Tech News Weekly 345 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Tech News Weekly. Jennifer Patterson Tuohy is here, and Jennifer has a great kind of thought exercise about the future of Apple's HomePod, given the rumor upon rumor upon rumor now that that HomePod may soon get a screen. How might it look? What might it do? We'll find out, hopefully soon. Then my story of the week is all about Cellebrite, the forensics company that tries to crack into smartphones. Apparently, it's not so great at cracking into the most recent, most updated smartphones on the market. After that, my first interview is with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai of TechCrunch, who stops by to talk about stalkerware apps and why, frankly, no one should be using them for more than one reason, not just the ethical concerns involved. And then Lexy Savvides, the principal video producer of CNET, joins us to talk about the Samsung Galaxy Ring, because she got to go hands-on, or rather it went on her hand. A great review of that device all coming up on Tech News Weekly.

0:01:16 - VO
Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This. Is TWiT.

0:01:25 - Mikah Sargent
This is Tech News Weekly, with Jennifer Patterson Tuohy and me, Mikah Sargent, Episode 345, recorded Thursday, July 18th 2024 Hands-On With the Samsung Galaxy Ring.

Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where, every week, we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I am your host, Mikah sergeant, and it is time to introduce my co-host of this week. It is Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of The Verge. Welcome back, Jen.

0:02:00 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Thanks, Mikah, always happy to be here. It feels like an age because I was here early last year, last month, so it's been a while and it's nice to be back.

0:02:06 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, it has been a while I'm glad to have you back, glad to get to chat with you, and for the folks tuning in for the first time, I'll explain that at the beginning of the show. My wonderful co-host and I both bring stories of the week to the table and Jennifer will be kicking us off this week with her story of the week.

0:02:26 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
And Jennifer will be kicking us off this week with her story of the week. Yeah, so it's been kind of a slow news week in my space. There's lots of news, but my space has been a little quiet and actually I did a piece on Tuesday where I kind of rounded up a lot of rumors over the years that were kind of triggered by some news that was discovered late last week around what possibly Apple might be doing new in the smart home space. For many years, literally, there's been rumors around Apple doing a smart display. And now, for those unfamiliar, smart displays are like the slightly more expensive sibling to smart speakers, so devices that you use voice control to ask to play music, what the time is, what the weather is, control smart home devices. And the smart display adds a display, an interactive element that you can touch, maybe see information, see album art, for tracks you're playing, view video doorbells in the smart home it's a sort of extra feature on top of a smart speaker and there are many popular brands out there that have smart displays. So Amazon has its Echo Show line, Google has its Nest Hub line. There were some third party smart displays, although those have sort of fallen by the wayside and Apple. For many years people have been wondering are they going to come out with something similar for the HomePod, so a screen with a HomePod? And so what happened last week with iOS sorry, with tvOS Better 3 that was launched is that 9to5Mac found some code in there that indicated there was a new springboard style interface called Plasterboard coming to tvOS 18, which had a touchscreen for entering like a lock screen code, like you would on an iPad. Now, why would tvOS need a touchscreen lock screen interface? And so they have made the sort of leap that maybe this is the beginnings of this long-rubed smart display. And there were some code found the previous week from MacRumors that actually said there is a new home accessory coming. It was called Home Accessory 17,1.

And there was a lot of sort of chatter around this that indicated that this could be the beginning of the first Apple intelligence coming to Apple Home, which, if you haven't caught up with right now, apple intelligence is not part of any Apple home device. It's not coming to current home pods. It's not going to be part of Apple home as we know it. Mark Gurman, well-known Apple expert, who who gets all the leaks and who has covered a lot of the smart display rumors over the years says that the first Apple Home device from Apple with Apple intelligence is likely to launch next spring. So, putting all these rumors together, I wrote a piece this week about what we may see with Apple's home screen pod display thing and I'm excited about this.

This is something I feel the Apple Home smart home really needs. The rumors are there are really sort of three core things that we might see and then a couple kind of extras. One is just the basic current home pod, the big one, which already has a touchscreen on top, but an improvement to that, so maybe something that you could see answers to your questions. So, for example, if you've ever asked your HomePod for certain information and been told, oh, I'll send you information to your phone if you ask me again, as opposed to actually getting the information you want, you've got a bit frustrated. A HomePod with a better screen on top could maybe show you some of that information, like the weather forecast or being able to control the dimming or brightening of a light. Those types of enhancements we might have with just a basic change to the current HomePod.

That's not super exciting, but you could see that as an easy upgrade, but the one that most people want, I think, and that has been rumored the most by not just by Mark Gurman, but there's also rumors from the noted analyst I'm trying to remember how to pronounce his name. Is it Min-Chi Kuo? Thank you, yes, that Apple will come out with a HomePod with a 7-inch touchscreen display and this new plasterboard interface that 9to5Mac has uncovered. That seems like a pretty good indication that that could be what they're working on. So this would be a lot like an Echo Show 8. But Mark Gurman's rumor says that actually, the development that apple is working on now apparently they've been working on a number of different solutions to this is a screen, a smart speaker with a movable robot arm type screen.

That sounds complicated that's sold on um, but what I would really like to see, um and this is what I talked about in the article I think what we really need. I don't think we need a smart display really from Apple. That's like a HomePod with a touchscreen, because that's been done and it's not very good. My personal experience with smart displays they're not great. I mean they have some uses, but they're generally inexpensive, which means they're underpowered. I see you have a Google Nest behind you. They make great digital photo frames. That's wonderful. That's pretty much all I use it for. Exactly, they're not great speakers, because you stick a screen on front of a speaker and you're ruining the acoustics.

So what I think Apple needs to do is come out with a home pad. So this would be like a and this has also been rumored a less fancy iPad that has a very specific use case for the home, very much like what the Echo Hub is. This is something that Amazon's come out with, which is an Echo tablet that you put on your wall or have on a countertop and you can control your smart home. So you know, there's a few different ideas here. I think something like the Google Pixel, the Google Pixel tablet, which, if you're familiar with is where they have a smart well, a speaker Calling it smart is a stretch A speaker that the Pixel tablet is docked to, so you could have.

You could imagine perhaps a HomePod that you could dock an iPad to. That's one other sort of rumor that we've seen, although if you're trying to use that for home control, the chances are that tablet is just going to disappear into someone's bedroom and you're not going to be able to control things. So we'll see. But I'm really interested to see what Apple does in this space. It seems to me that they have an opportunity, because they are so late to the game, to really come out with something useful, groundbreaking, exciting. I just hope it's not going to be ridiculously expensive because you know the home.

Yeah, which is likely. So what do you? What do you think is most likely? What will you be? What would you like to see? I mean, you use, you run an apple home, don't you? What would what I do so help?

0:09:53 - Mikah Sargent
you with your home when these rumors were first announced or when these rumors were kind of coming up even a long time ago. You're kind of the. The last thing that you mentioned is really what I pictured, which was an Apple TV that was also a soundbar, and then in I didn't even think of it at the time, but now I would want it to also have a FaceTime camera built in. Right, if there was a soundbar that had the acoustics that Apple is known for, that also was my Apple TV Apple is known for. That also is my Apple TV. But then I could just place in front of my television and it could be my FaceTime camera to do FaceTime calls but also Zoom calls. Now that that's possible with the Apple TV, all of that built into one, that's what I really would love to see and I would pay a premium for that. I would pay more money for that.

0:10:43 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
I could also see, Couldn't that just be an Apple TV, Like they just need to do? I think they just need to come out with an actual Apple TV.

0:10:50 - Mikah Sargent
Oh yeah, just like an actual television.

0:10:52 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, let's just do it, you know.

0:10:54 - Mikah Sargent
That might be $6,000 or something ridiculous, and hopefully. The speaker would just be, the soundbar would be like what? $350, $400. You're right, though. Maybe they just need to go back to finally doing the TV, or maybe there's some.

0:11:09 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Mac mini, apple TV confluence. We could do. Yeah, why not the modular element and a speaker? And yeah, I think a soundbar is an interesting one, I mean, and again, that rumor of and I think this one is the most sort of out there, which is the Apple TV with a camera and a speaker and you know, so that it can do everything, I feel like that. I mean, what was that going to look like? How would that work? What's your? I mean, what would you want there? I mean, like a little dongle that you stick on your TV and the sound bar below.

0:11:47 - Mikah Sargent
So this is the good thing about what Apple has done. Think about what is it called Center stage that they've introduced on different devices.

0:11:56 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
You can dock it, yeah.

0:11:58 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, and they have dock it too, so you can put your iPad wherever you want, and the camera and the system kind of all intelligently zoom in wherever you're walking around, and that's one thing with Apple that you can usually do is look at what's come before and see how those items are leading up to something that they're working on kind of down the road, and I could see that being part of it.

The other thing, though, that you talked about was potentially kind of having a HomePod that lets you dock an iPad to it. Outside of the couple of people I know and by that I almost do mean just a couple of people, maybe three, four people who are huge iPad users Everybody else I talk to says, oh yeah, I have to. Every time I go to pick up my iPad, I realize I need to plug it in to charge it, and that's because I just haven't used it in a while. So the idea that it could remain docked on top of a Home Pod and actually serve a purpose, and then anytime I could pick it up when I actually do want to use it and it would actually be charged because it's been docked, I think that's not a bad idea.

0:13:11 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, and that was Google's entire selling point behind the Google Pixel tablet was, like they did, this whole video of, you know, dead tablets in drawers that no one ever used because they're dead when you go to get them. And yeah, it is a great interface to have that. You know. If you could, if you could have some kind of mag safe accessory with, like the dock kit that would also rotate as you know, rotate around this is what Mark Gurman talked about like having some kind of robot arm. But so I think there are two distinct issues here. Is Apple going to develop a HomePod smart speaker with a display that's basically an iPad for streaming music, watching content, or is it doing a home device, like for smart home control? Because in my experience with smart displays, you can't do both well, and I'm you know you either. If Google Pixel tablet is a prime example, it's a great device for a tablet, but it's useless as a smart home controller. I mean that's also because they didn't put thread in it. The speaker does not act as a speaker on its own. Once you take the dock away, it's basically a useless piece of plastic.

They didn't do many things right with that and you could definitely see Apple coming along and doing it better. You know that's their thing. You know, better late and better than never, or early and bad. So we'll see. But from a home perspective, a movable iPad is sort of a non-starter, as in, you know, in a family, in a home with multiple people that might be moving it around and putting it in the wrong place. I'm also worried about a rotating screen. I've used the Echo Show 10, which does that, and you have to give that thing a lot of space because it moves and bangs into things and yeah, it's, it takes up space. So I mean, yeah, I think, I think I'm hoping Apple will be able to fix that conundrum which is right now. Smart displays are, you know, a jack of no trades.

They do everything not very well and you know, if Apple can come in and be like we've found the solution here. This is what's going to make your smart home easier to use and give you a great audio experience and maybe video experience. This is your time, apple, come on.

0:15:29 - Mikah Sargent
I have very little hope for this category as it stands, so it would be really cool to see something happen. And I mean, that's the other thing about this too, is it's just the most that Apple has done itself when it comes to home hardware is the HomePod, but the HomePod is still an audio. It's a music device too, so they get kind of a twofer with that. There's no strictly for the home hardware device that Apple has made. Correct me if I'm wrong.

0:16:10 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
No well, I mean, the HomePod would be the closest thing, because the Apple TV is somewhat home-related, but the HomePod has it in the name but, as you say, it is a music device as well. So they haven't. But the other rumors we've been hearing indicate that, because Apple has finally given up on its car ambitions and the Apple Vision Pro hasn't necessarily set the world on fire, that they are refocusing a lot of their efforts towards the home, which is very exciting because it is a space that they have pretty much ignored up until this day. And you know they're fully in on Matter, which we've discussed before a number of times, which is the new smart home standard, and Apple is like that's basically their way forward now, and I think there is so much potential.

It's a space that Apple really could, you know, really has a lot of growth potential for the company, which is something I know, you know they're always, always looking for. So if and they could do a lot in this space they really could. So it's just price. I think the biggest issue here will be price, and that that's I mean. What do you think something like this is going to cost Six, five, $600?

0:17:21 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, Depending on what it is and what it can do, that's, that's how expensive it can be.

0:17:34 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
I'd like to see you know $349 kind of prices, but who knows or $299. Or $299. That's why I'm thinking, just like a dedicated home pad I love that name, no, please don't use that name. A dedicated home control device. I think would be great in the iPad space because that's what people already try and use the iPad for and what the cheapest iPad is like three what 340 right now.

0:17:57 - Mikah Sargent
I think so, yeah, so yeah it'll be interesting.

0:18:01 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, maybe, and then there's the whole home robot rumors too, which I didn't even get into. I don't know what you know, but what will make this category really interesting, though, I think, is Apple intelligence, you know, and AI down the line. Amazon, we know, is working on a smart assistant that's powered by generative AI, and obviously Google too, so that's what I think is going to sort of make the smart speaker slash, smart display category more relevant is once it gets a lot smarter.

0:18:32 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely All right, folks, we are going to take a quick break before we come back with my story of the week.

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All right, we are back from the break and that means it's time for my story of the week. This is a little story from 404 Media. I should say it's kind of a big story from 404 Media. That is all about Cellebrite. Now, for folks who don't know, Cellebrite is a mobile forensics company, kind of a tech forensics company, who or I should say and its goal is to help, especially law enforcement, gain access to mobile tech devices. So you can imagine that you know somebody has a smartphone and it has a passcode lock on it. Cellebrite may offer the necessary hardware and software to make it possible to get into that device. Well, Cellebrite, which is known in law enforcement, does not typically tell the public and does not release to the public what devices it is or is not able to provide access to. That's something that they tell to their clients or potential clients, but they do not tell to the people who are just kind of like going to the site and browsing.

Well, 404 Media got a hold of documents that have been confirmed as authentic by Cellebrite itself that show what devices Cellebrite is able to gain access to, and it turns out that many modern iPhones are not able to be unlocked by Cellebrite. Unlocked by Cellebrite. The company has what they call the Cellebrite iOS support matrix and the Cellebrite Android support matrix, and this gives information into what is able to be unlocked with the software and or hardware that the company offers. So it says for all locked iPhones that run 17.4, that's iOS 17.4 or newer they are working.3.1,. Those are able to be unlocked, but only for the iPhone 10R and the iPhone 11 version of iOS 17,. Then Cellebrite, as it stands, is not able to gain access to those devices. So the thing that goes along with that is that Apple does release information about what operating system people are running and as of what was it? I think April of this year. Maybe it would have been March of this year. No, no, sorry, this was from June. Ios 17 is installed on 77% of all iPhones and 87% of the iPhones that were introduced in the last four years. So most of the newer phones and most of the iPhones that are out on the market that are capable of running iOS 17 are indeed running iOS 17, meaning that there aren't many modern devices that Cellebrite is able to gain access to.

Despite that, the company, in what it does offer online, does market itself as seemingly being able to gain access to these devices. So it says and I'm going to quote directly from 404 Media Cellebrite offers a variety of mobile forensics tools. This includes the UFED. It's a hardware device. It also sells Cellebrite Premium, a service that either gives the clients UFED that's the hardware device more capabilities, is handled in Cellebrite's own cloud, or comes as an quote offline turnkey solution. The video says that Cellebrite Premium is capable of obtaining the passcode for quote nearly all of today's mobile devices, including the latest iOS and Android versions. What? But you say in your marketing material to direct clients that you do not have the ability to gain access to a brute force method to the Google Pixel 6, 7 or 8 if the device has been turned off. The most recent version of Android is Android 14, and it is able to, in some cases, still gain access so long as the device has not been turned off and it's not one of the Google Pixel 6, 7, 8.

So here's the thing this is a company that makes most of its money by selling its services to different law enforcement agencies and nation states and others.

The company does say that it does not sell it to sanctioned countries.

It doesn't sell it to what it considers to be bad actors, and the reason why it doesn't release this information is quote it doesn't release this information is quote uh, the reason we do not openly advertise our updates is so that bad actors are not privy to information that could further their criminal activity. So I wanted to kind of open this up, um, to hear from you as well, uh, Jennifer, to just kind of talk about, uh, the, the, the current state of these tools that are out there. You know, I feel like a lot of people know that those tools are available and we have provided by we I mean TWIT and the different shows that we do have provided suggestions to folks when it comes to law enforcement, on what you should do with your personal device to keep yourself as protected as possible. Do you have any kind of things that you keep in the back of your mind when it comes to this, and are you at all surprised to hear that the latest iPhones are kind of unable to be unlocked, it seems by at least Cellebrite?

0:27:19 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Well, I think it's. I do not know much about the technical detail about how these companies work, but it does seem to me that what this really shows is that Apple, which very much pushes and promotes its privacy element, and Google Android, are really doing a good job here of keeping our devices locked down for us so that we don't have to worry about things like this, about people being able to crack our phones and get to our data, obviously, as there is in the smart home. We've had this issue with video doorbells and cameras, with companies giving data to police, such as. There was a long running issue with Ring and Amazon, whilst they have reversed their policies, there are still ways for law enforcement to access our data from our video doorbells without a warrant in cases of emergency. So you know the push and pull. Here is the whole safety. You know the safety of our nation, the safety of our former president there's, you know, because this all came to light following the shooting this past week, and when they were looking, the law enforcement was able to unlock the shooter's phone phone, um, so you know, there's this. There's this balance. There's always been this balance between protecting our privacy and, you know, safety and helping in in instances where we we want law enforcement to be able to get to the perpetrator and find out what's happened and stop potentially stop crimes.

Um, I actually just watched minority report the other day. For some reason, I haven't done that in years and it's like you know that, looking back at that, you know this sort of the concern around technology and where it could have gone. That was that movie came out what? In the 90s and it was set in 2050. And I'm like, yeah, we're nowhere near any of this yet, thankfully. But yeah, that you know it's something we always need to be keeping an eye on and as journalists, we always need to be. You know, watch. I mean, what 404 Media did here is very impressive, really good journalism.

To kind of get to the bottom of this and show that these companies are not doing what they promised that they could Do we want them to be able to do.

It is a different question, but yeah, the fact that they're lying, appear to be not telling the truth to their clients, is, you know, not good business. But I can also understand their perspective of we don't say, because we don't want the bad actors to know, and this is something that we hear from tech companies all the time Like we don't you know, when there are bugs found. We don't always come and tell you straight away because we don't want people to exploit them, and this happens in the smart home often. So you know, it's just one of those rock and hard place issues that we have. We're always going to be dealing with technology and you know this doesn't feel like. I mean, I'm not sure how the other companies that are able to do this, where they I would be interested to see where they you know what their information is and how much they can crack, because what Celebrate can do, according to this data that's been released, is very little, which is, you know, unfortunate for companies that are relying on their technology and paying for their technology.

0:30:46 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. Yeah, that was kind of my thought too. I'm going OK. So what are law enforcement officials using in place of this if it's not able to do the latest?

0:30:56 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, yeah.

0:30:57 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, wow, time just flies when you're having fun, and I certainly have had a lot of fun with you today, Jennifer, if folks want to follow you online, I know they can head to thevergecom, but do you have any other places that folks can go to keep up with what you're doing?

0:31:18 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
I am on threads at smart home mama. That's a good place to get me on the socials. I'm also on the tick tock and occasionally on X? Um at JP two. E? Um, there's still a good smart home community there, so I haven't abandoned it entirely yet. Um so, and him here. I'm here on twit every the third Thursday of every month, is it?

0:31:43 - Mikah Sargent
the third.

0:31:46 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, yeah, on twit every the third thursday of every month. Is it the third indeed? Yeah, yeah, I love to do one of my favorite.

0:31:50 - Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
I've been a twit fan for decades, so it's my favorite.

0:31:52 - Mikah Sargent
It's so cool so cool to have you here with us. Thank you so much and, uh, we'll see you again next month sounds good.

Thanks, Mikah all righty folks coming next. I have a great interview planned for you, but we'll take a quick pause here and we'll come back to the show. Online tracking your significant others online using Find my to know how long it's going to take for your relative to arrive at Thanksgiving dinner. There are different means of tracking, some that dig deeper than others. Joining us today to talk about a specific kind of tracking application known as stalkerware is TechCrunch's own Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai. Welcome back to the show, lorenzo. Hi, thanks for having me again. It was a pleasure, yeah, it's a pleasure, pleasure to have you join us again. So let me ask you this, first and foremost, because I think that people will want to know the separation, if there is any. Could you explain what stalkerware apps are and how they're typically used by individuals?

0:33:19 - Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
Yeah well, we refer to stalkerware. Apps are basically software that let people who control the software to monitor someone else's device in a surreptitious way. So without their consent, and with using these apps they're able to track GPS locations, seeing their text messages, their photos. You know, essentially this person gets control of everything that happens on the target device. Person gets control of everything that happens on the target device and you know, in theory, if used against children, if used on children's devices or employees, that's legal. In practice, though, there have been many cases where these apps have been used by jealous or abusive partners to essentially stalk their loved ones. Hence the name stalkerware, and you know that is a crime in the US and several other countries. And unfortunately, in some cases, some of these stalkerware companies have marketed themselves specifically to jealous partners, saying things like catch a cheater and other things, like one of them, for example, xnor, which we probably mentioned later on their website a few years ago, a essentially the quote was spy on cheating spouse um.

0:34:27 - Mikah Sargent
now your article talks about the significant trend that exists in the stock aware industry in this surreptitious stalking. Can you kind of give us an overview of what you found regarding the security of these apps and the companies that operate them, and then maybe you could talk about some of the most notable incidents and what data was exposed?

0:34:51 - Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
Yeah. So you know, putting aside the ethics and sort of creepiness of spying on your loved ones, which I think we can all agree on, should not be done we have seen that these companies are really pretty bad at taking care of the data that they collect, which, again, is super sensitive data. You know, even if it's your children and you have even consent from the children, it's still very, very sensitive data that this company should do a better job at securing. Over the years, journalists like me, my editor, zach Whitaker, my former colleague, joseph Cox, have been writing several stories about how these apps either leak data inadvertently, so, for example, leave it online by mistake, or lose it because they get hacked. According to my latest tally, there have been 20 stock over companies that we know of that have had these issues, of that have had these issues. So you know, again, this is really embarrassing and honestly unacceptable, because these companies collect photos, text messages, gps locations all things that should be secured in a better way. As I said, there have been 20 companies. It's hard to choose which ones. To pick Some that I remember. One was RetinaX, which was based in the US. It shut down. It got hacked twice the first time. They got hacked. Essentially they lost everything.

The hackers were able to get GPS locations of thousands of surveillance victims. So these were the targets of the surveillance, not the customers. They were also able to see photos, text emails exchange between the targets and you know whoever they were talking to their contact list. You know this is super intimate, super private. The other company that I mentioned earlier, exnor. They had a sort of like. They had an issue where any customer could see another customer's data. So if you were an XOR customer you were able to see what other customers were siphoning off from their targets. So again, super privacy invasive. These included chat messages, gps coordinates, everything you can think of that should not be out there.

0:37:09 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. Now I think this is a little bit obvious, but I do want to kind of draw the connection here. Why do you think that stalkerware companies are such frequent target for hackers? And you know what's the motivation behind gaining access to a stalkerware company.

0:37:32 - Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
Yeah, I mean, the ethics of the stalkerware companies are very questionable and I think a lot of you know. Some of the hackers that we've interviewed over the years have made it clear that their actions were motivated by this perception of a lack of ethics. They said that they wanted to destroy these companies, that they wanted to embarrass these companies. Their motivation, at least according to them, wasn't to make money off of this data. It was really to show the world that these companies are bad, and not just bad because they allow for potential crimes or creepy behavior, but also bad because they cannot take care of this data, Because even if we imagine that these apps were used with the consent of the targets and in ethical and legal situations which is possible these companies were not doing a good job at securing this data. And sometimes it happens because these are not really big companies, Sometimes maybe they don't really care about securing this data, but either way, they should do a better job at securing the data.

0:38:32 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. Now, despite all these security breaches, many stockware companies do continue to operate. So what has been the response from these companies? I mean, they're still making money off of people and, in theory, still want to keep running, so they probably need to provide some level of hey, it's going to be okay, keep using us. What have they had to say about the hacks and these breaches?

0:39:00 - Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
Yeah, as depressing as it sounds, most of them really never engaged with us, sort of denied the issues or said, yeah, we had an issue, we fixed it. Move on. Some of them even attacked the journalist who wrote about them. I guess I would generalize saying that their response was never really satisfying. And, as you said, yeah, some of these apps still exist. Retinax was one of the examples that shut down. In their case, the FTC went after them as well, and the fact that they were based in the US made it, I think, made them more vulnerable to essentially facing the consequences. Other companies like Flexispy Flexispy was used to be based, and I believe it's still based, in Thailand, so countries where US law enforcement probably doesn't have a lot of sway on. But yeah, some of these companies keep existing. Some of them don't explicitly say that they are for jealous spouses anymore, which I think it's also something that they're doing to avoid liability. But again, even if you don't market yourself for that kind of use, it's still possible to use these apps like that.

0:40:14 - Mikah Sargent
Now, in your piece you do touch on the kind of ethical and legal implications of using stalkerware. Tell us why these apps are problematic, even if they're used. You know, in they're used by parents to monitor children. And if, if there are the ethical implications, are there other options that parents might use if they want to make sure their kid gets home from school, for example?

0:40:46 - Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
Yeah, so I'm not a parent, so I haven't really, you know, fully researched this and maybe I can. I cannot say that I understand the situations 100%, but you know, I can see where I can see why parents would want to keep an eye on their children, make sure they're safe. You know that is legitimate and there should be ways to do that. But again, the problem with these apps is that they are often small operations. We have seen that they don't do a good job at securing the data, so if I was a parent, I would try to avoid these apps and fortunately there are alternatives.

Both iOS and Android have default baked-in features that allow people to essentially track their loved ones or family members, or even friends, with their consent. There are parental controls. Ios has pretty much everyone knows the Find my app, which is used by people to find their lost devices, but can also be used to keep an eye on the people you care about. Android has an app called Family Link and personally and I think that some security experts would agree with me I would rather use these than third-party apps, because I would trust Apple and Google to do a better job at this than some small company in Florida or Thailand.

0:42:05 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. And then, last but not least, for viewers who might now or might have always been concerned or suspicious that there could be stalkerware being used against them, do you have any resources or advice that you can offer for folks who are kind of trying to audit their own situation but also just be more aware of this technology in general?

0:42:36 - Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
Yeah, obviously, if you suspect that this is happening, it's a very stressful situation and you should take it seriously. There are some online resources now. Luckily, there's a lot more awareness of this issue in the tech industry. Some antivirus companies have done a better job at tracking these apps and finding them. One of the best resources that I've been told about is the Coalition Against Stalkerware, which people can go check out online. The URL is stopstalkerwareorg. There are some resources there on what to do if you think that you're being monitored, and I believe they have a hotline. The National Domestic Violence Hotline also is available and can help in these situations.

I think that an important caveat here is that if you think that your phone is being monitored, then perhaps don't use that phone to check out these resources, because that may alert your stalker or your abusive partner that you're doing something about it. So it's tricky. Maybe use a friend's phone. Go to a library work computer if you don't think that the work computer is being monitored. So yeah, that is sort of like the caution that I would say, but luckily there are some resources. The EFF has also done some good work on this. The Electronic Frontier Foundation.

0:43:57 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. Thank you so much for that advice there at the end and for writing this piece. Of course, folks can head to techcrunchcom to keep up with what you're doing. Is there anywhere else? They can follow you online to see your latest pieces.

0:44:12 - Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
Yeah, I'm still on Twitter. I'm on Mastodon Twitter or X. So yeah, I'm easy to find. Find Lorenzo FB on most platforms.

0:44:21 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. We appreciate it.

0:44:25 - Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
Thank you, my pleasure.

0:44:27 - Mikah Sargent
All righty, folks, we're going to take another little pause as we head into our next interview. A little breather before the next interview. All righty, up next. You had an opportunity to learn a little bit about the Samsung Galaxy Ring. I decided to talk to somebody who had even more information about it, so give this a listen. So last week you had the opportunity, dear listeners, to hear a little bit about Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event, and at the end of my conversation with Jason Howell, jason talked about a new product from Samsung, the Galaxy Ring. But we only got a little bit of a taste of what the Galaxy Ring was going to be, what it could do, what the Galaxy Ring was going to be, what it could do. And I am excited to say that we are joined today by CNET's own, lexi Savides, who is here to tell us even more about it. Welcome to the show, lexi.

0:45:29 - Lexy Savvides
Hi, Mikah, thanks for having me.

0:45:31 - Mikah Sargent
It is a pleasure to have you here. I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today, and I was hoping we could start by talking about the basics of this device. What is the Samsung Galaxy Ring? For folks who missed last week's episode or maybe want to know a little bit more, especially, how much does it cost and when and where is it available?

0:45:55 - Lexy Savvides
Great question. So I have the Galaxy Ring right here. I've been testing it and wearing it for about a week now. This is a smart ring. Think about fitness trackers from a few years ago things like the Fitbit, even the Misfit and the Pebble and so on Very passive fitness trackers that would just track steps, some would track activity and things like your heart rate and sleep overnight.

That is all now consolidated into a smart ring and it does a few more extra exciting things, including some gesture control options, and it gives you more insights and hopefully more actionable information into how it's detecting your sleep or maybe, say, giving you some tips about movement and activity levels over time. It is $400, which is definitely on the higher level of other smart rings that are out there, and it is going on sale on July 24th. However, it seems to have been pretty popular with kind of the pre-briefs and announcements last week, because it is now being pushed out. If you go to samsungcom and try and pre-order one, it now has been pushed out to almost the end of August. So it seems to be a pretty popular device and in my past week of wearing it, I can kind of see why.

0:47:09 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, in fact that is a great intro to my next question for you. I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about your initial impressions of the Galaxy Ring, the unboxing experience, the fit and finish particularly when it comes to fit, because this is the thing that has to be able to fit on your ring and then just generally what it's like to wear the ring.

0:47:29 - Lexy Savvides
Well, I've unboxed my fair share of tech gadgets over the years and I have to say unboxing the Galaxy Ring was pretty special. So the first thing to kind of know about it is that the ring box essentially is very different to other smart ring solutions which usually use kind of a puck system. So you just put the smart ring on and it charges. This is actually a proper case. It is transparent so you can see what's going on. There are some really nice lighting effects inside, so when you open the case up you'll see this light appear. When you put the ring on to charge it will also give you a battery indication and there's also another light for pairing. But the unboxing was pretty fun because you take out it from the main kind of packaging and then there's a bigger black ring box and then inside that box you open it up and then you get this box and then the ring was sitting right on top. So it was pretty nice.

There was a lot of thought that was actually put into this product. Design and packaging. The fit and the finish is something that's going to be pretty personal. Obviously, a smart ring is something that's probably going to be a little bit more of an accessory to kind of how you express yourself, a little bit more like jewelry than, say, a smartwatch or a fitness tracker. So it comes in three different finishes.

This one I've been testing is the matte black finish. It's also available in a silver and a gold. Both of those are a little bit more shiny and they kind of look a little bit more like traditional rings that you wear on your fingers and it actually it's really really comfortable. The first 24 hours I was wearing this I honestly had to keep looking down at my finger, going do I have a ring on? It is so very light it's maximum three grams that it's really not going to get into your in your way with your day-to-day life and activities. And super, super comfortable, at least for me, and I wouldn't consider myself a big fan of wearing rings in general. I have a wedding band but that's kind of all I can stand. So being able to wear the Galaxy Ring 24-7 is kind of the key because you will want to keep tracking your activity and your sleep over time.

0:49:26 - Mikah Sargent
Wow, you are very good at these transitions, because my next question is, in fact, about tracking stuff as a wearable. You know, in theory, its primary purpose is to track health metrics, so I'd like to know how you felt about how well or how unwell it did at tracking those activity and sleep metrics.

0:49:46 - Lexy Savvides
Such a great question because a lot of the smart rings that have come before haven't been necessarily great at sort of things like sleep tracking accuracy, heart rate accuracy and activity tracking. It gives you an idea but it wouldn't call it kind of like a great representation not all smart rings but just some of the ones, especially on the sort of cheaper end of the spectrum. Fortunately the Galaxy Ring seems to have done really good in my testing period over the past week. Obviously there will be kind of more things that may come up during time as I kind of wear this even longer term to kind of gather all the data. But I did compare a couple of different metrics against kind of more gold standard ways of measuring things. So for example, sleep tracking, I compared the Galaxy Rings results against the 8 sleep.

This is kind of like a cover that sits on top of your bed.

It's a full body system that does heating and cooling, but it also has sleep tracking metrics on board so you can kind of see how long you're in different sleep stages and how much you kind of move around during the night. The Galaxy Ring actually matched up pretty well in terms of getting those sleep stages to basically kind of the same parameters as the eight sleep was measuring. The only thing that the Galaxy Ring kind of said that I had a little bit more of than the eight sleep on my bed was actually the length of time that I was in bed, but other things like average heart rate was really quite spot on. So I was really genuinely pleased by that. And I also tested the heart rate sensor for just general resting heart rate during the day against a chest strap, which is kind of the gold standard of consumer heart rate tracking and it did match up within about two beats per minute, which is pretty good and on par with most sort of consumer smartwatches today as well.

0:51:28 - Mikah Sargent
Wow, okay. So my next question then it sounds like it did a pretty good job with sleep tracking. What's its comparison to other smart rings on the market? I know one really popular one is the Aura Ring, and it is one that I know a lot of folks that listen to the show, and even folks who I work with, all really like their Aura Ring. And we're kind of wondering, because Aura Ring's been around for a while and has certainly gained enough popularity and enough of a place in the ecosystem to, in some cases, get clearance to be purchased through FSAs and HSA plans and things like that. And so this one comes along from a big tech company and it does have you wondering kind of where does it stack up with the competition? Absolutely Such a great question and it does have you wondering kind of where does it stack up with the competition?

0:52:21 - Lexy Savvides
Absolutely Such a great question and it's really the kind of the burning question that many people want to know is how does it stack up against the Aura Ring, which has really kind of defined the smart ring category, and other players such as, say, the Ultra Human Ring Air? There's also smart rings from Amazfit, there are more kind of women's health focused rings, such as the EV ring as well, and there are so many out there that are coming out. But yes, you're right, samsung is the biggest company to make a smart ring. So far. It really has the potential to shake up the market.

Specifically when it comes to comparing with the Aura ring, the key thing about the Galaxy ring is that it doesn't require a subscription, so the outright cost is more than an Aura Ring. So the Aura Ring starts at about, I think it's, $299 or $300. The Galaxy Ring is $399 or $400 essentially, so it's a hundred dollar difference in the kind of the base price. However, the Aura Ring generally requires a subscription, which is $6 a month, in order to see kind of those really in-depth health metrics things that the Galaxy Ring is giving you. Basically, you know straight out of the box without having to pay an additional monthly fee. So that's kind of the big calling card there.

And I did kind of the price comparison, obviously the total cost of ownership over. If you keep the Galaxy Ring for two years and you were thinking about getting an Aura Ring you end up saving $44 basically kind of. Because if you do that, the math, basically with the $6 a month subscription you end up paying a little bit more over the two-year period in total. So that's really the big appeal there is not having to have that monthly ongoing cost to get access to your own data and metrics.

And the other thing is the Galaxy Ring I mean this is very personal, personal thing. A lot of people you know, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, rings are highly, highly personal how they fit, how they feel. I've definitely found the galaxy ring to be more comfortable to wear than the aura ring highly subjective again, but that could be another element that maybe makes you look at this over an Oura Ring. But the Oura Ring does have one more trick up its sleeve that the Galaxy Ring does not, which is it works on Android and iOS. The Galaxy Ring is Android only and you'll need a Galaxy phone specifically for some extra features that it has on board Understood.

0:54:34 - Mikah Sargent
Well, let's actually talk about that then. When we talked to Jason Howell at the time, he said that he was pretty sure that the Galaxy Ring only worked with Galaxy devices from Samsung, and then later we had heard that maybe it works with multiple Android devices. So what's the deal there? What's going on there?

0:55:00 - Lexy Savvides
devices. So what's the? What's the deal there? What's going on there? Yeah, there's a lot of confusion and I have to say samsung did not do a good job of basically telling people outright what it is and is not compatible with.

So I can tell you right now it is android only. However, if you want to access certain things that are kind of flagship features of the galaxy ring, such as the energy score, things like the wellness tips and also the gesture control, so you can use a double pinch things that are kind of flagship features of the Galaxy Ring, such as the energy score, things like the wellness tips and also the gesture control, so you can use a double pinch action to be able to do things like, say, take a photo remotely from your phone. Those features are only going to be available to you if you pair the Galaxy Ring with a Galaxy phone, so it is kind of locking you in that ecosystem for the most feature set, but you can absolutely use it with any Android phone from Android 11 onwards if you don't mind missing out on some of those features.

0:55:49 - Mikah Sargent
Now the last question I have for you, and I think it's a question that a lot of people will have. This is a very, very small device. It is tiny and it comes with that really cool case. How often do you have to charge it? What has battery life been for you? What does Samsung say about how you can get more battery life or less battery life, depending on what you're doing? Tell us about that when it comes to having this wearable.

0:56:14 - Lexy Savvides
Yeah, so the key with a smart ring and sort of most other wearables that are trying to give you the most accurate insights into your kind of health and wellness and sleep and all that is that you want to wear them as much as physically possible. So you need a battery that's going to last a long time. Samsung has two specific claims about the Galaxy Ring battery life. So the ring size is between 5 and 11. The battery life on that is going to be up to six days and if you have the largest sizes, either the 12 or the 13, that battery life gets extended to up to seven days.

I've done my own testing and verification of this. The one that I've been testing is actually a size 11. It does run, I'd say, a little bit smaller than standard ring sizes. So definitely use the sizer that Samsung will send you if you're interested in getting one. So it definitely does match up pretty closely to those estimates that Samsung has given. So I found that with a day of kind of normal usage maybe like just generally tracking my steps and activity, a workout or something like that, and also sleep tracking the battery generally drops between 15 to 20 percent every day. So it's definitely on track to give you that up to six days battery life on the smaller ring size.

But the cool thing is with the charging case this is as I mentioned earlier. It's kind of unique compared to other smart ring solutions because it's a actually a ring box so you can put the ring in like. So it's got this. I'm not sure if you can see on this very bad quality Zoom camera that I have here on my laptop, but it does have this ring light inside, so it gives you an idea of the charge.

This box itself holds about one and a half times charge, so that's basically like nine or 10 days worth of battery life in here. Pop it in and you close the lid. You can go about your day and throw it in a bag. It will charge up just over an hour, something like that. So you have a full charge and you're ready to get on with your day. And also, the other thing I really like about this charging case is that it has reverse wireless charging support from a Samsung phone, or you just put it on a Qi wireless charging pad as well if you don't have USB-C around to charge it up with. So that's a just a nice touch. That, I think, definitely sets it apart from other smart rings on the market absolutely.

0:58:24 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, uh, that's. That's pretty cool. I didn't. I didn't realize that it also did the wireless charging. Um, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today to talk about your review. Of course folks should head over to CNET to check out the entire review. You have it jam-packed full of great photos and information and loads more than we were able to talk about today in the interview. And of course, folks can head over to CNET to check out your great videos and your writing now as well. And I would love to know, and so would our listeners, where they can follow you online to keep up with what you're doing.

0:58:57 - Lexy Savvides
I'm on pretty much every platform you can think of Instagram Threads, tiktok. Just find me the same username, it's just my name at Lexy Savvides TVs, in case you're trying to work it out, because it's kind of hard to spell, but you can find me on that. I'm also really like. I love giving people buying advice and tips and things, so you can just DM me and hopefully I'll see it and I'll get back to you. If you have a question about which one should I buy, I can't decide, so always happy to help you out too in that way.

0:59:24 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome. Thanks so much for your time and hope to get you back in on the show again soon. Bye-bye.

0:59:30 - Lexy Savvides
Thanks, Mikah, thanks for having me. I would love that See ya.

0:59:34 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you so much again to Lexy Savvides of CNET for stopping by. She's the principal video producer over at CNET and did a great job of helping us learn a little bit more about the Samsung Galaxy Ring. Believe it or not, that is going to bring us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. This show publishes every Thursday at twit.tv/tnw. That's where you can go to subscribe to the show in audio and video formats. If you'd like to get all of our shows ad-free, I've got a way for you to do that and also help us out. It's called Club TWiT at twit.tv/clubtwit. When you join the club for $7 a month, you get every single TWiT show with no ads, just the content. It's a great opportunity to check out all of our stuff and also gain access to the Twit+ bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show. After the show, special Club TWIT events get published there and access to the members only Discord server A fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club TWiT members and also those of us here at twit. We would love to see you join the club. Join the fun at twit.tv/clubtwit. Seven dollars a month.

If you'd like to follow me online, I'm at Mikah Sargent on many a social media network where you can add to chihuahua.coffee. That's chihuahua.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Check out where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Check out iOS Today a little later today, as well as hands-on Mac a little later today. And be sure to tune in on Sunday to watch Ask the Tech Guys, the show I co-host with Leo Laporte, where we take your questions live on air and do our best to answer them. Thanks so much for tuning in today and I'll catch you again next week for another episode of Tech News Weekly. Bye-bye.