one of these things where it's I just never know if it's like the actual person and they want to verify with the phone number. So I think the QR code is a lot easier. So we'll see what happens with
that situation. All right, Let's talk Disney Plus. According to Variety, Disney Plus ended twenty twenty one with about one hundred and thirty million subscribers, which is just phenomenal. So I think they wanted a certain amount of subscribers. They had like a five year plan. They just blew everything out of the water. And Disney Plus is one of these things that's like water in a lot of people's homes.
So one hundred and twenty nine million paying subscribers, each person is paying what what is Disney plus seven bucks. So what's one hundred and thirty million times seven, that's nine hundred and ten million dollars a month for Disney. That is a good amount of money just on Disney plus. That's a pretty good new business. Huh. Now, I get it, they're probably losing some money in the movie theaters or a lot of money. But at the same time, this
is just a steady flow of cash. And it's not just a steady flow of cash, it's something they can bank on every month. So I don't think that this is going to go below one hundred million subscribers, so minimum, you know, seven hundred million dollars every month is just kind of a guarantee. So what does that allow them to do. It allows them to plan their slate of
new stuff against this money. And if you're like me, if there's one new movie on Disney plus one new piece of content every month, that's probably enough to keep you there. So In Canto was the latest one. That was probably last month, So I would look to February to have something new. I'm sure there's something new that's coming out that will keep us busy until the next month. And this is kind of like what HBO figured out
a long time ago. Except with HBO, when you subscribe through your cable service, you know number one, they would have a show that would last six months to nine months, and they parsed it out over that time, so it felt like, Okay, every week, I have a new episode for you know, six months, whatever it was. I don't
know how many months it went, maybe three months. With these services, it's much easier to cancel, so you need to have stuff that's fresh, like much quicker, and it's it's one of those things where when you sign up for HBO, you didn't really think about canceling because there was just so much it was so much work to cancel, whereas with Disney Plus and Netflix and all these others, I don't I think those two are much more protected compared to some of these other services, like maybe Discovery
Plus or something. With Netflix, it's just I'm keeping it forever. Disney Plus, I'm keeping it forever. But you can come and go on some of these other services, and so it makes it a lot easier to come and go for sure. Speaking of movie services, movie Pass is launching, movie Past two point zero is launching this summer, and it's gonna support a bunch of movie theaters. But here's the thing, I mean, do we even care about Movie Past? We need an unlimited movie Pass subscription anymore? I don't
think so. So they're going to use I read this facial detection so you can watch these ads and that'll give you credit to get towards watching movies. But who cares at this point if you're a movie if you're
a movie lover, you've probably already subscribed to AMC. At this point, you've probably already subscribed to Regal Cinemas, and they're unlimited services, which I know are probably more expensive at twenty five dollars a month depending on the area you're in, But it's going to be a much easier, probably system than going through all these hoops of Movie Pass, which is probably going to be cheaper. Maybe it's ten bucks a month, I'm not sure. But the reality is,
do we even need this anymore? I think I think Movie Pass had a certain spot in our lives and that that time is just kind of over. So speaking of over, I know this was an abbreviated show, but I wanted to get one on the books. Once I figure out my equipment. I'll have a better show next week, but that's going to do it this episode of the show.
If you have a question you would like for me to answer, you can go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com, slash rich on Tech, hit the big blue send email button, or go to rich on Tech dot tv and hit the email icon. I would also love it if you would rate and review this podcast. Just go to the listening app of your choice. Write a quick line about what you like about this show to help others understand why they should listen. Listen. You can find me online. I am at rich on Tech on
all social media. By the way, don't rate this show, just rate the other shows. This show was kind of like a tougher one because of the production quality, but I wanted I didn't want to not have a show. Also, no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free ktla plus app on appledv, Fire tv, and Roku. Once you do, scroll to the tech section and you can watch all of my TV segments on demand. My name is rich Demiro. Thanks so much for listening.
There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate you spending it with me. I'll talk to you real soon.