Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 11/14 - The Razr Returns!

Episode Date: November 14, 2019

There’s a new Razr phone with a foldable screen that might actually work? That Apple Prime bundle might be coming sooner rather than later. That Apple Research app is here right now. Why did 1Password raise a bunch of money for the first time ever? And can Netflix use Nickelodeon to fend off Disney? Sponsors: PixelUnion.net leap.FidelityCareers.com Links: Motorola's foldable Razr: Inside the remaking of a flip phone icon (CNET) MOTOROLA RESURRECTS THE RAZR AS A FOLDABLE ANDROID SMARTPHONE (The Verge) Apple Plans Mega Bundle of Music, News, TV as Early as 2020 (Bloomberg) Apple launches Research app, US users can enroll in three health studies (9to5Mac) In Its First Funding In 14 Years, Toronto’s 1Password Raises $200M Series A Led By Accel (Crunchbase) Netflix and Nickelodeon partner on original programming, following Disney+ launch (TechCrunch) First ‘Tuned by THX’ home theater speakers need no A/V receivers — or wires (Digital Trends) Support the pod directly! Subscribe to the ad-free feed directly in your podcast app! 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 the TechMeme right home for Thursday, November 14th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. There's a new Razor phone with a foldable screen that might actually work.

That Apple Prime bundle might be coming sooner than we thought. That Apple Research app is here right now. Why did One Password raise a bunch of money for the first time ever? And can Netflix use Nickelodeon to fend off Disney? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. The Razor is back, baby. At an event last night in Los Angeles, Motorola announced the new Razor phone with a 6.2-inch touchscreen display launching on Verizon only in the U.S. in January. But of course, the Razor was an iconic clamshell phone from the early aughts.

So this new device folds into a clamshell as well. Click through in the show notes to see the pictures. Opened up, this thing looks like, you know, your average. smartphone slab of glass, runs Android, etc. But close it up and it looks almost exactly like the razor of yore. Same prominent chin. Same thickness, actually, when closed. The only difference when closed is that now there is a 2.7-inch OLED display on the back, or the top or the outer show, whatever you want to call it, that will show you notifications, handle music controls, etc. Now, of course, other foldable phones this year have had issues. The 21 by 9 screen on the new razor when unfolded is actually a plastic OLED panel.

Motorola swears this thing is durable. These are quotes from the company. They have, quote, full confidence in the durability of the flex view display. That, quote, it will last for the average lifespan of a smartphone. And, quote, we are not going to go out there and say, consumers should be cautious of how they use the phone, end quote. Obviously, we'll have to wait and see if that confidence is warranted, but Motorola talked a lot about how they engineered multiple hinges to make the whole thing work.

This is from CNET. What had Motorola feeling confident was the unique hinge design it created for the new razor. The ultimate goal was to create a mechanism that would allow the screen to close in on itself. But here's the dilemma. If you fold a sheet of paper or plastic, completely. flat, you inevitably get a crease. That's why the Galaxy Fold, which folds inwards, has a large gap in the middle. It's also why Huawei chose to position its folding screen on the outside. By increasing the folding radius, you decrease the stress on the display and the likelihood

of a crease. It wasn't an easy process. Early prototypes had the phone with giant hinges jetting out from each side, giving it Dumbo-like ears that would have ruined the aesthetics. Finally, the designers were able to accomplish a complete fold with what they called the zero-gap hinge. As with the earlier prototype, the hinges remain at the side, but not as far out. In fact, you can see some of the gears exposed, getting a glimpse into the mechanics of the construction, similar to a luxury watch. It also added space for the display to bend inward. If you could look into a cross-section of the phone when it's folded, you would see the screen bend in an intricate teardrop shape rather than a flat fold, end quote.

So apparently no crease. That's good. But also, if you're going to do a razor, you're going to want that satisfying snapping shut action, you know, so you can end a phone call with a flourish or maybe even sending a text with a flourish, whatever. You know what I'm talking about. That's satisfying closing. clicking thing. How does it feel in the hand? Here's Hyam Gartenberg in the Verge. Quote, the whole opening and closing mechanism is supremely satisfying to do with crisp snaps in both directions. Snapping the phone shut to hang up a call is a particular delight. There really is

no better way to end a call than the classic flip phone snap, and it's excellent to see that Motorola has kept it alive here. The hardware feels great, too, with solid-feeling stainless steel and glass on the outside and a wonderfully textured back that's nice and grippy, which is essential for not dropping it while flipping it open and shut. It is a fingerprint magnet, though. The design isn't just a novelty either. The folding design actually solves a lot of the issues on hand with most smartphones today. Think phones are too big. The razor folds up to fit nearly any pocket. Worried about getting your screen scratched, the razors is protected at all times. Notifications too distracting, deal with them on the more limited front display instead of falling down

an internet rabbit hole, end quote. And hey, look, again, that's the whole point in the end of this whole foldable phone thing. Some folks are at least trying to figure out a fresh rethink to the fundamental design of smartphones as they've existed for the first time in more than a decade. And yeah, $1,500 is a lot of money, although that does make the razor the cheapest foldable phone on the market. So, if you want, you can get your 2005 on and still feel like you're living in the future at the exact same time. This news should surprise nobody, but sources are telling Mark German and Jerry Smith at Bloomberg that Apple is considering bundling Apple News Plus, Apple TV Plus and Apple Music together in order to attract new subscribers.

What is a little interesting is that Apple wants to do this as soon as next year, which means they're going to have to hurry up and restructure a whole lot of deals. And actually, it's Apple News Plus that might be the issue when it comes to that. If Apple sold Apple News Plus as part of a bundle with Apple TV Plus and Apple Music, publishers would get less money because the cost. of the news service would likely be reduced, the people said. Some media executives say the amount they've received from Apple News Plus so far has been less than expected. One publisher typically gets under $20,000 a month, less revenue than it saw from texture, a previous iteration of the

service that Apple acquired last year, one person said. It remains unclear whether publishers are seeing less revenue than they expected, because Apple News Plus has few subscribers, or because their content isn't being widely read, end quote. Also on the Apple front, in FYI, that the Apple Research app is now available to download for iPhone and Apple Watch in the U.S. Apple Research is that app that will allow you to enroll in and participate in health studies. Right now, there's only three available, a women's health study, a heart and movement study, and a hearing study.

Quoting 9 to 5 Mac. The Women's Health Study draws data from the cycle transfer. app on watchOS6 with the aim to improve scientific understanding of menstrual cycles. The heart and movement study uses a variety of signals from the watch, including movement and health rate information. The hearing study examines the impact of sound exposure on hearing health and stress levels. The research app can collect a variety of data types from the iPhone and paired Apple Watch, including movement, heart rate, and noise level data. As always, Apple is promoting the privacy angle of its health efforts. Apple says the research app will only share

appropriate data with the studies that the user explicitly signs up to. Last night, Apple and Stanford Medicine published the full results from its first Apple Watch heart study. The three new studies launching today are described as multi-year initiatives, which could lead to, quote, potentially groundbreaking medical discoveries, end quote. Super interesting raise. OnePassword, the password management app that I use and cannot live without, has raised a $200 million Series A led by a cell. This is interesting because this represents apparently the largest check ever written in one round by a cell, and because also this represents the first external round of funding OnePassword has ever

raised in its 14-year history. So if you're not familiar with the one-password story, the company was founded in Toronto in 2005 by two couples, Dave and Sarah Tier and Rostom and Natalia Karamov. Initially, they focused only on consumers and the simple problem of how to remember all of your passwords. But, of course, if you use the service correctly, it's actually a way to make sure all of your accounts have completely different passwords. That's actually the most important part of using OnePassword. Quoting Crunchbase. In May 2016, OnePassword evolved and began offering its services to businesses. This move took an already successful company to another level.

In three and a half years' time, OnePassword has grown to having over one million users, including 500,000 customers, including 25% of the Fortune 100, using its enterprise password manager or EPM product globally, quote, to help employees maintain strong credentials, manage access to services, and report on usage, end quote. In the past three years, OnePassWords Enterprise business has grown over 300% and now comprises a majority of the company's revenue. Customers include IBM, Slack, PagerDuty, Dropbox, GitLab, and Roche, among others, the company declined to provide its valuation. The move to B2B was a brilliant one, according to a cell partner, Aaron Matthew, who told me his firm,

actually approached one password about investing in the company. Quote, they weren't looking for outside capital, he said. The investment ended up being the single largest check and largest individual investment we've ever made, end quote. One password, Matthew noted, started out as a utility, but evolved into a, quote, core part of personal and increasingly corporate security hygiene, end quote. Small streaming wars dispatch, Netflix has entered into a multi-year deal with Nickelodeon, which will see Nickelodeon producing animated feature films and shows, including

content from existing characters, but also some completely new IP. So if one of Disney's key advantages in the streaming wars has been that amazing back catalog of especially kids content, this is an interesting strategic move from Netflix to partially counteract that, quoting TechCrunch. To retain customers, Netflix will need to have more kids content that will appeal to families, a powerful demographic that all streamers today target with investments in original programming and other licensing deals. Netflix didn't offer any details on which iconic Nickelodeon IP would be involved in the new programming or what sort of new characters may be under development. Nor did it speak to the number of titles it expects the multi-year deal

to produce or when the first shows or movies would arrive. Instead, today's announcement was more focused on taking the wind out of Disney's sales following its big and sometimes glitchy U.S. launch. Netflix isn't the only new partner in the children's and family space working with Netflix as part of the streamer's larger strategy to challenge the Disney Plus threat. As the New York Times recently reported, the streamer has been amassing a number of creators and executives as part of its counterattack strategy, including former Pixar and Disney animators and others. It also recently worked with the Jim Henson Company to produce the Dark Crystal Age Age of Resistance, end quote.

Netflix also touted to the New York Times the value of kids programming to its service, noting that around 60% of Netflix's global audience watches their service for children and family content on a monthly basis, end quote. Finally today, I don't know how often I've ever spoken about home audio tech on here, maybe once or twice tangentially. I saw this piece in digital trends that intrigued me, though. you know THX, that George Lucas founded company, that you probably mostly associate with sound in cinemas. Well, now THX can help you tune your own home theater sound set up. Think of it as tuning as a service, thanks to this new tuned by THX audio program. Quote, in automotive terms, it's like taking your car to a Formula One mechanic for a tune-up.

They won't be able to magically turn your Fiesta into a Ferrari, but they'll still be able to coax more performance out of it than it had when it left the factory. With a tuned by THX audio component, the difference can be very noticeable. The first product to receive the tuned by THX treatment is the new $899 Monaco 5.1 wireless home theater speaker system from Planton Audio. From the outside, it looks like a lot of other 5.1 systems. It's got a left and right set of bookshelf-sized front speakers, a center channel, two rear channels, and a low-profile 100-watt subwifor. But in addition to having its acoustics

fine-tuned by the audio mechanics at THX, the monoco belongs to a new breed of home theater speakers. Each speaker is wireless, needing only a wall plug for power, and the entire system can be installed and connected to a TV in minutes without the need for speaker cables or even an AV receiver.

It achieves this through the use of WISA wireless technology. WISA, I think I'm pronouncing that right, it's W-I-S-A, is an emerging standard for making home theater speakers wireless without giving up any of the quality or immediacy associated with traditional wired setups. For WISA to work, you need WISA compatible speakers and a WISA transmitter. The Monaco 5.1 system gives you both, but there's a bit of a caveat. The USB WISA transmitter that ships with the Monaco is designed to work only with TVs that are WISA ready. At the moment, only the 2019 LG OLED and nanocell TVs are WISA-ready. Software preloaded on the LGs TVs gives users the ability to control the settings for the Monaco speakers on screen using their existing remote control.

If you want to use the Monaco system with a non-WISA-ready TV, it's possible, but you'll need to buy a full-fledged WISA-compatible control center, end quote. So truly wireless audio systems where there's little to know sacrifice, infidelity. I know a 69-year-old audiophile who still obsessively buys vintage receivers from the 1970s on eBay and has old issues of stereo reviews strewn about his house. Hey, dad, $900 is maybe a little much, but I suppose we could pool our money and get you something special for your 70th birthday next year. That is all for today. As always, I've been Brian McCullough. Follow me on Twitter Brian MCC. If you want to help me find stories to feature on the show, post them on the podcast subreddit at our slash ride home. And if you want to support the work that I do here every single day directly, you can subscribe to an ad-free version of the show. The link to do so is at the very bottom of today's show notes. Five bucks a month for roughly seven and a half hours of content every month. About a penny a minute. It's quite a bargain.

Talk to you tomorrow.