Tech Brew Ride Home - (Bonus) The Razr and the Reality of 5G with QZ's Mike Murphy

Episode Date: November 16, 2019

So, that Razr event, out in LA... obviously I didn’t get to cover it live… and if there was ever a recent hardware event crying out for “hands-on” reporting, this was one. So, I reached out to someone who was there: QZ.com’s Mike Murphy, and actually, his take was pretty different than some of the others I read to you on Thursday. Come for that, and stay for the reality check about what will really make the 5G revolution happen. Sponsors: Mealime GetQuip.com/ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to another weekend bonus episode of the TechMeme Right Home. I'm Brian McCullough. So that Razor event out in L.A. earlier this week, obviously I didn't get to cover it live.

And if there ever was a recent hardware event crying out for a hands-on so that you could get reporting, this was one of those. So I reached out to someone who was there. Quartz's Mike Murphy. And actually, his take was pretty different than some. of the others that I read to you on Thursday. So come for that and stay for the reality check that Mike delivers about what will really make the 5G revolution meaningfully happen in our lives. So the Razor event was in L.A. last night, right? It was. Yeah. It was at this place in the arts district that kind of fell halfway between like a rave and some weird club that I probably

wouldn't have gone to otherwise. That's funny that you say that because from the pictures I saw, I was like, are they in a garage or a warehouse or something? It definitely was warehouse-esque, and there was a DJ that was far too loud for the number of people that were actually in attendance. All right, well, then, look, all we really want to know is, I assume you got a hands-on. Let me know your impressions so far. I did. I spent some time with it. The Razor kind of looks like the original. When you close it and hold it sideways in front of you, it looks identical, but then it's considerably wider.

And, you know, it doesn't hit. One of the things that really bums me out is it doesn't have that kind of satisfying, like, clack when it closes like the original did. Oh, wait, wait, wait, because I've read conflicting things on that this morning. Oh, really? Some people have said that, yes, no, it's still got that satisfying sort of flourish where you end a phone call by closing the phone. but just tactilely, you're saying it wasn't quite as satisfying to do that? Yeah, it has, I don't remember, I guess because of the old one, it was metal on metals. It was like a decent snap when it closed, but this, there's two magnets that hold it in place.

So it feels like closing a laptop screen more than it does, the old razor. It doesn't clack. I mean, it's still nice to like literally, you know, slam a phone closed if you're having an angry conversation. I can see that, you know, that'll be fun again. but it doesn't, it doesn't like snap like an AirPods case or a Zippo lighter or something. But generally, how does it feel like flimsy? Like that's the other thing I've been reading all day is that everyone seems to be at least going with Motorola's confidence that, you know, this is not, this is not like those other foldable phones. This is durable.

This is solid. Yeah, they're talking a very big game. And I asked their head of design twice. yesterday and the day before to his face that are you confident in this and all both times all you said back is we wouldn't have released it if we weren't um but you know when i was playing around with it i noticed that the way that the screen folds in it before it kind of goes into the device it actually pops out um a little bit from the body and you could put a finger under it like you can you can completely pull the screen away from the rest of the phone because it's plastic yeah um

I just can't imagine the editor who edited my story on this was like, I would not give this to my child. And I asked Motorola straight up, like, are you going to put any warnings on the box like Samsung did when they re-released the fold? And they're like, nope, okay. I don't know if this is like a hubristic claim on their behalf or if they really think that that's, I mean, I didn't try and like yank it apart. I'm at their event. I don't want to destroy their phones. But, right, but surely when you're opening, you surely must have open, open, close, open close, open close, open close, like, does that feel smooth and like reliable?

It feels pretty, pretty reliable. I would say as reliable as the fold felt, you know, I reviewed it both times. And I didn't have one of the ones that broke, but the actual mechanism of the folding screen seemed okay. It's just that like kind of in the same case with Samsung, it wasn't the, display itself necessarily, it was posing the issues, but things being able to get underneath it. And there's a massive gap. I mean, you can literally see through the gap in the display on the razor. And something is going to get in there. I don't understand how that's not an issue, but they seem confident that it isn't. And what about everyone has been telling me all morning

no visible crease. How does a plastic OLED screen kind of look when you're looking at it? It looks like a cell phone, like a good cell phone from a few years ago, you know, kind of as good as the iPhone 10R. You know, it's

not top of the line, but it's good. But I did notice a crease. I play with a few different ones. And if you hold it, you don't see it when you're holding it directly at you kind of like you do the fold. You definitely do. But someone else had one in their hands kind of pointed away from me. And when the light hit it, I could definitely see the fold. It wasn't as egregious as Samsung's, but like, it's still there.

At the end of the day, if you fold something thousands of times, eventually a crease is going to be left. Now, when you say that there's a visible crease, is it, is it that, well, sort of like paper would sort of get an indentation if you fold it enough times? Or is it that, like, the actual electronics inside the screen. Maybe you can see some sort of noticeable, there's where it folds over. Like, what are we talking about? Yeah, I'd say it's more like paper. So it's like a bubble,

not a digital thing. Yeah, yeah. How about putting it in your pocket? Because to me, this is the thing. Aside from the fact that I just like the idea that somebody after a decade is trying to do something different than just a

slab of glass. But also, I do think that it's solves, like, as much as they make everything thinner and lighter, we've still just been putting increasingly larger slabs of glass in our pockets. So, like, I love the idea of getting some square footage back. You know what I mean? So how does that feel in terms of pocketability and that sort of stuff? I think that that is absolutely the selling point with this. I mean, it feels comfortable in your pocket. It's like having an iPhone, it's smaller than an iPhone 3, I think in terms of the real estate it takes up in your pocket.

It really is quite nice. And what's quite amazing about it is when this phone is closed, it is as thick as the original razor. Yeah, that's amazing. It really is a feat of engineering. They've done an amazing job making this device thin. But part of the tradeoff there is that it's got that huge chin on the bottom like the original did.

And kind of like it was the case back then. That's because a lot of the components live down there, allowing the rest of the device to be so thin. But yeah, I mean, I could see it being a huge thing for people that just don't want a giant thing in their pocket that looks extremely awkward and but still want a big screen with them. And, you know, Motorola made a big deal about the fact that it has a 21 by 9 aspect ratio. And it's like, yeah, okay, so you can watch, you know, movies with this and it will look pretty decent. And because it has that giant chin, you can hold it by the chin and not put your hand.

on the screen, which is actually quite nice. Well, and then my other thinking about this, like earlier in the year when I thought, oh, this is going to be the year of the foldable phones is as a status sort of symbol, like I don't have the phone that all the rest of y'all have, which by the way, remember, originally before the Razor became the everybody phone, it was an expensive phone at the beginning, and it was a status symbol. So I'm wondering if, like, is the sexiness to it still there, you think? I think to a degree, I mean, it'll be interesting to see if I get to review it. I mean, when I, when I reviewed the fold both times, it's the only phone other than an iPhone that

people have been like, what is that? And I could definitely see that happening with this. And I asked Motorola yesterday, actually, you know, is this the start of a bigger thing? And will will this become your kind of every phone in a few years? And they basically, they were obviously a bit coy about it, but they were kind of hinting at this is the start of a larger push in this direction. So I could see this becoming a kind of, you know, standard for them in a few years as well. Yeah, actually, just a quick impression from you of, you know, wither Motorola. The Motorola of today is not the Motorola of the Razor in 2005. Just any sense that you got, from that company and like is there energy behind them and stuff like that it seems that way i mean

you know they do have Lenovo behind them which isn't a tiny company and it seems like there's a bit of a revival i wouldn't want to say it's you know it's their back or anything like that but you know you look at some of the devices that Lenovo has been making recently between this i really like their smart display they're going to have that foldable uh laptop out in 2020 like it does feel like they're one of the few companies that's actually trying a bunch of new interesting stuff. And whether it sticks or not is obviously, you know, we'll find out. But they're actually trying stuff. And it does feel kind of energizing. $1,500 is not cheap, but it is the the cheap end of the foldable spectrum. And it's only on Verizon.

I don't know. I'm just wondering, like, I just wonder if $1,500 and exclusive to one carrier is almost one of those sort of Palm Pre things where it's a good idea and it might get traction, but they're sort of handicapping it out of the gate? I thought that, and I actually asked them that and then extremely embarrassed myself because apparently I read it wrong. It's exclusive to Verizon only for a little while. They didn't say how long, but this will be available on every carrier eventually, and it's not carrier locked. I actually spoke with Verizon as well, and they said, nope, it's not carrier locked.

If you want to buy it and put it on some other network, but of course, you know, they did the marketing experiment. Why would you want to leave America's best network? It's like, okay, well, I have ATT. What do you want me to do? But so it will work on every network. Eventually, I think the tying with Verizon is just like a kind of joint marketing stunt for now. But yeah, I don't know.

It's really expensive. You know, that's $500 more than a very good iPhone. But, you know, if it's the start of, things that come. All you need is enough people, enough early adopters to do it. And then the price gets, you know, lower over time. And I could see it being the thing that kicks off the revolution. But yeah, I can see it being like a pound pre and just being a flash and pan that people remember finally 10 years later, but don't actually bought. I want to ask you about another product that you reviewed recently. I think you got

definitely more hands on with this, obviously, because it's out. But the AirPods Pro, you weren't quite as rapturous about them as other folks have been. So what's your high-level take on the AirPods Pro? Well, like literally right now, I'm using my old AirPods. I had the new ones with me somewhere, but I think I need to return them. And there are a couple things that I just didn't like about them. You know, and this has been a problem for all AirPods, but the new ones, they come with three sizes of rubber tips to put in your ears.

And basically, if one of those doesn't fit perfectly, they don't work. They don't work as intended. You know, there's supposed to be noise canceling or noise reducing headphones, but sizes, they're not going to do their job. And for the price, there are way better over-the-year noise-canceling headphones. Like, I have a pair of Bose QC-35-2s from a couple of years ago that I would never trade away for these new AirPods. You know, other than that, I don't feel like there's enough extra utility. And I personally really don't like the new design compared to the, with the case and the actual earbud themselves.

The original case, it was easy with one hand to flick it open and close because it was longer than it is wide, whereas the new one is the opposite. And it's just, I always feel like I need two hands to use it. the earbuds are a little harder to get back in their little houses. They, I don't know, a friend of mine was saying they kind of look like some company you tried to knock the AirPods off. You know, they look like someone took the original AirPods design and went, how can we not get sued for these? So, I don't know.

I just, I have been really big on AirPods pretty much since the get-go. I've had them since they first came out. But I don't know. I think for the additional. value of sometimes noise cancelling, I don't really know if that's worth $100 extra dollars. Well, and the thing that I didn't realize, because I must not have read the reviews closely enough, is that the tapping interface, is it completely gone?

Or is it just... Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's another bizarre thing. That blows my mind. The old ones, yeah, the old ones had a very simple top twice to do something, and you can set, whether that's change a song, talk to Siri, and you can, you can, call out Syria on the second generation model as well, which I'm not going to do except by like five Apple devices in front of me. But the new ones, you just have to, you can only squeeze the

stem of the earbuds, which bizarrely is also twice as short on the new ones. It's actually kind of hard to do that and you need to use two fingers to do it. It just kind of looks like you're taking your AirPods in and out every time you're doing it. And it's just super fiddly. but you the the beats solo pro you liked i did actually and it's the same technology um you know everyone was saying how amazing this new transparency mode on the AirPods is it has literally been in the the beats line for a while now and i was surprised i personally have never wanted a pair of beats i've never owned a pair of beats so maybe i was going in expecting quite quite little and it was better than that but they've they've redesigned the beats um you know they've they've

they were pretty susceptible to breaking in the past. They've redesigned the hinges. They don't snap as easily. I still have the noise cancelling, especially considering they sit on your ear rather than covering your whole ear, was surprisingly good. Like, I used them on a few flights, and I found them actually pretty nice to use.

Finally, this is something that I try not to do, but sometimes I can't help myself. Your piece on 5G, and what it'll really mean once it starts to happen to us, connected with some recent news that really made me think of things differently. So I'm going to go on a bit of a soliloquy here. You know, the news that Apple had that internal meeting recently about how their AR glasses are the next big thing

and maybe will eventually long-term be a replacement for the iPhone, sort of made me scratch my head, but then I don't know, it makes sense. But then your piece about the, I remembered your piece about the 5G revolution. And the point that you made that connected dots for me was that, okay, we're all anticipating 5G coming, but in reality, what does it mean? Oh, it means things will be faster. But fundamentally, we're just going to be doing the same stuff on the same devices that we already have.

It'll just be faster. So the point that was made in your piece is that. that the revolution in 5G won't just be everything will be faster. It'll actually be when latency goes away. Somebody in your piece said that 5G will need an iconic device, and it'll probably be AR and VR because once you can do everything instantaneously in real time out in the world, then suddenly some form of AR, headgear, or glasses or whatever, actually makes sense. Yeah.

So tell me more about why. All we're talking about right now is speed, but it's really when the latency goes away that the real 5G revolution is going to happen. Yeah, I mean, that's what a lot of smart people have told me, and it makes sense to me. the issue isn't necessarily that we can't get enough content on our existing devices fast enough today. That's no one is, I mean, yeah, okay, some places you've got spotty cell connection or something, but that's not going to be revolutionary. It will be, and this is going to be a much harder task, but it will be if 5G is able to reduce latency

to less than 10 milliseconds. Because basically that, below that threshold, the human eye, can't perceive anything, like it looks like real time to the human eye. And so if you can create a network where you can deliver information constantly and reliably to someone that to them, it looks like it's happening in real time, you're going to have a transformative experience. And, you know, holding a device up in your hand is not going to be that. Yeah, it'll be cool. Maybe Google Maps AR will work a little better. But you're going to need something that's more intimate and more taking up your entire field of view at all times.

And so some kind of headset or something that's wearable seems to be the thing that would do that. But, you know, there's debate whether that would be AR, VR, but I feel like it was VR. You're only going to be able to use it in certain situations. Well, I mean, by the way, VR is something that we've been told is the next big thing for a while now. So maybe, maybe, again, it's everything, something's the next big thing until there's that one key threshold crossed. And maybe 5G is it. But like I said, that connected the dots to me to that Apple thing where if they're, like you're saying, smart people are telling you this. If Apple's seeing this, then yeah, that does make sense that, like, in the same way that we couldn't, like, smartphones couldn't take off until 3G was around so it was fast enough to be functional to have mobile internet on you at all times. what you just said, like, where it's real time where if I'm at a baseball game and I'm looking at the pitcher and there's an overlay that gives me his stats and the instantaneous, you know, or whatever, any number of scenarios. Like, that to me was the first time that I'm like, oh, yeah, it is obvious that AR at least clearly would be the next step.

Yeah, but the problem is the network that you're going to need to build that is insane because you're moving from cell towers every, 500 yards or something to cell towers, I think every 20 yards to build that structure to maintain that latency. And I don't know, that's a huge infrastructure task. And that's going to take time and money and people will

probably get disillusioned before it actually becomes a reality. So if there's a high chance it will never actually come to pass and it will be solved in some other way, like Wi-Fi everywhere or something. But I don't know. It's a really interesting concept when you start thinking about getting beyond these little rectangles who we keep in our pockets.

And so when we hear right now about carriers rolling out their 5G network, all they're doing right now is getting the gear in place to get those higher speeds, but then that eliminating the latency phase could be years and years after that. Yeah, it's actually, it's weird because 5G is a set of standards rather than one standard. And so, yeah, half of it, or a third, depending on how technically you want to get, is that faster speeds. And that can be done with existing infrastructure. It's just putting new radios on the towers and masks we already have. But to create the low latency structure that is also part of the 5G standard, that's going to require heavy capital investment and just new infrastructure everywhere.

And so that's a lot harder to do. when ATT or Verizon says, we have 5G. All they mean is we have the existing structure that you're used to, but now you're going to get, you know, in the time it used to take you to download an episode on Netflix, now you can get a whole season. Finally, finally. You're a Chelsea supporter, right?

I am. You guys are quietly having a better, like everyone's talking about how, you know, Lester is hanging in there, and of course everyone's, like, focused on the fact that Liverpool hasn't lost, but you guys are quietly hanging in there way better than at least our solace. It's the most exciting time to be a Chelsea fan in years. It's really, really enjoyable to watch

these literal kids who are actually having fun out there. Like, I can't remember the last time I felt like a Chelsea team was having fun. Well, right, because that was always the knock on Chelsea for the last 20 years, is that they just buy stars and they spend tons of money on their youth academy, but the kids never get to play. And then out of nowhere, Like, why isn't Tammy Abraham a bigger star? Like, Jesus. I think there's a few reasons for that, but it's partially because of the preconceived nations of Chelsea. And Tammy Abraham will be one of England strikers from the next 15 years if he stays healthy.

He's like nothing else I've seen. And I guess quietly maybe Lamps is a decent manager? Well, you know, what people forget about Frank Lampard, not only is, Is he one of the greatest midfielers of all time? He is a member of Mensa, and he's a literal genius. So it's not surprising to me, but everyone else seems to forget that. Well, listen, if Arsenal's listening, you know, maybe bringing back old players as coaches. There's Vierras around somewhere.

I don't know. Yeah. Ayn Rie just signed for Montreal today. Right. I saw that. So I don't know. You know, the annoying sliding doors, but I guess every team thinks this, is if Vanger had just left a year or two earlier, we could have Klopp now.

But again, I think everybody thinks that. All right, Mike, thank you. Thank you.