Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss the gift of an Amazon thrown package, Google's phone cost vs the iPhone, the new Galaxy phones, Samsung's email app problems and self-inflicted leaks, and more.

Penny in Windsor, Ontario Canada listens on AM800 CKLW - “The Information Station” and asked: "After saving for a couple years, I finally have enough to buy a new phone. I've always gone with Android, now I'm thinking of going with an iPhone. The only thing I didn't like about the iPhone is that you don't have a back and forward touch and you had to open up a seperate window for your numbers. I hated that. Can you guys suggest a phone because your advice has never done me wrong in the past?"

Penny, phones are very personal devices and there’s no right choice or wrong choice but there are some devices that are likely to give you a pretty good and predictable experience.

Samsung is usually a good choice, though we should mention that Samsung makes a lot of cheap and very, very mediocre phones, try to stick with their higher end.

That higher end is usually very good, the upcoming S10 should be a fine choice, but it won’t be cheap. In fact, all flagships of every brand are basically selling at laptop prices.

The Google Pixel devices are worth a look too, they’re the line that Google is willing to put its name on. The main advantage that you will get from these phones is that your updates will come down as soon as they leave the Googleplex, no need to wait for manufacturers or carriers to add their “features” to them first. The quality of the hardware itself is very good too.

Unfortunately, the warning about the price of flagships still applies to them as much as it does to any other manufacturers, but if you’re not against an older model, there are some relative deals to be had.

Greg asked: "I tried backing up an iPhone 7 over WiFi to the cloud unsuccessfully. I tried an iTunes backup to a Windows 10 computer which appeared to complete step 2 of 4. No indication was given of steps 3 and 4. The iTunes on the computer failed to connect (unknown failure) to the iPhone XR. An attempt to install the latest version of iTunes failed because of an invalid certificate. What are steps 3 and 4 of an iTunes backup? How do I get the latest iTunes to download on my Windows 10 computer and restore backup to the iPhone XR?"

Greg, an iTunes backup is usually little more than clicking on “Sync” or “backup,” the steps the software was notifying you of likely refer to the type of media that was being synced. For example, it could’ve meant that photos were step 1, audio step 2, etc.

If that’s the case, then the steps remaining would’ve depended on what you told iTunes that you wanted to sync.

As for downloading iTunes, you can get the latest version from https://support.apple.com/downloads/itunes, did you try to download it from a different site? That might explain the invalid certificate error.

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