Are the Surface Pro X, Samsung Galaxy Book S the future of PCs? (The Daily Charge, 10/7/2019)

Today on The Daily charge our highlights from New York Comic Con, the results of our Galaxy phone test and tablets or May the future of PCs [MUSIC] Welcome to cnet's daily charge. It's Monday October seven. I'm Roger Chang and with me are Dan Ackerman and Mike Sorrentino. Here today stories. [MUSIC] So we're still unpacking Microsoft huge event from last week and I want to go a little bit deeper on the Surface Pro X. So unlike other PCs, this one runs on an arm chip which means rather than the same kind of process of the powers of smartphones to bit more power efficient has cellular conductivity baked in But it doesn't play well with all windows or PC apps, right, break it down for us. Surface Pro apps is definitely the thing, I have the most emails and tweets about after the event, probably cuz it. Deemed the most different except for those Neo and duo dual screens. Yeah, but those are really just prototypes that you're not going to see until at least a year from now, if not more. So what they did here was they took the Qualcomm Snapdragon style chip that's in a bunch of laptops Tabs and tablets already. Yeah. And said we're doing a tweet custom Microsoft version, we're calling it the SQ1, but it's really basically the same. I love the rebranding. It's kind of like [CROSSTALK] somebody said does it stand for like Snapdragon something, like no just letters just advocate designate. Yeah, yeah, sure. Sure. So like the surface it's a tablet you clip on a keyboard. Unlike the regular Surface Pro, the stylus goes in a cool little pocket right above the keyboard. Right. So it snaps in there and recharges from there. Everyone kinda likes That part and they claim to have pretty long battery life not really as long as some of the other Qualcomm seen my my question about is these these Qualcomm power laptops, these Snapdragon power laptops I mean generally they don't Run all the apps that you want them to run, right? Is that still gonna be a big inhibiting factor? It's a little hit or miss. And this goes way back two years ago to the first generation of these. Yeah, Lenovo had one. HP had one. But they were announced [CROSSTALK] Exactly that and a few of those products came out and frankly, we did not, Find them that impressive, because number one, the battery life was not like the 24 hours they talked about, it was 12 or 13, which is good but not extraordinary. Right. They weren't really any cheaper than regular laptops, so you weren't saving any money by **** this. And again, they had some. Compatibility issues with some apps. It's a hit or miss. But some things just won't work on. And because you're not using an Intel Windows platform, you're using a an arm platform and it's just not going to be 100% compatible with every Windows app. And Microsoft isn't the only one doing this. Samsung has the galaxy book S as well. So I'm just curious Does this represent sort of that next wave, the future of laptops? Here is the thing, the first generation came and went. It wasn't that impressive, frankly nobody asked for them. They did a little minisecond generation, again same thing. This is the kind of thing that keep trying to make happen over and over again even though no one's asking for it. It is a solution In search of a problem that said the Pro X and the galaxy book, so might be very nice to get them will test them we'll see. But no one is really beating down the doors for these. Yes, it's probably easier to get always on LTE connections. But you could still do that in most especially business laptops. Sure. Easily you just got to pay for a plan every month. Same thing with these. Here's my biggest problem with the Samsung with the Surface Pro X just like every other Surface Pro, the 999 just get you the tablet part. That the keyboard and you'll want the stylus, which they always show with it. Yeah really need those, I think get the two of them together to 69 extra Wow. Yeah, so not quite every surface. [UNKNOWN] I always have this problem. I have a great keyboard. But unless you put in the box, you're really kind of being a little dishonest with people when you show the problem, right? To be fair, that's not just a Microsoft problem, right? Apple does the same thing with the iPad, right? They don't a lot of other guys include the keyboard in there in there, too. [CROSSTALK] Well, on a laptop that's a mobile OS thing, They really show the surface on its own ever. It's always attached with those eyes. Yeah, that's true. All right. Speaking of Samsung last week, we put the Galaxy fold through its paces, placing it in a machine that continuously folded and unfolded device the last 14 hours and got through 120,000 folds. Before it's hinge got damaged and well, half the screen blacked out. That represents about three years of use which seems impressive except the phone's a bit short of Samsung claims of 200,000 folds for five years. Then and frankly it failed somewhere i was watching this live bass i was fascinated this is so great Were you there for 14 hours [LAUGH] [CROSSTALK] In died back occasionally but it died somewhere between 110 and 120 we don't know exactly>> Yeah,yeah [CROSSTALK] Short one was. [UNKNOWN] Definitely 119 is when they check this. Yeah. When it started sounding weird. You know, that's a tough one because when you say 200 that's usually at least 200. It's like the IKEA chairs the robot that checks. There's the fair. I'll be fair, Samsung this. I don't think folks are going to be opening and closing. Phone no 120,000 times straight. So the added stress of the continuous folding unfolding might have had a much sharper reaction to or impact on the phone. I would respectfully counter that and say running around in your pocket or your bag or being tossed around your house is probably rougher on the device then having one static angle Where a machine is not gonna overextend it or do anything damaging to it. I would disagree cuz if it's in your pocket it's not stressing the hinge point. I mean just general wear and tear, just being knocked around like your phone gets. And the force of the machine itself. Right, but knocking it around doesn't mess with the hinge. Opening and closing does mess with the hinge, I think that's kinda the issue there. That said, I think it's awesome, I still kinda want one. Yeah obviously that does it change your opinion this is a $2,000 phone. That's about. You expect something like that to actually last for a while Mike what do you think? It's really an early adopter phone though it's like thank you someone who's going to they know what they're getting at they're spending $2,000 on this thing they know that it's going to fail and that's gonna only get like in future iterations That first one will look really old even though that first one was $2,000 like Right First apple watches which they go not even- With that said, three years is probably plenty of time if you can afford a $2,000 phone as like probably your second phone, as a gimmick phone you can only afford to upgrade the next year and the year after that right, It's still insane Lastly New York comic con just wrapped up in our own Mike Sorrentino and Dan Ackerman both attended this year's show guys, what are some of the biggest highlights? Mike, you were covering this directly what would you see? The biggest one for me was definitely the Star Trek panel on Saturday. The card trailer in particular got a huge reaction from the crowd that that was there. Jonathan Frakes, William Riker, first Deanna Troi being for the first time appearing in it. They made a point though that this won't be necessarily a star trek the next generation reunion, they're trying to at least say like, if any characters coming back it's for a specific reason in their arc. And it's really just Picard's story. A lot of haunting data, a lot of focus on Picard. And just to full disclosure, star trek As CBS shows, CBS owns scene as well. But beyond Star Check, were there any other highlights from the show? I watched the Watchman, first episode which comes out on the 20th I believe on HPO. And Watchman, it leans a little bit, it's a little bit more like in a first episode like the Handmade's Tale or a Man in the High Castle taking this alternate future with a couple of tweaks. Highly charged with like that of police violence in the first episode and in a bit of like racism groups. There's a little bit of sci fi but I believe it's gonna come later in the show. But it was extremely like I'd have to be next to like a theater screen a theater speaker There was a subwoofer like beating there's lots, of lots of music like they had RMB for some outros and at when the gunfights began, there's like, kind of like a matrix style EDM in the background. I feel like music is gonna be a big instrumental point in the way they tell this story. But it should be, I mean, I came in to a little bit skeptical but out of it kind of excited. It's taking place after the books so it's gonna be just going forward in the world. So it doesn't touch anything about the books. Gotcha. Hopefully. And Dan, speaking of Watchmen, you spoke to Dave Gibbons, right? Yeah, and actually we didn't specifically talk about the new series, but we talked about Watchman and we talked about some games he's working on. Did something unusual at Comic Con? I bought some actual comics. Wow. Because it's really more about movies and toys. I know right? I got I got some new series I hadn't seen before. Blade Runner 2019 with some Sydney design covers, which I thought was very cool. So I start reading that that was pretty cool and I got the graphic novel version. William Gibson's never produced alien three script which Dark Horse put out in a graphic novel hardcover this year. So I got that too and we were just discussing I played some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles stand up pick at home arcade game Nisha market. By the way you should check out our YouTube video project at that is fantastic. daily chart. I'm Dan Ackerman and This is Mike Sorrentino, thank you for joining us. Can't get enough? Check out the daily Supercharged, our extended post-show with special features, audience Q&A, and in-depth reviews, available now wherever you get your podcasts. [BLANK_AUDIO]