Episode 26: The iPad (barely) survives the ultimate torture test

-This week on always on, it's our 2013 CES special and we have it all. Look at ginormous TVs. -Drop! -Drop it! Go! -Highlights from our live torture test -1 for drop. Ha, ha, ha. -and the future of health and fitness tech. Always On is on. -Yeah. -Welcome to Always On. I'm Molly Wood and this is the show where we take a look at tech that's part of your life and your future. Now, C.E.S. just keeps getting bigger if not always better. The TVs on the other hand are getting both bigger and better. Let's look at the best of the bests from the 4K to the OLED, to the most beautiful television design that I have ever seen. -This is the next Frontier of TV, the Samsung Ultra high definition TV. The screen which almost floats within a frame is mesmerizing. -A 55-inch and a 65-inch model that will deliver a stunning 4K viewing experience at more accessible price range. -Well call it Ultra HD and it offers 4 times of pixel resolutions of old HD. -LG is leading the way of our WRGB technology. It provides the most realistic color, widest viewing angle, and infinite contrast ratio for an incredible viewing experience. -I don't care that the entire world suddenly decided that 3D is dead because I am hooked and I am not leaving here. Now, it's time for some of the highlights from our stage. Brian Tong joins me on stage for live torture test and let me tell you it was some of our epic testing yet. Let's start with our slightly more extreme than usual drop test. Now, though, it is time for the drop test. Under normal circumstances, mostly people drop gadgets just from like this high. We're gonna push it a little farther than that. You know and so we were like let's get a ladder and we did, and Brian Tong is going up the ladder first. -Okay, so what are we gonna drop. -What will you choose? -Just hand them to me. Let's get this thing going. I'm gonna climb the ladder. -And oh my God, we keep something. So, he's gonna drop and then I'm gonna go and assess the damage. Let's start with like a sort of an easy one, the [unk] -So, guys, when we drop it, do we drop it flat or we drop it on its corner guys? -Corner! -Exactly, that's how we do it, all right. Just count with me. We're gonna go 3, 2, 1, drop it. Here we go, ready guys? 3, 2, 1, drop it. -Ow-- -Oh my gosh, is that the screen? -That didn't go well. Brian, I can't believe when you drop it from 9 feet, you broke the screen. -That's horrible. -That's your basic bad damage right there. I think that the Razr is supposed to be pretty tough, the Droid Razr, right? Razr HD. This is meant to be rugged. It's got Kevlar on the back. I have high hopes for this one. -Stop looking on my butt. -I hope. -Okay, here we go guys. -Ready, 3, 2, 1, drop it! Hey. Oh my God. -Oh, hang on, hang on. -I just think it fell. -Well, it's not like okay. It has hairline fractures. -Sounds like, oh-- -So, now I'm trying to turn it on. -Oh, I don't care. -And I'm pretty sure it came on before that drop, but now it doesn't. So, that's also kind of-- Wow, that's a pretty big let down actually. They are not coming on. There's like-- I think they are glass shards in there from it. -Windows Phone 8 shards, so good. -This one though-- This one, I have seen people using phones in way worse condition than this. So, I'm gonna call usable assuming that it comes in later on. -Just wanna do something bigger. -Because normally, I think. -Because bigger is better. This is-- Hey, you know, you tell me what to drop. This is okay. -I'm gonna give your wit. -On the corner, -Oh God. -Dear Lord, forgive me for I have sinned. Here we go, here we go. In 3, 2, 1, drop it! -Ow-- -It went flat. -It went flat, didn't-- It's getting kind of hard to get in here. Oh my God, it's totally okay. -Again. -Wait, well it turned on. -Oh. -There's life. -One more drop, one more drop, one more drop! All right, we hope if this drops on the corner, we got to live with that. All right, here we go, let's go, 3, 2, 1, drop it. -Ow! It wants to live. -It put a weight the on the booty, guys, what can you say? -That was smart. -You know, that's funny too because I took an iPad Mini to Paris recently and dropped on the Champs-Elysees and it completely broke and this guy is okay. It seems this is our first success story. -I can tell you that I've literally tried to drop it on its corner. -I know. -Everyone saw that here right. -I saw it. -This is not like Apple Byte preference thing, right? -How about-- Oh, you guys really wanna see the Surface. You kind of on that little tablet run. I think I'm gonna do Nook first. I got to say something good stuff for me. -Yeah, yeah for sure. -I mean, not that the Nook is not good, which it is. The Nook is good, and I think the Nook is somewhat sturdy. -Alright, here we go, ready, let's do it, 3, 2, 1, drop it! -Ow-- -Ow, there's damage. I can already tell. -Ow-- -Oh, yeah, we have some coming apart at the bottom here, but it comes on, totally still usable. -Welcome come back, covered under your 30-day warranty. -I know your Nook is okay-ish except that your little SD card slot here, I think, is not in good shape. So, that's not gonna be as usable anymore. -Okay-- -No, longer expandable. -All right. Oh God. turns out this ladder is pretty high. Let's try the iPad Mini with the case since we've already-- You're gonna have to retire on that, sorry. Okay, so this is a G-Form case that they lent us to try to drop. They ask us to drop it flat. We'll see what we can do. -All right, ow-- -That's gonna be anticlimactic, but it's okay. -I mean if, if. -If he can get it. -The one-- -You're the pitcher. -If the one without the case survived flat and we dropped it flat, it's probably gonna survive. -I don't know if the-- -I'm in-- -I think it's okay. -I think I pitch like a dog. -Well, I did. -Okay. -It's totally fine you guys. That case you can tell it's completely tough. -Still good, still good guys. -Still good. -Your iPad is okay. -Okay, what do you want next? -Okay. All righty. Okay, I'll go up step for this, oh God, all right. I gonna die. It's okay. They do, but not me. All right, Nexus 7, ready. -I'm gonna do it on the corner, corner, corner-- -3, 2, 1, you guys, you only do that for BT. -Hey, come on-- Let's go-- Let's do a-- Hold up the corner. -You say it. -Hold on the corner. -All right, okay. -All right and you go, 3-- -Make them do the thing. -2, 1, drop it. Go! -Now, that's exciting. It came part. -Wow, this is amazing. The nexus screen is awesome there. -By the way, we have this super-- -We have these wonderful systems on there, GoPro that is streaming, so that's how you're getting that cool split screen there. -Alright, here we go guys. We're gonna do-- -See it comes on. -one more test here, which is good. -He's like where's the-- Maybe that thing has test on that. I do think for that thing to go on. -Yeah, which-- -Oh, yeah, you got to get the buttons on that part. Okay, okay, here we go. This is like-- I feel like I'm in Foxconn right now. Okay. -I'm just up here on the ladder. -Too soon? -Okay, here we go. I'm trying to able to play source, okay, here we go. Holding the power button, holding the power button. No. -No. -Huh. -All right. -All right, let's keep going. -Okay. -I thought that's gonna be fine. I'm not worried about that. -Here we go. -All right, time for the Apple Byte. -That's not my personal one, right? -Okay. I just wanna make sure. -No, no. -I just wanna make sure. -It does still work. You can see my little kit on there, but this is the one that we've already tested, so, okay make him do the thing. -Here we go, guys, let's go-- 3, 2, 1, drop it. -I thought he's playing. -You know, it kind of feels sideways. You have the damage here where it actually impact right here. Can you see that? -But otherwise, it's okay. -Right on that corner right there. Everyone is like, well, I'm mesmerizing. Okay, yeah it's-- Okay. -All right, let's do a rugged phone. -Let's see how-- Oh, we got to do the Surface, you're right. -Let's do the left-- -Let's, yup. -Let's just, let's just do it. -It's time. -My God, oh no, that thing is heavy. Yeah. -Okay, see. I want you guys to know that during his announcement, Steven Sinofsky, dropped this thing a whole bunch of times. He skateboarded on it. It was pretty tough when Jeff Cannata had to go on it-- on this, I'm gonna die on later. Okay, make him go. -3, 2, 1, drop it. Whoa! -Ow. -That did a little bump. -That was dramatic. -That did fall in the corner. -I think we can see some damage from here. -So, you can see some of the battle damage here where the camera-- the alignment of the [unk] of camera piece here. The metal has been warped, right, oh that's too bad. -Oh. -That's not hurt. -No, but, dude, turn it around, look. It's on. -Yeah! -It's sending a message. I'm okay. I'm okay to go. Oh, it's like that. -And here's the corner where it hit, but there you go. So, it is up to this point. -Survived. Turns out it takes a long time to drop a bunch of stuff. All right here we go. This is the Samsung Rugby Pro Ruggedized Phone. So, if it is not fine, I'll be very surprised. -In 3, 2, 1, drop it! -Wow. -It's rugged. -Molly, it works out clearly. -Okay, here we go. -The USB port guide did open on the drop. That's kind of new. That's a new feature. And over here, here's the battle damage here. You got little rugged- I did-- Chip-- -Oh, rubber chip -All right, there you guys have it. Let's see if we can power the bad boy on here. -That's not so bad though. I mean-- -Here we go. -Right. -It's alive! -There you go, survived. Boom! -Okay. -I love it. I cannot believe the iPad Mini can take 2 drops off a ladder, but can't the Champs-Elysees. I guess, it's all how it lands. There is much more amazing iPad footage coming up a little later, but first a major trend that's making a major debut here at CES personal data collection galore. -Okay, so, tell me about the HAPIfork. The surprise hit of CES. -At its most basic, HAPIfork is a tool to help you eat more slowly. -Uh huh. -The demo fork that we have here has been pre-programmed on a 10-second interval-- -Okay. -and it basically means that if I'm putting food in my mouth under 10 seconds, it will vibrate. As you can see, here, I've just activated it and the light just went red and I had the vibration. So, basically, if you're having this on, it's [unk]. Okay, oops. -Too soon, too soon. -Too soon. -Can I try? As I've been listening to it. Oh yeah. -We've got the Fitbit Flex. The Fitbit Flex is a wrist-based device. -Yup. -It does activity tracking steps, distance, calories. It is super, super comfortable and lightweight. It's got five LEDs on it. So if you tap it, it actually tells you your progress against your goal. But what's also important about it is that it uses bluetooth 4.0, so it wirelessly syncs in the background to smartphones. -It is a band you wear like a watch. It does tell the time as well the date, but you can also do quick things like check your heart rate as you see here, check your calories burned on that day, as well as check your steps right here on the watch. -Right. -Here to trend at 2013 CES this year is this idea of the quantified self. Basically wearable gadgets and apps that can give you more information about how you behave, what you do, and how you can make yourself better. So, for example, I'm wearing this Spree headband which tracks my heart rate, my motion, and my body heat so that I can get more information about what happens when I exercise or when I just like walk around looking kind of 80s. Let's talk a little bit about this data gathering trend and this idea of sort of the quantified self. That's always been kind of, I think, the big appeal of Fitbit that you could gather so much information about yourself. Where do you see that trend going? -Well, so, we think it's really about learning insights and being able to understand our behavior and what you do on a day-to-day basis and how to fix your health. So the data is really important, but even more importantly is what-- how does that matter? What does it really mean? -Yeah. -Well, I think, for some people, the data itself is very compelling. I think, for most people, though, it does need to be aggregated in a way and delivered in a way that's really actionable. So, lots of numbers. It's so exciting at first, but unless you can do something with it that day in and day out for the long term, it's not gonna be as successful. So for us, we've really focused on these things like habits. We take all that data and make it-- bring it to people in a way that they can do something with it. -Obviously, you can't change, you know, a lifelong learned habit of eating habit overnight, when I'm asking that, but very slowly and progressively, it's a really-- we program that habit so that you can eat more healthily. -And wearable tech is starting to take all forms including more subtle options like this patch for those people who don't have to always go around, being like I'm quantifying myself. I like it. I like the patch. -So, it's a multisensory product, just like our other products that people use today. It has three axis of motion as skin temperature, rate of heat coming off the body, conductivity of the skin. We've munched all that together and create these very accurate algorithms around calories burned, physical activity, minutes of physical activity, steps, sleep patterns that you have. And people would generally use that for-- you know, use our products today for weight loss, but also diabetes management, sleep management, bunch of different kinds of conditions. Having that feedback or having that dashboard about me allows me to make proactive change and change behavior probably in a longitudinal longer term way. -All right. -And we see that-- we see that in the journeys that our consumers use everyday. -So, I have a pretty important question about the fork, though. -What's that? -Is that dishwasher compatible? -Yes, it is. So-- -I'm safe. That was my big fear. -Time for a quick break. When we come back, the grand finale of our live torture test where the iPad gets a little in liquid nitrogen. You do not wanna miss that. I'm here with Chuck. I'm ready to get suited up for liquid nitrogen to have my apron on for splashing and look at that-- look at the freezing steam coming out of this thing. Do you think-- Okay, so, here we have a GoPro camera. -Yeah. -We have a GoPro camera? -I guess. -We have an iPhone 5 and a ballistic case -Right. -Which they say is like military spec, but there are holes. -Uh-huh. -And then we have the naked iPad. Do you think anything on this table is gonna make it. We also gonna have-- I think we can the Samsung, right? -I don't know. -Anyway, we're gonna do this 2. -Liquid nitrogen is 321 degrees below zero, so-- -Sort of. -GoPros must be really tough. -That-- You will see what that case is like. -Can you give us like a little demonstration? I put my gloves and my goggles and stuff on. Show us what happens to things when they go in liquid nitrogen. Whoa, there's no flying. -Suited up. -Uh-huh. All right, so we can see that rose-- -Kind of bubbles. It's basically bubbling in there like it's being fried. It looks like it's in a fryer, all right fried up. Probably our devices aren't gonna go in that long, huh? Oh, poor little thing. Look at that. It looks like egg shells. My patience might be over that close to that. -Okay. -So, which one are we going to-- -First, let's go-- I think we should go with the GoPro, which-- Look, it's recording. -Yeah, okay, as we go. -Yeah. As it goes to its doom. -Okay, let's put-- -Got a little fryer basket and record every-- Oh my God, look at that. -It's still recording. The light is still flashing. I mean GoPro-- -You want long time or wanted to may be-- -I think medium because I'm a softy-- -Yeah. -Seriously, though, it's still recording right now with the fryer basket stepped to the side. -Now, do you want to do a drop test on it? -Not this one, not this one. -Look at the-- look though-- near as I can tell even though there is cold smoke coming off of it, this is a highly unexpected outcome absolutely. How long is it gonna-- I can feel the cold by the way through this gloves, which are like an inch thick. How long do you think it's gonna take to warm up? -Yeah, that's a good question that I don't know. Each item is different, you know, it gonna start-- -Yes, that's true. -All right, we're gonna set-- I hear like cracking as it's warming up though. I think the plastic is starting to crack as it warms up. -Yeah. -All right, well this is dramatic though because the camera inside still okay. I'm calling this a conditional survival, and I am pretty surprised. All right, let's keep moving. There are 2 ballistic cases. It turns out these are both ballistic. We're gonna try them both. The iPhone 5 is in here. -Okay. -And this one has some little holes in the front. Let's see how it does. Oh, wow. It's gonna like turn it-- -Oh, yeah. -Oh, you're brutal. You really get into this pair of thing. -I wanna play around. -Feel like I don't have this kind of time as quick as bad boy. -Ow, it's-- That one clearly. We're gonna have to wait, remove from the case. I don't even know. The sounds are insane. It's just frozen solid. See the power button. Oh, I hear cracking. -It's not coming on. -I think the button maybe is frozen. -I think the button is frozen, yeah, okay, but you know, we'll let it warm up for over a period of days, I guess. Look at the froze on that one, okay, and then let's the S3. The case, by the way, structural integrity-wise at least the case is looking good. The Samsung Galaxy S3 is inside this ballistic case, which seems have a little, but the cameras are exposed. -Oh, there's no film on that. -Yes, that's kind of bomber for that device, but nevertheless and it goes. Oh, look at the bubbles. It looks really pretty like Halloween. I think our studio audience is horrified right now. They're instant silence. GoPro by the way still recording. Okay. I think you hear that. -Lot of cracking going on in there. -Do you hear those sounds at all, all that cracking? All right, now though, okay, the phone seems okay thought. All right, once again, when that warm up you guys will probably still be here when we see if it's okay, but we have one last device to do. The only one that's going in unprotected. Brian Tong, can you come here for a minute because, I think, we're gonna-- this is the 2 partner. -Okay. -I'm sorry guys. There is one device that we're taking out of the give away pool and that is our so far indestructible iPad because everything we've done to it, it's been okay. Now, it has water in it -Yeah, and as well as liquid nitrogen. -And it has no case and it's going in. -I'm speaking for the last. I think it's gonna survive. -And it goes and then-- -It actually sounds like it's frying. -I know. It sounds exactly like a fryer and it looks like the bubbles there- -The the screen is on. -The screen-- No. -Can you guys see that? Yeah look. -The screen is on. -And it just went away. -Wow. -It's last breath. -Look it restarted. -Yes, [unk] just started. -Yeah. -You guys, this thing is unbelievable. Look the water on the inside is starting to freeze. You can see the ice where-- that was the water from the inside. All right, now that it's entirely frozen, it wouldn't be a liquid nitrogen test if we didn't go a little bit terminator on it. Maybe I should bring it over and you should climb up or something you can climb while you're holding it. We're gonna go ahead and drop this one, maybe back up if you could climb a bit. -Yeah, take a step back. -Take one step back. -Cover your beautiful faces. -And you wanna know this guys though and just give it a look. -All right. -Like it's frozen on the inside. All right. -Hey, the logo just went. -It just came back on. -The lo-- well, if refuses to die. -It really wants to live. It's still really like that. -And up. -Tough stuff. The logo is still on, guys. That thing is amazing. You can give that any kid you want. -Okay, you guys -Ready. -We're gonna count this out really good. -Except knock shot because he's like a really dangerous state. -We're gonna go 3, 2, 1 dropping. Cover your eyeballs. I mean I'm gonna be like this. -Cover your eyes also. -I got to protect this place you know what I mean. Okay, here we go guys, ready, 3, 2, 1, drop it. -Ow-- -Is that screen? -It's not okay. -I actually think it was so strong as dense as the cement. -As dense as the cement. -Okay, where we go guys, let's pick up the pieces here. -What-- you got it. Still on! -Yeah! -Okay, as far as I'm concern that is a passed. This thing is still kicking. That's unbelievable. All right guys. -That's ridiculous. -Incredibly, every device we put in liquid nitrogen came out okay. The GoPro Hero 2 not only survived, it recorded the whole experience. -Still recording. The light is still flashing. -And the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3 were fine inside their ballistic cases. -It looks really pretty. -Once we let them thawed out a little, both turned on. -Do you hear those sounds at all, all the cracking? -I think it's safe to say the iPad is the unofficial best of CES winner. You got to hand this to Apple they know how to make a tablet. All right, that's it for this week everyone. Always On is going on a tiny break, but we'll be back in February with more torture tests, more road tests, more future tech, and much more. Thank you everyone for watching Always On. By the way our cooler is full of beer and sodas which we could also pass out after this. -Who wants the soda? -Does not have of any beers. Don't freeze sodas, oh my God. -Good reflexes, good reflexes. -Kind of close, seriously. Yeah. -I think it's about-- -Our producer-- by the way once again just came in to us and said stop doing that. -I'm scared here. -There's no way that thing is gonna turn on, oh wait. -There's some water. -Well, that's awesome. -There is some water inside. Look at the water inside the screen. -Here's the water guys. Who wants this one?