Tech Topics: Radio Wednesday 5th and Saturday 7th October – Google’s new phones, Samsung’s Fan Edition devices, Spotify’s free audiobooks, Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Google preventing spam and more!

Thank you for listening

1. Google’s new Pixel smartphones have launched – and wow, these are impressive devices! Watch the keynote below for the full effect, but prepare to be impressed!

Here we go!

Google makes it easy to switch from iPhone to Pixel:

The Pixel Watch 2 trailer

2. So, did Samsung also launch its new “Fan Edition” phones as was predicted last week?

To learn more about Galaxy S23 FE, please visit: http://www.samsung.com/au/galaxy-s23/

To learn more about Galaxy Tab S9 FE series, please visit: http://www.samsung.com/au/tablets

To learn more about Galaxy Buds FE, please visit: https://www.samsung.com/au/audio-sound/

The Galaxy S23 FE starts from AU$999, with the Galaxy Tab S9 FE and S9 FE+ beginning from AU$749 and AU$999 respectively, and Galaxy Buds FE available for AU$199. All devices will be available in Australia from Samsung.com/au and select retail and telco partners from 12th October.

3. Spotify gives its paying Premium users in Australia and the UK, with other countries to follow, free access to 150,000 audiobooks, but what’s the catch?

Today, Spotify users in Australia can now get even more from their premium subscriptions with the launch of Premium Audiobooks; a catalogue of 150,000 audiobooks that are now available for up to 15 hours of listening per month. The new addition to Spotify’s premium subscription enables more listeners than ever to discover and engage with books, paving the way for future innovation for the audiobook format. 

Launching first in Australia and the UK, the introduction of Premium Audiobooks is a new step forward in Spotify’s evolution as a platform. Just as Spotify has done in music and podcasting, this offering will fuel the audiobook industry by empowering authors, publishers, and creators to innovate and enable discovery at a never-seen-before scale. 

Spotify Premium Audiobooks catalogue is the largest of any subscription-based audiobook streaming platform currently on the market: including 70% recent bestselling titles from around the world from top publishers including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and RB Media, as well as independent publishers like Dreamscape and Pushkin.  No matter what kind of books you love, whether you’re a lover of romance novels or looking for inspiration for your next vacation, you’ll be able to find amazing reads on Spotify Premium. 

• A catalog of over 150,000 audiobooks as part of existing Spotify Premium subscriptions.

• Access to 15 hours of audiobook listening each month as part of their existing Premium subscription. Additional 10-hour allocations can be purchased as top-ups whenever needed. 

• Any audiobook marked as “Included in Premium” can be listened to with a Spotify Premium subscription. 

• Users will be able to track their monthly audiobook listening time and see how much they have left at any point in their in-app settings.

• Listeners will be able to take their audiobooks wherever they go; Spotify works on over 2,000 devices from more than 200 brands. 

• Premium subscribers (master account holders) can download audiobooks for offline listening, and Spotify’s automatic bookmarking feature saves their place so they can easily pick up where they left off. To maximize their consumption time, listeners should utilize Sleep Timer, which will help conserve their 15-hour allotment. 

• Listeners can find audiobooks by searching for particular titles in their Home feed and in our Audiobooks hub, which features an editorially curated selection of top titles.

4. It’s the 20th Annual Cybersecurity Awareness month, first started in the US by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, so what do they recommend as the four easy ways to stay online, and what are the resources to recognise and avoid scams in the US, UK and Australia?

Four Tips:

1. Use strong passwords

2. Turn on MFA

3. Recognise and report phishing

4. Update software

5. Internet security company McAfee has launched a new AI-powered scam protection component to its well known Internet security software, to help protect end users from the ever more convincing and personalised scams that are appearing at scale. 

McAfee Scam Protection uses patented, AI-powered technology to proactively detect scams. Its smart AI automatically filters out or alerts you if it detects a dangerous link in your texts, even before you open the message. McAfee says not to worry – it can even block risky sites if you accidentally click on a scam link in text, email, social media, and more.

6. Facebook’s new Meta Quest 3 headset and its new RayBan glasses – what do you think, Alex?

7. Google will enforce strong rules against spam in 2024 to keep inboxes “less spammy“, so what are they proposing to do, and will it actually work?

8. There’s talk the iPhone 15 range is overheating, with Apple apparently confirming this, but is it true? A 17.0.3 update has been released that fixes this. There’s also reports iPhone 15 models are being fried when wirelessly charging in BMW and other cars, so until yet another update comes, please don’t charge any iPhone running iOS 17 in your car.

9. When someone buys an analogue watch, its lifespan is usually measure in decades, so what of reports the original Apple Watch from 2015 is now obsolete?