 Coming up on DTNS how to keep your phone screen virus free oppo's hot new phone and watch and There is an afterlife for gadgets and Nicole Lee has been there This is the Daily Tech News for Friday March 6 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood I'm Sarah Lane and I'm the show's producer Roger Chang We are joined today by Nicole Lee senior editor at engadget.com welcome back Nicole Hello, happy to be back. We were just talking about home remedies for getting gum out of your hair We were talking about dog etiquettes all kinds of good stuff at good day internet become a member and get the wider show at patreon.com slash DTNS let's start with a few tech things you should know Microsoft Google Facebook and Twitter have all confirmed that they plan to pay their hourly workers regular wages Whether their services can be used or not the companies have encouraged people to work from home But many hourly workers do jobs like drive shuttles or housekeeping the office or being part of the kitchen staff And those cannot be done remotely Samsung says it will temporarily move some of its smartphone production from South Korea to Vietnam After another of its Korean staff tested positive for the coronavirus at its Gumi factory Which is close to the city of Daegu since last month a total of six workers have tested positive at the factory Samsung does say that operations will resume at the Gumi factory on Saturday. It's not like they're trying to do a big clean sweep It's not not a very long time to be down short form video streaming service Quibi is giving people a 90-day free trial if they sign up for the service before launch day Which is on April 6th the service will cost $4.99 cents per month with ads and 799 with without after the trial Four independent iPhone developers told CNBC that Apple rejected their apps related to the COVID-19 virus outbreak Because they aren't recognized institutions like governments or hospitals One developer claimed an Apple employee told them over the phone that anything related to the virus must be released by an official health Organization or government a source told CNBC that Apple is evaluating the apps related to the coronavirus to prevent The spread of misinformation so they're cracking down a little harder than they might otherwise it sounds like All right, let's talk about something that isn't a virus an Oppo phone Indeed not a virus Oppo announced its find x2 pro smartphone featuring a 120 Hertz 6.7 inch quad HD plus ammo led display Qualcomm snapdragon 865 chipset 12 gigs of LP DDR5 RAM 512 gigabytes of storage an in-display fingerprint reader the find x2 drops the pop-up camera from the original find x But offers a three sensor system on the back with a 48 megapixel main shooter using suit Sony's new I am x 6 8 9 sensor that supports phase detect autofocus and 12-bit raw capture a 5x optical zoom telephoto and a 48 megapixel ultra-wide camera These are nice cameras the phone also supports a 65 watt super Vooc 2.0 flash charging providing a full charge of the 42 60 milliamp battery in just 38 minutes The phone comes in black ceramic or orange vegan leather with a rose gold frame and starts at 6991 or about 1199 euros available in Europe this May Yeah, so they took took out the the fun little pop-up camera But they replaced it with a really crazy good side of of cameras here and sensors And and for a pretty reasonable price. I mean you're talking about a few hundred dollars here for for a great phone It's gonna come to Mexico. It looks like we don't have a date on that But that's the indication so it'll get close to the United States In Alpo is just kind of slowly rolling out around the world really focus on Western Europe right now and Nicole What do you think of this phone? I mean, it's really impressive and you know the Chinese makers have always been kind of at the forefront of that because they kind of Not say copycat, but if they can I guess they're inspired by their competition elsewhere to make these phones and I was I mean the upper pop-up thing was kind of cute But I don't know I always thought it was a little touch on the gimmicky side But this seems like an actual like really sleek look nice looking phone Yeah, I I agree that if you're going to replace that pop-up camera With something better like you know that then I don't think too many people will complain They also oppo itself said they wanted to make it IP68 dust proof and waterproof And they couldn't do that with the pop-up camera. So that's another legitimate reason there as well But this is a this is a nice little phone. Let's talk about their watch Oppo also announced the oppo watch as you might have guessed it would be called it's a 46 millimeter and 41 millimeter Version of a watch the 46 millimeter version features a 1.91 inch OLED screen with 402 by 473 resolution Fitness and sleep tracking music playback heart rate monitoring It doesn't have EKG stuff, but it does have heart rate monitoring water resistant up to 50 meters includes NFC E-SIM cellular connectivity claimed 40 hour battery life on the 46 millimeter one can achieve a 46 percent charge in 15 minutes with the VUK fast charging system It runs a version of Android called color OS watch It does not appear to be based on Android where it's a it's which is an interesting choice Launched in China for a thousand four hundred ninety-nine Yuan. That's about two hundred fifteen dollars Also, the 41 millimeter version has a 1.6 inch screen with 24 hour battery life that one is a Little bit cheaper. I think this this number I've got in here may be incorrect but a premium stainless steel 46 millimeter version cost two thousand four hundred ninety-nine Yuan all three models go up for pre-order March 23rd shipping March 24th Well, I The sort of buzz around this was like wow this looks great and it also looks a lot like an Apple watch Like Right It does seem like that's you know, they're going for something that's pretty comparable The prices are a thousand nine hundred ninety-nine Yuan for the 46 millimeter and a thousand four hundred ninety nine for the 41 millimeter That's stainless steel one still much more expensive 24 ninety nine But yeah for something that looks like an Apple watch. That's a good price Well, that's the thing. I think that's kind of like my overarching question about these like non-Apple watches non-Apple watch watches and Like does it does it really behooved them to look exactly like the Apple watch? It wouldn't like if you were if you were a consumer who didn't want it Who didn't want an Apple watch you wanted something different like with this I don't know. It's just wondering like is this supposed to be it is supposedly like very Deliberately, yeah, yeah an Apple watch clone or if you're an Android person, like do you want something that looks exactly like an Apple watch? I mean, I don't know I Think it's just it's it's kind of like early days of the form factor, you know Like once the iPhone arrived in the world's well a lot of Android phones looked a lot like the iPhone at first You know now we have so many that you know Everyone's trying to do you know pop-up cameras and be different, you know Which is I think speaking to your point Nicole, but I think oppa was sort of like well, you know I mean even my my verse of two I mean no one's gonna think this is an Apple watch, but they all have the pretty much same form factor at least right now Yeah, the negative side is this is just a knockoff without originality the middle range is to say Well, if you don't want to live in the Apple ecosystem, but you like that style Here's an option for you, and I guess the overly positive one Would be this is just the convergence of a good design and and that happens a lot where people start making things that look alike Because that's the design that works the best it also really speaks I think to like the The fact that Android wear is falling out of favor Because you know, this is this is a really nice looking watch, right? It's an Android watch, but it doesn't use Android wear What does that say about Android wear? What does that say about? Yeah, you know, what that's going? It doesn't seem like a good sign So it's it's harder to use Android on a watch without Android wear Theoretically so yeah, right not not a great look for Android wear that oppo didn't choose it The New York Times reports that Clearview AI facial recognition database marketed to law enforcement was also beta tested by people not in law enforcement for personal reasons such as Finding out who was dating their children That is actually an anecdote that the New York Times added in the story Clearview co-founder Juan at ton thought said that the trial Accounts were offered to potential and current investors and other strategic partners Yeah, this happened before the launch of Clearview AI it doesn't it's not clear to me that all those accounts have been ended though And again Clearview AI doesn't freak me out as much as it seems to freak out other people because it's taking public images and Helping you figure out who those people might likely be. Well, it's it's a tool and and tools can be used for ill or good I totally get where Clearview AI trying to drum up money would let potential and current investors And strategic partners like hey, you want to partner with us on this here. We'll let you try it out That's totally normal for most products is to let your investors try them out It's a little weird when you're talking about a product with this much controversy around it Yeah, I mean I think for for all that the flak that Clearview AI gets, you know There there is it an example of you know, somebody dating the children is like what what happened what happened was somebody saw his daughter at the same restaurant, but in you know, who was with somebody that he didn't know But in order to use Clearview AI he had a waiter go take a clandestine photo of that's where it gets weirdest, right? I mean that's bad behavior on on a user's part It doesn't really say anything about the software itself Yeah, because you can do other kinds of reverse image searches Figure it out. So yeah, I guess that's my point is Clearview AI Just need some safeguards not to be used by creepy people Whether they're in law enforcement or not creepy uses creepy people abuses, you know, that's all that's the thing with facial recognition It's so new that we were not comfortable with The rules about how it should and should not be used. Well, it's kind of like, you know, someone saying well You shouldn't stalk people on Facebook. That's just not ethical, you know, but Well, there's a lot of you know There are a lot of tools that you can use for reasons that other people would find unsavory, but they exist Yeah, and it could be used for for not Actually, that's you. All right, folks There's a lot of attention on hygiene these days with COVID-19 out there and smartphones are getting a lot of that attention because if you wash Your hands and you don't touch your face, but your phone's full of bacteria and viruses and then you touch that That is a vector for transmission. You should clean your phone once a week or so You don't have to clean it all the time, but this is the Consensus health recommendations out there once a week or so or after you travel or after you let someone who's not you use your phone You should use simple soap and water and a microfiber cloth more powerful disinfectants can and will damage the phone So turn your phone off remove the case Make sure nothing is plugged in Begin by just wiping the phone with the cloth without any water or soap and then If needed a low amount of warm water can be used You don't want to stop it, but just first just try cleaning it and see if it if it gets pretty clean if you're like No, that's not good enough for me. I want to make sure I get it super clean You can use a little warm water and regular soap. That is probably enough. You don't have to overdo it Don't let any water get into any open ports. Some phones may let you dip them in clean water for cleaning You may be able to use an alcoholic solution or something stronger on it But don't attempt that unless you are confirmed from the maker of the phone Not just some guy on a message board But like from the phone makers support website that that's okay because some of these coatings will come off Even if you're using a low amount of alcohol an ultraviolet light sanitizer will kill some but not all germs But again, most health organizations say really just wiping it down Maybe using a little warm soap and water is going to get your phone clean For keyboards and laptops different methods apply including compressed air You don't want to use compressed air on the phone they say but you you know You do want to use it on your keyboard You can use a little bit of alcohol there a lot of monitors you can use a little bit of an alcohol solution Same thing you might clean your glasses with but You want to you want to not overdo it the temptation is like I'm gonna get this thing clean I'm gonna dump it in alcohol. That's a bad idea Don't do that. So I've got microfiber cloth is if you've been watching the video version of this You've seen me cleaning. I've got a terry cloth not ideal because it's got some fibers and stuff that can get loose But it's better than nothing Sarah Nicole. You guys clean in your phones, too well, I I Realized that I should be cleaning my phone more but this discussion got me thinking my phone is again for the video folks My phone is Incredibly cracked Mostly on the back although I've got some cracks on the front This is just sort of the way I live my life, but I was thinking, you know This is actually an interesting bacteria thought because even if I clean my phone as it should be cleaned Well, first of all, I have to be a little bit more careful because the phone is already more fragile But I wonder how much the cleaning is less effective because I have cracks in the phone that aren't supposed to be there Doesn't mean I'm gonna freak out I'm not too much of a germaphobe about this whole thing, but it did get me thinking about hmm Yeah, you know, you're walking around with a phone in a state. It's not supposed to be in I wonder how much that affects this beatmaster says what I don't get is what you get out of this phones are personal devices How many times do other people put their hands on it? It doesn't matter if you touch a surface that has the virus on it and the virus gets on your fingers And then you touch your phone that virus could stay on the phone for up to a week So you if you want to make sure that you're not getting anything off of your phone This is a way to do it. Normally. I would say it's probably not that big of a deal And that you know, you clean your phone when you think you need to clean your phone But if you're in a situation where you are extra concerned about picking something up Maybe you're working in an airport or you're a hotel or something like that This is something you want to take take account of and start getting in the habit of cleaning that phone regularly And think of you know, the last time you were at a restaurant for a birthday party and someone says Will you take a photo of us? That's somebody else touching somebody's phone. Yeah That's why they say if you do let someone else touch your phone You want to clean it after that because you don't know who knows where their fingers have been they do maybe they don't Well some some better news Removed the recycle mode on older devices that was previously tied to its trade-up program Existing customers are still eligible for the 30% trade-up discount on new devices But originally opting in in the trade-up program would grant customers the discount except give legacy devices only 21 days Before entering recycle mode, which would erase all data and permanently disable the device So once you once you once you went up the old thing was bricked And now users can choose to keep it or give it to somebody else or recycle it or send it back to Sonos for recycling So the options are there for the customers who were not super pleased about this program in the first place Yeah, this this it is tempting to say what took them so long, but at least they got there Good job Sonos. Nobody likes the thing they own to be bricked Even if you are giving them a 30% trade-up discount that just comes off as adding insult to injury at that point So yeah, I they are also committed to continuing to do safety updates for the old Sonos They want to be adding features It will continue to be a problem if you try to run these on the same network as the newer ones They're working on a solution for that but they are going to keep patching them So they won't become security vulnerabilities and that's the most important thing Considering they're really expensive devices and yeah, this is a really good thing Hey folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines comm Now we just talked about Sonos doing the right thing and not breaking an old device But Phillips is not gonna brick But they are gonna limit the functions of the original Hue bridge That's the round one if you have the square one, you don't have to worry But if you got the old round one as of April 30th, it will be limited to local use It'll be shut off from online So you can use the app to control it when you're in the house on the same network But that's it the circular bridge was introduced in 2012 and replaced by the square one in 2016 so we have two stories here that kind of you know remind us that gadgets don't live forever They do go away and we've all got drawers probably filled With with some old gadgets and wires and things like that But Nicole, I love that you looked into the afterlife Of these gadgets that have been discontinued by their companies and found some hopeful stories Right and I think in almost all of the start all of the cases that I have researched It's always sparked by a really beloved gadget that has like hundreds of thousands of fans and the passionate sort of passionate really passionate community really and one of them is the pebble You know, that's one of the most successful Kickstarter for all time just tens of thousands of fans or who actually bought the pebble Years and years of just building up this community of people who just love their pebble And this is despite the fact that the Apple watch came out like You know a few years later and right where it came out So it kind of survived this like influx of all these, you know wearables Except it kind of didn't because as we all know pebble kind of died away got bought out by Fitbit in 2016 um, and officially it officially It officially was shut down the servers were shut down in 2018 So if you don't have servers and don't have apps Your pebbles kind of useless, right? Um except a community I guess I mentioned that it's a developer community that it really cultivated from very beginning And they built up this site called rebel rebel.io. I believe is the url for the site and rebel spelled r e b b l e like pebble, right? Yeah, that's right. That's right. Um, so these people like when they first heard, okay, Fitbit's buying this company out That's pull out resources and they just like downloaded everything they could the stk the documentation Like everything they could get their hands on they downloaded everything in like two days And in two days, they had this build this whole new website And uh, they said I hadn't had everything ready just yet But they were like we have everything now we can just reverse engineer from from here And it took them a couple years to do so But right now if you go to like if you if you have an old pebble Lying around your house somewhere and uh, you still have that the connecting plugs and everything You can't actually get it up and running again by going to rebel.io Following really simple instructions. That's a link. It's a link. You can click and learn learn about all the afqs and stuff They have uh, I was really impressed They have a customer service team They have a discord chat channel. They can go for like help questions It's a full-on organization run by volunteers and uh, Yeah, there there is hope yet for all of you pebble lovers out there That is one of the greatest stories, uh Of a gadget that no one who loved it wanted to see go away And so they banded together and made sure that it didn't go away I mean, they're not making new pebbles, but the pebbles that are out there can still work I was more surprised however, because I know how much people who have pebbles love their pebble I was more surprised that the chumby still works That's the that was a surprise for me too. So the chumby, I don't know if anyone remembers the chumby It was like a small little like what do what do you mean? It's like a like a personal internet device I guess you could call it. Yeah, it was like a small echo show that was also a beanbag. Basically It was like, yeah, it's kind of squishy. It was like a squishy small little alarm clock almost Um, if anyone is short you could you could use it to show like your facebook feed and little weather widgets Like think of it as a as a widget screen like a screen full of widgets essentially rather than I guess a traditional smart display that you wouldn't know of today So it was, you know, it was again founded in 2006 and The the founder bunny huang he made the hardware But he the whole idea behind the chumby was that the the chumby harder was supposed to be the The seller for the os like they were they really wanted to sell the operating system to like tvs and pieces and things like that but um And they even sold they even sold off their their os to the sony dash I don't know if anyone remembers the sony dash and that was kind of like a fancier more elegant chumby, if you will And unfortunately, uh that too because because with the I would know with the iphone and all of these other gadgets coming along Just didn't really stand a chance really, uh against all the the the oncoming smartphone revolution But the cto of a chumby, uh, dwayne maxwell He was like No, um, I will keep it running myself So he essentially bought out chumby from the shareholders Like just with his own money and you know, I kept it running um with his own time and by by himself And if you go to like, I think I can remember the exact site I think he the the company's called a blue octi and there's a company there's a site you can go to to Look at it and you if you have an old chumby lying around you can still go to this website And you know plug it in everything and it will still work. I mean he said that he told me that he had to like Re-engineer everything because the old widget framework used adobe flashlight which nobody uses nowadays So he had to like rework everything like you use use javascript html 5 and all of that so But it's up like it's running and if you have an old chumby lying around It will still work and they do have a customer service team which again Which is is amazing to me that they have a customer service team And they have like a still store and if if you if your chumby sort of like breaks a little bit You can actually send it in and they'll try to fix it Um, so that's really interesting that this this like small little Yeah, yeah fan community Well because you would be forgiven if you heard this and said so wait a minute the cto bought the company and just kept it running How is that a story of life after death? That's not exactly what nicole was describing. This was a company in bankruptcy, right? It was it was going out of business and what the cto did was for cents on the dollar. He bought the ip He didn't buy the company. He just bought the parts that would let him maintain the servers And basically is doing this as a labor of love. This is not a startup That's you know doing rounds of series b funding This is just the cto trying to make just enough money off of people who want to keep their chumbies running So that he can keep the servers up and keep their chumbies running, right? Right and well, that's the other thing was that you know, obviously it takes money to run this thing by yourself And he was like, okay If you would just want to use this chumbie as just a good dumb alarm clock, you know, that's free That's fine But if you want to use any of the widgets that will cost like three dollars a month and which is fine I think it's very cheap very reasonable Um, so yeah, that's how that's kind of how he's keeping it all going I should say the rebel website uses patreon For to support it as well Before we wrap up, I know there's you there's a few others out there including one that that just got another life There's a there's a crowdfunding campaign started this week for numaz tag round two or three. I guess depending on Yeah, right. That's a little wi-fi bunny wi-fi connected bunny into that. Yeah, that's being fraud funded The little printer that uses the little receipt printer. That's being sort of there was resurrected last year a little bit And they're all kinds of smaller stuff. I'm sure that I haven't even looked into Yeah, yeah, uh, but yeah, it's nice to know that if if there's enough people who love a gadget That we have the resources for people to kind of rally around and keep it going. So cool. Thanks for looking into this The goal. I'm glad you did the story for gadget. Yeah Joining the conversation in our discord if you haven't already It's a rock and good time and you can join by linky to a patreon account at patreon.com Slash d t n s let's check out what's in the mail bag Oh, let's uh, we got a response from chris christensen our amateur travelers Note about remote work yesterday. This person wanted to stay anonymous But said just wanted to respond as somebody who's been using those sites plus more without any success for over a year Wouldn't want anybody to think that this is an easy cure all plan on submitting dozens of applications without any responses And even more before talking to anybody Maybe i'm doing something wrong, but i'd like to let folks know that they may be ignored or rejected or dismissed regularly So go into such a process with a strong disposition because it can be extremely demoralizing I think chris was just trying to give us, you know, something to shine a little light in there. Uh, but but yeah This is this is the norm when you're looking at applying uh places even if they are, you know, working on a beach Uh and chris himself wrote back after yesterday's show and said tom is so right that this is not a great time to be a travel blogger Or travel podcast for that matter although it's a lot worse to be a travel company airline or cruise line Fortunately chris says i still make my living as a software engineer My company actually just went into limited beta at bodeswell.io in the personal finance space So if you want to help chris out you might go check out bodeswell.io And make sure you you keep him employed so you can keep doing amateur traveler stuff I also got an email from marcus who says greetings from this week It's spring in golden colorado sounds nice mark Just thought i'd mention that the first time i recall the concept of a phone screen that scrolls out to whatever size Is convenient was from the earth final conflict tv series from way back in 1997 It featured heavy mci product placement, but otherwise demonstrated the practicality of this concept Other factors took the series on a very steep decline after the first season But somebody in the props department was top notch. Ah, thank you marcus. What a what a flashback I forgot all about earth final conflict. That's cool. I don't even remember it to begin with But it sounds like they were onto something shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels including at james p callison One de hernandez and jonathan price also. Thanks to nicole lee always nice to have you usually it's on fridays It seems like how can people keep up with everything you've been up to Um, well the easiest way to do so would be twitter.com slash nicole, but of course you can always go to engadget.com to see my stories there Excellent folks. It's been three months since we started the counter on people getting a new sticker poster mug or t-shirt with the special six-year anniversary dtns logo on it and the first batch is headed to the factory right now In fact, they're probably in the factory right now getting printed and mailed out to 174 patrons You can join those folks get some cool stuff and insider perks on top of it get the details at patreon.com slash dtns Slash merch our email address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com And we're live monday through friday at 4 30 p.m eastern At 21 30 utc until monday when it'll be 20 30 utc because good point There's daylight savings for a lot of folks find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live Back on monday with justin robert young talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frogpants.com Club hopes you have enjoyed this program