Our firsthand impressions of the iPhone XS, XR, Max and Apple Watch (The 3:59, Ep. 458)

[MUSIC] Welcome to the 3:59. I'm Roger Cheng. I'm Alfred Ng. And with us is special guyes, Shara Tibken. Apple's event was last week but we're still talking about the new iPhones and Apple Watch. Shara, you were at the event. I was. So Please give us some of your impressions. What did you think when you actually got a chance to play with these phones, these devices? Yeah. I mean, it's pretty interesting. I think what they really did was kind of give more options in terms of, we have the bigger screen again. Yeah. They've finally redesigned their cheaper iPhone. [LAUGH] Quote unquote budget phone? Which is now, yeah, above $700. The 10S itself is, G-d, those names. I know, we've been mixing that up all week. Yeah, terrible. The 10S itself, if you have the 10 it's gonna be basically the same phone for all intents and purposes. But it's kinda those other two that are really interesting. Yeah, the 10R, you wrote about this ahead of time, that it was the most intriguing Of the lineup. What did you think of that phone in particular when you held it? Did it feel cheap? It didn't feel cheap. I mean, it definitely was colorful. I don't know if people remember the 5C. So when that one came out, it felt cheap cuz it was Is plastic, so it literally was cheap materials. But it was colorful. This one didn't feel cheap in your hands. It's still premium materials. It's aluminum. It's not stainless steel, so it's just not as sleek as the other two. Right. But it still is a really good phone for what it is. Did you see the difference between the OLED versus LCD? What I notice was the bezels, so with LCD you can't curve it over the sides like you can OLED. Yeah. So iPhone X, it's just like you almost don't even notice that there's any edges around the Display at all, okay it's just kind of all screen. That was more noticeable, I thought, on the 10R. Just kind of the edges. But I wasn't watching videos or anything side by side to be able to compare. I think for most people you probably won't notice. Okay. Just in what you're doing on a normal basis. You're looking at Instagram and checking our Facebook and sending emails and Google maps and whatever it is you're doing. I don't think it's gonna be a huge, huge difference. Right, and so you also wrote about how smart watches are finally Finally where we wanted them to be five years ago. Yeah. And then so that's perfect set with Apple watch. What'd you think of the new series four? Yeah, I honestly want my watches to be smaller instead of bigger. So that was one thing because these are definitely a little bit bigger. Right. But it does look a little sleeker cuz it's kind of It's curved a little bit. Yeah, they're using kind of some of the design techniques they were using in the phone. Starting with the iPhone X last year, they've kind of taken those a little bit to the watch, and then the health stuff is really interesting. Not just for- I feel like a lot of us aren't going to be using the EKG monitors. We're not going to be necessarily carrying it on fall detection all the time, but it's kind of nice knowing that stuff is there if you need it. And for people who have disabilities, the elderly, some of these other areas, people with epilepsy, who do fall a lot, these could really be Very significant devices for them. Okay. And we wanted to talk about the latest in Road Trip series. Alfred you went to what's supposedly an underground bunker. Tell me about what that was like. Well yeah, so I went to a factory out in Los Angeles. It's from the Atlas Survival Shelters. They're like one of the top sellers of nuclear bunkers in the world, but they also sell it for Things like wildfires or tornados or things like that. That's actually their bigger concern right now because they're based in California, a lot of the shelters that are selling art for wildfires. And that being said, a lot of their customers are also very rich. [LAUGH] A lot of them are going into Napa Valley, which is near Silicon Valley with all these tech billionaires there. One that I was being built was supposed to double as a wine cellar, so in case of emergency Nice. you can also get very wasted as the world is ending around you. That's what I would do. Some of this wine is worth a lot [LAUGH] of money. That's true. So no room for the kids. Just Yeah, yeah. So how much are some of these shelters? So they start at about $18,000 for like the cheapest one, which is the one that I was in. Okay. And then they can go up to Cheap for like the area that we are stay at, sorry, go on. They can go up to like 8.3 million dollars and that's if you want like some crazy thing with like. There were two that were built in Napa Valley that had like. Horse stables. And then, I'm like why would you have your horse underground with you? It doesn't make any sense. Because the wildfires. Just think of the smell though, right? Hey, you've gotta protect the horse, all right. [LAUGH] So for more on these stories in the Road Trip series, check us out on CNET. I'm [INAUDIBLE]. I'm Alfred Aang. I'm Kara Chipkin. Thanks for listening. [MUSIC]