In the 113th episode of the iPhone Life Insider Podcast, members of the team talk everything iPhone 11. Will the next iPhone model slated for a September release really house a triple camera array on the back? Will it be as unsightly as critics say, and will improved photo quality make it a worthy tradeoff? Listen to find the answers to these questions and more. In the exclusive Insider portion of the podcast, learn how to send SMS text messages to Android users from your Mac and iPad.
This episode was brought to you by iParty Inventory Now. If you own a small business, you need a reliable way to track your inventory. Inventory Now is the perfect app to take charge of tracking where your products are, where they need to go, and when it's time to restock them.
Questions of the week:
Question 1: How have you or would you use a Voice Memo as a ringtone? Question 2: Do you care how the rumored iphone 11 triple camera looks or just about functions? Email podcasts@iphonelife.com to let us know.
Special how-to shared in this episode:
How to turn a Voice Memo into a ringtone:
You can create a ringtone from a Voice Memo on your computer and then move it to your phone via iTunes.
- Record and edit your Voice Memo on your iPhone and then AirDrop or email it to your computer.
- Save the file on your Desktop.
- Right click the file and change the file from .m4a to .m4r.
- Click Use .m4r in the dialog box that pops up.
- Double click on the renamed file and iTunes will open.
- Plug your iPhone into the computer.
- Click on the phone icon.
- Under On My Device click on Tones.
- Drag the file from your Desktop to Tones.
You can also turn purchased songs into ringtones and text tones using a similar process.
Now you can return to your iPhone and set the newly created tone as a ringtone or text tone!
Articles referred to in this episode:
- How to Delete the Live Photo Version of a Picture on Your iPhone
- How to Get Text Messages & iMessages on Mac
Apps & gear referred to in this episode:
- Kanex GoPower Watch Plus Portable Power ($79.95)
- Jabra Elite active 45e ($99.99)
- Disneyland app (in-app purchases)
Useful links:
Transcript of episode 113:
Donna Cleveland: Hi and welcome to episode 113 of the iPhone Life Podcast. I'm Donna Cleveland, editor-in-chief at iPhone Life.
David Averbach: I'm David Averbach, CEO and Publisher.
Sarah Kingsbury: And I am Sarah Kingsbury, Senior Web Editor.
Donna Cleveland: Each episode we bring to you the best apps, top tips, and great gear in the iOS world. Today, we're going to also talk about iPhone 11 rumors. It's a little bit early in the cycle, but September we're getting new iPhones and already there's a lot to talk about in that area.
David Averbach: I feel like iPhone rumor season starts in like October, really late to the rumor game.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, so that will be fun to get into. First, we have a sponsor that David will tell us about.
David Averbach: Yeah, so today I'm going to tell you about Inventory Now. Inventory Now is a lightweight inventory management system for small business. If you've ever used a point of sale system, you know that they're really complicated, 90% of the features they have you don't end up using and then they're expensive as well, so if you're a small business who's just trying to manage your inventory, this is a great app for you. It's app based, so it's super easy to use, it's very affordable, they have a free trial, and it integrates with PayPal and Stripe so you can have the full product lifecycle. So make sure you check it out, Inventory Now, it's available in the app store or we will link to it at iPhonelife.com/podcast.
Donna Cleveland: Next up we want to tell you about our daily tips newsletter. If you subscribe that iPhonelife.com/daily tips, we'll send you a free one minute tip each day that teaches you something cool you can do with your iPhone. It's one of our most popular items that we offer and you don't want to miss out on it. This week I also want to tell you about our favorite tip right now, it's my favorite tip from recent. And that's how to delete the live photo version of a picture on your iPhone. So live photos is a feature that I keep on for all of my photos because it allows you to have three seconds worth of footage that you can scrub through later and choose the best frame in there or you can turn it into gifs, it gives you this extra options, which is really nice. Do you guys use live photos?
David Averbach: I love live photo.
Sarah Kingsbury: I love live photos and I love it for the reason you're talking about because sometimes the still version of it you look really not good, but if you scrub through you can often find the perfect moment and make that the main picture and then turn off the live photo.
Donna Cleveland: Yes, exactly. And it's also good for group photos, you might be able to find a moment in there where everyone has their eyes open.
David Averbach: Yeah. And also every once in awhile you'll capture a really cool moment and you can turn it into a gift for a little mini video, and that's fun too. That happened to me when I was on vacation I was using live photo and I captured this really cute moment and I was really happy I had live photo on.
Donna Cleveland: Was that last week-
Sarah Kingsbury: Will you show me later?
David Averbach: Yes, I'll just tell you guys-
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, tell us about it.
David Averbach: My nephews, I went to visit, I'll talk about later too. I went to go visit my sister and her in San Diego, and my two nephews and my sister and her husband were all walking to the beach and a wave came and their little two year old nephew just panicked and just ran away, so it's a video of all of them walking to the beach except for my nephew who's running the opposite direction.
Donna Cleveland: That's adorable.
David Averbach: And I took a photo of it, which turned into a really cute live video.
Donna Cleveland: Cool.
Sarah Kingsbury: Nice.
Donna Cleveland: So that's the background on live photos and this tip is about how to retroactively turn it into a still. And this is something that really the main use of it is that you may not want to be using so much storage on photos, and so you can afterwards go and turn it into a still. Also, sometimes when you send a live photo to people, if they have iPhones too, they can see the whole live version of it and you might not want them to, maybe you're making an awkward face and the rest of the photo you don't want the person to see.
Donna Cleveland: So you can go in and, let's just walk you through how to do that. So you open the photos app, you open a live photo, tap edit in the upper right corner, and then from there you'll be able to scrub through, there's a little timeline on the bottom and you can find your favorite moment and you'll tap, make key photo it'll say, and then from there you can tap the live photo option at the top again, that turns it off. It's a little yellow circular icon, and then tap done.
Sarah Kingsbury: Yup. And it turns white when it's off so you can know.
Donna Cleveland: Okay, cool. Yeah, so that is our favorite tip of the week. If you're interested in signing up for the daily tip news letter to learn tips like this, go to iPhonelife.com/daily tip
David Averbach: And it's free. If you're not signed up, go do it.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. Next we'll tell you about our product that's not free, but that's a great deal. And that's iPhone Life Insider. It's our premium monthly subscription and it's our full educational service for IOS users. So if you want to learn how to get the most out of your iPhone, iPad, other IOS devices, AirPods, all that stuff, this is the service for you. We walk you through how to use everything. And so it just makes it pretty effortless so that you don't feel frustrated with your devices and you get the most out of them. So if you go to iPhonelife.com/podcast discount, you'll get a special five dollar off deal for our annual subscription. And that's just for our podcast listeners. So thanks to all of you. That's iPhonelife.com/podcast discount. Just a quick summary of what you get with an insider subscription, so to know whether you would want to subscribe or not.
Donna Cleveland: You get a digital subscription to our magazines. So you get the full archive it's more than 30 issues of iPhone life. You get the premium version of this podcast that has no ads in it. And also we have a special exclusive section just for insiders. You get insider guides, so IOS thirteen's coming out in a couple months. You'll be the first to learn how to use all the new features with our IOS 13 guide. That's a really popular one. We also have a bunch of other guides on how to use all your devices, video versions of our daily tips and ask an editor if you're having any specific tech issue, you just email it to us and we'll walk you through to a solution. So that's iPhonelife.com/podcast discount. Thanks.
Donna Cleveland: Next Sarah is going to tell us our favorite insider question from the week. Her favorite insider question from the week.
Sarah Kingsbury: I wouldn't usually do this question just because the answer is kind of long and complicated, but it's kind of also one of my favorite things to do. And so the question was how do you turn a voice memo into a ringtone?
David Averbach: Oh wow.
Donna Cleveland: I love this.
Sarah Kingsbury: See you love it already.
David Averbach: I did not know that was possible.
Donna Cleveland: I need to do this.
Sarah Kingsbury: Right. So you can also do this with a song, but there's a couple more steps, which we actually have an article on so I can link to that. But it's much simpler with a voice memo because you can edit it on your phone to just have the part that you want.
David Averbach: Can we get it like a use case? You said this is your favorite thing to do. Have you done this and why?
Sarah Kingsbury: Okay. So well the insider in question wanted to have I think an alarm tone, because if you create a tone you can set it for pretty much any notification of, I think it was her niece saying good morning.
David Averbach: See that's cute.
Sarah Kingsbury: Which is really adorable. And I in setting this up used it to create a voice memo, like a text tone for my office mate who we like to say snarky things to each other. And so I have a text tone of him saying, whatever Sarah. And every time he calls me or texts me, it's just like whatever Sarah.
David Averbach: That's really good. Okay I sold. Now let's see how to do it.
Sarah Kingsbury: So once you have on your phone, your voice memo set up, now to be clear, there is a voice memos app on the Mac, but I couldn't figure out how to drag it onto my desktop, and it's really important to have it on your desktop or not in the voice memos app basically. And also if you have a PC, you don't have a voice memos app. So once you've gotten your voice memo to be the length you want and have what you want in it, you can either email it to yourself or airdrop it to your Mac, and save the file on your desktop.
David Averbach: So you're recording the voice memo on the voicemail app on the iPhone?
Sarah Kingsbury: Yes.
David Averbach: And then you're air dropping into your Mac email?
Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah.
David Averbach: I'm with you.
Sarah Kingsbury: And then save it to your desktop. I mean, I guess you could save it to like another file, but basically somewhere that's not the voice memos app. And then you're going to right click on the file to change the format from dot M4A to dot M4R. Yeah, it's complicated, and I'm going to put all the directions in the podcast show notes.
David Averbach: iPhonelife.com/podcast.
Sarah Kingsbury: Right. And a link to how to do this with a song because it's a little bit more complicated. And then it will ask you, do you want to use this one or keep the other one? And you click use it, and then you double click on the renamed file and iTunes will open. And then you plug your phone into the computer, and you click on the phone icon and then you click on tones under my device. It's complicated. It's actually pretty simple, but there's a lot of stuff. And then you drag the file from your desktop into tones, and then that will now be available as an option for your tones, like text tones, ringtones, alarm tones on your iPhone, and then you can go in and just have a lot of fun setting this up. Yeah.
Sarah Kingsbury: So I will share how to do that. We're actually going to have a tip on it too coming up. But I won't make you wait. And then also I will include a link to how to do this with a song and how to change your ringtones from the default ones so you can really have fun with this.
David Averbach: Not to hijack the question of the day. I don't know if we have a question today, but if you guys use this, I'd love to hear what you end up doing with this. Like what ringtones you're creating for people. It's fun to hear. So send us an email podcast at iPhonelife.com.
Donna Cleveland: Yes. So I was curious, I feel like this is one of those things too that it's not that hard to do from what you said, even though there are steps but people will be really impressed with because most people aren't doing things like that. So it's kind of fun. But yeah. I was curious if you had any other ideas of ways you would use this?
Sarah Kingsbury: For the voice memo one, I don't know. It depends. You have to catch something short but worth doing these steps for. I have used it with a song to create like text tones and ringtones, because you can really get precise about what part of the song you isolate-
Donna Cleveland: Oh, okay that's fun.
Sarah Kingsbury: ... and use. Whereas if you just add a song as your text tone or ringtone, it just sort of like picks the first however many seconds of a song.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. This one is cool.
Sarah Kingsbury: The interest of songs aren't always the part that you want. Or if you buy the ringtone the same deal it might not be the part of the song you want. Whereas if you own the song, which will often cost not much more than the ringtone that you buy, then you can get the exact part of the song you want.
David Averbach: Oh, that's cool.
Donna Cleveland: Cool. All right, so let's talk about iPhone 11 rumors now. So I'm just scrolling down to that section. Oh wait, we did have a comment from a listener I wanted to read out from last week. We asked people what features of IOS 13 they're excited about because our last podcast we were covering Apples annual worldwide developers conference where they debuted IOS 13 and told us everything it will include. So David Fisher wrote in, he said, dark mode, faster software loading speed, privacy, Apple watch and hearing warnings were all of the features that he was most excited about. I would agree that was a pretty good lineup of cool features.
David Averbach: Yeah. I will say because I just finished writing my op-ed, and I want to voice a complaint about IOS 13 that I didn't get a chance to voice last.
Donna Cleveland: Oh, tell us.
David Averbach: I think that Apple really is falling behind in terms of AI. I think applying AI to smartphones is something that Google's done a really excellent job on and Apple hasn't, in particular, Google has a feature called, I think it's called Night Site or something like that. Have you guys heard of this?
Donna Cleveland: You were telling me about it.
David Averbach: It's amazing. It basically takes a photo that you take, it uses AI to improve dark or low light photography. And what it does is you take a photograph and it'll just automatically improve the lighting of it. And it works really well because the thing is is with a flash, you end up distorting the photo in a number of ways. This you don't have to use a flash and it works really well. I was really disappointed that Apple didn't have a feature like that. And there's a whole bunch of other features that Google is started to do with AI that Apple's just really missing the boat on.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. Could you give a quick for people who might not know what AI is?
David Averbach: Oh yeah. AI is artificial intelligence. And so as applied to photography, it's called computational photography. And so it's basically using a computer to analyze a photo and figure out what pixels you want to be lighter and which ones you don't, and then improve the photo that way. And so it's kind of just doing it more intelligently.
Sarah Kingsbury: So I have a comment on that.
David Averbach: Yes.
Sarah Kingsbury: I think that it's too soon to say that Apple hasn't done something like that because it will involve an improved camera and that's usually the kind of thing they announced with the iPhones, even though it does involve software.
David Averbach: It is true. And I did actually mention that in my [inaudible 00:14:00] which is that sometimes Apple saved some software features for their iPhone announcement and this may be one of them. I hope it is. But nonetheless there's other AI features too. They just didn't apply much AI updates this time around.
Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah. I mean I would agree that Apple has not been amazing in this area. And I also think in general IOS 13 I wasn't that excited about as much as I could be. Like dark mode I think is a nice feature. It's pleasant, I use it on my Mac and enjoy it. But it's kind of funny to me that that's one of their big selling features when it's just like a darker color palette of apps, you know what I mean?
David Averbach: They didn't come up with any feature that was really like pushing the boundaries of technology or really revolutionary in any way. And it's like this is a 13th version of IOS. So in some ways you can't expect them to reinvent the wheel every time. But I would have liked to see something and that's why I'm pointing AI, is because that's an area that is new that they could be pushing boundaries more.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. The privacy and security updates I think I was probably the most excited about because I like the convenience. They have a feature called sign in with Apple. If you didn't listen to our last episode, we talked about that and it will replace the sign in with Facebook if you want it to. And it doesn't share any of your personal data with the app or account that you're creating. So that's a really nice feature. But it's also just like creating an improved version of something else that already exists. But I am excited about that.
David Averbach: I'm really excited in general about Apple's push for privacy, because they're the largest tech company that's doing that. Most of the tech companies out there are doing the opposite, Amazon, Facebook, Google, they're all pushing to have as a little privacy as possible for all their users, and so I am really excited that Apple's pushing for privacy.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, me too. So early rumors of the iPhone 11 are really centering around the camera, and the improvements say there will be a triple camera instead of the dual camera that we have on the iPhone 10 and later. And a lot of the rumors are complaining about the looks of this that it's going to be kind of clunky and unsightly. But we already talked about this a little bit before the episode, and David has opinions about this that if it's a better camera who cares. But I'm curious that should be our second question of the week. Whether our listeners care about the look of camera improvements.
David Averbach: I mean I think if you're a fan of Apple you obviously care what hardware looks like, because Apple puts a lot of attention into the aesthetic. But I feel like for any technology you have to put function over looks, and if it's a better camera, camera is an important function of a smartphone these days. And that seems like that's way more important. Also I was saying before how I was just reading an article the other day about how everybody needs to apologize to Apple for complaining about the notch, because as soon as Apple came out with the notch-
Donna Cleveland: Which is that little area on the iPhone 10 at the top if you don't know.
David Averbach: Yes. Thank you. Everyone complained and call it ugly so people would hate it. And then every other smartphone that came out after that also had the notch because it was the best solution for the problem at hand. And so I think not only do we tend to think new things look aesthetically worse than things we're used to looking at, but also I think complaining about the looks of something that's a function first just seems silly to me.
Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah. I was just thinking in some ways it's a little weird that we still call them phones because one of the main functions we have for them is actually taking pictures.
David Averbach: And so many things other than making phone calls.
Sarah Kingsbury: Right. Most people I don't think make many phone calls. I guess texting is now a function of of a phone as well. But it's so much more than a phone.
David Averbach: Yeah, totally.
Donna Cleveland: The triple camera. Like the pictures I saw of it was about the size of a postage stamp and your eye immediately goes to that. It makes it look a lot more like a camera and less like a phone. But I mean I agree. If it's really great then who cares in a lot of ways. So let's go over what this triple camera would do-
David Averbach: Yeah, I was about to ask.
Donna Cleveland: The rumors say that the third lens will be an ultra wide angle lens. So you'll be able to take images that have a much larger field of view, so that sounds nice. Also that there might be the possibility of combining the photos from all three lenses to have a more detailed photo. And also that it can improve optical zoom, because right now the dual lens allows you to do two times optical zoom. That means that when you zoom in you're not just losing resolution, it's actually the same resolution. So having three lenses you might be able to zoom in even further than two times and still not lose any detail.
David Averbach: And I think part of why I'm defending the three camera solution here is that I love having that optical zoom. I love the two cameras. I use portrait mode a lot and so I feel like adding that second camera have really made a difference and hopefully adding a third camera might do the same.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, it could be cool. There was also some rumors that it could improve... I don't even know what I was trying to say there. It could improve-
David Averbach: Include and improve.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. Augmented reality capabilities. I didn't get any details on what that might be, but as Sarah said, the measure app right now, which is Apple's first stab at augmented reality, it pretty much sucks. It doesn't work very well. When it first came out I was so excited. So I've probably said other things about it in the past, but recently I have tried measuring things with it and it's just not that precise.
Sarah Kingsbury: I feel like if I were measuring something really flat, with right angles it'd be easy. But I was trying to measure an insulated dog house, which is just all like an Igloo shape and there's no straight lines on it anywhere and it was so just wild being accurate and different measurements every single time.
David Averbach: I feel like I get flack from our listeners sometimes on this, but I'm super skeptical of Apple's augmented reality direction. Like I know that eventually we'll probably all use augmented reality and won't even have computers or anything, but that's really far down the road and every time Apple spends 20 minutes out of their IOS announcement to show somebody doing some augmented reality game that just doesn't seem that exciting I kind of roll my eyes and it's like they push it really hard each year-
Donna Cleveland: Tim Cook keeps on talking about how it's such a focus for Apple and it's like really this is all you came up with then, a game that seems like it'd be better if it wasn't AR.
David Averbach: And the measurement app doesn't work very well. Yeah. The games always seem like they'd be better if they weren't AR don't they?
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. Trying to in a room and pretend that what's happening is on your table through your camera view. You're like, is that cool? Would I just rather see it in my phone and not pretend that it's on the table?
David Averbach: Yeah exactly.
Donna Cleveland: I don't get it.
Sarah Kingsbury: I don't know. I mean I play Pokemon Go constantly. I don't know if you guys know that.
David Averbach: We know you're into Pokemon go?
Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah, I didn't know if you knew that, which is an Ar game, and I never use the Ar feature. That's like really-
Donna Cleveland: Oh really?
Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah.
David Averbach: Good, I though you were going to defend AR.
Donna Cleveland: I was waiting to come in and be like, hello Pokemon Go you guys.
Sarah Kingsbury: No, it's actually much easier to play the game without the AR feature.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. And Quartz is a news app that also tries to incorporate AR with just random historical objects or whatever that you can project onto something in front of you and it'll tell you about it. And it's cool to learn about some of these things, but I don't know, again why AR? It seems like they're just trying to incorporate AR because it's supposed to be a cool new thing, but I've yet to see a use for it that feels practical now.
David Averbach: Yeah, I agree. Hopefully it's building towards something practical but right now-
Donna Cleveland: Do you have any thoughts on what would make it practical?
David Averbach: Well like I was saying there's this company called Magic Leap, I've talked about them in the past. Their technology actually seems like it's a little disappointing right now, but they as a company don't have computer monitors. They have augmented reality glasses that projects where a computer monitor would go. So you can imagine a reality where you can make computers small enough, you can actually fit them in augmented reality glasses, I mean you don't even need computers and you might not even need smartphones and it could all be augmented reality and we're all just wearing glasses.
Donna Cleveland: That'd be amazing. So are they glasses now or are they like horrendous goggles that you like-
David Averbach: They're like horrendous goggles attached to a horrendous large computer, and they're this really secretive company that pretends they have a really exciting technology but nobody's actually seeing this technology, read about it Magic leap. It's really fascinating.
Donna Cleveland: But that's a cool vision of what-
Sarah Kingsbury: Isn't that just Google glasses?
David Averbach: Yeah, but better.
Sarah Kingsbury: But better?
David Averbach: Well, better. Yeah. I don't know if they're cooler but-
Donna Cleveland: Because an actual display in front of you and set a full display a computer but it's AR right?
David Averbach: Yeah, exactly.
Donna Cleveland: And so they're just like little things with the Google glass?
David Averbach: Yeah google glass wasn't cool enough.
Sarah Kingsbury: I just have a headache thinking about it.
Donna Cleveland: I know. Okay, so back to the iPhone 11 rumors. So we've got the triple camera, and apparently a lot of the android phones are coming out with triple camera's too. So all smartphones are now going to look like that. Bigger battery. This was an interesting rumor. Reverse wireless charging. And this would mean that you could charge your AirPods if you have the AirPods with the wireless charging case, and other cheek compatible wireless devices on your iPhone instead of just charging your iPhone wirelessly. So I thought that that sounds kind of interesting.
Sarah Kingsbury: So what, you would just put it against your phone or something?
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. You just place your AirPods case on your iPhone, which would be cool.
David Averbach: I wonder if you could charge other iPhones, like if you have a full battery and your friend doesn't, you just stick-
Sarah Kingsbury: That would be more useful.
Donna Cleveland: Do you think that some android phone do work that way?
David Averbach: Probably.
Donna Cleveland: I've probably never seen-
Sarah Kingsbury: Because I feel like the battery life on my AirPods and the AirPods case is actually greater than the battery life on my phone and I'm not sure I'd want to send it in the direction of my AirPods.
David Averbach: Yeah, I had the same thought, and it's like if my AirPods don't work I'll be okay, if my iPhone stops working I'm so lost in this world.
Sarah Kingsbury: Okay, you don't function if your iPhone dies.
David Averbach: I don't want to give iPhone battery to an AirPod, I had the same thought.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, I guess that's true. Then you're sort of just creating a new problem. Anyways. But that's one rumor. This is really cool. Fast charging in the box. So that means you would get a USB-C to USB-A right?
Sarah Kingsbury: Adapter?
Donna Cleveland: A charging cable instead of a lightning.
David Averbach: USB-C to lightning
Donna Cleveland: USB-C to light. No. Yes. Yes. So it'd be a USB-C adapter with a USB-C to lightning charger.
David Averbach: And I have to say, I've actually been really annoyed that Apple hasn't done this already. It's like they came out with this rapid charge. It's a really cool technology. They hyped it up a lot and no one is using it because Apple made you go out and buy every component of it-
Donna Cleveland: Yeah if you spend like 50 bucks at least.
David Averbach: And then Apple felt sheepish that they were requiring you to buy all this stuff. So they didn't explain to people that in order to get rapid charge, you had to go buy this stuff and nobody understands it and nobody's buying it.
Donna Cleveland: So I think a lot of people are like, I guess I'm already using rapid charge. It doesn't seem to be doing anything differently. But really this fast charging technology allows you to charge your phone in something like a half hour when you use USB-C to lightning cables.
David Averbach: And I will say I'm going to skip ahead because my gear of the week was this.
Donna Cleveland: Oh really?
David Averbach: Yeah, on vacation I finally got around to getting a USB-C charger, and then a USB-C to lightning cable, and I've been rapid charging.
Donna Cleveland: Cool. Actually those were all of the rumors I had unless you guys wanted to add anything so we could just go into apps and gears.
David Averbach: I don't have any remarks.
Sarah Kingsbury: Okay.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, we'll be for sure updating you guys with more rumors over the next few months leading up to September. But we just wanted to get started, getting you excited about the iPhone 11 today. So what product was this? What was the brand?
David Averbach: I went with Anchor, in part just because I bought it for this trip and I bought it on Amazon, and I have a hard time trusting brands I buy on Amazon and Anchor, sort of like the Amazon brand I trust. I don't know that you guys.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, Anchor. I like their product.
David Averbach: Yeah. So they're pretty reputable but they tend to be more affordable. And so I have a little wall charger that I use for both. I got a little more expensive one because I use it for my computer as well. And I like that too actually, and I'll put a link to it because it's smaller than Apples, it's included for a Mac book pro, but it still works. So I have that and then I brought USB-C to lightning cable, and I was so glad that I brought it because a couple of times during the trip, when I'm traveling I tend to use a lot more iPhone battery.
David Averbach: And there were a couple times where I was going out, I was going to be in traffic, I really need my phone and my phone was almost dead and so I could just plug it in and then 15, 20 minutes later I would be largely charge. Now I didn't quite get the fully charged in a half an hour thing. Have you gotten that Sarah?
Sarah Kingsbury: I haven't really tried to see.
David Averbach: Because there are a couple of times where I had like half an hour to an hour and I'd plug it in and be like okay this will be perfect. And it would be 60 or 70% which is enough to be fine but it wasn't quite as rapid as promised.
Donna Cleveland: Right. That's good to know because I haven't used it yet. I have a Belkin wall adapter that I'm planning on testing but they haven't sent me the actual cables yet, and I don't have a USB-C to lightning cable because Apple didn't give me one, so I could borrow from you.
David Averbach: Part of why I'm complaining about Apple is it's kind of expensive. The cable was in Anchors a cheaper brand, it was like 15 to 20 bucks for that cable. Plus you have to get a different wall adapter because it's a USB-C. So having Apple include that seems nice.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. The Belkin one has a USB-C and irregular USB, so that's nice, you could charge another device along with your iPhone, rapid charging from one adapter.
David Averbach: And anchor has that same thing actually.
Donna Cleveland: Nice. So my gear this week, I'll pull it out. It's A Kanex, what was it called? Kanex GoPower watch plus portable power, long name. But anyway, it's an Apple watch charger that's very portable. Whenever I travel I don't really want to bring that long cable with a puck. And so this is something that you can bring and just place your Apple Watch on it. It also has pass through charging, which is a nice feature, meaning that if I'm charging this unit, because this is something you charge and then you can not have plugged in and charge your Apple watch, but it will charge your Apple watch first before it will charge the GoPower. And it has a little light thing on the side, so it'll be four lights if it's fully charged. And what else about it?
Sarah Kingsbury: I mean it has a USB port so you can charge your phone or headphones or any other gear you've got with you.
Donna Cleveland: Yes, that's a really nice feature also it has a mini USB, so I was charging, you can charge. What was I using that for? I can't remember. But it has a mini USB, and it has a USB-A port in there and it's 79.95. So yeah, I've been enjoying that this week.
Sarah Kingsbury: Cool. I have a similar one from Belkin that I really love, it's so handy for traveling because it basically can charge all your things and it doesn't have a huge amount of battery capacity because of the charge through, I don't think Belkin lets it do that, I'm not sure. But it's really handy because it's so compact.
Donna Cleveland: Well it's nice because when you travel, a lot of times you want to bring some sort of external charger with you for your iPhone too in case you get stuck somewhere where you can't plug into a wall. And so you're already bringing that so you might as well have something that will also charge your Apple watch and you don't have to bring any extra stuff. So it's just one device that serves a lot of purposes.
David Averbach: I've talked about this on the podcast before, but I have a device similar to that. It doesn't have the Apple watch puck, which is really nice. But it's Ventev. And what I love about it is it has the wall adapter part, and it has the iPhone lightning cable all attached into one unit.
Sarah Kingsbury: That's really nice.
David Averbach: So you can carry that, you can use it when you're in the hotel as the thing that charges your phone. It has the pass through so it will simultaneously charge the battery and then you just take all of that with you as you go. It's a little bit bigger than that, so it fits in your pocket. It's like a little bit bulky to fit in your pocket. But I like that it has all the components built in and you don't have to carry anything else.
Donna Cleveland: That is nice.
David Averbach: And it also has a couple other USB ports so that when you're traveling in the hotel, you can have that and you can use that same adapter for your Apple watch, your iPad or whatever.
Donna Cleveland: Yeah. One last thing about this, this was my first Kanex products that I've tried and I was really happy with it. So I'm curious to try some more from them. Have you used anything from them?
David Averbach: I haven't.
Sarah Kingsbury: I have a portable keyboard that I have from them and I've had it for years, but I still use it and love it. I use it multiple times a week.
David Averbach: this is going to sound weird. But every time I see them at CES they're just not particularly nice and so I never use their products. I feel bad saying this in front of everyone.
Donna Cleveland: I wish I didn't know that.
David Averbach: I know. I'm sorry if they're nice products they're products.
Donna Cleveland: That's good to know. What about you Sarah, what do you have this week?
Sarah Kingsbury: I have these earbuds from Jabra, which I think you guys know by now is one of my favorite headphone brands.
Donna Cleveland: Yes.
Sarah Kingsbury: And what they really are good at is making earbuds for working out. And my favorite ones from them are actually their wireless ones, true wireless. But not everyone likes that. Some people really feel like they need something to keep them on their ears, and so these ones are great because they really can be adjusted, and they're very comfortable, which I don't always find the true wireless ones to be. But also these are completely waterproof. Which if you're a sweaty person or are you like to run in the rain is really important.
David Averbach: Are they waterproof up to swim with?
Sarah Kingsbury: I mean they can be submerged up to one meter for like 30 minutes.
David Averbach: Because that's pretty cool because the Apple watch is.
Sarah Kingsbury: Bluetooth doesn't work underwater.
David Averbach: Oh yeah. I always forget that.
Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah.
Donna Cleveland: These are quite interesting looking.
Sarah Kingsbury: They're pretty big. It's true. I will acknowledge that.
Donna Cleveland: I like the color of them they're not even bad looking but they're just kind-
Sarah Kingsbury: You can use Siri with them. Have you ever tried running and if you don't have your Apple watch, especially if you're trying to skip a song.
David Averbach: Yeah.
Sarah Kingsbury: Like pressing buttons on your headphones while you run.
David Averbach: It's so annoying.
Donna Cleveland: It's so annoying.
Sarah Kingsbury: You could just tell Siri to skip the songs. You could ask Siri to Redo your text messages. I tend to just put on do not disturb when I'm working out. But if you're the kind of person who actually would like to take calls or hear your text messages or use Siri to skip music, these are a great option.
David Averbach: Have you ever taken a call while on the run? It is so awkward. They're like, what's wrong? And I'm like, I'm running.
Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah. I don't take calls. I don't respond. Sometimes I try to text and that's awkward.
David Averbach: I do love the hey Siri function of my AirPod, I would have a hard time going back to ear buds that didn't have that uh oh my screen's updated.
Donna Cleveland: I'd use it to set the volume of the music I'm listening to, which is nice-
David Averbach: Yeah, exactly. And you can do with the-
Donna Cleveland: 80%.
David Averbach: Yeah. 80 I'm like a 75%.
Donna Cleveland: I thought you told me 80?
David Averbach: I might've.
Donna Cleveland: Okay. Anyways.
Sarah Kingsbury: So anyways, for people who want something with a little extra to keep them in their ears or if you really need something that's pretty waterproof or very waterproof actually, or you want to be able to use Siri but not have airports. To be honest the air pods are really not waterproof.
David Averbach: No, not at all.
Sarah Kingsbury: And so these are a good option.
David Averbach: And they're not designed for sports really.
Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah. These are very much designed for sports Jabra is great at that, and the sound is great. And also they let ambient noise through. So if you're running outside, that's really important. So there are a lot of awesome features for these. So I just wanted to share them with you guys.
David Averbach: And what did you say the price was?
Sarah Kingsbury: 99.99.
David Averbach: That's the other thing I love about Jabra, is they tend to be very affordable pricing.
Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah. I mean those aren't the cheapest earbuds, but they're good for-
Donna Cleveland: Somehow when we pull out the products for the apps and gear section, it feels a little bit like an infomercial we're like and now.
David Averbach: I know I thought-
Donna Cleveland: It is nice to show that. Yeah. All right, so I think this wraps up our episode 113 of the iPhone Life Podcast. Our question of the week is, David, you said the question of the week, remember?
David Averbach: It was about the ringtone and did you use the ringtone feature that's-
Donna Cleveland: Yeah, what type of voice memos would you use for your ringtone?
David Averbach: And then we had a second question which was do you think the camera's ugly and do you care? Then three cameras.
Donna Cleveland: For the forthcoming iPhone 11. All right, so email podcast @iphonelife.com, and we will see you in a couple of weeks.
David Averbach: And real quick, I have a favor to ask, we ask this every once in a while. I just went and looked at that podcast app and saw we had some really nice reviews, people actually listen to us. So I'm going to ask again if you guys could take a moment to go rate and review the podcast, especially if you have nice things to say. It helps other people discover it, so we really appreciate it.
Donna Cleveland: Thank you so much. Bye.
Sarah Kingsbury: Thanks everyone.
David Averbach: Thank you.
