Samsung unveils the Galaxy S twenty four lineup with AI. Pre Orders for the Apple Vision Pro are now open. The new website that can tell you if a text message is a scam. Plus your tech questions answered. What's going on Rich Demiro and this is Rich on Tech broadcasting live from Los Angeles, coast to coast. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer your questions about technology. I believe that tech
should be interesting, useful, and fun. Let's open up the phone lines at triple eight rich one oh one. That's eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one, triple eight rich one O one.
Give me a call.
If you have a question about technology, or if you just want to comment about something. We do that too. Email also open. Just go to the website rich on Tech dot tv hit contact. You can submit your questions there or your comments. If you submit a comment, I'll read it throughout the show or later on in the feedbag.
We got some great guests this week.
Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal will join to share her thoughts on trying on the Apple Vision Pro Ray Wong, tech reviewer at Inverse dot com, will give his impressions of the new AI features on the Samsung Galaxy S twenty four lineup. And I know you're thinking football Super Bowl Sunday.
Coming up.
TV reviewer Caleb Dennison. We'll share his top TV picks and explain all that terminology you're seeing when you go to Costco or best Buy or online for TVs micro l D l E ed uhd LCD. Oh my gosh, so many things to explain. He is fantastic friend of the show, been on many times. He will tell us what we need to know. Well, this was a big week in tech. I only say that a couple of times a year, but this is one of them. We had two major things happening this week. Number one, Vision Pro.
Apple's Vision Pro this is their ar VR headset, went on sale for pre order thirty five hundred dollars for this thing, and yes people ordered it, and yes people will be amazed when they get this thing on their head. I had the opportunity to try it on this week. I will talk about my experience in addition to exchanging notes with Joanna later on in the show.
But the thing that you wanted me to talk about.
First, According to my Instagram is the big Samsung event also happened this week.
So I was, okay, I will tell you this.
I really think Apple was trying to steal the spotlight from Samsung this week.
Let me tell you how.
So during CS if you listen to last week's show, you might remember they put out a press release right before CS opened saying hey, we've got the Vision Pro and here's when it's gonna come out. And everyone went nuts over that because we were waiting for that date and time. Well, this week they did two interesting things. They set up schedules or appointments with a lot of people in the media world, a lot of journalists conveniently either right before the Samsung event or right during the
Samsung event. So for me, for instance, my appointment was first thing on a Tuesday morning when I had to fly up to Samsung in San Jose for the event Tuesday afternoon. And at first I was like, oh, this is bad timing. Then I was like, wait a second, interesting timing Apple. So they did that, and you know, so you had a couple of little things. Then during
the Samsung event, what do they do? They put out a press release that there's a brand new Apple store no other than in South Korea during the Samsung event. Did I say Apple event during the Samsung event? I mean, come on, Apple, I love you, but you're just I mean, and look, I am all about out the hustle, I'm all about the game.
I'm all about you know, back and forth. You know.
This week it was announced that Apple overtook Samsung for the first time in like a decade as the world's largest smartphone maker. I have the the numbers here. In twenty twenty three, Apple shipped two hundred and thirty four point six million units. Samsung shipped two hundred and twenty six point six million units, dropping to the number two position with a thirteen point six percent decline. Now you
can imagine that these two companies. Apple was celebrating and Samsung they were not very happy, especially on the week of their own event happening here in the US.
Let me tell you about that event. It was up in San Jose.
And I love going to these events, not only because you know, you get to kind of meet with everyone that you see online and all the tech people that you know, but also you get to go hands on you get to feel like how this company does stuff. So they took over the SAP Center. Don't call it SAP, that's not it's SAP. They took over the SAP Center in San Jose. They took over the hotels and all the meeting rooms in San Jose, and they actually brought me up there. So thank you Samsung, and we had
a great week. I was up there for three days. I didn't really understand why I had to be up there. But they not only do the event, but they do like a dinner, and then they also do the day after this big excursion. So you get your phone as your review unit and then you have all day to kind of go out and use it. And so we went to a couple places that I thought were so cool.
We went to the Winchester Mystery House, which is like this wild mansion that has like one hundred and sixty rooms and a lot of them, like staircases that lead to nowhere, all kinds of wild things. If you're in San Jose, highly recommend you visit that. That was just a wild experience. The other thing that was really cool is this place called the Mystery Spot up in San Jose, or I guess this was a Santa Cruz and that is like this weird cabin they built that. You go
in there and you can't stand up straight. You like literally are at a I don't know angle when you stand up. It's really really weird. It like defies all gravity rules. Now it's funny because my kids and I we were up in San Jose or Santa Cruz a couple of years ago, and these were the two places we skipped. We're like, ah, those are tourist traps. We're not going to those. Sure enough. They were so much fun. I had a blast and I can't wait to bring
the kids. Anyway. I tell you that because here's what you need to know about these new phones. So you've got three new phones, S twenty four, S twenty four plus S twenty four Ultra. The focus this year is all about AI. So you've got various AI features, especially when it comes to translating things. You've got Live Translate. You can make a phone call to someone in a different language, translates in live time. I know, it sounds like a sci fi movie. You can chat with someone
in text messaging in a different language. It just trans describes it and translates it instantly. Then you've got the recorder functionality that will transcribe everything that you record on there. So if you have a meeting for work, you can just let this thing record it. It will not only transcribe that meeting, it will also come up with a summary of that meeting for you.
That is really cool.
Then they've got this new feature which I just absolutely love, called Circle to Search. You basically press and hold the home button on your phone and you can circle or scribble over anything that is on your screen, whether it's text, whether it's a photo, whether it's a video, whatever it is, and it will search Google for that. And this is a killer feature that I don't think is going to come to the iPhone in quite the same way, but it is coming to previous Samsungs, especially the S twenty
three and also the pixel eight Pixelate Pro. The Pixelate Pixelate pros happening on January thirty first. The other Samsung they said within the next six months. This is a amazing feature. You got to check out my Instagram at rich On Tech see what that's all about. It is seriously cool. Then you've got all of these AI editing features, in fact, I just used it to edit a photo I tweeted because there's a sign in the background I
didn't want. And so you can do all kinds of great stuff on these pictures with the AI editing tools. Seriously cool. I mean, you cannot trust a picture ever. Again, You've got someone you take a picture of someone making a basket in basketball, and you can literally just press and tap and hold on the person as they make their shot and just bring them up so they can like slam dunk the shot, I mean, and it fills in the background and everything. It's really really cool. You
can resize things, you can do whatever you want. They've got this instant slow mo feature, so if you take a video, just press a hold on.
It instantly slows it down.
So again, that same person making a basket, you didn't shoot it in slow mo.
Now you can just slow it down.
It uses AI to recreate the frames on that video, and it's really really good. And by the way, yes, a lot of this stuff is what we saw on the Pixel eight series, but on Samsung because it's a much higher powered phone. It is a lot faster and it works a lot better. So yes, you can get this stuff on the Pixel, but on the Samsung it is definitely better and faster because the phones are just
more powerful. The other thing, they now seven years of security and operating system upgrades upgrades, So if you buy a Samsung S twenty four today in twenty twenty four, this thing will be supported until am I getting the math right?
Twenty thirty one?
What say what twenty thirty one, you don't have to worry about a new phone. I mean you're gonna be like, that's just wild. So seven years of security and operating system updates. That's the same thing that Google promised for their Pixel phones. So look, we're getting a lot better and Apple does about five to six years on their phones. So when you buy a phone today, I know it's expensive, but you can keep it for a long time and then you can give it to someone else and it's
still going to be secure. Prices on these things. They did change one thing. They used to have a ten times optical zoom on the previous model. Now it's a five times lens, but because they made the lens better, it still goes up to ten times optical. It's just cropping the shot and it's very complicated, but the reality is it's still going to be just fine. You could still zoom up to one hundred times and it looks
even better than before. How much are we talking? Eight hundred dollars entry level, one thousand dollars for the middle, and thirteen hundred dollars for the S twenty four Ultra Whoo start saving now. That's one hundred dollars more than last year and one hundred dollars more than the iPhone fifteen promacs. All of this is on pre order now. If you order now, you get double storage. It's going to be available on January thirty.
First.
We'll talk more about those phones later. And they tease something a new ring, a Galaxy ring, which is kind of like a wearable fitness ring. So that's really cool. Oh so much fun up there in San Jose. All right, coming up your turn Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. My name is rich Dumiro. You are doing something smart. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to
rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you at Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Couple of things to know.
If you want to follow along with the show notes in real time, just go to rich on tech dot tv slash wiki wiki. That's rich on tech dot tv slash wiki. If I mentioned something you're like, oh wait, what was that? Just go there.
It will be there in real time. Uh.
And also find me on Instagram at rich on Tech. That's where I hang out the most. You can check out my stories and if you want to see more about my travels up to San Jose see some sample pictures from the S twenty four. You can just go to my profile page on Instagram at rich on tech and hit the circle that says I'm guessing.
Let me see what it says.
I think it says Samsung S twenty four and so yep, there it is Samsung. So there you go. Let's go to Terry in Seal Beach. Terry, you're on with Rich.
Hi Rich, How are you?
I am doing fantastic? How are you?
I'm good? I got a question, since you're in the Los Angeles area, what is this weird stuff coming down from the sky today?
You know what? Look, it's called rain. Oh okay, and it seems to happen.
Now.
The good news is you're in Los Angeles. Because you're in Buffalo, it'd be snow. So you know, it's all good.
That's why we pay the price to live here.
Yeah, and that price is not cheap. What can I help you with?
Well, I'm getting ready to go out of the country for a couple of weeks, and obviously I can't use an e SIM on my phone. I have to actually physically swap out SIM th each country I go to. And I was just wondering, is zero a way even if I'm using a foreign SIM that I can still text and receive in sentex.
The folks back here, is this an iPhone or a different type of phone.
No, it's it's a Google pixelill five A five G, which is not you know, I heard your recommendation a long time ago about using a SIMS. Unfortunately I can't use anim on this phone.
Okay, yeah, that might have been before. Is that before
the SIMS started on those Yes? Okay, all right, So you've got so you basically have a carrier here in the US, like a T Mobile, Verizon, whatever it is, and you're going to pop that SIM card out and then you're going to pop in a SIM card for the country that you are in correct, Okay, your text messages from the other SIM will not still get delivered to that phone because they are dependent on that SIM card and the I'm trying to think if there's a solution.
The only solution I can think of is sometimes these carriers have an app like a Verizon Messages or a T Mobile Digits that will deliver the messages digitally to your phone, but that is carrier dependent, and I don't know if you have the SIM card in there or out of there, if that would still work. Like, like, I want to be able to check my my text messages on a different device, and it's really tricky to
be able to do that. So I think it's it's one of those things where once that SIM card is out, it's just that those texts are not going to come through on there.
Let me ask you this. I have a backup phone that I take with me because I learned the hard way. If you drop a phone on the remote island and it cracks, you're out of luck.
But you can.
Still use a backup phone via Wi Fi. So I was just wondering if I bring my backup phone with my US domestic SIM in it will I be able to text by a Wi Fi Oh yeah?
Does that?
Does that phone have Wi Fi calling on it? Oh yeah, yeah, turn on the wife. So here's what you do. Turn on the Wi Fi call, put the take the sim out, put it in that phone. It will activate. You know, usually it's pretty automatic. I could just switches over if you If you pop the simmon there, it will activate. Once that's activated, your old phone will have no service, you know. Now you can use that on your trip.
But this old phone, this other phone, you will turn on Wi Fi calling and then once you're over in the other country, just make sure your roaming is off and it as long as this carrier supports Wi Fi calling, your text will come through and your phone calls will come through on Wi Fi calling. Now here's the thing. I learned this actually from a friend when I was in Japan because I had my phone off and I was like, oh, yeah, I've got my I don't want
to use my US carrier. He's like, dude, He's like, why don't you just turn on your Wi Fi calling. I said, well, text messages won't come through. He goes, yeah, they will, And sure enough, they came through as soon as I activated that Wi Fi calling on that but kept the roaming off. So I want to report back though, Terry, when you get back. You got it all right, good luck, have fun. And it sounds like a nice place you're going to.
If it's a it's called Fiji.
Oh okay, well, enjoy Fiji.
It's actually even warmer than southern California right now.
I've had water from there and it's it's pretty tasty, so I imagine the whole island is even better. Thanks for the call today, triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
You know, the Fiji water is so good.
Even my kids, My kids are nine to twelve, and even they know the quality of Fiji water. When they're in the store and I'm like, look, you can pick out any water bottle you want, They're like, Dad, we want Fiji. I'm like, what kind of kids am I raising that they're drinking Fiji water. When I was a kid, I drank out of the hose right and it was cold and delicious, And you know what Fiji water is very is very similar.
I guess.
You know you find things at cs. I'm gonna give you a recommendation of a product that I really found there and I've been using ever since. It's called the Gator Grip. This thing is so simple, it's so easy. It's literally a almost like a clothes pin for your phone, and it has a very simple functionality. You put this thing on your phone and you can now prop up your phone so you can watch videos on it. It's like fifteen bucks rich on Tech dot tv slash Shop
if you want the link to that. I love when I find little things like this did.
I actually use?
All right, coming up, we are going to talk to Ray Wong about Yes twenty four from Samsung.
You're listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one. We are on location in San Jose, California, where Samsung held their Galaxy Unpacked event. This is where they unveiled the S twenty four lineup in the audience along with myself, Ray Wong, tech reviewer at Inverse dot com.
Ray, thanks so much for joining me.
Thanks for having me Rich.
All right, so you've been following Samsung for a long time. You know we've got these new phones. This was all about AI. Is that a buzzword or is it actually.
Happening on these devices?
It's the biggest buzzword, not just on Samsling devices but across consumer tech. And honestly, I think the features are very useful and compelling this year.
So first off, the event, what did you think of the actual event?
It was at the SAP Center in San Jose.
They bring in people from all over the world, but it was just focused on the phones, with one little tease.
For a new wearable ring.
Yeah.
Usually Samsung's past Unpacked events are full of theatrics, and you know their spectacles, and you come here for the kind of like big showy kind of tricks.
But honestly, this year.
It it did seem like a little subdued, a little more tame, got Mister Beast kind of showing up virtually, and then Pokemone showed up in person.
So I guess those are two of their spot guests.
Now, these phones live translate a lot of translation features, so this live translate feature, They've got this interpreter feature where you can talk to someone and kind of see things on screen for each language. And then with text messages, they've got chat assist, which translates your text messages into a bunch of different languages.
So with this phone, you.
Can almost communicate with someone else speaking a different language without knowing that language correct.
Basically, somebody calls you, and if they're speaking a different language, you can select their language and you can speak back, and it'll automatically translate your voice into another language and vice versa. Apparently also works on a PAYFA or a landline. From what they said, I tried the feature out yesterday.
It seems pretty pretty cool, pretty useful. Probably useful for like if you're calling a restaurant and they're speaking a different language, or you're in a different country you're traveling. Like I said earlier, I think there's a lot of there's a lot of utility and the Galaxy Ai features. A lot of past sam sum features have been like pretty gimmicky. They'll have to like throw everything at the
wall and hope something sticks. It's usually a feature that you tried once and then never remember that exists again. With these Galaxy Ai features, Samsung has somehow like become more thoughtful. There are features that I think a lot of users will actually use on the daily And I actually found myself saying, Wow, that's actually pretty cool, like over and over after every single one of my like AI demos.
A couple other features, this voice to text, so this is the future that's been on the Pixel. I find it very handy as a journalist to be able to just transcribe anything that I'm hearing. So now that that's coming to Samsung, do you think people will find use in that the average person that's not a journalist.
One hundred percent?
You know, as a journalist myself, I use that recorder app on Pixel all the time. It's great for transcribing like long interviews. Pixel phones are pretty limited in terms of like sales, and I think that's just just having this feature on a device that is sold in more in more numbers is going to expand the utility of it.
Honestly, I think that Samsung actually goes.
A little further.
There's a way to translate the trend inscriptions after the fact, so they kind of go above Google a little bit, and I think I'm gonna be very excited to try that out, especially when I'm interviewing people.
We speak in foreign languages all right.
Now.
One of the biggest features is this circle to search, which I think this is pretty incredible. I think this is really probably one of the best uses of Google I've ever seen. And we've had lens in the past, but this is a feature that allows you to search anything on your screen, or just circle anything on your screen or scribble on it and it will search Google for that. Tell me about your thoughts on this feature and trying it out.
Like I said, this is going to be a feature.
I think everyone's going to find some kind of utility out of basically you just find an image, find some texts, find a video. You have to pause a video for but then you basically hold down the home button and then you circle the item and then it a little car pops up from the bottom and it shows you what it's discovered.
I tried out on a pair of sneakers.
That I have yesterday and it was able to find my limited edition Nike's.
Was genuinely impressed.
It is easy to use, it was fast, and I think it's gonna give a boost to like shopping. People are gonna find things in sid of like let's say videos, and then just just have a quick link.
To buy it.
Also, this is a big differentiator between iPhone and Android, Like, this is a feature that you can only get on Android. I think it's only going to be available to be done on Android. The way it's kind of, you know, taking over the whole screen. So do you think that will get people interested in Android?
Man, that's a tough question.
I think there's just so much stickiness to iPhone and iOS. You know, there's so many great Google apps out there on Android. But people who buy and use iPhones, they're willing to like kind of like work around that and open apps, you know, do a couple of more extra taps. So I don't think iPhone switchers or I don't think iPhone users will switch to Android just because of this singular feature unless you're like searching.
A lot all day all the time.
But I think it will make Android a more compellent, more compelling platform.
The AI features on this it's a lot of the stuff that we've seen on the Pixel with regards to photo editing. So you can delete items, you can regenerate backgrounds, you can make items bigger in your photos. Everything gets this special AI water mark, which I thought was interesting too. So what do you make of these AI photo editing features?
There's some that are pretty practical, some that are pretty gimmicky. I think the object eraser and like the that kind of like magic eraser like features a little bit gimmicky. I don't really like tampering with my images too much, Like I have no intention of like really like lifting a person that's flying in the air and like moving them like a little bit higher in the photo, or like adding and generating some kind of fil for like
you know, a background or a foreground. I think the the features that I'm most excited for are like when it pertains to the camera or like instance, low mo where you can turn a regular video into a slow motion video by adding by using AI to like add extra frames. It's super smooth, it looks really great. I think that one's really cool. And the ones that are the features are the AI features are a little less sexy, honestly,
I think will connect more with users. Features like being able to remove a reflection, remove a shadow that's maybe like cast over your face, Like we've all held selfie, we've all held our phones in front of like the sun, and you know, you get that shadow on your face, and just being able to automatically remove that shadow off your face is.
Like pretty cool.
It's easy to see these features in a demo and think, oh, yeah, it works.
Of course it works right like it's in a controlled environment.
But being able to actually try it out myself with my own like pictures and see that it works really well, that really like surprised me.
The ring.
They had a big surprise at the end where they mentioned this Galaxy ring.
It's a wearable. It looks like the Aura ring.
No details though, So do you think we have room for another wearable? Do you think this is something that people are looking to put on their finger.
Well, Rich, I'm wearing an Uher ring right now, and I've been wearing one for many years before this, before it even existed, I wore another one. There's definitely room for more wearables.
You know.
I'm not wearing an Apple watch right now or any kind of smart watch, mainly because I like wearing a regular, classic mechanical watch.
But I also don't want to.
Lose that functionality being able to track my heart rate, you know, get like stress level tracking, sleep tracking. As somebody who's been wearing a smart ring for like many years, like I want to say, like four or five years, It's like a big finally for Samsung. I'm surprised it took them so long to like as Againta's category.
Any other takeaways from this experience at Samsung Galaxy Unpacked twenty twenty four.
Yeah, I think this is the beginning of a new trend for smartphones. You know, we've kind of peaked, you know, phones have kind of peaked in terms of like hardware design, in terms of like software design, and AI is kind of like new way to kind.
Of give it a second act.
I was a little skeptical about it when Google announced the as system with bard features and AI features of their own on the Pixel eight series, But I think I'm more convinced now now that Samsung has done it. They've done it in a very thoughtful way, a very functional and very practical way. Even even a company like Apple is gonna have to launch your own like generative AI features on the iPhone sooner or later because you
can only rely on hardware for so long. I expect to see a lot of AI features roll out into every phone basically in the next twelve months and beyond all.
Right, Ray Wang, tech reviewer at Inverse dot com.
How can folks follow you online.
You can find me on x dot com.
I'm at ray WANGI ri yw n g Y and if you want to follow me on Instagram, it's sour Lemons.
All right, thanks so much for joining me today.
All right, thank you for having me.
All Right, more rich on Tech coming your way. Give me a call if you have a question about technology. Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you talking technology. Not sure if you're listening or if you've noticed a theme. If you're listening live on the radio, we're doing an all nineties theme today, some of my favorite nineties songs. It all stems from my peloton ride.
This morning.
I took a nineties ride and I was like, wow, I forgot this music existed and I really like it.
And so there you go. I hope you enjoy it.
Triple eight rich one on one is the phone number eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. And just to put a cap on this whole Samsung stuff, the AI features that I was talking about will come to older devices. So if you have this is my advice. If you have a Samsung Galaxy S twenty two or earlier, this S twenty four model is a great update. If you have an S twenty three, you don't really need to upgrade. The AI feature will come to your phone
in the first half of twenty twenty four. S twenty three, S twenty three plus S twenty three Ultra, S twenty three f E, the Galaxy Z Fold five, the Z Flip five, and the Galaxy Tab S nine series are all getting the Galaxy AI features in the first half of twenty twenty four. It's also coming the circle to search feature I was talking about that I love. That's coming to the Pixel eight Pixel eight Pro as well on January thirty first, and I'm assuming other phones later.
Let's go to Shar in the Colorado Springs Shar you're on with rich Heller.
Rich My first of all, I apologize that my thought is I'm probably not going to be giving you the information in the exact order that you need, but I will certainly do my best here. This is what has transpired. I had an old Apple iPhone and I subsequently purchased Apple iPhone fourteen pro right, and I was going through a provider Total by Verizon, and I contacted their customer service number and you know, asked that they switched the number that I had associated with the old phone to
the new phone. Now, mind you, the old phone had a physical sim. The new phone has an e sim. So anyway, the individual claimed that they had transferred the number. Well, come to find out that that service I guess ended on my old phone, like any a day or so after that. So anyway, the person told me, well, the new number should be activated on the new phone, you know, just activate the service on the new phone and you'll be good to go. Well, I tried that and it
didn't work. And so subsequently what ended up happening was I no longer had a phone number associated with the old phone, didn't have service with the old phone, and now with the new phone there was I had activated service there, but it has not been associated with that phone.
Okay, so how can I help? What's what's the problem?
So my question is what do I need to do in order to activate service on that phone when I've already purchased the service.
So you don't have a phone at this point, you don't have a phone number on this phone?
Correct? They told me that they had transferred the old phone number to the new phone, and that hasn't happened because they had been telling me, well, send us a text message to verify. Well, I can, because it doesn't have service.
Okay.
So the new phones you've got, You've got both phones in your possession, and the new phone does not have service, and neither does the old phone.
Correct.
Okay, So this number, this is what's called porting, and this number is stuck in like you know, fantasy land, somewhere out there. It's in the clouds right now? Is it the same phone number that you're trying to get?
Okay? So what you need to do? And you're sure?
Yeah, it's a iPhone, of course it works with this. So how many people have you talked to at total by Verizon?
Oh? I probably spoke about fifteen different people.
Oh, Mike, fifteen different people.
It's insane.
Well, that is insane. Okay.
So I will tell you when I had this issue and my phone went dead and I was freaking out because my phone number was in La La land somewhere stuck between two phones. The person literally was going around in circles asking me for all this information, this and that and none of it worked right. And I kept calling back until I got someone that literally did this process in thirty seconds. They knew what they were doing and it worked properly. Okay, I think you either need
to escalate this to the next person. I know Total by Verizon is sort of a prepaid system. Can you go into a Verizon store with that service to help to get customer service or know?
Is this all online?
Well my thought is I think I'm going to be forced to do that. I mean, I contacted Verizon business.
No, they wouldn't they wouldn't do it. It's this Total. Yeah, Total by Verizon is a prepaid service. Usually when you go with a prepaid or Envy and oh, you know, you're definitely you should be getting the quality of service you expect.
Sometimes that doesn't happen.
So Charp number one, I want you to stay on hold and give your number to UH to Kim and I will I know people at at Total and I will see if I can get some help on the back end here. I appreciate it because this shouldn't be happening. You know, this is I love when people save money. And clearly you've made a decision that you can use this service and it's good for it fits you and it works exactly. But you shouldn't have to be stranded
without a phone number for so long. So okay, what I think you should do is, when you get off the phone with me, call Total one more time, and you have to be very clear about your question to the customer service agent number one, say I'd like to get this escalated to a supervisor. And you say, I tried transferring my phone my phone number from one phone to the other, and it has not arrived on my
new phone. I need someone to go in and make sure that this is all properly provisioned so that my phone gets the number on it.
And that's all you do.
You're doing a You're not even porting the number really, because are you going from total to Total?
Yes?
Yeah, so you're just literally switching devices. So say I switch devices and my new device the phone number has not showed up on there yet, and you say, I just need to get this phone number activated on the new device. You basically give them the e SIM there's like a code on the phone.
And that's the other what they keep asking me for. An I M the yes yes, and the I am there isn't an I M the I there is associated with the thought there is.
It's the I M I two.
Okay. So the two things you need to give them are the IME I two and perhaps the E I D. Those are the two pieces of information if you give them the regular I AM I that is for you said, this is an iPhone fourteen correct pro pro And I'm trying to remember if they went on SIM with a fourteen I can't it is.
It is okay.
When I spoke to the individual's business with Verizon, he said that it was SIM period.
Okay, So iPhone fourteen pro only has an SIM, So just give them the uh either I am I should actually work with this one. But but give them the I M E I two. That's the one that is the is the dedicated SIM and that should work. So uh bashar, I'm gonna put you on hold, give Kim your info and phone number, and I will see what I can do. But I want to follow up on this and make sure because this should not be happening.
I appreciate that. I mean, it's been exasperating. And then that's the other thing they would tell me one moment we are going to escalate this to a supervisor, and then they would keep me on the line for fifteen twenty minutes and then tell me we're going to escalate it to corporate.
And I knew it was no and this this isn't Look, this is not an escalation. It's activating a phone. It's simple. It takes literally thirty seconds when it works. So clearly someone needs to train these people to understand what you're trying to do. But the words I'm telling you, you're just switching devices. It's just a device swap and you're going from a physical sim to an e SIM. Very
very simple procedure. It should not be a problem. Thanks for the call sharer in Colorado Springs eighty eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two, four to one zero one. Speaking of Verizon, they're raising prices. I'll tell you about that and the Apple Vision pro coming up. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology. This is the show where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I
answer your tech questions. Once again. My name is Rich DeMuro. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on tech. You can find me on x formerly, Twitter, Instagram, and of course Facebook.
Facebook. We've got a.
Lively community on there. Let's see about eight hundred and sixty thousand of you dealing with my sometimes just silly stuff. Like last night, I'm complaining I couldn't find anything to watch on all the streaming apps I had, and I got frustrated, so I said, life was so much easier with a list of DVR recordings. Hopping between a dozen different streaming apps searching for something to watch is really
getting old. Yeah, I mean I subscribe to all these apps, and we sit there, we order the pizza, We're sitting in front of the TV. We got everything ready to go, and we can't find something to watch. We start a movie fifteen minutes and we're like.
Where's this going? You got to stop it?
And then we went to another movie and then we fall asleep. So that's how it works in the DeMuro household. Let's go to Gina. Gina in Venice. You're on with Rich.
Hi, good afternoon, Rich. Hello, Hey, all I can think.
About is that song?
Do you know?
Do you know the way to Sam Jose?
When I talk about San Jose. Yes, I don't know that song, but I will listen to it by Dion Warwick. Okay, do you know the way to San Jose? All right, I love it nineteen sixty eight. I'll ask Bobo if he can find it on our system. The restaurants to go to by the way and San Jose is called Original Jo's.
And I yeah, it was great. I had a great time there. All right. What can I help you with, Gina.
So I'm wondering. I'm an Apple person, I have across the the all platforms, and I'm wondering if there's a way to think applications that I have like to sink Gmail across all applications. So when I I've read it a message or email and on my iPhone and delete it, it's all also deleted on my Mac or my.
iPad or whatever.
Yes. Yes, So there's a couple of ways you can do this.
If you download, like specifically for Gmail, if you download the Gmail app, you can install that on your various devices. And if you delete a message on one device, whether it's the web, whether it's the iPhone, whether it's the iPad, it will delete on all the other devices as well. If you're using the Apple Mail app, as long as you set up the email using kind of like their flow, which if you haven't done this in a while, like if you set it up a long time ago, you
might have. You might have set it up as what's called pop three. And if you're setting up as pop three, that means that the email is kind of downloaded to your device and everything happens locally.
So you want to set it up as what's.
Called imap im ap, and when you make a change there, it is reflected on the server, which means it'll be reflected anywhere else. So if it's not deleting, like let's say you've got the mail app on your phone, you delete an email from Gmail and it doesn't delete, then that means I would go in. I would delete my entire email account from the mail app and set it up fresh, and your email will be safe because it's
it's going to be on the server from Gmail. Yes, yeah, I think the Gmail app is the easiest way to go. That's what I use because it does work across everything perfect and I.
Learned stuff And I have one te quick question famous last words on this show, Gina, I know when you click the box trust this device, yes, does it?
Yes?
You should only click that box when you are attaching the device a trust the device to your computer or like, if you see that message when you are plugging into like an outlet at the airport, run as far as you can, because that is why they put that there. That is only for your phone to your computer, and that is because it means that you can transfer data between those two things. If you see that message anywhere else, if you're at a library, public computer, you do not
want to do that. You don't want to trust that device. Your device can still charge off of that computer or that outlet, but it will not send data. So trust this device is Take that very seriously when you see it. That's there for a reason.
All right, Thank you so much. Rit I really appreciate your program and all the information you provide.
Well, Gina, I appreciate you listening. You are the best part of the show. Thanks so much. Debobo, do you find the song? We can't find the song? Okay, well we're going to have to let's go to Let's go to Okay, yeah, fine on YouTube.
That's fine.
Let's go to John and Temecula. John, you're on with Rich, Hey.
Rich, question, I just purchased a Samsung A fifteen to five G. Okay, I know it's ain song. We wife and I both just use phones, you know, from basic phone texting whatever.
Sure the A is there is there sort of budget series phones that are typically at a lower price.
Yeah, definitely. And we had the A thirty two to five g's prior.
Yeah, which is a great phone. That's the A lineup is great. This is I think this is actually like the world's top selling phone. But okay, keep going.
Yeah.
So so anyways, we live in a remote area and we are service provider's T Mobile, and we've been using for about seven years the T Mobile four G cell.
Spot Okay, right, the like the in house thing.
Yes, okay, So, and we.
Had the I've had the LG phones, we had A twelve phones, and now this is the first phone that won't connect to that cell spot. Okay, We've I've been on the phone for at least a couple hours with T Mobile people and they couldn't help me. So I'm kind of just thinking I'm going to be stuck with Wi Fi calling.
I was gonna say, so, so it sounds so okay, So you don't have any T Mobile service at all at the house.
Correct, zero, even with the old phones.
Correct.
Okay, But you were using this, uh, this range extender that you plug into your Internet and it puts out a signal that a four G signal that the phone recognizes and then uses that to make calls.
Yeah, basically anybody that walks in the house. Oh yeah, the mobile will now have service.
Okay. And this phone, so does this phone not have four G service at all? Support four G?
I don't know. That's a good question.
Okay.
So usually in the settings, if you go into the settings on your phone, I want you to try something. Go into settings on your phone and under connections it'll say, let's see mobile networks, and you can my on my phone it says allow five G service and allow two G service. So if I turn off allow five G service, see if your phone defaults to four G.
So mine just went back down to four G.
Okay, So go into connections, you said.
Yeah, So it's settings connections and then mobile networks and you see where it says allow five G service.
There, yeah, turn that off. Okay, and now does your phone show lt E up at the top.
No, it says allowed two G.
Okay, leave that on. Okay, but just turn off the five G one I did, and does it come up lt E No? Okay?
Interesting, So I wonder if this phone I find it hard to believe this phone would not have a four G antenna inside. You might want to give it a second to see if it picks up that signal.
So what what has happened with this phone? Which is kind of crazy? If I restart the phone, excuse me, it'll connect with the cell spot for maybe at the most it's been like seven or eight minutes, okay, and then it disconnects.
Okay.
Well, this phone does support four G, so it could be okay. Well, the bottom line is, John, honestly, the world has moved to Wi Fi calling, so I see no reason. If you can turn on Wi Fi calling on this phone and it works in your house, you're going to get your phone calls and you're gonna get your messages the same way. Now for other people that come in, if their phone still work with this little
you know, mobile extender that you have, that's fine. But I think the bottom line is that a this phone should work because I'm looking at the specs and it does have four G service, so it should work with that extender. Sometimes you have to register the phone with the extender for it to work. Since you're telling me other people have been able to come into your house and use it, that's interesting because typically you have to register the phones with this extender for it to work,
as far as I've experienced in the past. But I think if you're fine with the Wi Fi calling and it works, toggle that on. You'll be fine. Everything's going to work pretty much the same. Make sure that you set your nine to one one address in the settings when you set up the Wi Fi calling, and this phone should perform pretty similar to the way it would with the extender, if not better, as long as you
have a good signal. But there really shouldn't be any reason why this phone doesn't work with this extender, unless you know, everything is just sort of out of date with this extender and it's just not recognizing it on the new phone. But I would just use Wi Fi calling, John, and when you're out of the house, your phone should work as it typically would on that T Mobile network.
Thanks for the call today out there in Temecula. Verizon I mentioned they are raising prices on some older unlimited plans. Verizon is increasing prices by four dollars a month per line on older plans starting March first. The plans five G Get More, five G Play More, five G Do More, and five G Start. So what do they want you to do? They want you to go to the new unlimited plans Unlimited Plus, Unlimited, Welcome Ultimate Unlimited. Pricing for
the new plans is not changing. But again, if you see this on your bill, which you will see starting March first, that's what it's all about. It's because you're on an older unlimited plan. I would personally do the math, see how much your old plan is, see how much the new unlimited plans are, and switch if the math does not work out. This was reported by c Net. Again, Verizon increasing pricing plans by four dollars a month on
some older unlimited plans starting on March first. If you have a five G Get More, five G Play More, five G Do More, and five G Start, you might see this increase. You'll probably get an email from Verizon explaining that you're getting this new increase. All right, coming up, I'm gonna talk about the uh Apple Vision pro.
I'm gonna give you my experience.
I put this thing on last week and it's quite incredible. It's also quite expensive. I will explain what you need to know about the new headset from Apple eighty eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
This is rich on Tech.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Wow, this song was way ahead of its time. Now they're driving Uber and delivering door Dash the actors. You know, it used to be when you came to LA you got a job as like you know, valet waiter. Now you can just do everything on your own time. It's actually quite incredible. Uh do you know the Way to San Jose by Dion Warwick?
All right, Kim.
You know when Kim gets fired up is when she says to me, like, hey, rich, how the heck did you not know that song?
And I said, I don't know.
You know, there's things that have evaded me in this lifetime, but now I know, and I can't wait to listen to that again.
You're listening to rich on Tech.
My name is rich DeMuro eighty to eight rich one on one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. I want to get into the Apple Vision pro but I got my main man, Micah here from Maine. You got a suggestion on how to get text messages in Fiji.
Yes, I do three or four of them actually, oh mydad. One is Yeah, there are a number of different ways. If you're a T Mobile or a Google Fi customer, you get text messages internationally at no additional charge. So that's a very simple way to do it. If you're not with those two companies, if you have a Google Voice phone number, you can get text messages, send and receive through your Gmail account and that makes it very easy and you just need to have data that way.
You also get data with Google Fi and T Mobile, so you have the data automatically, and if you want to make phone calls, you know, as a travel writer and a travel podcaster, I have an UMA landline at home specifically so that I can put the UMA app on my phone and use data to send and make and receive phone calls from the USA at no additional charge to my regular landline phone number.
Well, it's certainly gotten easier. Sure sounds that way. Thanks for the suggestions, Micah that you know, look, there's so many ways of doing this. I think that at the end of the day, you either have to be set up in advance with some of those things. I think personally, Google Voice has been just incredible, Like I've had my Google Voice number forever because of these reasons. And I know people that travel a lot love Google Fi because
you basically get service everywhere. It's very inexpensive, it's very flexible. And also T Mobile is very good with the international add ons with their plan or I shouldn't even say add on a lot of times, it's just included in there. But I will say in general, international travel has gotten a lot easier, a lot better. And again for most of the modern phones, if you have e SIM, you've got that dual SIM card situation on most of the modern phones. The caller originally did not have the dual
SIM and that's what made it very tricky. But he had an extra phone, so makes it kind of easy. Thanks a lot, Micah in main there. All right, let's talk about the Apple Vision pro. So I had the opportunity to try this on. This is Apple's thirty five hundred dollars augmented reality headset. And so first thing I do, I get into this thing, they scan my face with an iPhone app and that helps them understand the size
of the light seal, and that helps keep the light out. Now, when I put this thing on, I actually had a lot of light bleeding through, and so that actually did not work very well. But the first time I tried it on, it was very There's not a lot of light coming in. So the other thing is the Okay, so I get in there and they immediately start showing me. You put this thing on, and you see the room
that you're in. I was like in a living room that they set up at the Apple headquarters, and immediately it looked like I was just looking at the living room I was in. But of course they trick you and it starts writing in three D the word hello, floating in the middle of your eyesight, and that was really cool, And that's like kind of your like OMG moment with this thing. You're like, this is really cool because I just thought I was sitting in the room
I was in and looking through glasses. No, I'm looking through a camera that is showing me the room. And then you start to kind of move around and all you use with this headset is your fingers and your eyes, so you literally look with your eyes where you want to select on the screen, and then just tap your fingers together, pinch your fingers together, and that selects it. So that alone is just such a breakthrough with this intuitive gesture that you use to browse this thing. And
when I'm talking, it's like Minority Report. It really is, because you just move things around, like if you want to take the window, you kind of pinch the edge, you make it bigger, you make it smaller, you kind of grab the window, move it over to your side of view. You can have a bunch of windows open. You can look around and see those windows just floating
in mid air. It is quite incredible. Then we tried out some movie apps, so we looked at first we looked at some pictures and videos in spatial video, which Apple doesn't call it three D, but it's really just three D. They call it spatial because you remember three D TV's bombed. But looking at pictures and videos in three D is just quite incredible. So you can take pictures and videos on your iPhone in three D and then look at them inside this environment.
Really really cool.
How often are you gonna do that, I don't know, but it's still pretty cool to have it I watched Super Mario World in three D.
It was great.
I mean, it's like being in an Imax theater in your living room because it's just an enormous screen in front of you. You can make it as big as you want or as small as you want. Let's see what else do we do?
Oh?
Then I took a part a F one car in front of me. So they have this giant F one car in three D. I can move it around, I can zoom in, I can pop the wheel off, I can pop all the parts off.
So I just.
Imagined that this could be really useful for teaching as well. Again, thirty five hundred dollars for this. It is incredible, but it is very very expensive. Pre orders are open now. It is in stores February second. Coming up Joanna Stern from The Wall Street Journal and I will talk about our experiences inside the Vision Pro.
Welcome back to rich On Tech.
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at triple eight Rich one oh one. That's eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
The big news this week.
Apple Vision Pro is available for pre order if you can still get one. Joining me now is Joanna Stern, personal tech columnist at the Wall Street Journal.
Thanks for joining me, Joyna, Thanks for having me Rich.
Okay, so you got you went hands on with this thing four times, or I should say head on with this four times.
Heads on, heads on with the face computer four times.
And what do you make of this?
I mean, it's an augmented reality, virtual reality headset. Apple obviously doesn't call it that. They called a spatial computer. But what do you make of this thing?
In general?
Yeah, every time I put this on, I really have two reactions. One, this is the best headset I've ever used. The image quality, the way you navigate this with just your hands, no clunky controllers like we've had with the Oculus. It just feels natural, similar to when we first got that iPhone and it moved away from the clunky smartphones and they had stylustes and it wasn't really that natural to interact with those, And so now feels like Apple's
doing the same thing with the headset. So that's part one of the impression. Part two of the impression is you're wearing a computer on your face and it feels like that right now. You almost can start to see the future of this device. When you put it on that it's going to get smaller and the battery pack is going to disappear, and it is going to feel more like glasses. You just don't know. We just all
don't know when that's going to happen. And right now, as I'm just saying, it's a face computer, You're putting a computer on your face. And yes, it's cool, but it's also big.
It seems to be quite popular at thirty five hundred dollars plus accessories. As I'm scrolling through my social media, I'm seeing a lot of people have ordered this. They're eagerly anticipating it. Is that just par for the course with any new gadget?
I think the big question is who are those people on social media?
Right?
Are they early adopters who have always bought the first Apple thing?
That's my guess.
Are these the people in your life that now you many years later have iPhones and iPads and air pods and Apple Watches? Probably not right. I mean, these are sort of the way these products get mainstream or go mainstream. Is It's just it follows the Apple playbook early first version is not meant for the masses, and certainly with this when we look at thirty five hundred dollars for device which we aren't quite sure what it will do
for us, Well, that's a luxury item. I mean, I'm not saying this is actually like a luxury, beautiful item, but it is a luxury to be able to buy a thirty five hundred dollars phase computer that you're not really sure yet how is going to fit into your life.
Yeah, you said this was incredible, but do you think that this has potential to revamp the way we experience entertainment and also compute Because they call it a spatial computer.
Will I replace my laptop with this?
It seems very clear. Again, I haven't had the chance to test this, and I know you haven't either outside of Apple's walls, but given these demos, they seem to be sort of building a narrative around at least one big use case, and that is entertainment. One of the two of the demos I got to see over the last couple months, we're around the spatial videos and photos again three D. We won't say the bad word, and
that really is remarkable. I mean, it is really cool to be able to take a video on the weekend of your kids in three D and then watch it back in this headset and feel like you're really there with them. Right. It feels a lot more immersive and real. The question is how often are we going to do that?
Right?
How often are we going to want to use these devices to do that? Sure it's good for the business trip you might take when you're not with your kids, But I can see my kids in real life. I'm lucky to be able to do that. Maybe it's when they get older and I can relive those memories. Maybe it's people who have passed away. So I think there are a lot of interesting cultural uses that might evolve here.
But again, it's got to come along. Right. You're going to want to have a device eventually that's easier to put on, sleeker, and maybe you can you don't have to have a big battery pack with it.
What did you make of the everyone's retweeting like this picture of.
Like my ear, your ear?
You know, this bulky headset that's like crunching down on ears. Did you find that this thing was really heavy and or hot on your head?
I have always thought this thing is quite heavy, and I do really think that is going to be the main thing that prevents you from being able to use this for longer periods of time, then you probably want you'd probably want to wear it for a little bit longer, and you might start to feel the weight literally on your head.
I'd be curious to watch an entire movie in this thing, because it's something I have not been able to do in another headset. And also on the plane, they all they always show this, you know, this picture of someone watching on the plane. Do you think you would use this on an airplane or do you think it'll get a lot of use on a plane?
I do, I definitely think, you know. I like I bring my iPad typically on longer flights. It's it's sort of a travel device for me. I don't use an iPad as much on my day to day activities, but I could see this sort of replacing the iPad for watching on longer flights. The issue, then, I think, also becomes like this a very solo experience, so you can't really share with somebody else. You don't really see what's going on around you. I mean, there are ways to
obviously control that. Using the dial on the device, you can dial in how much you see around you. But I've sat next to people on airplanes wearing VR headsets and other types of glasses, and I mean they look nerdy and they're fine with that.
What were you most impressed with? What are you you know? What do you think is the best aspect of this device?
At launch?
I always go back to how easy it is to navigate around. I think one of the things that Apple had to overcome here is making this a device that's easy for anyone to sort of use. The controllers on these previous devices, you've really felt like they're clunky. They kind of get away, get in between that experience. So I think that's one thing that is going to help with moving this into the future. I think the second really is the focus Apples putting on the real world.
This is not about the so called metaverse where you get out of the real world and you're surrounded in all digital objects and you've gone to outer space or wherever you've gone. You can do some of that in here, but they're putting the real focus on being able to see people and things around you. As soon as you put on the headsetting rich you know, you put it on,
you see the menu, and you see your surroundings. If I had it on right now, I would be seeing you and I would see the menu in front of me. And so that seems like a really big difference, and again also really showing where Apple, I think is wants to go with this in the future, which is not a device to be alone in your home, but a device that you can wear out and about and see digital information and not just be staring down at your phone.
What did you make of the eyesight, because they in my demo, it was kind of the surprise at the end where this person looks up from their computer or whatever they were doing and they've got these digital eyes on the screen.
It was it was a little weird, especially when they blink.
They said, see you can see me blinking, and then you know, they took a picture all these little things, which is nice to have, but it's still a little odd.
It's odd, for sure. I think that really is I think about making sure that people feel like there's that privacy component here that they know, oh, you're looking at me versus you're looking at something else. I mean, for your listeners, just to describe this, I mean, it sort of makes it look like a pair of ski goggles, right, so it's not just a plain piece of plastic in
front of your face, which it is. But what Apple's done is put a screen in front of the headset that mimics what your eyes look like, so it looks like the person is looking at you, and that is to make it seem like you're just wearing glasses and you're naturally talking to somebody. But yeah, it didn't also work that well, Like it looked like like to your point, it was like I'm blinking and I was like are you?
And it looks quite delayed. And I also asked him to take it off to make sure he actually had eyes because I couldn't. It was like, do you have the real lize? Like, what do your real eyes look like? I'm interested to see what it looks like on me. In our demos, we didn't see really quite yet any killer apps. And I don't actually want to say that there's going to be some killer app for this, but we didn't see a ton yet of third party apps.
What are the developers creating for this headset? And we know that that was such a key to the iPhone and the iPad is these developers and software makers coming along and saying I can build this really cool thing with this, something you couldn't do with the stock apps that Apple provides. And so I think there's some big questions about what are these developers making. Once this is out, we'll have a better sense. And is there incentive for
them to want to make things here? I mean, this is sure Apple's going to sell a lot of these to early adopters right now, but this is not a mainstream product, and so does that make developers not want to sort of invest in it right now?
All right?
Joanna Stern, personal tech columnist at The Wall Street, Thanks so much for joining me today.
How can folks follow you online?
They I'm at Juanna Stern everywhere, X, Threads, Instagram, I don't know Blue Sky, don't use it really much. Masted on all of them. Yeah, you've listened them all.
All right, sounds like it's pretty easy. Thanks so much for joining me today.
More rich on Tech coming up after this eighty eight rich one On one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight. Rich one On one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Let's go to.
Uh Gladden in Beachy there. Hey, yeah, welcome to the show.
Walk out to the car here.
Hey, look, my question was I was listening a couple of weeks ago. You're telling everybody that's do you have Spectrum cable and like a Samsung TV or whatever smart TV that Disney Plus is taking free subscriptions.
Well, I went to Disney Plus either on my phone or I did it on the TV screen, and it's not all the information email that such.
I'm then and ask you to ask you for your a credit card number.
Now I stopped there. Are they going to charge me later on or just just a security background check?
Good question.
So this is you're talking about the free deal if you have Spectrum TV with the Select plans. So if this is if you have traditional cable TV from Spectrum and you're on the Select plan. They announced that Disney Plus is now included the Disney Plus Basic, which is basically their Disney Plus with ads. It's about eight dollars a month value and you can get this for free.
And I posted this to my Instagram, my Twitter, and my Facebook, and a lot of people took advantage of it and a lot of people said, yes, this works just fine.
So Gladden.
The main thing you need to know is that you have to activate it first through Spectrum.
What does that mean?
You have to go to Spectrum dot com slash Disney Plus. That's where you have to activate it first, and then you sign in with the Disney account, so it will all the instructions are there, but it will lead you through the process. I think it sounds like you went to Disney Plus first, and of course it just looks like you're signing up as a regular person, so you have to go through Spectrum first. That will give Disney Plus the signal that hey, this person is a Spectrum customer,
give this to them for free. Now I have not done this personally, so I don't know if once you get to that Disney Plus sign up area, if they do ask for a credit card for like a background thing, like, you know, if they just want to keep it on file in case you cancel your spectrum. But the way I see it on their website, it says if you cancel your Spectrum, you will lose access to Disney Plus basics. So doesn't sound like they require a credit card or
they'll fall back to charging you. It just you have you lost access. That's the way I see it. So start at Spectrum dot dot com slash Disney Plus and then follow the steps there. Sign in with your Spectrum account, move over to the Disney account and then get it through there.
But good question.
And if you have Spectrum TV on that select plan, absolutely get this for free.
Why not?
And we're paying so much for these services, get something for free. Thanks for the call today, Gladden and glad to have you on. Marshall and Resita. You're on with Rich Yeah, Hey, how's it going.
Hanging in there?
I hope you doing on?
I twitched over from that note twenty Ultra I had that, you saw me and Amazon Press. I have a twenty four. I'm sorry I had no twenty Now we've got the twenty three. But you know that doesn't have expandable memory. I got a five twelve memory when I bought the phone, so they doubled your memory.
Yeah, they're doing the same thing right now for the S twenty four buyers. If you get the two fifty six, you get the five twelve, you get the five twelve, you get the one terabyte.
So it's a pretty good deal.
Yeah, but tell them, whoever you talk to the Jamsung, tell them to put the expandable memory back in, because they did this back in the five or sixth senteries.
And I don't know if you remember, Oh yeah, Marshall.
They put it back in on the seven or something like that because people complained, yep, and.
Then they took it away.
Yeah.
But here's the thing. People love the expandable memory. But these phones are getting to the place where they have they're getting the carrier or the phone makers want no ports whatsoever. So on the Samsung, I'm actually still I'm surprised at the latest Samsung still has a SD card slot.
But anyway, keep going.
I need a big suggestionment from your part. I want a tangible thing. I could put it, take it like, you know, because if I put the micro c car once I filled it up, you know, I could take it out and put a fresh one in, but take it with me and then whatever I want to do with that card. I don't want to put myself up in a cloud. I don't want to put it onto
a laptop. And like, I want something I could take and put into the you know, plug into the phone, download all the stuff from you know, the pictures and videos hurrna. I have put it into something tangible that I can put, you know, carry around with me because it's got five twelve, five hundred and twelve memory on it, so it probably needs to be considered something large to you know, you know, not physical large, but like you know, data large.
Well, the good news is, look, the good news says with these phones with the USBC, you could plug any drive into them. Just get a hard drive if you want to do it that way, that's the cheapest. If you want something small, get a flash drive and the uh. The phone actually has an app built in called my
Let's see what it's called here files, my files. So if you go into the my files app, if you plug in a hard drive or a flash drive, it's going to show up under storage and you could just go ahead and copy and paste all the stuff that you want from your phone into that drive. And I'm sure there's some apps that can help you do that as well, but it's built into the phone.
It's very simple to do it that way.
If you don't want to go to the cloud the drives that I recommend, if you want to just get a regular hard drive. Just go on Amazon search you know hard drive Western Digital and you can get like a probably a two terabyte drive for like sixty bucks at this point. Make sure it's USBC. But if you want to get a flash drive, PNY has what's called the duo link, and this is a USB three point two C drive USBC, plug it into the bottom. They make it in one twenty eight gigabytes or two fifty six.
One twenty eight gigabytes is twenty bucks. Two fifty six is twenty five dollars. That's that's a pretty good value. If you want to get sand disc. They make some products that are USB flash drive ives under the I expand name and same thing. You can get these things very cheap. Just look for USBC. They're they're kind of dropping the I expand. It looks like so it's they call it the Ultra Dual drive Go and USBC. You
can get it all the way up to a terabyte. Okay, so one terabyte is going to be one hundred and nine to ninety nine. You said your phone, I think you said it was two fifty six or five to twelve thirty six ninety nine for a five hundred and twelve gigabyte drive flash drive. This thing is tiny, it's it'll fit on your keychain, So go ahead, you can get that and sink all of your photos.
Videos, files, whatever you want. Marshall.
And yes, I remember you. We met outside the Amazon Fresh store and I think it was Woodland Hills maybe when it was first opening. You showed me your phone. You said, rich you made me get this. And when people say that to me, I'm always like hesitant.
I'm like, do you like it? And you said yes, thanks for the call today.
Eighty to eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Apparently playing football on Peacock pays off record number of viewers for the streaming only NFL playoff game. Over twenty three million viewers for the Dolphins versus Chiefs wild card game that aired exclusively on Peacock. This got me scratching my head.
I said, wait a second, where's this game? Wait, it's streaming only what And of course we had to watch it because you know, Tata was in the audience watching Kelsey. So my wife is all into the Chiefs all of a sudden, uh, twenty three million viewers, most streamed event ever in US history if you include local TV, twenty seven point six million total viewers.
So wait, it was on local TV too, I'm confused.
No, it wasn't on local TV, so streaming numbers were close to typical NFL viewership. Hey, streaming is happening. Amazon's got it on Thursday Night Football. Now we got it on Peacock. All I have to say is I saw a bunch of emails from Peacock saying all my family members were logging into my account, so I knew something was happening. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome
back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple eight Rich one oh one, that's eight at eight seven, four to two, four to one zero one. Welcome to another hour of the show. You can find me on social media. I'm at rich on Tech on Instagram, Facebook x, all the places online, the website for the show rich on Tech dot tv. You can also watch the segments that I do for television there. Uh and you know, just a lot of
stuff you can do. Listen to the podcast. You can download this show later to listen again. You know, maybe you didn't catch something. You're like what did Rich say about that? Let me listen to all three hours once again. Just search Rich on Tech in your favorite podcasting app or your favorite audio app. I should say what else? Oh, coming up on the show? I know we're thinking super Bowl Sunday? Coming up? When is that?
The eleventh of February?
Is that?
Like, let's see when is super Bowl?
Super Bowl twenty twenty four, Sunday, February eleventh, twenty twenty four. There you go Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Now that's the place to have a super Bowl. I mean you get to Vegas and it's like, you know, when you go to Vegas, somehow you become a different person. And they have marketed this and they have perfected this. You get to Vegas and you are suddenly having a bloody mary at like you know, you don't even look at
the time, you don't even care. You're gambling, you're drinking, you know, you're I don't know, you're You're just a different person and it's fun and I get it. And as soon as you leave Vegas, you're just act to like who you were. And it's like this little place where people can just be as wild as they want.
To be.
Then they get back home and.
They're like, Okay, that TPS report is ready to go, sir. It's just the way it is Vegas, So have fun there. Anyway, we are going to talk TVs, the TV to purchase for your Super Bowl Sunday.
We'll talk budget TVs.
We'll talk TV terms with Caleb Dennison coming up very soon in the show. Katie is in Uh, Katie is in La Century City, Century City. Welcome to the show, Katie. Have you been to Vegas?
Oh? Yes, many times?
And do you agree that.
You become kind of like a little bit more fun, a little bit different, a little bit hang.
Loose, definitely different.
I hear Katie just had some like memories flash in her mind.
Okay, what can I help you with?
Yeah?
Right, First of all, thank you for taking my call on hear very good things about you. And number two, I have a very simple question, so I hope I'm not taking up your time. If we change carriers on our cell phones from one to another, from AT and T to something else, can we keep our phone numbers the way they are?
Yes?
This is called yeah, this is called porting out a phone number, and basically all the cellular all the cellular companies use a system that allows them to grab the phone number from your old account bring it to the new account. Now, how easy that is can sometimes be a little tricky. So the thing you need to know about porting a phone number out number one, do not cancel your old service. That is the number one thing
to know. So you need to have your old service active, and you have to also kind of set up that service for the portout. And with AT and T specifically you can Basically you need a pen, you need your account, You need your account information very perfectly for the new carrier to be able to grab that phone number. And with AT and T you need to get a special pin code because phone numbers are our lives, and so you don't want to just be able to have a
stranger take your phone number from you. And so these cellular carriers have gotten pretty like strict about porting out. They want to let you do it easily, but they also want to make sure you are who you say you are, and so you basically need to get a pin number with AT and T so that you can give that special pin number to the new provider and get them and that way they can grab that phone number.
So on AT and T you can dial from your phone star Port p O R T and you can get a number transfer pin sent to you via your text message. You'll need your account passcode to generate that, so just keep in mind you will need some of
that information. If you have the AT and T app, you can go into the people and Permissions and it says transfer port transfer phone number and you have to request a PIN there and it will display on the screen and that PIN number is what's going to get that new carrier the ability to grab your phone number. So it's you know, porting is not tough, but you do need to have all of your information in a line and also some of these code numbers before you
can allow that port to happen. And that's for a reason because again people do these things where they steal your number and then they can get your codes for logging into various websites, you know, the two factor authentication codes and or they you know, there's a lot they can do a lot of damage they can do. So that is the way to do it, Katie, and just yeah, make sure you don't and by the way, once you once that number is transferred to the new service, it's
automatically canceled at your old provider. So once that number is pulled out of your account and you have it with your new service, your old service will be disconnected automatically. There's usually nothing you have to do after that. It should automatically disconnect. Thanks for the call, Katie. I'm glad you heard good things about me. You must have been talking to my family. Google's incognito mode not so private
after all. Google is settling a five billion dollar class action lawsuit accusing it of privacy violations because the incognito warning is not.
Really that clear that.
By the way, yeah, they can still track you when you're using incognito. So here's what you need to know about Incognito mode. Number one. Incognito mode is the private browsing feature that is available on Chrome, but also other browsers have it. They have something similar, but this is specifically on Chrome. So on Chrome, if you go to new Incognito window, it opens up this little window that basically says you can brivee.
Browse privately.
It says people who use this device won't be able to see your activity. However, your downloads, your bookmarks, you're reading, list items also be saved, so Chrome will not save the following information, your browsing history, cookies, and site data information entered informs.
Your activity might still be.
Visible to the websites you visit, your employer or school, and your Internet service provider. So what does this mean. It means a lot of people thought that when they go inside that incognito browser tab, everything is safe, and everything is secure, and everything is invisible to anyone else.
You are not invisible, so you have to remember that.
And so, yes, your employer could see the websites you visit, your school could see the website, the ISPs, and most importantly, Google and the website you're going to can identify you by your IP address and other factors.
So what are they going to do.
They're going to change the warning on this little incognito mode when you go into it and say that website information data could be still be collected by websites and services, including Google.
So just keep that in mind.
If you're at work and you're surfing the web and you go into this incognito, your work can still see what you're doing, the best way to think about it is that what you're doing is not saved by your computer, but it's still saved by or it's still registered by the websites that you're going to. Now, the one thing I would add to this, there is an option on incognito that says block third party cookies.
There's a little.
Toggle right on the main screen when you go into that mode. I would toggle that on. And what that's gonna do is that's gonna keep websites from cross tracking you. So let's just say you use incognito mode to shop for a new ring for your significant other, and you go into this because you don't want to see all those ads follow you around to other websites. Well, that's
a good way of doing it. And if you block third party cookies, those websites will not exchange information with other websites to try to sell you jewelry when you're on different websites. So that's the way to understand it. But just keep in mind that's what's happening. There's an app that I love that I think you should download.
It's called Perplexity. This is a really really cool app and it's basically like an AI app that uses chat, GBT and claude to give you just like information about stuff and it's available for iOS and Android, and what I love about it is not only does it answer questions and like very easy to understand answers that are like very well thought out. Every day they send you a notification with like one kind of like item, so it may say the S and P five hundred hit
a record high. That was a notification yesterday, and when you tap it, it gives you all information about that, like almost like a little history lesson every day, but it's on a different topic and it tells you most importantly the sources. So it says, like, here's why we know this is true. So you know, AI can hallucinate, it can make up stuff. But what Plexity tries to do is it tries to tell you, hey, here's where I got this information from and here's why it's important.
So it's really great. I love it.
I look forward to the little notification I get every day from it.
Again.
It's called Perplexity Peer p l e x it Y. It's available for both iOS and Android. You don't have to use it as your search engine, but also when you ask it a question, it's got this thing called copilot, and it tries to figure out like what you're asking and it will come up with like the question. It's just a really cool use of AI that makes you feel very smart and you can feel like you can
trust most of the answers that it gives you. So I kind of just use it every day for the daily notification, but you can also do searches on there, so if you're in a different city, like when I was in San Jose, I just typed in San Jose and it gave me like a whole history of the city, like a nice brief little history. And when I asked San Jose just now, it said which San Jose are referring to? Costa Rica or California, And it kind of helps you aft your question better to come up with
a great response. And now it just gave me a whole thing about San Jose using all kinds of sources Wikipedia, San Jose website, tripadvisorweather dot com for the weather. And it's just a really cool app. So again, it's called Perplexity AI, available for free. Of course, they have a subscription. You do not need the subscription to use the app. You get some extra features if you do. I'll put a link on the wiki. Rich on tech dot TV
slash Wiki. All right, coming up more of your calls at Triple eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one. Plus we'll talk about more tech news in the world of technology. You are listening to Rich on Tech. Welcome back to Rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you on a nineties weekend. If you're listening on the radio, playing all nineties songs A eight rich one on one eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
Coming up right after this, we are talking to TV reviewer Caleb Dennison. He is going to share his top picks for Super Bowl Sunday. I'm listening. I've told you I'm in the market. Dennis is in Corona, California. Dennis, you're on with Rich Rich. Hello, Dennis, I'm hearing myself. Oh there we go.
Can you hear me?
Yes? Hi.
Hey, So I've been with Verizon for years and I've had on I've been on auto pay, and I didn't really realize it that they've been incrementally increasing my rates. It almost seems on a monthly basis, so T Mobile I can.
Get well, that's why they love having you on autopay, right, Yeah, that's why they That's why they charge ten dollars if you want to not do that.
No doubt, no doubt. So T Mobile will give me the same price for four lines where I can get my ten and eleven years old daughters of phone, which is another question, but I'll call you another vine another time about how to monitor them. But in any event, I'd like to switch. But I have a question regarding so I always buy unlocked phones from eBay. I wait till a couple progressions go and then I can get a good deal on you know, like an eleven for example,
which is what I have. My wife has an se can an unlocked phone on a Verizon network work for T Mobile because I think one's a GSM and one's a C D M A or something like that.
Well that used to be more of the case. Nowadays phones are pretty much universal. So what, well, what phones are we talking about?
Like?
What is it an iPhone?
What?
I also have a physical SIM? Do I still need a physical SIM? Or can these phones utilize digital sim?
Well? Sorry, I didn't catch what kind of phone it was an iPhone eleven?
Okay, iPhone eleven, iPhone eleven let's see if it has an EM sure that has a SIM. Let's see. Uh, let's see iPhone eleven. I got to figure out that supports let's see. Okay, okay, iPhone. Yeah, iPhone eleven has one SIM and one physical SIM. So your iPhone eleven, it should it should have a U, it should have an SIM on it.
So uh.
The simple question is typically phones, especially the iPhone, has been pretty good about covering all bands, so I think you'll be okay.
But it's pretty simple.
Just you can just go to T Mobile and pop in the uh the code from the phone like the I M I, and you can see if it will.
You know if it will work there.
So if you search on on Google, just search T Mobile, I M E I check and it'll bring you to a page that says, uh, you know, check your phone to see if it'll work.
And so yeah, I didn't see anything like that. And then one last question. I have steptrum for my internet and I get about I think I want to say, it's like seventy NBS seventy to eighty, and I'm on a legacy which everybody else gets like two or three hundred or whatever. They brought it back down to fifty dollars to match T Mobile. But the T Mobile hotspot and the house seems to be pretty good. There's a
seventy to two fifty. Would you recommend just going T mobile for everything that the wireless in the house and the phones.
Oh you mean that, you mean the whole the Internet for the house, the T Mobile things WI.
Yeah.
Look, if you get goods, if you get good service from T Mobile, if you're getting seventy eighty down, I mean that's pretty good. I think that the look cable Internet, I think is still slightly better, especially if you have a lot of devices you're doing a lot of gaming stuff like that. But if you're just watching Netflix and and you know, just pretty standard stuff surfing the web,
all that good stuff, I think you'll be fine. But again, just make sure you have a good five g U S signal with T Mobile in your house.
You know that for sure.
You just built a tower at the school and I live.
Oh, then.
They put a tower on their soccer field.
Yeah, I'm sure the school got paid a lot for that too.
Yeah. I would, I would go with it.
I would just keep your other service before you cancel, just to make life easy. In case the T Mobile doesn't work out. But it sounds like, uh, sounds like to me, Dennis, you're going you're going all in on T Mobile. So look, if they've got a cell tower right near your house like that, you're gonna get fantastic coverage, good speeds, and T Mobile versus Verizon out and about. I think that Verizon probably has more coverage in like
especially rural areas, compared to T Mobile. But in my experience, T Mobile the network is really really good. It's very fast, and uh, I think if you're saving all that money getting four lines or the price of two plus the home internet at a discount.
Go for it. Easy, easy easy. Thanks for the call today.
Coming up, Caleb Dennison, we're going to talk top TV picks for Super Bowl Sunday. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you talking technology at Triple eight Rich one O one eighty eight seven four to two four one zero one. Joining me now, Caleb Dennison. He is the senior editor at Digital Trends and a TV reviewer extraordinaire. Caleb, Thanks so much for joining me today.
It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Let's get into the interview because I've got a lot of stuff I want to cover with you. But first off, TV trends you saw at CES.
Well, I got to say the biggest trend that I saw at CES was the bigness of the TVs. I could not believe some of the screen sizes that we saw at the show.
This year.
We're talking about one hundred and ten inch and one hundred and fifteen inch TVs. That one hundred inch barrier has been broken, and so now we're seeing TVs that are the size of projector screens, which called into question why you'd ever get a projector at this point?
Oh?
Interesting, Yeah, So what's the common what's the most common size people are buying at this point?
Well, I think sixty five is probably technically the still the most popular size, but we're seeing a lot more seventy five and especially eighty five inch TV selling, and we tend to see a lot of those bigger screens selling right about now as we head toward the big gang.
Okay, so in terms of TV terms, there's O LAD, Q LEAD, LED, qHD micro led. Oh what what ones of these terms do we need to know.
I think the two that folks need to understand the difference between our Q LEAD and O lead because those are really the ones we see the most. Also Mini LED, which is just a different flavor of Q lead TV.
Right.
The essential difference is that a Q lead TV works a lot like your computer monitor does. There are little LED back lights in the back of the TV and they shine through an LCD panel. And these things now have something called quantum dots, which are these cool little nanoparticles that help make the TV brighter and more colorful. And these TVs are excellent at getting very bright and so they're great for a really bright room. If you watch a lot during the day, you might want to
lean toward a Q lead TV. If they have a drawback, it's that their black levels are not perfectly black. That's where old really excels. O lead uses an organic compound and they don't require a bunch of later, So the OLED TVs are super super thin, thinner than your phone in your pocket. I guarantee you and these things exceed
at doing perfect black levels and really gorgeous colors. And I mentioned the black level thing a lot because contrast is the thing that the eye picks up on the most and O led TVs are just the more the more contrasty TV of the two. The only problem with OLEAD is that they're hard to make, and therefore they are usually a bit more expensive than the Q Lead TVs or many LED TVs you'll see out there.
What about reflection wise, I used to you know, it used to be like the LEDs who were better than the old Eds with reflections.
Is that still the case?
Not so much.
A lot of the O LED TVs these days have really good anti glare treatment on them, and so they're they're fairly good at handling reflections. I think the thing that really helps the TV overpower glare or reflections is its capability of getting super super bright, which again I think if you're going to be watching during the day a lot, and you've got windows with sun coming in and you're not in the mood to draw your curtains or whatever, you probably want to lean toward Mini LED or or q lead TV.
So many LED is sort of like the best flavor of LED.
Huh.
It's the latest hottest flavor of LED TV. They basically shrunk down the back lights to be super small Anybody who's gone out there and bought LED lights these days know how tiny they are and how bright they are, and at working at television they can use more of them for more brightness and more control and they Yeah, generally, when you look at a mini LED TV, you're looking at a more premium picture quality, though these days you don't have to spend a whole lot more to get it.
So what types in general brands, Like, what brands do you like out there? Because I'm seeing a lot of like High Sense getting awards and you know, TCL, what are the brands that you really like?
I'm in love for High Sense and TCL for delivering the best picture quality for the money. They are by far the highest value out there right now. And I know that those are brands that maybe people are still warming up to, but I guarantee you you see them at your Costco and at Amazon and at best Buy now they're everywhere. They've proven to be very reliable, and again, the picture quality that you can get for the money
from these TVs is absolutely splendid. So you know, if you ask me what my top pick for a budget TV is going to be, guaranteed it's going to be a TCL or a High Sense.
Okay, so let's get into some of those picks.
So do you want to give us specific picks for some of these TVs?
Yeah, Actually, I have some model numbers that I think people should be looking out for, Okay, So from High Sense, I would look at, for instance, the U seven pay remember the number seven. That's probably the easiest way to go about it. You can get a sixty five inch High Sense U seven K for about eight hundred dollars
right now. If you're a little bit more picky about picture quality or you just want to get the best TV, you can get the High Sense U eight K is about one thousand dollars or so for the sixty five inch, and these TVs go right up to eighty fi five inches too, So if you want to go really big by this is by far the best way to get a really big screen without just draining your bank account. I also recommend TCL, and again they have a seven and an eight. It's almost like they plan this right.
So with TCL, it's the Q seven again about eight hundred dollars for a sixty five inch, and the QM eight around one thy to eleven hundred dollars for a sixty five inch, So if you want to spend a little bit more, you'll get a lot more picture quality. But those those seven models I think are the best pick for the most amount of people out there.
That's interesting. So both high Sense and TCL are both using the seven and eight. That makes it easy to kind of remember, you know, seven is good, eight is better. What about when it comes to like premium sets.
I am in love with the Samsung S ninety C O LED television and hot tip best Buy has an exclusive model to them called S eighty nine C just like one number away. Don't know why they did that, but it's a little less expensive and it is for all intents and purposes the same od LED television. This thing is just spentacular, absolutely remarkable how good the picture quality is on this thing. And it's one of my top TV picks of the year by far.
Now this is the one that you're talking about. I just looked it up on best Buy and it is on like really sale. So could this is saying it's two thousand bucks sixteen hundred dollars off?
Does that sound right?
Yeah?
You know, when these TVs first come out at the very beginning of the season, and TV season starts around April or May. Usually they are at their loftiest prices. Over time, they tend to come down. We see some
discounts around Black Friday in the holiday shopping season. But right now is probably the best time to buy TV if you're looking to save money because the new models that were just announced at CES, they'll start coming out again in March or April, and so a lot of businesses are trying to clear out the twenty twenty three stock to make room for the twenty twenty four and now is a great time to save a lot of
money on TV. I don't think TV prices are going to get much lower than they are right now.
The trick is you want to buy.
Soon because as stock starts dwindling, Once these things disappear, they're not coming back.
And it's interesting that I didn't realize Samsung was doing O LEDs. I thought they were mostly doing the Q leads.
But that's yeah, yeah, that's a little bit of a shift in strategy from them. We're coming into the third year that Samsung will be making an O leed, and this after crashing O lead for years and years and years, but I think they caved once they realized that consumers really love that O LED. Look if you've ever seen an OLED TV, and you can look at one if you walk into Costco, they'll have one sitting right there,
shining bright and looking gorgeous. Most people understand as soon as they see it that they don't understand what true black really does until you see that contrast on an OLED TV and it's phenomenal.
And also the top of the line iPhone and Samsung phones are O lead and they are incredible displays too.
Yeah.
Absolutely, we carry them around in our pocket, and you know, we've been able to get them in a television for quite some time, but they used to be just prohibitively expensive. Now that OLED's been around for about ten years, they're starting to come down to earth a little more.
All Right, we've got to run in a minute here, But any other picks that you wanted to share, LG also makes.
An outstanding OLED TV.
I would look at the C three if you're having trouble finding that Samsung old that we talked about. And of course if you are a movie buff or a cenophile, Sony is still the best out there.
They make the very best.
TVs in my opinion, though you tend to pay a little bit of a Sony tax to get a Sony TV these.
Days, but it's a Sony and you know, people, look, Sony is the brand that it stood the test of time and they still do make a great product. And these are all fantastic picks. I love them. This is why I love talking to you. You explain TVs simpler than any human being out there. And you know, you go into like a Best Buy or you know, all these places were so just there's so many terms, and there's so many things, and there's so many model numbers, and to just have it broken down in this way
to understand what's the best. What can I get away with? If I like this, it's all perfect. And that's why I have you on the show.
Caleb.
How can folks find you online? How can they find your reviews and what you talk about?
Well, you can find my written reviews at digitaltrends dot com, or if you actually want to see the TVs I'm talking about, you can go to our YouTube channel, Digital Trends on YouTube. I have a ton of videos there, not just explaining the technology, but also talking about the TVs that you will want to buy.
All right, Caleb Dennison, Senior editor at Digital Trends, thanks so much for joining me today. I'll put all your picks on the website rich on Tech dot tv. Coming up, we will share some more of your questions in the feedbag segment. You are listening to rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here closing out the show. This is rich on Tech. We're going to go through a little, uh, kind of a lightning segment with some news items, and I'll get to your feedback segment.
Meta is adding new nighttime nudges for teens on Instagram. So if your teen is on their phone late at night surfing, reels, surf and Instagram, the phone is now going to remind teens that they've been using the app too much and encourage them to close it and get to bed. This is going to happen when teens spend more than ten minutes on Instagram, on reels or direct messages late at night. It will remind teams that it's late and encourage them to close the app. Whether they
do it is up to them. Wall Street Journal says there's a huge cost hidden cost to subscriptions. Americans vastly underestimate how much they spend on subscriptions each month. If you ask them, they say probably about sixty two to ninety six dollars. The actual amount closer to two hundred and seventy three dollars. A lot of people forget to cancel subscriptions and don't realize they're still paying. The best way to get rid of subscriptions and clear out the
subscriptions you have, you get a new card. Once you get a new card, because the old one is not going to charge anymore, that you stop paying for those subscriptions. Interesting, when vision Pro launches, there will not be some prominent apps on board, Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube.
Nope, we're We're not going to be there.
And some of them are even blocking their iPad apps from running on vision Pro, which means those are three big entertainment apps that will not be there. Wirecutter, one of my favorite reviews websites, has some new picks for the best Wi Fi mesh networking systems. They say Euro
six is the best for most people. The Asus Zen Wi Fi ax is the best upgrade pick if you have a really fast Internet plan and if you're want a budget, you want to budget pick the TP link Deco S four provides good coverage but at a lower price.
Once again on the Wirecutter.
Consumer Report says each Facebook user is monitored by thousands of companies. Study by Consumer Reports analyzed Facebook data sharing from seven hundred and nine volunteers. On average, each person's data was sent to Facebook by over two thousand different companies. Some had over seven thousand companies. Wow, data broker named live Ramp appeared in ninety six percent of participants data major retailers like home Depot, Macy's, and Walmart. We're also
in the top one hundred data sharing companies. Keep in mind, friends, these companies. Yes, you love Macy's, you love home Depot, you love Walmart, you love Target, but they are marketing geniuses. Their entire goal is to get you to love them so that you take your paycheck and you deposit it into their account. Little by little, we all do it. You go into Costco. I saw a meme on Instagram. It said I saved three hundred and forty seven dollars at Costco today by not going in for blueberries.
It's so true.
Norton has a new AI tool to help you detect scams. It's called Norton Genie and it uses AI to analyze screenshots. You can pop in a text message, you got, an email, or a social media post. It will scan it and figure out if it is a scam or not. It's available at Genie dot Norton dot com, or you can download the app on iOS and Android. So if you're thinking this might be a scam, it could be and this might help you figure it out. Let's get to
the feedback. Janis says, I'm contacting you for a friend. He was working for his girlfriend's company. His laptop was synced. He has now broken up with her, but his girlfriend has been accessing his laptop his iPhone, reading things, changing things, locking him out of things. He spent hours on the phone and in person with Apple and T Mobile. No one can get her off his phone and laptop. Her
name in login is all over it. Any suggestions the janis, I doubt if Apple and T Mobile have looked into this, that they cannot get this person off the phone or the laptop. Do a factory reset and that will take care of it. Both on the iPhone and on a MacBook or computer. Just look for a factory reset that will wipe everything clean and it will be just fine. Shary says, hey, Rich, I love your show. I need help with a dilemma. I was searching for Laker tickets
on a website. I dozed off holding my phone while searching for two hundred dollars tickets. I was awakened by a text message from my credit card asking if I made a purchase for almost twenty thousand dollars. When I checked my account, it said I got two court side seats for almost ten thousand dollars each. After doing some research, I found that the ticketing website I was looking at saves your credit card info since I'd made previous purchases.
Do you think it's possible I purchased the tickets accidentally in my sleep or do you think I was hacked. I've disputed and I'm waiting a decision. Shary sounds like you're going to the Laker's court side. You just spent a lot of money on that. No, I mean, look, I don't know if you went through the entire flow of this ticketing thing, you know, sleeping. I mean that would be a lot of like steps. Come on, there's either something you're not telling me here or you got
to dispute these. Don't use the tickets because you want to make sure that you can get a refund on those. I know there's no refunds, but that is so wild. Joy says, I use a Google spreadsheet for my financial records. Some people have access to my computers or any way to set up a password or two factor authentication, so only I can open my Google spreadsheet. I love your podcast, Joy Joy. I think when you open up this spreadsheet on your computer, use that incognito mode I was talking about.
That means you can log in and when you exit this tab on your browser, nobody else will be able to get into that browser. Patrick says your show, your podcast is my favorite. Well done, thank you, and Laurel says love your segments on KTLA. I wear the Fitbit Inspire for sleep monitoring while my Apple Watch is on the charger. I accidentally discovered I could set the Fitbit Watch to merge into the Apple Health. This gives me twenty four hour heart monitoring and all of my stuff
in one place. This is a great feature and worth reporting. Keep up the good work. Laurel, keep up the good sleep. If you can believe it, that's gonna do it. For this episode of the show, you can find links to everything I mentioned on my website. Just go to rich on tech dot tv for the show notes. You can find me on social media. I am at rich on tech Next week, let me check the calendar.
What do we got?
Uh?
I don't know.
More stuff. We'll talk about whatever's happening in the tech world. You know I'm gonna bring you good stuff. I will bring it, I promise. Thanks so much for listening. There are so many ways you can spend your time.
I do appreciate you spending it right here with me.
Special thanks to my guests, everyone who makes this show possible, plus most of all you for listening. My name is richdmiro. I will talk to you real soon.