Blame Samsung for your jumbo smartphone (The Daily Charge, 8/6/2019)

Today on The Daily charge, black hat and DEF CON 18 T's five G and breaking down the note. [MUSIC] Good morning. Welcome to see that Sandy charge. It's Monday, August 6. I'm arbitrary. And I'm Jessica [UNKNOWN]. Let's take a look at today's headlines. Well, most of us are going to be focused on Samsung this week. There are two big cybersecurity conferences going on right now at black hat and DEF CON. Our own Alfred. He is on his way to Las Vegas to hang out with the hacker community, but he's left us With a little tip sheet on what to pack for such an event. But ultimately this is just advice for everyone. He notes having an updated iPhone is actually your best option for an event, really to keep things secure. Also, turn off your Bluetooth and WiFi. Generally That's good advice, right? Yeah, I mean, I hotspot this thing everywhere. You do have to pay more. I think it's worth it. I just peace of mind. Yeah, public Wi Fi mean we've talked about for a long time the dangers of public Wi Fi even like a Starbucks Wi Fi network. But folks still can't live without that stuff. I'm sometimes guilty. Library wifi wherever you are. I mean it's definitely convenient, you wanna hop on. Yeah. But I sort of think, it's better to be self contained. And yeah, I think it's worth it. Yeap. Well the advice he offers in terms of a notebook having a Chromebook is your best bet in terms of it being private and secure. One of the bitter news will be on the lookout for as a Forbes report that has Apple handing out special secret version of its iPhone for hackers later this week The idea is that the security experts will be able to dig around for potential vulnerabilities as part of a rumour new bug bounty programme. Bug bounty programme that was one of the [INAUDIBLE] Say that ten times fast. [LAUGH] Yeah. It's a really interesting take, right? Apple leaning into the hacker community to work on security for its phone. An I think that's part of the reputation that Apple's trying to cultivate with making its OS more secure than Android, which is fragmented. Right, Android has done this for a while because it's open, and naturally there are more problems there, right? And so, I think, for a lot of security professionals, being able to dig into the iPhone has been really tough before cuz it's been locked down. So having an open version is a big step in the right direction. Alright, At&t has turned on it's 5g network today in New York, but unlike other carriers it still hasn't made it available to consumers. If 5g is live, but we can't use it, does it really exist? I'm still not exactly sure what At&t is doing here, because you've got, it is an interesting take to concentrate on the business You know, segment. Yeah. And in some senses it makes sense because 5g is going to be expensive and right now it's limited. So who's going to bankroll that they're thinking perhaps that regular consumers don't want to pay 1300 dollars for a device to not be able to use that's frustrating, but perhaps the company IT department doesn't mind. It's maybe a drop in the bucket. [UNKNOWN] Yeah, it's select business customers. And I get the sense that they're sort cozy business customers that have good relationship with AT&T anyways and probably don't wanna talk about the experience. Gotta get those testimonials. There you go, lastly, we've got our main story, the Galaxy Note 10 makes its debut tomorrow. But our own Jessica Dolcourt has a nice breakdown of how we got here. That original Note had a 5.3 inch display which elicited a lot of gags because it was deemed super large and just ridiculous looking. Nowadays, we don't even blink an eye. So, just for the sake of comparison, the iPhone at that time had a 3.5 inch screen. Which is unbelievable, by today's standards. And even then, when this was 2011, by the way. Even then, all of the customers were clamoring for a larger screen but by larger they meant four inches right, which was the size of the Galaxy S four. So then along comes a 5.3 inch screen and it's not like today's This is the Galaxy Note nine. It's not like today's phones, where you've got these nice slim Basil's right and the size of the screen doesn't necessarily mean that the phone is massive. It's large, but it's not like exponentially larger. Right, and back then, we had a lot of bezel, we had physical buttons, or maybe buttons sort of below the screen, not necessarily integrated. There was just a lot of extra border. So to have a 5.3 inch screen meant that the phone was actually big. But it was no bigger than doing this. But we were just like, my god, look at that, it's like holding a brick. We all took those phones Photos [UNKNOWN] Yes. And now even though there's less of an emphasis on making calls with somebody you do a lot of this you do a little less of this right. Maybe you've got wireless earbuds, but you don't really stop when people do this right we've got toothbrushes coming out of people's ears yet the iPods like nobody cares about that. But, what's so interesting is that we did mock it and I reviewed that phone. Yep. And I talked about the screen size and I talked about the stylus and I talked about how it was great for multimedia, but nobody's going to really want to carry around a phone that big. It was just too big. And I was right. It kicked off a trend. Part of the reason is because Samsung's got the marketing clout to really sell those ideas. And they were also controlling the popular, becoming exceedingly popular and increasingly popular, Galaxy S line. Yep. So it was able to sloly nudge the screen size up on those devices. While also selling the note and selling the benefits of that larger display so I think that that other manufacturer's caught on and that's how the trend really kicked off. And it feels like being in a tub of water as the temperature keeps rising and rising the screen gets larger and larger and now we've got these massive screens and Samsung they've done a good job of slimming the bezel down making, Slim for the screen size you get a lot of screen size for the body. I still wonder if these phones are too big. What we learned is that people can adapt. Mm. I've got smaller sized hands and I complain about! it's such a reach and this and that and the thing is you just You change how you use the device, and you change what your expectations are for it. Yeah. And because we've got these faster speeds that let us do more on our phone, we rely on our phones for. For viewing, right? For playing games, for looking at the news, for on-demand communication, for on-demand video. > Yes > So it's a little bit, but it's okay. I've got to get my stuff, I've got to spend time on my phone, I've got to be productive or entertained. >That is true, although I have to say I look at a choice between an iPhone 10s or a 10s+ plus I chose a 10s because I wanted to go back to a smaller phone. I feel like, we've gone too far. Our hands just can't, well my hands are tiny as well and I just can't handle the larger phones anymore. And that's really what the fold is about, right, just to take it off in a completely different direction. What Samsung is doing what it has done with the Galaxy Note line and what it's doing with the fold which has that screen that bends in the middle, problematic screen but this phone is now going on sale for real in September sometime. But all of that is Is in service to having as largest screen as you can, on a device or a body that is still portable enough. Yep. Right. And Samsung is thinking once again that people would rather have the large screen space to do stuff on. To see stuff on, and then they would, something small that they can just fit into their back pocket, or your little pocket on the front of your shirt. Well, we'll see if Samsung's going to bankroll that promotional effort around that, cuz they spent a lot of money pushing the Note and the Galaxy S lines, so we'll see how the Fold fares. For the Daily Charge, I'm Roger Chang. And I'm Jessica Dalpert. Thanks for listening, and watching. [MUSIC]