Samsung's Galaxy Fold is fixed, but don't hold your breath for it (The 3:59, Ep. 581)

[MUSIC] Welcome to the Future Tonight I am Roger Cheng I am Alfred Ng Samsung has reportedly fixed the screen issues plaguing the Galaxy phone. That's according to Bloomberg. It says the company is set to begin manufacturing the troubled foldable soon. It's been delayed for more than two months. And Samsung keeps saying that we'll hear more details, but we don't hear anymore details. But it looks like this things isn't going to get ready until the holidays. I'll believe it when I see it. Part of me feels like they're going to roll it out for You know reviews again and some other issue will come up that they had not foreseen. Start all over again. I yeah I feel like this is one of those phones this phone is like Matt Damon on like Jimmy Kimose where we're gonna make it. [LAUGH] sorry I just couldn't get it we can fit in that so yeah take a look The Galaxy fold as a bit of context again with reviewers early reviews found that the phone was tended to break there were some screen glitches dust got into it. Foreseeing Samsung to basically recall a bunch of the review units. They haven't actually gone to market. We're still waiting here for a minute, waiting to hear some concrete details from Samsung. There is a August 7th Note 10 event. Going on, but Bloomberg says that we probably won't hear much about the fold back. At this point they should at least offer some kind of discount for all the people that might have pre-ordered it or were expecting to get it a bit earlier. That's kind of Have a frustration for them. Yeah. I would hope there's some kind of discount. That's a really good point. And Jessica Dolcourt actually made that point in one of the articles, that it's great that Samsung has sort of apologized for pushing this out too early. But He didn't really apologize directly to consumers. Yes. All right, next up, Amazon finally opens up about how much data it's storing and how much data Alexa is collecting. Alfred, you were on top of the story, what's going on? Yeah so they had to sign a letter to US Senator Chris Coons, a democrat from Delaware After he sent them you know basically send Jeff basis the letter and may asking for answers on Amazon and Privacy Practices on Alexa. Yep. So in their response, Amazon wrote that one they keep this data forever until you delete it yourself which you have to go and manually do it. There's no like automatic like expiration date on that. Two, some of them are shared or recorded. And you can't delete those, most of it is related to transaction. So if I order a pizza from Lyft. Yeah. That makes no sense if I order a Lyft or if I order a pizza That like, it's like financial transactions also they keep records of that and that doesn't like you can't believe that even if you want it to And do they have access to those? Yeah, yeah, they have access to that and as do these third parties, and the other thing that was kind of revealed in this is that the voice data is not anonymized. So all the voice data that they have Emily track of That's tied to you and that's tied to your account. They say that's out of transparency purposes they say they keep those transcripts because they want people to know when Alexa hears them wrong, what did it actually think but you said so you can go and view that. Interesting. And they noted that after our scoop from may about how Amazon was keeping transcripts even when you deleted the recordings. Yeah. Even when we wrote that story they said they're they're taking more they're going under processes to make sure that it's deleted from all their systems. Yep. In this letter that was sent on June 28th. They said they're still working on that. So that process is still ongoing. There are still parts of your transcript that linger in Amazon systems even after you delete the recordings. Got it. Lastly, the Huawei drama continues, despite President Trump saying that he had loosened some restricitions on Huawei's ability to By key product American products and services like chips, and as well as access to Android. Commerce department has come out said no actually there's still maintain the full band. So we're kind of in this weird back and forth. Now, the company is don't you know, as long dealt with security concerns, but right now it's sort of wrapped up in this broader tussle over trade terms between China and the US. So So generally, like, am I able to get a Huawei phone in the US still? So a ban isn't necessarity about whether or not Huawei can sell a product here. It's more about whether or not Huawei can buy products from American companies. And does that include software? Like, if they want an android Exactly. That's the big one. It's because they can't then technically, Google can't sell Google Mobile Services Which is allow the Android key services to [UNKNOWN]. That would basically cripple the phone outside of China. All right, for more of these stories check us out on c|net. I'm Roger Chang. I'm Alfred Ng. Thanks for listening.