Samsung Fold 3 and Flip 3 review

Coming to you this time around from Las Vegas. So if it sounds just a little bit different, that is why I'm sitting here in the MGM Park or is it Park MGM. It's one of those park MGM. So I'm sitting here in the Park MGM, which I have not stayed in for many many years. In fact, I think it was my bachelor party the last time I stayed in this hotel. They've totally redone it, and I got to say it's quite nice, you know. I like the room. It's kind of hip, it's young, it's modern.

It's a smoke free casino, which is really unique. And you know, even though I do sound a little stuffy, probably because I'm in Las Vegas, that's to be expected. It's such a breath of fresh air when you can be on that casino floor and not really have the cigarette smoke, which you know, that's a choice, that's a choice that they made. They probably lose a lot of people that may not stay here or come here if they don't want to deal with that. So anyway, I

kind of like it. One thing I noticed in the room there is no alarm clock. So, like I said, this is kind of a hotel geared towards millennials, and it's young, it's hip, it's fresh, and no alarm clock, which is kind of interesting because I'm taken aback by that. But at the same time, when was the last time I used an alarm clock in a hotel room. In fact, I don't even look at the time on the alarm clock in the hotel room because it's off half the time.

The things are not set. There is a short period of time for a couple of years when all hotel rooms had an iPhone dock. Do you remember this. You go into the room and it'd have a dock for your thirty pin connector iPhone, and then all of a sudden, Apple switched to the lightning connector and no hotel ever updated those docks. It was like either too expensive or they're just like, ah, we got burned one time, we're not doing it again. So you never really find an

iPhone doc. But I was thinking about it. The one thing that I would like in a hotel room is like a Bluetooth speaker, you know, a way to connect, and I've been in a couple rooms where they have that, but it's not a big feature that you see in a lot of places. So anyway, I'm here in Las

Vegas for a new attraction they're opening. It's called the Flyover, and it's basically if you've ever been on like the Back to the Future ride at Universal back in the day or the Soar and Ride at California Adventure, it's very similar to that, except a little bit more high tech because the thing moves in more ways. So I was very impressed. I'll have that story on KTLA soon and of course you can experience it here in Las Vegas.

It's opening very soon. And then the other thing that I checked out, and I'm just giving you lots of inside details here. The other thing I checked out. I don't know if you saw the story about elon Musk living in this fifty thousand dollars tiny home. While I tracked down the company, I said, can we come and see this tiny house? And can we see it most importantly unfolding. It's a house that unfolds, and they said, sure,

come on by. And it took a lot of wrangling and figuring out and coordinating, but I did get out here to see that, and I gotta say, pretty impressive, Like I want this thing in my backyard so badly, and I'm trying to like jump to the top of the list by saying, like I could really use one of these, but they just weren't having it. So I can't wait to show you that story. I actually got to open full help unfold, I guess you can say

the house, which was kind of cool. So all in all, I'd say it was a very successful four hours in Las Vegas. A quick trip, but I always love coming here because there's always something new and there's always something interesting, and you know, I just enjoy it. So we had a great time yesterday and let's get out with the podcast. Oh one more thing that I did at the park MGM, because it's so high tech and you know, everything is

touchless these days. It's really fascinating to see just how much impact the pandemic has had on the technology that companies are using, and especially hotels, restaurants, the mobile ordering. We've seen all of that, but this was one of the first times that I actually checked into the hotel fully from the phone. And I've done that on Hilton before, and I've used my Hilton app as a digital key, but this was something that I was not a member

of before. So I literally in the lobby. I saw there was a self check in and I said, oh, that's really interesting, but you had to scan a QR code. But to get that QR you had to, I guess, somehow go on your phone. So I ended up downloading the MGM app and somehow it found my reservation. I have no idea how. It said, hey, is this your reservation? And I said yeah, And next thing, you know, he said, okay, well, let's just check you in right here on the app.

And so I went through the process and at one point the two things I had to enter was my date of birth and my phone number to verify who I was, And somehow they verified who I was based on that. So I don't know, the system was pretty cool. It worked, and then you know, as soon as I registered it was all good. I said, we'll tell you when your room is ready. I got a notification to my phone about a minute later it said, hey, your room is ready, and it said you could just use

a digital key. And I did use my phone as the digital key the whole time here, which was cool. The only downside to that, if you follow me on Instagram, you saw that I've been using this new mag Safe wallet on the back of my phone of pop sockets, and that does not play nicely with the digital key, so you have to remove that from the back of your phone. And basically your I'm guessing uses a Bluetooth beacon or some sort of It must spit out like

a Bluetooth code or something. I'm not really sure. It could be RFID, but I don't know if the iPhone can generate an RFID. I'm not really sure how it works. I should find this out. I should know this stuff as a tech as a tech reporter. But it worked every time, and I would say, the only downside to that is if your phone dies. So we were in a situation out in the desert here recording our story, and my phone just of course overheated in like five minutes.

And so if that was the case and I wasn't able or the battery fully died, and you were coming back to your room, that would be a little bit of a bit of a problem because you would have to stop at the front desk and get a key. But the other one more thing, I'm not gonna harp on all this stuff, but one more thing that was kind of interesting. I've never seen this before with a self check in area they had here at the Park MGM.

They had one of those machines where you actually code your own key, So they just had a stack of room keys and a machine where you tap the room key to the machine to actually program the key for your room. And I thought that was pretty wild because I get the whole digital your phone is a digital key, but to actually sit there and like code a key, like you're literally like a front desk clerk at that point. So now I personally like this kind of stuff. I've

always liked self service. I think that it's interesting. You know, you always hope for the upgrade at the hotel, but I've come to the conclusion that that rarely happens, so I've kind of decided the self service, the self check in is is better anyway. So, by the way, one more tip if you're ever here in Las Vegas, definitely try to eat at the Nomad Bar or look at

the Nomad Restaurant. They're so cool. One of the coolest places I visited when I was in New York City, and they have an outpost here and I probably mentioned this on the podcast before, but it's such a cool place, just such a cool ambiance. And I got the burger last night and it was fantastic. So all right, let's start with some of the news this week. All right,

let's start with my review of Samsung's foldable phone. So I have talked about them a little bit on the podcast, but I've been playing with the Fold three and the Flip three. I'm gonna take a little sip of my coffee here since I'm doing this in the morning, but the fold Let's start with the Fold three. So now here, here's the thing. If you read my review on KTLA dot com, you know, or you can go to Rich on tech dot tv for the link. You might say, oh, Rich,

you're you're a little harsh on these phones. Well, here's the thing. I want to be harsh because you have to know what you're getting into. These are not phones for the masses just yet. Now, the Flip three is very close to that, and I have no problems recommending that phone with some with some caveats, the Fold three is definitely a very ambitious phone. It is something that is not for everyone. Do I love it? Yes, I

think it's awesome. Do I think it's really cool? Of course, You've got this little screen on the outside that you can do stuff on, but then it opens up to this giant screen on the inside, which is basically kind of like a tablet, kind of like a kindle, kind of like a cool way to watch videos. I mean, it's just a nice big screen. So if you're traveling a lot, it's amazing. Now, with that said, this phone is bulky, it's heavy. You know, we don't know about

the long term durability of these screens. I think that's a big question mark. But here's the thing. If you're spending eighteen hundred dollars on a cutting edge device, I don't think you're expecting to use this phone for three four years. I just don't. I think you're the kind of person that's probably buying a phone every year or every other year, more likely every year, and so for that reason, you probably are going to trade this in

next year when the new one comes out. So the screen thing is probably not that big of a deal because Samsung's also giving you. I think it's one free fix. Overall. It's the phone is fast, it's really snappy. The cameras are good on this thing. They're not Samsung's best, but they're really good. I have no problems with them. You get that big, giant screen on the inside, you get the small screen on the outside, which is kind of cramped.

Especially like every time I wanted to do something on the small screen, I would just end up opening it up to the big screens. I'm like, why am I messing with this tiny screen? Like, let me just look at something on the big screen. And so you do that. The opening close is you know, I'd like a little bit more of like a click, like a you know, a solid like okay, this is open, click, this is

closed click. When you close it, there's definitely a little bit more of like a click, But when you open it, there's like no you don't really know when it's fully open except the fact that it's open. Let's see, I mentioned that it's eighteen hundred dollars. Everyone's gonna have questions. Everyone that sees this phone thinks it's really cool, but that's not a reason to get it. The main problem

is that this technology is not all there yet. So when these two sides fold together, they don't completely meet in the middle. There is a gap between the screens, and obviously what I would expect this phone to evolve to is being half of the size folded and the screens would fold completely flat. But with all that said,

I don't think this is a bad phone. I think that it's a really cool phone, and if I was traveling a lot, I think that I would definitely consider this because it's such a you know, you get your kindle, you get your big screen for watching Netflix, and then you get, you know, a nice screen that you can do stuff. The g board, the Google keyboard is not really optimized for such a big screen, so I'd probably recommend using the Samsung keyboard. All right, now, let's move

on to the Flip three. This phone is easily more recommendable. I say in my review it is narrow and long, so when you open it up, there is some weight issues where you know, if you're balancing it on your hand, it could fall over, you know, because it's it's a little top heavy with the cameras on the top, but

not a deal breaker. It's not easy to open and close with one hand, and I think that's a big deal because if you remember back to the motorole Eraser and all those flip phones, they were very easy to open and close with just one hand. You kind of use your thumb to get in between. You flip it open, you do your stuff, boop boop poop, and you close it. Phone feels like it should do that. It does not.

And it also has this weird like the closure mechanism, like the it doesn't like have a good snap close or a good snap open, so you're not quite sure when it's closed. When it's open, it does it, but it's not like this reassuring like snap. What else about this phone? The cameras on this are definitely a weak point. It's they're they're not even they're good, They're not great. You're gonna be just fine if you don't really care about the best cameras in the world. You're gonna take

everyday pictures with this thing. It's gonna be just fine. I noticed in low light a little slow, little laggy. It takes a little bit longer than you'd think to take a picture, and they don't come out as good as the iPhone. But again, this is a really cool phone. This one's one thousand dollars, so it's still very expensive, but you're probably gonna be trading in another phone, which is gonna bring the price down, or you might get a a you know, some sort of promotion from your carrier.

But you know, I like it. I it's the phone that I would personally switch to if I was gonna switch to a foldable. And I say my review that I think it's one generation from being perfect. It's close, but it's not there just yet. So if you want to read my full review and also watch my video on the foldables from Samsung, you can go to rich on tech dot tv click the link, or you can download the KTLA plus app and you can watch it

right there now. Because I'm on the road, I don't have my little music for the people that email me. But let's start with Donna's question, Donna says, I tried your tip about using Spotify to play music on my I Watch, and I can't get it to allow me to play on the watch. Do I have to pay for the upgraded version to have it give me the choice of where it plays? Frustrating, I went back and looked at your directions and could not find it. Thanks for your help. I do like your spot and Channel

five News. I hope this gets to you. I am old, but I'm new at all of this tech stuff. Sincerely, Donna. Well, Donna, thanks for your question. So you're referring to the tip I put on on Instagram about downloading Spotify music to your Apple Watch. So I feel like a lot of people just don't know that that's available. And the thing about the Apple Watch, I feel like the it's like one of these weird things where you don't really need the music downloaded to it unless you're running without your

phone nearby. And I'm trying to think of a scenario besides running that you would be listening to music from your watch that's actually downloaded to your watch where your phone is not nearby, and I can't really think of many. I'm sure there's scenarios, but to me, in my head, the only one I can think of is running. But if you're running, you probably want a cellular connection on your watch because if there's ever an emergency, if you just had your watch, you wouldn't be able to call

for help. Now, I know that's funny because I've been running for twenty years and I've only had that capability in the last like three or five or whatever. But now that I have it, I can't live without it, and I just think it's such a cool future to have. So I don't run with my phone. I just run with my watch with the music loaded on it. And if I ever need help or something, or you know, fall into a ditch, I can, you know, call nine

one one from the cellular capability on the watch. So the question that Donna says is do you need to have the upgraded version? Yes, you do, so to download Spotify to your watch, you have to have Spotify Premium, and that is a ten dollars a month fee. I think it's worth it because if you don't have it, the ads on Spotify are just so so intense. And the other thing is that you might be familiar with Apple Music that is sort of the default on the

Apple Watch, and that's been around forever. And they've also had the ability to download music from the Apple Music to the Apple Watch. That's been pretty much the only provider that allows you to do that, except I also believe Pandora does. But now you have Spotify. About six months ago maybe they announced that they would let you

do it, so it's still, you know, coming around. But anyway, if you want to do this on your Apple Watch, you go make sure the Spotify app is installed on your Spotify Watch by going into the Watch app on your iPhone, I know, very confusing. Then you choose a playlist on your iPhone or yeah, I guess iPhone on Spotify, and then you click the three little dots underneath the playlist name. Like once you're in the playlist, like there's like a download button and there's a heart button, and

then there's three little dots. You press those three little dots and it says download to Apple Watch, and you tap that and it will sync those songs to your Apple Watch, which you can now listen to without a connection. The other thing is that sometimes you know, because you can you can live stream music as well, but sometimes when you're out there in the middle of nowhere, the cellular connection is not very good, and so for that reason, it's also good to have the music stored on your phone.

I just like having music store on my phone. You never know when you need it. You get a pair of Bluetooth ear butt and you can listen you know, wherever you are. But yes, you do need Spotify Premium. This week, I've also been testing out Pandora Premium because I can't believe that there's not a feature on Spotify to just shuffle all the music that I've downloaded to

my phone. Like remember that used to be the main feature of the iPod, is that you downloaded a bunch of music to your iPod and you could shuffle it. Now they still have that feature on the iPhone with Apple Music, but it's only music that you've added to your library, and so that makes no sense in today's day and age, because I don't add any music to my library. I download playlists. I've got my country playlist, I've got my pop playlist, I've got my indie playlist,

I've got my chill playlist. And what I want to do is make like a shuffle of all of those playlists, and as far as I can tell, unless I go through and manually add every one of those songs to my library, I can't do that on the iPhone. And I just want that mixture of like, you know, if you're in a market where they have the same called like jack FM, that's kind of like an iPod on shuffle. It just plays like random songs one after another, and you know, it's just good songs that you like, but

they're not particularly one genre. And I just want that on my on my phone because I think that would be a really fun way to listen to music. So Pandora does offer that. But so you pick your stations on Pandora and then you can say shuffle all my stations and it'll play a country song and then a pop song, and then an indie song and then a rock song, whatever you want. But the problem with that

is that they don't let you download that. They do let you download that music offline if you are a premium subscriber, which I did like the free trial, but then when you're offline, they don't let you shuffle. So I'm like, what is going on here with all these music? Music services they give you like a little portion of what you want, but they don't give you the whole thing. So maybe one day we'll get exactly what we want. I don't know, let's hope. So all right, so big news.

You'll probably hear about this news on the news. Apple basically, you know, they had this lawsuit and there are it's a class action suit from developers, and they say Apple puts a nice rosy picture on this that it's gonna, you know, really help developers with all of their changes, and the reality is they didn't really change much. So the big thing if you've been following kind of the

developer struggle with Apple, is that Apple is amazing. Right, you get your app on the App Store and it could be liquid gold for you if you have a hit. And the thing is Apple makes everything so easy because they handle the payments, they handle the customers, they handle you know, promotion. If your app is getting a lot of good you know buzz, they're gonna put it higher in the App Store, They're gonna help surface it to more people. But there's also this double edged sort of

this whole thing where Apple controls the entire experience. So if you're a developer and you somehow aren't playing by Apple's exact rules. You could be booted at any time and there goes your entire app and your livelihood on the iPhone. Or if there's a feature in your app that Apple doesn't like, they may just not approve it, and now you know, you just don't have an app that has the feature that you want. So there's a

lot of things that are not so good. And then also, of course this idea of the thirty percent cut that Apple takes. Sometimes it's fifteen, but to me, I mean it's kind of I always go back to when I sold my book on Amazon. Like Amazon, at the end of the day, I think it was like forty percent of my book price, which was like twenty bucks, went to fees. And you know that didn't include the taxes I had to pay on the money I made as well. But like, you know the fees you know that Amazon

also charged, you know, shipping, you know, promotion. I mean, there's so many fees. By the time you get it, it's like half of what you actually sell the book for you're getting. And then by the time you do taxes it might be you know, I said, I get about twenty five pen of the book price at the end of the day. So if it was a twenty dollars book, I would probably end up with, you know, five dollars, which is great because guess what, it's five

dollars that I didn't have before. And so all of those little fees were just kind of the price of doing business. And this is what bugs me about businesses that charge you an extra four percent to use your credit card or debit card or whatever, mostly credit cards, because I'm like, well, if I don't spend this money

here there, you get no money. And so if I'm spending my money here, the four percent that you have to pay, or the three percent you got to pay the visa for the interchange fees or whatever, is just kind of the cost of doing business, Like you're accepting this convenient way for me to pay. We all know that people tend to spend more money when they use their their plastic, and so why are we charging me extra? Because now I'm gonna use cash, I'm gonna be very

cognizant of how much I'm spending. I'm gonna have a bad user experience. I'm probably not gonna go back to your business because it's just annoying, and so for all those reasons, I'm kind of like, just just take the credit card, don't say a word, and just you know, it's like I got my air conditioning redone. And by the way, that's one of those things that I call it the the fixes that get you back to where

you were. You know, they fix the air, which, yeah, it's a little bit colder, but it's like, you know, the guy charged like three percent on top just to use a card, which was much more convenient than writing a check and this and that. But it's like, you're charging me so much for this, Like you really got to charge me another three percent? And I get it. The business margins are very slim. But anyway, I'm going off on a tangent here. But so here's what Apple

says they're going to do. These are like the big things that Apple says are going to do. Okay, they are going to give businesses earning less than a million a reduced commission. So that's I guess better. Apple has agreed to keep search the same way for three years, which I don't really understand that that seems like a loss, but there you go. And this is like the big change that it's kind of like it sounds good, but

it's not that good. So Apple is clarifying that developers can use can use communications such as email to share information about payment methods outside of their iOS app. So if if let's say I sign up for Spotify through iTunes or through the app store, right, and I pay twelve ninety nine a month, and then you know somehow, Now the question is do developers get my email address? That's the big question. Okay, I don't know if developers

get the emails from their users. I guess when you sign up you probably do anyway, So I guess Spotify can now turn around and say, hey, Rich, you know that if you sign up through our website you can pay nine to ninety nine a month instead of twelve ninety nine a month. And I go, oh, that's cool. Now, yes, there will be some people that do that immediately, but some people are just gonna say, ah, that it's more convenient just to leave the subscription through through Apple, through the

app store and just leave it at that. But that's the main I'm trying to read through some of the uh yeah, some of the comments on this on tech meme, and you know, a lot of people are saying the main thing about this is that they're allowing developers to

email users and just say, look, you can. I guess if you sign up for a service, they're going to have your email address if you use like a you know, a real email, So no matter what, And here's the thing, I don't know if you realize this, but whenever you sign up for a service, a lot of them are a little bit more expensive if you sign up through

the app store. So if it's a monthly subscription, it may be you know U for Pandora, Let's say it might be six dollars a month if you sign up through the app Store, but it might be five dollars a month if you went to their website and signed up. And again it goes back to that charging a little bit of a premium. The developers charge a premium because they have to pay Apple thirty percent or whatever, h

fifteen to thirty percent forever on that subscription. So they're like, well, if you have to do that, let's just charge people a little bit more for that convenience. So now I guess the big thing is that Pandora can now email me and say, hey, you do have some other options for subscriptions. Do you want to put your credit card in on our website and get a little cheaper rate?

And I see both sides. It's like, you know, it opens up a lot of things where you can now accept bitcoin for your payment, you can accept PayPal, you can accept you know, whatever you want. That makes it easy for the customers instead of just the you know, Apple payment. So it's not a huge huge change, but I do think that it will help developers in a little bit, just to just to expand and give people some options. All right, Again, I don't have my little sound,

you know, my little sound I make. But let's go to the next question. Michael says, Rich, I'm in the market for a new tablet for my seven year old daughter. Is there a tablet you recommend for her? Also? She is a heavy Roadblocks user. Any information you can share will be appreciated. Mike, Mike, if I had my buzzer, I would say to Roadblocks because it is banned in my house. I don't like it. I feel like it's a lot of nonsense, and it's just it's one of

those games that every kid is playing. It's easy, it's convenient, there's so much on there. It's free, and the reality is they're just getting you on the back end, because what kids do is after a while of playing roadblocks, what do they want? They just want parents to buy the Roebucks and also some of the games on there. I just don't like anyway. For that reason, it is banned in my house. It has been banned for a

long time. My kids begged me to play it. Not so much my older kid, but my younger kid, you know, begs me pretty much every day, please, guy, have an hour, please, And I'm so mean, I just say no. But I feel like I'm protecting him from something that's just nonsense. You know. It's just like, you don't really need this. The problem is a lot of kids are playing it, and so you kind of take that out of the works.

Where my kid is very social and he's fine, he has other things to talk about with his friends, but he said, you know, it's like, oh, this is what the kids talk about in class. And so I understand that it's tough and I don't know, it's just one of these things. But anyway, So the tablet I would recommend that I always recommend for every child is the iPad, and it used to be the iPad Mini, but they're not really updating that as much. So definitely the standard iPad.

It's you know, it sells for three twenty nine and I would go find the deals, so search on Google iPad deals or deal and then hit the news tab and then you will find all of the people that are blogging about the deals on this on this iPad, so you can find it typically for you know, anywhere from thirty to fifty dollars off, sometimes more. So that's

what I would recommend. I did test the I know, the Amazon Fire Kids tab is very compelling because it's so inexpensive, but the reality is I just can't recommend that in good faith because the iPad is going to last you four years minimum, whereas the tablet from Amazon on out of the box is laggy, it's slow, it's cumbersome. It's just not a good experience. And that's on day one. So imagine three years in your kid's going to be

pulling their hair out. Now. I get it that it's cheaper, but when you do the math over the three years, the three hundred dollars that you're gonna spend on the

iPad is well well worth it. And also there's much there's just so much better accessories, so many better accessories, I should say, if I'm using the English language properly, there's so many better accessories, there's so many better apps, And it's just one of those things that it's like when you're looking for a case, you're just gonna find a better case. When you're looking, you know you want

to use the Apple pencil, you can use that. You know you're looking for apps, and you know you might even have an iPhone Mic so it'll work nicely with that. But those are all the reasons that I recommend that I can't recommend any other tablet. In fact, my kids, when they tested the Amazon Fire Kids tablet, basically gave up on it because they could not get roadblocks to

work on it properly. And I don't know if it was a defective tablet that I got, but I agree it was just a nightmare of getting it to work, and so I just can't recommend it for that. So go for the standard iPad. If you were really being really, really good, I would recommend the bump up to the one twenty eight gigs. My father in law had just helped him buy a new iPad for his trip overseas, and we sat there and we purchased it online. And excuse me, it was you know, you had a thirty

two gig model or the one twenty eight. I think it's hundred dollars more for the one twenty eight. I don't think you necessarily need that for your child, but for him. You know, if you're traveling you want to download movies on this thing. Your kid's probably gonna be streaming most of the time anyway, so it's probably not that big of a deal. But you know, if you if money was, you know, if you had the budget for it, I'd say go for the higher one. But you don't have to anyway. But by the time we

set it all up, it was kind of cool. They actually come to you, at least in LA and help you set up the tablet, so they literally give you an appointment, and it was couple days later they bring the iPad to you and they will sit there and help you set up all of your stuff. And he said, it was a fantastic experience and it's just one of those magical things that only Apple does, and this is why they are so on top with things, all right,

a little bit of news here from Fitbit. I won't spend too much time on it, but they have a new Fitbit Charge five, and Google says this is their most advanced health and fitness tracker, and it's got all kinds of things. So it's thinner, it's sleeker, it's got a brighter touch screen. It's got up to seven days

of battery life, which is really nice. And so far we haven't seen a real, real strong alternative to the Apple Watch, but we've seen a lot of alternatives, and so I think that this new Fitbit Charge five is definitely if you're on the Android side of things, I think that this is something that could fit the bill. I have not tested it, but it looks really cool. And if I end up switching to the Pixel six later this year, I'll see if I can stay on the Apple Watch, which would be ideal, but I might

have to switch to this. But the one thing that they're really pushing on this is this new Fitbit Premium, which seems like if it's really ten dollars a month, that seems like a lot to pay for like a fitness I mean, I know Apple has Apple Fitness plus, but that's a lot. Yeah, ten dollars a month. I don't know, like I mean, I know they have like all kinds of like little workout plans and you get all this like insights, but that's a tall order ten dollars a month. But anyway, so you get six months,

six months of that included. But a couple of features is that you get this new This is kind of interesting and I think a lot of the news people picked up on this. But you get a fitness fatigue Okay, So you get a workout readiness score, so it'll tell you if your body is ready for a workout or if you should prioritize recovery, which means just sitting on

the couch. So in the morning, you're gonna get a score based on your fitness activity, so how much you did the day before, I guess your heart rate variability and your recent sleep and so you will see it. It'll be like, yeah, you used to work out. Yeah you shouldn't work out today, which is important because recovery is a big part of working out. Right, You got to give your body that rest so it can otherwise sometimes you feel really tired during your next workout or

feel like you have no energy. It also gives you recommended target active zone minutes a goal, which is pretty much the only thing that I look at on the Apple Watch is if I'm meeting my goal for the active minutes that I should have. So I don't care about steps, I don't care about you know the standing. All I care about is that I my heart rate reached a certain point for a certain amount of minutes every day, and for me, that's thirty minutes of I don't know what the rate is, but it's you know,

it's elevated heart rate. And so as long as I get that, I feel like I'm I'm doing a good thing. Some days are more than others, but I do try to hit that thirty minutes a day. And then it also has built in GPS. It's got twenty exercise modes, automatic exercise recognition, it can recognize your oxygen. Let's see what else. You get a stress management score, which is kind of cool. I think that we are definitely going to see more of an emphasis on total well being. Right.

It used to be if you know, you had a six pack, or you had good you know, biceps, big arms, whatever, or if you were thin you know, that was fine, but nowadays it's I think that physical health is way more than just those things. It is really how you feel on a daily basis. It's you know, it's how you the stress levels that you have. You know, it's your mood, it's your anxiety, it's it's a lot of things,

not just do you look physically fit. And so I think we're gonna see a lot more emphasis on kind of you know, like I said, kind of a holistic view of well being. So you've got a lot of different things, like just so many things that you know, the sleep, Like I said, sleep, Like people are just kind of putting this big emphasis on sleep, which we always knew was important, but now we're realizing, like this whole idea of getting no sleep is just not good

for you, not healthy. And it's funny because I never really cared about sleep. I've always been not a light sleeper, but I've always been kind of an early riser, and obviously with my current job, I'm you know, always waking up very early. But I never really cared about, you know, the hours I slept until I met my wife, and she's very much into, like I need my eight or nine hours. I'm like, wow, that's a lot. I think I personally need closer to six or seven hours to

function pretty well. And honestly, like even on a little bit of sleep, I can still function. So a lot of people if they get only a couple hours like I can, I'm just not available to do anything. I don't typically feel like that. It all depends, like you know what the situation is. Anyway, Charge five gonna be available for one hundred and eighty dollars. That includes six months of the premium membership, and it's going to be available this fall. Looking forward to checking that one out.

All right, let's get on to the next question. Let's see, Cindy, let's let's see. I'm trying to find a good question here. Okay, here's one from Ray. Ray says, hey, Rich, thanks for the oh thanks for continuing links in your podcast. Okay, thanks. I did put back the links in case you haven't noticed in the Great Google Search segment. This is a segment I did on KTLA and I mentioned it on the podcast about how to search better. I learned some

good things PDF and versus. The one thing I want, though, is default is a default search timeframe? Why would I want results from three years ago, and why do I have to pre select the time one year every time I initiate a search. Is there a default mode on Google or my new favorite Neva cheers. Good question. So what you're referring to, Ray is the when you do a search on Google, if you look to the right of the search, it says tools, and then you can drill down and you can choose a time frame for

your results. And that timeframe could be you know, a week, it could be a day, it could be a year. I don't know if it's a day. Let's let me try. Let's try Rich, I'll just search myself and tools. Okay, So you can do anytime past oh, past hour? Wow, I can see if people mentioned me in the past hour and yeah, wow, twenty three minutes ago, kfi. Okay, so you can do past hour, you can do oh wow, oh interesting. You can do past twenty four hours, past week,

past month, past year, and then custom range. So Ray, to answer your question, I don't see a way of selecting a default for that. I agree. I think that would be good, but you would also be missing out on some very relevant results that may not be from a year ago. Or three months ago or whatever. Like. They may be older results, but it's like the most relevant results. So I understand why Google's not necessarily snapping

to like whatever you last choose. But I also do think that if you know the limitations of that search that you know and you set it, that should be fine. So I don't see this as a default with Google, and I'm not sure that Neva does it as well. But I think there might be a you know, like a power Let's see if there's like a power Google Chrome extension. Oh, here we go, power up Google. So there might be let's see, what does it do ensures that video animations and gifts embedded in your Oh no, no,

that's not it. So you know, there might be like an extension that helps you change kind of the default settings on Chrome or on Google to the way you want them. But I haven't. I have not found it in just a quick but I would look for something like Google Settings extension on Chrome or like you know, power user on Chrome. I don't know. I mean it's it's I don't know, but it's not clearly it's not

something that's there and easily doable. But that is a good question, and I wish it, yeah, but I'm glad you learned from the Google segment that was That was one of the most popular segments this year. Actually the most popular segment this year so far is the digital vaccination card for your phone and so I talked about that on the last podcast. But oh, Google search tips is a close second, okay. So, and then refurbished tech deals was popular. My Orange Chicken beyond Orange Chicken Taste

test was very popular. The Wi Fi system, the Villo was really popular. The gadgets to track your kids was really popular. And the only way I know if segments are popular, there's only two ways I know if you're watching my segments. Number one is if you click on my rich on tech dot Tv, I get like a you know, it'll say how many people clicked on the link, so I can see that. And then on KTLA they will send out like the links every day so I

can see that. I can see the top videos. And then of course I can just tell the interest on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, if you know, if you're you know, sharing a lot or commenting a lot, that's another way that I can see what you're into. But it's tough. I mean, since we're not fully fully digital and like all this stuff is kind of fragmented. You know, I'm kind of I go into this stuff, like, you know, just with a gut feeling of Hey, do I think

people will really like this? Or do I think this is a story that people will like? All right, Cindy, let's go to another question. Cindy says, is there a way to retrieve text messages and photos deleted from an iPhone? Twelve? Thanks Cindy sent for my iPhone. Cindy, you would think that it would be easy to do this. Now. I know you said photos, but you said text message in photos,

so it's not like photos. There is a way to retrieve those if you go into your if you go into the photos app and you deleted something, you can go into your albums and all the way at the bottom it says recently deleted. So if I was a sleuth on someone's iPhone and I was kind of snooping around, that'd be the first place I look for what they recently deleted. But I'm just saying you can also empty

that out as well. But when it comes to text messages, there's no trash on the text messages so when you delete something, it is gone, and the only way to get that back would be to dig through a recent backup of your I messages. And guess what, the average person is never going to be able to do that because it's just so complicated. You would think that you'd be able, and I talk about this all the time

on the podcast. You think that you'd be able to go onto iCloud dot com and just download, you know, or just sift through your trash on your messages, but you can't. You think on your iPhone you might have a messages trash, but you don't. And I don't know why they don't have that. I don't know what the reasoning was for that, because you would think it would make sense, like on Gmail you have a trash. Now

maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe you're listening to this right now and you're saying, Rich, what are you talking about. The trash is at the bottom of the messages pile or something like that, But I don't think it is. I think when you delete a message, there's just no way to get it back as far as I know, except for it says would you like to delete this conversation? This conversation will be deleted from all of your devices. Delete boom, It's gone, and I have no way of

seeing that again. So the only way is if your phone was backed up the night before and you can get into that backup. And the only way that I know how to do that is with an app called i Amazing or something similar Imazing dot com. There's a bunch of these apps. There's also one called doctor Phone Doctor fone, and this is kind of like a recovery solution for iPhone. But both of them require you to have a backup of your iPhone on your computer, and

that's that's kind of tricky. Now you might say, well, can I use a third party to sort of import my mesa, you know, on a daily basis from the iPhone, And no, you can't. Apple just doesn't allow that kind of stuff. And maybe it's a security reason, but you know, an Android, you could back up your text messages no problem, using an app like SMS backup and restore. You know, they're backed up in various places, so you can do that quite easily. But on on iPhone it's just not easy.

And again I talked about this in the last podcast. I hate the fact that we put so much emphasis, and so many of our communications are done through text messages because it's such a it's such a terrible way to have messages, and it's such a it's not a platform that was made for what we're using it for now. Yes, I Message is amazing, but it's because it's Apple. It's so limited in the way that they let you do anything with your data. And I just wish that I wish.

I mean, I use Telegram and I love it. And it was funny because my kid was scrolling through one of my message threads with my photographer Luis, and he was scrolling and he scrolled up and up and up, and he said, oh my gosh, you guys chat so much. And I said, yes, I have all my chats in here for two or three years with this guy, so

I can go back to like anything. I can also sort through all the files we sent, all the music we transferred, all the voice files, all the links, all the gifts, anything that we mentioned in here, and I can also search. So I mean, it's just such a

to me, a beautiful way. And by the way, if I ever want to export that, I can into a format that I can then read in other programs, whereas all those things I just mentioned are like nearly impossible on I Message, except yes, you can go into your I message and search, and yes you can go and look at like the pictures that you exchange with someone over the times, but it's just not easy anyway. So that's my long drawn out answer to what you asked. But it's just one of those things that the iPhone

just does not make it very easy. All right, let's get to the next question. Kay says Rich. If you have any advice on computer backups, external backup or online service, it would be for both personal computer and small business computer. Both are laptops, Thank you, Ka. So I would recommend the service that I actually recommended a few weeks back for the picture backup, and it's called I Drive. And the reason why I like I Drive there's a couple of them out there. So you've got eye Drive, you've

got Carbonite, you've got crash Plan, you've got Backblaze. You know, you can also use like iCloud, Google Drive. But because you're saying you have, you're basically trying to back up your entire computer, and so something like Google Drive it will back up your whole computer. But it's not really, it's I don't think it's the best for that iCloud. It's probably fine, but it's not. Again, it's not the best.

Something like a back Blaze or crash Plan or Carbonite or an eye drive is actually meant to back up your entire computer. So they have software that pretty much backs it up and if you ever have a problem, you can get it back. So the reason I like I Drive is mostly because I met with them in person. So whenever I meet with someone in person, I like the company because I get to know them and I get to see that there's like an actual person. I get to kind of quiz them on things and ask

them questions. And I did all that with Iedrive, and I like them. Now, the other competition you have there is something like, let's say, I think like a backblaze or crash Plan or kind of two of the most popular. But the thing is the big downside to like backblaze. Let's say, so it's sixty dollars a year for eye Drive, but this is for unlimited computers and smartphones, So that means, if you know, if you're on a business plant, it's a little bit more expensive, but you get several computers.

So you said you wanted to back up two computers, whereas on something like backblaze, you're only going to be able to back up one computer at that price. If you want to do another computer, you have to pay more. And so that's number one, and I think that's the big delineation. Let's look at yeah again, crash Plan, same thing. So if you're subscribing to crash Plan, you're gonna have to pay more if you want to back up more than one computer. So I would just look at iDrive

dot com. It's anywhere. It's you know, sixty bucks for the first year, but it's like eighty dollars after that, and either maybe one hundred dollars for business plans. But I don't think you need the business plan per se. I think you just need the personal plan, and you can back up both computers. Now, it is capped at a five terabyte backup, so if you have more than five terabytes between those two computers, you might have to go, you know, you might have to go with a bigger plan.

But in general, those are the two i'd recommend. I used to do this. I used to back up my whole computer using one of these services. But now because I store so much in the cloud, like all of my photos are in Google Photos, I use Google Drive, I use drop Box, you know, I use a combination of these. I use iCloud, So I use a combination of these cloud services. So I don't necessarily need one kind of big backup of my computer. In fact, I don't want to restore. I don't want to restore my

computer from a one backup. Now, if you are a business, yes, you probably want to do this, because in the case of ransomware, you probably want to just restore your entire computer so that you're you don't skip a beat. But me, with my personal computer, I don't have a lot of stuff on here that can't just be reinstalled and then linked to the cloud. And so that's kind of how I do things. But it just depends on your situation.

So for me, if you know, if my computer was ever you know, if the you know, hard drive crashes, I would just go ahead and install all the programs that I use again, and a lot of my stuff is just in the cloud. And in fact, the way that Google Drive works now they just kind of updated their app. They don't really download anything to your computer anymore.

It's like all stream. They call it like drive stream or something, and they basically just you know, when you need a file, they download it to your computer on demand, kind of the way Dropbox. I use it that way as well. It's a little bit, you know, you have to have a fast Internet connection because if you need like a two gigabyte file, it does take a little bit for that to come down to your computer, but it works, and it works pretty well. So that's the

way I use Dropbox an the other ones. All right, let's go to another question. I'm trying to figure out if I talked about all the tech stuff I wanted to talk about this week, because there wasn't two, it wasn't a whole whole lot. So I figured I'd do more questions on this on this podcast since I'm also on the road anyway. All right, let's get to Diane. Hey Rich, wondering if you know anything about the Samsung Galaxy A thirty two. Do you know if it's a

good quality phone to replace my Samsung S six. Thanks for any information you can supply me with, Sincerely, Diane. Diane, the A thirty two is pretty much Samsung's I think it's like their most inexpensive phone. In fact, I requested this phone from them to test, and they ended up sending me the A fifty two, which is a little bit higher end. I think that one's four ninety nine. This one you can get for a little bit cheaper. I'm seeing it for as cheap as I think it.

I think that the price was like two point fifty when it came out, maybe a little bit more. Let me see by now, Samsung when they put their prices, they only put them with a trade in. It's like you can't even you got to like click around to see how much this costs without a trade in. So let's do no trade in. Okay, so no trade in? It is two hundred, Yeah, it was two hundred and fifty bucks, so or two eighty and then it's really they're selling it for like two forty unlocked. So do

I recommend this phone? I mean, I think this phone will be fine. And I think you know the price that you're you're asking, you know you're you're looking at a very inexpensive price point. So at this price point,

I think this phone is going to be okay. I would say, if you can if you can if you can squeeze out an extra two hundred dollars, which I know is a lot when you're looking at a two hundred and fifty dollars phone, and I'm now recommending a four hundred and fifty dollars phone, But I would look at the pixel five A. I mean, I just think that you're gonna get better software, You're gonna get a way better camera, You're gonna get a better experience. It's

gonna last longer, it's gonna have less hassle. It's just gonna overall, I think, be a better experience. And some of these cheapy Galaxy phones, they just, you know, it's not the best experience. And I just I feel like at the top of the line Samsung, if you have a lot of RAM on it and you've got a lot of storage, it's it's fine and the software is good. But when you get to these little, less expensive phones,

it's just the experience is just not as good. It has five G it's got a you know, it's got a camera, it's got you know, good cameras. But it's just one of these things where I just feel like the experience is just not gonna be like, let's see what's the screen. So it's gonna point five inch screen. It doesn't really say what type of screen it is, but anyway, so I think this is fine. The other phone I would look at is the TCL. They make a twenty series and it's the twenty. It's let's see TCL.

It's uh, let's see there's there's a high end and there's a low end. So let's see mobile phones. They've got the okay, so they've got the twenty pro five G. They've got the twenty S, and they've got the twenty S. So I would perhaps look at one of these phones as well, because the tcl's so the twenty S is two hundred and fifty dollars. And then let's see what

the SE is. And I reviewed the last model, the ten, and it was I actually found it to be really good for the price, so I was very impressed with what they did. The camera is fine, it's not the best, but yeah, the twenty se is only one eighty nine, So I would look I would compare. I would look at three device. I would look at the Pixel five A.

That would be my top pick. And then I also like this TCL, the twenty s. I would look at that phone and see what you think about that, because I think it's it's a little bit of a better I think it's a better device because of the software. It's like a little bit cleaner, and it's a little bit more expensive two fifty. But I think you'll be okay with the Samsung if you if you're comfortable with it.

But it is going to be a little step back because you're on the Galaxy S series and this is the Galaxy A series, which is a little bit lesser SPECX wise than in performance wise than the phone that you've been used to. But your phone is old, so maybe you know it wouldn't be as bad, all right. Pamela says, Hey, Rich, hope you and your family are doing well. Thinking you know what, Actually, let's go to

Let's go to Gene. Gene in Pasadena says I'm an old geezer seventy six that's not too much into tech stuff, so please bear with me. I have a sand disc MP three clip jam Wow, which I use while walking. Is there a table model MP three player which I can plug in a flash drive like I do in my car to listen to music in my home. I have a speaker system that's hooked up to my Denin stereo components. It would be nice if the denin unit had a flash drive port, but it's a few years old.

We bought at Pacific Stereo, which has long ceased to operate. I thought Pacific Stereo was built inside best Buy. Thank you for any suggestions for your continued informative segments on the KTLA five News Gene and Pasadena Gene. Here's a solution I think you should do. I think that your denin, even this old stereo has either an audio like an RCA input left and right, or a standard headphone jack input, you know, like a stereo what is it? A quarter

inch stereo input is an eighth inch? I don't know if it's an eighth or oh gosh, this is where Oh my gosh, what is what is it? Is it a quarter or an eighth inch? I think it's a quarter into and it's it's just a standard headphone jack, you know, yeah, stand oh Google, no standard headphone jack size. Okay, three point five inch, three point five millimeter, so whatever that is? So three point five millimeter, you know what

I'm talking about. It's like the standard you know headphone jack, right, So I would say that I think that your stereo receiver is going to have a standard headphone jack input, and so what I would do is look for that input and then I would just get an iPod Touch

and you can use that as your music player. And if you really want to be wild, you can just subscribe to Apple Music if it's available on there, and now you can have your music unlimited on that device, or you can use Spotify, or you can whatever you want. So I would just do that, and now you have the iPod Touch is going to be one hundred and ninety nine bucks. You can probably get one cheaper. If you want to go old school, you can just buy one on eBay too, and used one and plug it

into your stereo system and that's it. Now you've got all the music in the world on your stereo. And again there's two ways that you can plug this thing in. On the back of your stereo, you might have RCA input, So if you look for you know, it's basically the old school cable. That's RCA Audio cable to three point five millimeter. So if you have the RCA on one side and then it's the three point five millimeter jack

on the other side. You can plug the three point five into your iPod Touch and then the other ones into the back of your stereo. And by the way, that cable is seven dollars and sixty two cents. Now, the iPod Touch, I believe it still has a headphone jack. Let's make sure. If it doesn't, you can just use the lightning connector. Let's see doesn't have a headphone jack. Come on audio playback external connectors. Yes, it does have a three point five millimeter headphone jack. So that is

going to be the simplest way to connect it. If it if it connects to the back of your receiver, it's probably like you know AUCS input. Uh. If it's if it has the three point five millimeter headphone or input somewhere on there, you can use that cable and that's a three point five milimeter to three point five

millimeter and that is six dollars and ninety cents. So you're looking at if you really want to be you know, brand new and get the the iPod Touch, it's one hundred and ninety nine dollars for that plus two dollars, or you know, it's eight bucks for the cable and

you'll have exactly what you need. Now, if you want to go even cheaper, you can, uh you know, you can go on eBay and get a used iPod Touch, and I'm sure that you can find one that's, uh, you know, considerably cheaper than the one ninety nine new. All you need this thing is to work and to play music, and so I'm seeing them on here for a pretty cheap But that's what I would recommend. I think that that's gonna be the way to do it.

And you know, just because it's an old sound system, it probably has those standard connectors that are that are gonna work really, really well. All right, let's do one more question real quick. Chuck Asks in Temple City. Hey, Rich, thanks for all you do. I'm considering upgrading my one plus six T to a one plus nine Pro. But I'm concerned if it's a good decision because none of the T Mobile stores carry the phone. What is your opinion about a phone that no one seems to carry.

I'm guessing it's not selling well, Chuck. I think it's more of a supply and demand or more of a supply chain issue. I would say the one plus nine Pro is one of my favorite phones right now. It's a great phone. You have the one plus six T you know all about the one plus I would say it's an easy upgrade to the nine Pro. It's a fantastic phone. It's got the best software out there besides the pixel. It's got a great camera. I wouldn't say it's the best, but it's an excellent camera, very capable.

And again you're getting a really I spect out phone with amazing specs. You're getting great software, and I see no trouble upgrading. If you're trying to use it on T Mobile, obviously you might get an upgrade deal through T Mobile. See if you can order it online through them, See if you can place the order. But I have no problem recommending the one plus nine Pro at all. I think it's a fantastic device. So no hesitations whatsoever. Go ahead and treat yourself. All right. That is going

to do it for this episode of the show. I've got a flight to catch. If you'd like to submit a question 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 you can just go to rich on Tech dot TV and look for the email icon under my name and you can submit it there. Also, I would love it if you

would rate and review this podcast. Don't use this episode as your episode to rate, because you know the production quality is a little different from typical episodes, but write a quick line about what you like about this show so that way other people can understand why they listen. And I'll be honest, we're getting way more listeners right now. I don't know what happened, but we've basically doubled the listenership.

So people are gonna start seeing it on those iTunes charts in that top fifty, top sixty, and they're gonna say, what's this? What's this rich on Tech show? So if you have good reviews there from someone like you that's listening to the show, it can help them say oh, can push them over the edge to that follow button

and then we grow the show even more. So you can go to rate this podcast dot com slash rich on Tech to submit your review, or just figure it out on the podcast app on Apple to figure out how to do that. You can find me on social media. I'm sure you know this, but I am at rich on Tech and no matter where you live in the US, you can download the free KTLA Plus app on Apple TV, fireTV, and Roku. Then scroll to the tech section and watch all of my TV segments on demand. My name is

Rich Dmiro. My only decision right now is do I spend another twenty dollars in the slot machine before I head out to my flight. It's like one of those things where if I do it, it feels like, Okay, I got my last twenty dollars in. I don't really gamble too much, but you know, it's like, I'm in Vegas, so I might as well rite when in Rome. But then I'm like, eh, Then you leave Vegas feeling like I just wasted twenty dollars when I could have purchased

something that's like two months of Spotify. Anyway, That's what I'm dealing with over here. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend an hour of your time. I do appreciate it you spending it with me. I will talk to you real soon.