In the future, no gadget will go missing

love to send me questions. I mean I could spend all day answering questions from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, even when I decide to post there. I posted my first video to TikTok today, which don't get used to that because I you know, I just did that for fun man. So last week I was off. I don't know if you notice, but if you did, congrats You must listen to the show a lot. But otherwise, Yes, I'm back

from Hawaii. I know, not the time to travel, but you know, with the vaccinations and all this good stuff, travel is definitely increasing. And so this was my first big trip since the pandemic started. Second time I was on a plane, so The first was to go up to Seattle for ces. This was the second one, And honestly, we rescheduled this trip so many times that we said

we're doing it. We're sticking to it. And the wildest part about the whole trip is so my mom was scheduled to come with us on this trip to Hawaii. We had planned this, it's been her dream to go to Hawaii. Blah blah blah, and no joke. The morning of the trip, the morning of the trip, she is flying out from New Jersey to Los Angeles to meet us to fly to Hawaii. I get a call about three am saying, not good. I tripped on my suitcase

and I can't make it. Because you know, when you're a little bit older and you trip, it's not so good. So she was all bruised and she had to go get X rays and thankfully she's okay. But you know, to go on a big trip from you know, New York to La La to Hawaii, you know, not so good when you're you know, when you're totally bruised and beaten up. So that was a bummer. But the funny thing was we were taking my other mother in law and so she still came. I mean it was a

whole big thing. I mean, this is you know, this was just unbelievable circumstances. So we we had a fantastic time in Hawaii. Uh, notwithstanding all the issues or whatever. The worst part of getting over there was really the COVID test that you had to do to test negative to get over there. But otherwise, once we were there,

it was great. I mean, obviously the island has been greatly impacted by the pandemic, with a lot of things closed and not open yet, but overall, once you were just like on the beach sitting there, it was fine, you know, and we had a really nice time. So I probably wouldn't recommend going right now, honestly, because if you're thinking of doing that, but you know, just wait for things to change. We're so close. We are so close.

We're getting there. Things are, things are happening, They're they're in motion. So if you want to watch my video on the little trip I put it, you know, I didn't. I didn't set out to make a video, not like a YouTube vlogger, but I you know, I ended up recording so many videos on my phone that I ended up editing them together to h to make like this little clip video and you can find that on my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash Rich on tech. All right,

let's get to the first story of the week. Kind of a big one. I mean, I don't know if you have an LG phone, but LG has said they are withdrawing from the mobile industry. Now. You might have heard that last week. They announced it, I think when I was in Hawaii. But the big update now, and it's really sad that LG is exiting industry because you know, it's one less choice for consumers. And you know, they

did have a decent amount of phones. I think in recent years they didn't really have hit phone that I personally loved. But I always loved what they did with their phones, Like I always really enjoyed their software and

their approach to things. But their camera, you know, it was good, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted personally, and some of the software the you know, a lot of the phones I've noticed in recent years of LG, and this might have been a problem with them, is that they were heavily, heavily influenced by the carriers, and so you'd get this phone to test and it would just be filled with Verizon software or filled with AT and T software, and you go to the iPhone and

it's so clean and it's so pristine, and even Samsung in recent years has been really clean that it's just it kind of not you know, made for not a very good experience. Anyway, they said they will give three years of iOS of sorry not iOS of OS updates for their phones, and that applies to phones released in twenty nineteen and later the premium G series, the V series, the Velvet, and the Wing. Twenty twenty models like the LG Stylo and the K series, these were like they're

less premium phones will get to operating system updates. So I mean, it's kind of interesting. Good to know that they're doing this pledge, but you know, I don't know they're gonna still make phones. They're winding down July thirty first, So sad for LG. You know, it's the end of an era because I really my first phone I ever tested was the LG Chocolate. That was my first assignment ever for c neet back in the day. So it just goes to show how how long I've been doing this.

All right, let's get to the first question. All right, oh gosh, I'm gonna mess up your name. Hormaz says, Hey, Rich, thanks for your awesome podcast. I haven't missed even one episode in the last three years. Well, thank you. I need your advice to buy a perfect wireless charger stand for both my iPhone twelve and my Note twenty ultra, which vendor and modeled you suggest. I want to have one that works with both iPhone and Samsung. Thank you

for your amazing podcast and your help. Well, oh gosh, or Moz, I think I'm looking at the perfect one. I have it on my desk right here. So it depends if you want a wireless charger stand, I mean, if you just want one device, or I don't know if you want to charge two devices at once or one device you know, at a time. But there's two i'd recommend. The first is this one I have in my desk right here. We featured it on KTLA today. It's called the au Key air Corps three and one,

and it's a three and one charger. It's got a place for wireless AirPods, whatever earbuds you have that wirelessly charge. It's got a place for your Apple Watch, and it's got to stand for your phone, and it should work with your Samsung. It will work with your Samsung and also your iPhone, and so i'd recommend that it's only

thirty bucks and it's that's a pretty fantastic deal. The other one I'd recommend is just a Mophi that has it's a two in one charger, so you can lay two phones on this device and charge two devices at once, and you know that should work as well. So those are the two that I would recommend. But realistically, you can go on Amazon. If you just need one device to charge at a time, you can just go on

Amazon and find a charger. Make sure it's a high speed charger for these devices, and you know all Key makes them, Anchor makes them. I think i'd probably look at those two or Mophi is also the other big brand that makes these things. So that's what I would recommend. And you know, if you want to see my video on the Auki, I've got that on my Facebook page as well. Let's talk about best Buy. They have a

new membership program. I don't think it's exactly competing with Amazon because Amazon sells everything in the world, but they have this new membership program called best Buy Beta. That does seem pretty compelling if you are a tech person that likes to buy, you know, gadgets, you'd have to buy a couple of gadgets to make this worth it because it is two hundred dollars a year. Here are the benefits of the membership, dedicated and exclusive concierge support.

So what does that means? That mean like tech support? I don't know concierge support. I don't really know what that means. But it's available twenty four to seven by phone, chat, email, or through the best Buy app. I mean, I don't know what that what the concierge would help you with? Like you know now they do have unlimited geek squad tech support on all technology in your home, whether you

purchased it at best Buy or not. So that's compelling and that could be quite helpful, especially if you have, you know, a family member that you are the tech support person for. This could help with that. But you know, what's the weight line? What's the weight time on that? I mean, I don't know how good that is. Either

fast and free shipping with no minimums. Okay, that's cool, exclusive, but you know a lot of things you buy best Buy our gadgets, they're more expensive, so you know a lot of times it's over thirty five anyway or fifty whatever. Their minimum is exclusive member pricing on a wide range of products, free in home, standard delivery and installation on most products. I mean, but how many times a year are you buying like a dishwasher? So I don't know

about that one. This is compelling. Two years protection on most purchases at best Buy, including Apple Care on Apple products. Now that is the compelling part because if you buy an iPhone once a year, which yeah, not many people do that. It's usually once every three years, you know, you buy Apple Care for two hundred bucks or whatever costs, you know, that could pay for itself, sixty day extended return window, and ten percent off subscription services build through

best Buy. So I mean, I don't know, two hundred dollars a years a lot. And you know with Amazon they're charging what one twenty for their Amazon Prime and that's like, you know, you're getting something shipped from Amazon or a lot of people are like on a weekly basis. For us, it's like twice weekly. So this is interesting. It's got a lot of perks. You know, there are a lot of interesting perks, especially the two year protection. But you have to figure out if it's worth two

hundred dollars a year. I mean, that's that adds up very quickly. I mean, you do this thing for five years, that's one thousand dollars. So are you getting one thousand dollars worth of tech support and in home delivery and installation and protection. I don't know, but this is starting at select stores through at Iowa, Oklahoma, eastern Pennsylvania. Then in April it's gonna expand to Minnesota, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

I'm surprised they didn't do it in Minnesota at the beginning because that's where best Buy I think is headquartered. So they're gonna have it a total of sixty stores. Best Buy has many more stores than that, so I don't know. Just keep an eye out for it. Best by best By Beta membership program. Everything's a membership in the future. All right, let's get to the next question. This comes from. Let's see, I don't have a name

on this. Let's just say sore, okay, Hi, Richard. I'm wanting someone calls me Richard, except my mom I'm wanting to get a new Samsung watch, but I'm not sure what to get. I don't know if Samsung is coming out with a new version soon, and if so, the watch face will be different. I'm not crazy about the round ones. I would appreciate any advice. Thank you so much, and a heart sent for my T mobile four G LTE device. Well, let's see, is Samsung coming out with

a new version soon. They recently came out with one, so I don't know. Usually their cadence is h Yeah, I think it just came out, so I would say probably not. And I don't see them changing to a square watch face like the Apple Watch. So if you don't like the round, ah, that's a tough one. So the thing I would look into is perhaps a fitbit. They do the square faces, and they've got the Fitbit versa I think three now. And you know, it's been a while since I tested a fitbit. I don't know fitit.

It's gone like they like never get in touch with me anymore. I don't know why. I mean, the last time I did a fipbit review, it was like it went bananas online. I mean, I'm talking bananas. I never saw so many people click on a review in my life. That was the Versa. That was a Fipbit versa. So that was like the first like real alternative to the Apple Watch that was like a smart watch. And I wrote up a little review and it just went wildly viral.

That was a couple of years ago and ever since then. And I bought that watch on Amazon and I used it for a long time and they never get in touch with me after that, and anyway, so I digress. So it's been a while since I've tested one. Yes, I guess I can go out and buy one and test it out, but it seems, you know, like I'd rather just borrow one and test it and you know whatever, So I would just probably go with a Fipbit. There's another watch that's coming out called the one Plus Watch,

which is a nice alternative to the Samsung. I'll have my full review on that next week. I've been testing it, but I can't really talk too much about it right now. But the fippit would probably be good. The one Plus is great, but it's uh, well, I can't say it's great just yet. It seems like it's going to be nice, but it does have a round watch face. So if you want square like Apple, then you know you're gonna have to you know, really the Pippit is the way to go. The other one is the whys Wyse has

a smart watch for twenty dollars. And in fact, I'm gonna just go ahead and read these next two emails because I guess it plays into this. Tomas says, hey, rich, I just received my phone today and set it up for twenty dollars on my phone. I think he meant watch because it says why's watch and set it up for twenty dollars plus another five dollars for an extra strap. It's really trick. I'm guessing that means cool, auto correct, auto correct. I had to wait almost four months to

receive it. It's a great deal. It does a lot of things the other more expensive watches do. I guess I won't be wearing my Rolex from now on. Sent from my iPhone. Oh interesting, he's using it with an iPhone too. Yeah, the wise Watch works with iPhone Android. The main downside to the wise Watch there's no onboard GPS. So but it's twenty dollars. I mean, it's a nice little smart watch. I haven't tested it again. I think they were supposed to send it to me. They never did, but whyse I

love what Whys is doing. They make really really nice stuff for very inexpensive. Kevin writes, Rich, have you gotten to the new wise Watch? My wife and I received ours this week. It's nineteen ninety nine. It's pretty fun. Definitely not an Apple watch, but maybe an overgrown fitpit. But for about one hundred and eighty nine dollars less than an Apple Watch, it's nifty. Thanks Kevin sent for my iPhone. Another iPhone user wow with the wise Watch.

So anyway, that's probably another good option. If you just want like a watch that tracks your steps and can give you your notifications and you know, all that good stuff, and you know, track a little bit of your fitness, the wise Watch is going to be just fine. And so is a Fitbit. So those are some good options for you there if you don't necessarily want the round watch face that Samsung offers. And I've tested the Samsung watches. I think they're fine. They're not my favorite, but I

think they're just fine. I personally, I know, I know Apple, you're such an Apple fanboy, Rich, I just I've gotten so spoiled with the Apple Watch. I just I love it. I feel naked without it, I really do. I just feel like everything I want out of a smart watch the Apple Watch does. And it just it's truly unbelievable. I mean, it really feels like it watches over me. I told the story about how I almost fell, and it would have called nine one one if you noticed that.

It just attracks my runs and my music is on there, and the notifications are so good, the haptics are so good. Everything is just so good about it. And I've said this before. I would give up my iPhone quicker than I would my Apple Watch because the Apple Watch is just so good. It's got cellular connectivity, which I just

I'll be honest. Okay, I can't talk too much about the OnePlus watch, but I went out for a run with the OnePlus watch yesterday to test it, and I felt like I was missing something because I did not have my cellular connectivity that I'm so used to on my Apple Watch. And I know these are all things that are like, oh, first world problems, rich I get it, Yes, they all are one hundred percent, but you know, when

you test tech for a living. You see these differences, and the difference of the Apple Watch among all the other wearables that I test is that it really truly is leaps and bounds ahead of them, and you know it's gonna take some catching up. Just the ecosystem that Apple has built is so strong and it's so solid, and just you know, I don't try to I don't set out to say, oh my gosh, I love all Apple stuff. I love all you know, whatever Apple does

is amazing. Like no, I'm actively testing other things out there, you know, to see if I can love other stuff as much. And the Apple Watch is just one of those things where it just has become such a big part of my life. We were testing walkie talkie feature the other day, which we don't really use, but my wife and I were testing it and we're like, ah, this is so cool. Why don't we ever use this? And we didn't use it. After that, All right, let's get to oh and Apple story. How convenient rich you

Apple lover? Apples find My Network now offers new third party finding experiences. This is from the Apple newsroom. So what Apple has done is they have taken on tile and they have expanded the find My app. Remember it used to be called find my iPhone. Now it's just called find My. And what they've done is they've opened up their network, they're finding network to third party gadgets. And yes, I'm sure that these third party gadgets have to pay a nice licensing fee to Apple to use this,

but it hear me out, this is pretty phenomenal. So three gadgets that now have the find my tech built in, one from Belkan, one from Chipolo, and then bikes from Van Moove. So Belkan's doing a pair of earbuds the uh what are they called, the sound form Freedom true wireless earbuds. Then Chopolo has a it's a little finder. So I hate to use the example of Tile because this is who they're you know, totally annihilating in the process here. But Chopolo is kind of an alternative to Tile,

and I remember liking Chopolo. I can't remember what the reason was. I think they have batteries that pop out and you can put new ones in there, whereas Tile always had the batteries that were built in. Maybe they changed that, but it's been a while since I used one. But Schoppolo is called the one spot and you can put this on keys, luggage, backpacks and more. And to be completely honest, I will likely be buying these now because here is the OH and then the Van Mouf bikes,

the S three and the X three. These are e bikes. They cost about two thousand dollars and I got to test one because not that I think my audience is purchasing these e bikes for two thousand dollars, but I get so many emails about them. People are really hip on these e bikes that are, you know, electronic. They kind of give you a little assistance when you're driving them. I you know, I don't know. To me, it seems

very expensive, but I don't know. People seem to like them, and I should probably get some experience hands on with them. But the okay, So here's how this this find my works. It basically turns any Apple products into a beacon like a locator for these lost gadgets. So let's say you had one of these Chipolo items on your backpack, right these little tags, and let's say you lose your backpack in the airport, Well, how many people are walking by

with an iPhone? And yes, I believe you have to activate the third party like crowdsourcing feature on it, but it's all anonymous and Apple has done their homework, so they're making sure that it doesn't eat up all your power on your phone or doesn't give away your private info. But when you walk by, your iPhone sees that little beacon, that little on someone's backpack and it says, oh, it just it just sends that little day to the network

saying oh, we located this. And then you a thousand miles away say where's my backpack and the Apple network on fine my says, oh, well, we saw it at the Lax an hour ago, and here's the precise location of it, because we had one hundred and seventy five iPhones walk past it in the past hour, and so we're pretty sure it's right here. I mean, that is phenomenal. Now you might say, rich Tyle did this years ago, this is what Tile did so many years ago. But

here's the thing Tile was. I think it worked, but I'm not sure that it was ever able to work in the way that Apple was because the difference is that someone had to have the Tile app on their phone enable the finding feature and walk past that device and the chances of that happening were a lot less than some random iPhone or iPad or computer. If it does computer, I'm not sure it does. But you know, let's just say iPhones alone. I mean, how many iPhones

are floating around in the world. In the world, So if you lose your device in Japan, someone's probably gonna walk past it with an iPhone and locate it for you. So in that case alone, this is phenomenal. And I can see why manufacturers are gonna want to jump on board. In fact, if I was tile, if I wanted to sell some more tiles, I would jump on board. I know it probably kills them to do that, but this is huge, and I will say this again, this is huge.

The potential here is enormous, and I think that the beauty here is that these devices, these these little clips, you know, these little Chipolo add ons, and the things they put inside these uh you know, bikes and stuff. They don't have to have their own GPS to locate them. They're just piggybacking on the GPS built into every iPhone. So this is a huge when I think it has a lot of potential, mark my words, this will be

one of the most successful programs that Apple does. If people can get over the privacy concerns of I'm using my phone to find other people's stuff, don't worry about it. It's gonna be just fine to find. My network is a crowdsource network of hundreds of millions of Apple devices that use Bluetooth to detect missing items nearby, then report

the approximate location back to the owner. Apple says the entire process is end to end encrypted and anonymous, so no one, not even Apple or the third party manufacturer, can view a device's location or information. In fact, I think I'm gonna buy some of these Chipolos today. Why would I not. I want this on everything. I want this on my car, I want this on my backpack, I want this on my luggage. I want this on my keys. Oh my gosh. How much is one of

these Chipolos Chipolo one? Now, I will tell you I covered Chipolo many many years ago with KTLA, and it was at CES. I saw these things and it didn't go anywhere because it was like, well, Tile is like the big one. Okay. Chipolo one spot starts shipping in June, and how much? How much? How much? Does not say, I'm guessing they're expensive of regular Chipolo's twenty five dollars. So, ah, this is huge. This is going to be big. Oh wow.

And let's see replaceable battery, twelve month battery. Oh, this is going to be huge. Wow. I'm so I've never been so excited. But no price has been announced just yet, so we will we will keep an eye on that story. Anyway, let me move on. Let's see. Thomas says, Hey, Rich, I love this show. We have the two hundred gigabyte thank you. We have the two hundred gigabyte iCloud Family Share storage plan, and we are running out. I don't really want to bump up to the nine to ninety

nine a month one terabyte plan. I want to remove it. How can I go about this? Where do I put these a local drive? Another less expensive cloud service? Thanks Tom, Tom, I feel your pain, buddy, because I am right there with you now. I pay for the two hundred dollars iCloud Family Share plan as well. I think that's three dollars a month. I also pay for the ten dollars a month Google Drive plan, which is one two terabytes, and I believe Apples is two terabytes. As well. I think, yeah,

two terabytes, so it's two terabytes for ten dollars. Now I'm at the place where I'm right up against my two terabytes. So I get this thing that says you're ninety percent full, and the next level up for me is fifty dollars a month, which is like, that's a lot. Now. I pay eighteen bucks for YouTube, which you know, I mean, so it's not that big of a deal to pay for it, but it's still fifty dollars a month. Six hundred dollars a year for cloud storage seems like a lot. Now,

I see what you're saying. You're saying I want to remove the videos. But here's the deal, Tom, You're gonna go through this whole I mean, you're gonna go through your iCloud and remove all those videos, and then now you're gonna have them somewhere else, and now when you want to look for them, you gotta look somewhere else for the videos. It's a whole big thing. So I would say, at this point, there's not really another place

where you can put those videos for free. Even Google's gonna start charging on June fifteenth for storage, so you could I don't even know if you can upload them there before then to get them to get them in there for free. But I would say, I think you just go for the ten dollars a month. I know it pains you, and it's ten dollars a month, and it's a new fee, but you're already paying three dollars, so you're only paying seven more dollars a month. And you know, do you really want your videos in a

different place? I don't know. Probably not. Now, a local drive is fine. Yeah, you can go to Costco buy a four terabyte hard drive for sixty bucks and offload your videos there, which is fine, But you still need to have them in a second place. So now you're gonna be sitting there, You're gonna be going through your iCloud, downloading all these videos, putting them on off separate hard drive. Then you got to copy that to another hard drive. Then you got to bring that hard drive to a

friend's house, so you have them in two places. Then every time you add new videos, you gotta do the same process over and over. So it just sounds like something you don't want to do. And so I for that reason, would recommend just just ponying up for the ten dollars a month. I know it's tough. I gotta do it for the fifty dollars a month. It's going to really kill me to do that. But I think I don't know what. I'm gonna try to save money somewhere else, and I'm just trying to figure out where

that is. There's got to be a subscription I have that I'm not getting the full use of. And last week or the last show I talked about Verizon has a twenty dollars a month unlimited storage plan. But again it's the same problem. Do I really want to split up my stuff? I was thinking about it and I'm like, okay, well I can use some you know, some of the unlimited storage and Verizon to free up space in my

Google Drive. But then I have two different places I got to look for stuff, and that, you know, there's also something about making life easier, and that's the goal with all this stuff, and so you want to you know, you can't. You can't discount the fact of is my life more complicated because I'm saving five dollars? And you know, I always say to someone, did you buy a beer for five bucks? Have you ever purchased a beer for five dollars. How long does that last? A half an hour?

An hour and it was five bucks. Now think about that, you're paying a whole month for seven There's probably something in your month that you purchase for seven dollars that doesn't last very long. Whether it's a Starbucks, whether it's a beer, whether it is you know, whatever it is. So just think about it that way. That's the way I've gotten through all these little fees and hopefully that

helps all right. Speaking of Google, I tried Google's latest gadget that helps you get a better night's sleep, and I'm obsessed. That is the headline from my KTLA segment on the Google Nest Hub two. This is you know, one of my favorite gadgets is the Google nest It's just my favorite part about it is that it shows pictures when you're not using it, like all your Google photos.

It's so cool. And then of course it does all this stuff, like the smart home stuff, like you know, you can play music on it, you can answer phone calls, all that good stuff. Now, there's no camera on the original Nest Hub. This has a seven inch screen and Google found that a lot of people put it in their bedroom because of that, the bigger one has a camera and this has Now the new feature on the

two is a radar sensor. It's called solely, first appeared on the Pixel four and they realize that they can use this solely radar to figure out when you're sleeping and kind of track your sleep patterns. And so I tested this out. I had this by my bed for

a couple of weeks and it's fantastic. I mean, you just go to sleep and when you wake up, you get a little report card of your sleep and it tells you how long you slept, how long you're in bed, which gives you your sleep efficiency, So how long it took you to go to sleep, how long it took you to wake up, how many times you moved throughout the night, if you snored, if you coughed, and it's

pretty wild and so how you're breathing. The idea here is that Google is going to offer insights into your sleep plus suggestions on how to make make it better, get a better night's sleep. So for me, the suggestion it had is that I go to bed and wake up at very different times throughout the week, which is causing me disturbances. So there you have it. This is one hundred dollars. I highly recommend it that the Nest Hub is. My only problem with the Nest Hub is

that it's sluggish. And maybe they're going to fix this with a software update, but it's like the thing is brand new, and you know, I was using it and it's like you tap it and it takes like three seconds to respond. Now why is that? Google? Come on? So I don't know if they're using like a low powered you know, whatever the processor is, or if they just you know, I don't think the processor's changed from

the first one. Perhaps maybe it did, I don't know, but it seems just as slow as the first one. And so that's my only big problem with it. But for a hundred bucks, it's a great, you know, digital photo display and it does all your smart home stuff and if you don't, you know, if you're in the Google ecosystem with Google Photos, it's it's a pretty cool way to see your pictures throughout the day, and then

with this little feature, it's pretty cool as well. The only thing to know is that Google says this is a free preview, so they eventually plan to charge for this thing, so just know that they didn't say how much. But that's the idea, is that this is free for now, and later on they will likely charge for the service. And if you're wondering if they're going to use your sleep data to sell you ads, Google says they will not do that. So there you have it. Linda says,

good morning, Rich. I recently I always joke that people say good morning because they see me on TV and they go, oh, I need to email that guy. Good morning, Rich. I recently found out that my Samsung Note nine is resending pictures without me knowing. How do I fix this? Signed? Confused Linda, get out look for Android. Oh, Linda, this was a problem a while while back. I mean I'm talking like I thought this was like a couple of

years ago. And I guess if you're on the Note nine, that was probably at least yeah, three years ago, because at the Note ten and they did the twenty so yeah. Uh So it's interesting because I thought they fixed this. I would Number one, do a software update. Update all of your software, so that means going into the there's three places I want you to go. Number one Google Play update all your apps there, and then restart your phone. Then I want you to go into the Galaxy Store

update all of your apps there. That's a secret one. On Android phones that are that are Samsung, sometimes you miss that. It's not necessarily prevalent on your phone. Sometimes you get to pop up maybe that says, hey, you got some updates, but maybe turn that off. I would go into their update your apps there, and then I would go into the software update in the main settings and update your phone there, and you know, go through that process. So if that does not fix it, I

would go ahead and switch to Google Messages. This is Google's SMS app. I believe that Samsung is replacing their messages app with this anyway in the future, and I think that's what they're doing. If not, I mean it's it's just better anyway. I would just go with the Google Messages. So all you have to do is download what's called Google Messages, and once you download it, you open it up. It will bring over all your old texts. You don't have to worry about doing anything special and

boom you can. It'll say do you want to use this as your defall app? Say? Yes? And I don't think that app has that problem. So I think the software update should probably fix this, but the fact that it's still happening this late into the game, I would just go ahead and switch. I think that the Google Messages app is better anyway, and it's certainly updated more often, and just I think they're switching to it anyway, So I would just do that. Man, every story and every

question is leading into the next story. So this this goes right into the story that Samsung has unveiled their cheapest five G smartphone, and just full disclosure, I have not tested this phone, so I can't say how good or bad it is. But it's the Samsung A thirty two five G A thirty two five G. It's their

first five G device under three hundred dollars. And I was looking at this device because they came out with that the Samsung FE last year, which was a pretty pretty solid device for the price, but that was still like six seven hundred bucks. This is two eighty nine, a toot eighty. I mean, that's a steal. And I looked at it. They undercut a lot of these other phones, like a lot of these other devices that were really inexpensive, and Samsung at this point, you know, when it comes

to Android, and we saw this with LG. It's like they're just they're killing it in their own way because it's a two party it's a what do they call it, two pony game, two horse race, I don't know what you call it. But it's basically Apple versus Samsung. When people think Android, don't even think Android, they think Samsung. It's Samsung versus Apple. It's not Google, it's not Android, it's not LG, it's not Huawei, it's not Pixel. It

is Samsung versus iPhone. That's what people think. And so Samsung has done a really good job of just building on their momentum of Look, we're the we're the Android king, and we make a lot of different phones at a lot of different price points. You don't want to spend one thousand bucks on a super high in S twenty one or a Note twenty boom. Here's your five G A thirty two for twot eighty, and it's got the

features you need. It's got four K video, it's got the scene optimizer for the camera, so the camera should be decent. It's got these special ar lenses for snapsh which I don't know how many people use that but whatever, it's got a huge battery five thousand million hours. That's that's among the biggest. In fact, I think that's the

biggest you can put in a smartphone. It's got the fast charging, it's got power saving mode, and it does have a micro SD card slot, which is really nice, so you can add extra memory to this forty eight megapixel main shooter. It's got a six point five inch HD LCD screen, so it's not the highest quality screen. And again with a lot of these things, you're not getting, you know, the absolute best quality. Maybe you're not getting the best quality camera. Maybe you're not getting you know,

you're not getting the top refresh rate. This is ninety hertz, which you know the top is is one twenty. You're not getting a super ammal ed screen. You're getting an LCD, you're not getting the full HD, You're just getting an HD, so, you know, but it's still fine. I think for the average user, you're not getting the most ram it's four gigs, and some of these phones now and Android top out

at twelve. You're not getting the most memory. It's sixty four gigs, which generally one twenty eight is the base nowadays. But again you have that extra memory slot, you are getting fast charging. I don't see wireless charging, so you're not getting that. But the reality is, for most many, many people who just won an expensive phone, two hundred and eighty dollars is the difference between saving up your money for a couple of months and buying a phone

and having a phone payment for twenty four months. So why buy a thousand dollars phone with all these things you don't need when you know you can buy a two hundred and eighty dollars phone and get ninety nine percent of what you need. Yeah, your pictures may not be the absolute best, it may not be the fastest, it may not have wireless charging, but it's going to

be pretty good for the price. And it's a Samsung, so it's going to be a nice, you know, overall nice device with a lot of support, a lot of accessories. So check it out if you want a cheap phone, a thirty two to five G from Samsung. That's the big announcement. They're cheapest five G phone yet. All right, Rich writes in uh, can you tell me if I delete a picture from my picture account on my laptop and I have an iCloud account, or I have a cloud account where I think the picture goes for backup.

Is the picture also deleted from the cloud account or do I have access to the cloud account to delete it there? Also? Thanks always enjoy your text segments on the news Rich well, thank you rich. From one rich to another rich Richie Rich, thanks Rich, thanks a lot, thanks a bunch um. Okay, so this gets a little confusing, and I know a lot of people are confused by this,

so let me explain what happens. Okay, So, if you are using Google Photos or something similar on your phone, right, so, you've downloaded Google Photos, You've downloaded one drive, You've downloaded Amazon Photos. What it does is it takes that picture from your phone, it sucks it up and puts it in to the cloud, and so it now lives in

the cloud. And if you're on your smartphone and you go into your smartphone's photo gallery, not the Amazon Photos app, not the Google Photos app, and you delete that picture, it will remain safe and secure in the cloud. So that's the way it works. If you go to your desktop computer and you go to Amazon photos dot com and you look for that photo and you say, eh, it's not very good, and you delete it, it will delete it off the cloud, but it will not delete

it off your phone. Do that makes sense? So stick with me here. If you have Google Photos, same thing. You upload a picture from your phone to Google Photos, you go on Google Photos on the web app on your laptop, you delete a picture in Google Photos, it remains on your phone. If you delete that same picture from your gallery on your phone, it remains in Google Photos. So imagine it's kind of taking a copy of that picture and sucking it up to the cloud and keeping

it there. Now Here is the big exception. If you go into Google Photos on your phone and you say, oh, let me delete that picture from the app, it says, would you also like us to delete this picture from your gallery? And you say yes, and it will delete it off your phone. I know. Now, if you're using iCloud, this is where it gets really interesting. If you're using iCloud and you sink your pictures from iCloud, you know, from your phone gallery to iCloud, and you delete a

picture off your phone, it deletes it across everywhere. It will be gone out of the cloud, it will be gone off your laptop. If you use Apple Photos, it will be gone off the web. If you access your photos through through iCloud on the web, it will be gone everywhere. So this is often a thing that happens to people. They delete a picture and they think it's going to be deleted just from their phone, and it

deletes it off the cloud. So what you need to do in the event that you use iCloud is you need to go into settings and use a setting called Optimize Phone Storage. And what this does is iCloud will manage your storage on your phone. Because you're thinking, well, you know if I if I upload to the cloud, I can delete it off my phone. No, not if you using iCloud, because it's not. It doesn't work that way.

It's an integrated platform. So it's a little bit different and it's a little trickier because if you go deleting things off your phone, it deletes it off iCloud as well. So what you need to do is let Apple manage it. And here's how they manage it. If you have that Optimized Phone Storage turned on in your photo settings iCloud Photo Settings, it will look through your phone and as you reach the end of your storage on your phone, the physical storage on your phone. It will say, okay,

we're gonna we're gonna offload some of these pictures. So what it does is it deletes some of the pictures off your phone, but it keeps a tiny copy, like a thumbnail copy, but it keeps the original in the cloud. And so let's say you go back, you scroll back on your camera roll all the way a year ago, and you notice that there's a little cloud icon in the corner. That means that the photo is not actually

on your phone, it's grabbing that data from iCloud. When you tap that picture, it will immediately download it from the cloud and it will be on your phone just like it was before. I know this who very very confusing f from your mortals that may not be a tech nerd that you know specializes in this stuff, but it's what you need to know is if you know, if you're using iCloud, if you're you know, just if you're using iCloud, don't delete stuff off your phone. Let's

make sure that that feature is in there. And if you need to free up storage, like if there's something you don't need like a picture or a video, like for me, I ran out of storage on my phone. The other day, I went through and I deleted a whole bunch of videos on my camera roll number one. I know those videos are backed up in Google Photos, so I'm fine doing that. If I was just using iCloud, I would only delete things that I knew or that

were stuff I don't need, because I don't you. I don't use the optimized iPhone storage because I don't use iCloud for all my photos. So it's a little bit different for me. But if you're using that, just know that if you delete something off your phone or computer. If you're on Apple Photos on your computer and you delete something, yes it will delete it off everything. It'll lead it delete that video or picture off your phone as well. Hope I explained that, and I'm not, and

you're not sitting there more confused than before. Talk about Facebook. You probably heard about this giant Facebook data breach. Facebook does not call it a breach. They say that bad actors scraped giant amounts of information off of their website, including phone numbers, email addresses, all kinds of stuff whatever you had on there five hundred million people. So one of the big things that was a little different this time is phone numbers were and before we've seen email addresses,

we've seen passwords. It's sad that we're you know, sort of immune, not immune, but we've we've grown accustomed to seeing this happen and so we're just like, ya on, okay, my private information's out there again. Great now what uh? And you shouldn't feel like that, bully. I'm just saying that it's just happened so often that we're like, you know,

we just see it. So the phone numbers were the things that raised a lot of eyebrows because people are like, oh, and Facebook, because we feel like Facebook is always getting hacked, but this happened in twenty nineteen. Facebook says that basically bad actors abused what's called the contact import feature. So if you've ever downloaded the Facebook app or Messenger or you know, Instagram, it says, hey, do you want us to check your contacts and see if any of them

are on Instagram? And you say yes, And what they're doing is they're uploading your address book and then they're comparing it against all the people on Facebook that have inputted their details like their phone number or their email address and saying, oh, we notice here that you know this person and you want to friend them. And so what these bad actors did apparently is just fake a whole bunch of phone numbers to see if it matched anyone on Facebook. And now they had the information about

who that person was. So that's what Facebook explained, and they said this wasn't a hack. It was sort of a you know, using our systems in a way they were not intended, and we since patched this up. So at the long story short, the phone numbers are still out there, and so there is a website if you want to check to see if your phone numbers out there.

It's have I Been Pooned? Have I been pwned? That's how you spell it have And you would think that would be have I been pawned, but it's pned like owned. Have I been poned dot com? Pwned dot com? You can type in your phone number and you can see if it was part of the breach. Mine was not. Miraculously, and you might be saying, rich, why what I type my phone number into this website? Aren't they just gonna steal it? And this guy is a security guy, the

guy who runs it, and his name's Troy Hunt. He's been doing it for many years. You can cross check it. He's pretty good. So he's not sitting there trying to collect your stuff. He's just trying to make people aware of when their stuff is out there on the open web. So you have to type in your phone number because the reality is, even if your phone numbers out there, there's nothing you can do about it. You can't recall it.

You can't say, oh, please put this back in your in your data storage and keep it in there, please. You can't do that. You just know that your phone numbers out there for hackers to or spammers to send spam to. And I was talking about this on my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash rich on tech about how all this information that's out there about us is really bad because because the smart spammers are gonna start linking up our email address with all this personal information

we have. And so let's say our phone number was on here, and so now these smart hacks are texting us, and they can text us with our real name and with our real email address, and so these texts that we get seem more legitimate. And I've always thought about this with all these companies that try to like verify who we are. I mean how much how many ways can they verify who we are? I mean, there's only

so many pieces of personal information about us. You know, the street you grew up on, your mother's may name, your date of birth. I mean a lot of these things are now floating around out there, especially with the amount of information we put out there on the web about ourselves. So I mean social security number is one of those things that still reserve for like you know, hopefully that's not floating around, but sometimes those are floating around.

So I always am concerned for the future that we need a better way of identifying people about who they are, because how do you really know someone is who they say they are? Because how many ways can you verify them? And I always think this is interesting too. We have all these computer systems that try to attempt to verify someone. But imagine you as one human to another. You can have a friend call you up thirty years later and you can identify them instantly by the sound of their voice.

So just think about that for a second. All these systems that we create, right, all these systems that eighteen T has and Verizon and Google and Facebook and Instagram, none of them compare to what our human brain can do, which is identify someone by face or by voice in about a fraction of a second. Think about that amazing, right, And I always I always think about this in my mind. All these systems we're coming up with are basically trying to to recreate the human brain and the human body

that's already out there. It's already perfect, it's already exactly what we need as humans to interact with each other. Right, you want to build trust with someone, you can identify them in one second. If someone comes up to you and says they're your mom, you know if they are not one second, right, there's no there's no like faking it. You know, someone says your friend from you know, freshman year college, you can tell on about one second if

they are. Anyway, I find that stuff fascinating. So anyway, another podcast, the The Extistential rich on Tech podcast. All right, I don't even know if that is. What does extistential mean? Let's see, Uh, I just say these words. I'm not even sure what they mean, but let's see extestential relating to existence. Philosophy concerned with existence, especially human existence, as viewed in the theories of ex distentialism. How do you

use the word to define the word. Come on, Oxford, what are you doing Google logic affirming or implying the existence of a thing? Anyway, Okay, maybe it is existential Let's get to another question here. kJ says, good morning, Rich. I love all the information you shared daily. I've been watching KTLA way back since Jennifer Yorke barbar Beck Das. I'm a dedicated fan forever to KTLA. Love the way you make your audience feel like family. I have a

question for you, now that you've buttered me up. Okay, let's hear your question. Can you please give me advice on the best cellular phone that is out there? Now? I currently have the Note ten I want to upgrade. I trust only your advice, not the sales associates. I fax email, scan documents all the time for work using my phone because I don't have any of these devices in my home. If you please give me advice, I greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance. Oh, Lakeisha, kJ l

J interesting Lakeisha? Okay, Well, anyway, I always it's always interesting to see people's names but their email address. Because kJ, I would think her first name would be kJ because her middle name is Jay. Anyway, Okay, you have a No. Ten. I mean a No ten is still pretty solid. I would say you could probably upgrade to the Note twenty and be just fine if you want to continue with the Samsung route. If you don't want to continue the Samsung route, I would say a standard iPhone twelve would

be perfect. And I will say one thing. I do find that the iPhone scans documents better than the Samsung's. I don't know why they just do, but I would also there's also a new app for the Androids called Stack by Google, which does some pretty clean scans. But I find that the scanning on the samsungs varies a bit. Sometimes it's clear, sometimes it's not. But anyway, so those are my advice. I would say Note twenty. If you want a big phone and you want to continue with Samsung,

I'd go with the Note twenty. If you don't necessarily need the Note, I would say the S twenty one plus if you want to continue with a big phone, would be just fine, but you don't get the stylus. And if you want to switch to iPhone, which you know rich you're such an iPhone lover, why do you

always recommend iPhone? I mean, it's a good phone and it's got, you know, everything she needs, and so you know, you can do that and you can probably get a good trade in price if you go through Samsung dot com if you're trading up to a new Samsung, and if you go through the iPhone route, Apple will give

you some money for your Note ten. So those are the phones I'd recommend S twenty one plus Note twenty if you need not twenty, I think is like that's only if you need the you know, biggest best phone for you know, if you want to continue on the note route. Otherwise, I think S twenty one plus or the S twenty one Ultra is kind of like the Note ten or the Note twenty rather, but it's like the newer version of it, so it's got. I'd probably go with that over the note because you can still

use the stylus with it. In fact, you can use your old stylus from the Note ten, So save some money there, all right. I think I answered that, let's uh move on to Marriott. Is it Marriott or Marriott or you know I read somewhere that you're supposed to say Marriott like Chariot. Oh sorry, yeah, like Marriott. I

don't know anyway, now I'm saying it. It's like do you ever say a word so many times that it feels it sounds weird when you say it, Like like if I say Marriott, Marriott, Marriott, Marrio, it so Marriott, I say Marriott. Marriott is introducing contactless arrival kiosks. And this is not new necessarily, I've seen these in Vegas, believe me. But for Marriott Marriott Marriott to do this is a big deal because they own let's see, seventy six hundred properties woo, and they these kiosks are not

at their main hotels just yet. They're at courtyards. They're at the Moxie, which is kind of like their hip young fun brand and Townplay suites. And so these kiosks are for guests who prefer low contact interactions, so you can skip the traditional check in desk altogether and complete an easy three step process at the kiosk to check in and get your room keys. And so they have these kiosks have anti microbial technology baked into the touchscreen glass.

Then there's UV light to kill bacteria and viruses, and I think this is fantastic. I love it, and I know, oh, you know, it does affect the job situation with the front desk clerks, but let's be real, there's always people that want to bypass the human contact, the human connection. I find it's interesting as I get older, I kind of like the human stuff, but there are places where I don't necessarily need it, Like at the grocery store. I do like the cashier because I think they're faster

than the self checkouts. The self checkouts I will use if I only have a couple items and if the lines are long at the checkout and everyone's like, ah, I'm not using that because they are so bad. I find that Target is decent with their self checkout. The grocery stores, most of them are terrible. Costco was pretty fast, but you know, it's like anyway, So I would say,

I think this is fine. And I think in Vegas a lot of people don't use the kiosks because I don't know if they're looking for a room upgrade or if they just don't trust them. But you know the reality is it's uh, I don't know. It's just one more option for people, and I think it's pretty cool.

And I think these hotels are starting at because you know, do you ever hear that thing where you slip the cashier twenty and they or the front desk perse a twenty person a twenty and they will, you know, upgrade your room, which, by the way, has never worked for me. I don't think I've ever gotten a room upgrade in my life staying hotels. I mean never. They're always like, we're all full or completely full? What do they say? They say, We're completely committed. That's I think that's the

word they use. We're completely committed, mister Demiro, we don't have a room. We noticed it one time I booked a room on Google because it was so simple. It was like one click and they had all my information. And the hotel person actually called me out when I asked for an upgrade, and they're like, oh, you booked the cheapest possible way on Google. No way or giving you an upgrade we give We usually give those people

the worst rooms. So I was like, oh, and I've heard before from other hotel people that like, you know, if you book on Priceline, they give you like the worst rooms. So I'm talking price line with the price line with the auction bidding. You know, they're like, oh, we reserve our worst rooms for those people. So I don't know. I've I've I've booked all different ways, believe me, and even with diamond status at Hilton, and they still don't care. It seems they're like they might give you,

like a better view perhaps, but it doesn't. I find that the hotels you gotta pay if you want an upgrade. Anyway, I digress. So I think the kiosk is cool. I would definitely use it if it was like a Hampton in or something where it's like, you know, courtyard. There's really not a better room at the courtyard. It's not like there's like a fantastic suite you're gonna get upgraded to by sweet talking the front desk person. So I

think it works in that kind of hotel. I think that if you're staying at a five star hotel, I don't think there's an expectation that you would be checking yourself in, although if they offered that as an option, I'm sure some people would use it. And if you're at a Moxie, which is really their their kind of fun, young hip hotel, you do everything on your phone and so you would expect to check in on a kiosk.

And I know, with Hilton at least, which is a brand I've been kind of loyal to over the past couple of years, they let you check in on your phone and so you can use your phone as a key for the room. And I don't know, I don't know if Marriott, Marriott Marriott. I don't know if Marriott does that. But anyway, so there you have it, all right, one more story real quick. I thought this was interesting.

This little website called Wormhole wormhole dot app, and it's a way to send files quickly, end to end encryption, and it's a link that expires in twenty four hours. And I saw this on product ton I thought it was pretty cool. You know, they say their security is pretty hip. But if you need to send a file to someone quickly and easily, but it's called wormhole dot app and you dragon, oh send up to ten gigabytes.

That's pretty good. So if you need to send like a big video file to someone or you know whatever, a big file you get a presentation, you need to share it with someone, you drag and drop it onto this website Wormhole dot app. It creates a link. It's end to end encrypted, which is really good for security, and the link expires in twenty four hours, which is

really quick. But you know, if you're just sharing something with someone and time is of the essence, this is a really quick and fast and easy way to do it. There's another website called Firefi Send, which I recommended, but that's shut down and this seems to be a pretty good alternative to that. Ope, you know what that sound means. It is the end of the show. That's gonna do it. For this episode of rich on Tech. If you would like to submit a question for me to answer, there

are two ways to do it. Just go to rich on Tech dot tv Slash podcast and hit the microphone button to leave a voicemail, which I'm not getting many those, so clearly nobody likes to do that better yet, Go to my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash rich on Tech, hit the big blue send email button and that will send an email to me hello at richon Tech dot tv. I like the Facebook method because it puts something in the subject that helps me parse out that it comes

from the podcast. Also, I would love it if you would rate and review this podcast to help other people discover it. Just go to rate this podcast dot com, slash rich on tech. You can find me on social media at rich tech and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free ktla plus app on Apple TV, Fire TV, and Roku. Then scroll down to the text section and watch all of my TV segments on demand. It's super cool. It's so easy. You can watch me from anywhere. Now. I love it,

Love it, love it. My name is Richar dmiro. Thanks so much for listening. I am telling you that more of you are listening now. I don't know if it's because more people are driving, commuting, going to work, whatever, but the numbers are slowly ticking up to the pre pandemic levels, which is good. So thank you for sharing this show with your friends. Please tell a friend about it so we can expand our reach. There are so many, so many ways you can spend an hour of your time.

I do appreciate you spending it with me. Stay safe. I will talk to you real soon.