February 25, 2025 • 14 mins
This week we cover:
- News of Apples’s latest phone, the iPhone 16e;
- An update to info about the WeWALK Smart Cane 2, including news that it will soon be available from the Vision Store, shop.visionaustralia.org;
- Damo’s recent venture in to the world of Network Radio.
To access the program, presented by Stephen Jolley and Damo McMorrow you can go to varadio.org/talkingtech
To write to the show use damo.mcmorrow@visionaustralia.org
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:08):
Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from
February the 25th, 2025. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have
you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio, associated
stations of the Radio Reading Network or the Community Radio Network.
There is also the podcast. To catch that, all you
need to do is search for the two words talking
(00:29):
tech and Danica. Nor come usually on a Tuesday afternoon
just after it's been produced. Another option is to ask
your Siri device or smart speaker to play. Vision Australia
radio talking tech podcast. Vision Australia radio talking tech podcast
with me. Vision Australia's national access technology manager. Damo McMorrow. Hey, Damo.
S2 (00:49):
G'day, Stephen.
S1 (00:51):
Damo, we've got news of another in the iPhone series.
The iPhone 16 series was released in the last few days.
S2 (01:00):
Yes, this is the iPhone 16 E. The iPhone 16
E is available to order from February the 21st and
start shipping, I believe, on the 28th of February. This
one replaces the iPhone SE variants, so it is a
(01:20):
well as budget a model as you get with an iPhone. Um,
it's still sort of starts at, I think around $999 Australian.
It's a bit of a change from the SE format.
It's not a small phone, but this one is actually
based on the body of the iPhone 14. So you're
(01:42):
still talking about a, you know, a six inch screen
and that sort of thing. The other significant change that
people will notice is the departure from the home button.
I know we've sort of been anticipating that for a while,
but it's now not possible to buy an Apple iPhone
with a home button. So this one, as with the
(02:02):
other models in the 16 lineup and ones that have
gone before it, Now you're sort of utilizing face ID
to unlock the phone and using a swipe up gesture,
rather than tapping the the physical or haptic home button
that we've had on the seas for a number of years.
S1 (02:20):
For those who have never used face ID, it shouldn't
be all that daunting these days, should it?
S2 (02:25):
No it's not. And if you have voiceover running when
you set it up, it does give you some pretty
good guidance on how to set it up. Um, I
don't find it a problem. It works in the dark.
So if you're the sort of person that reads a
book in the middle of the night, that kind of thing,
you'll still be able to unlock your phone. It just
takes a little bit of getting used to. In terms
of knowing where to position it relative to your face,
(02:46):
and also if you don't use VoiceOver but you have
limited or no eye control, there is a thing which
you can switch off, which they call attention mode, where
you have to actually be looking at the phone with
your eyes so you can turn that off, which will
help to make it easier to to unlock and recognize
(03:06):
your face. So that's just something to sort of be
aware of.
S1 (03:10):
Remind us of the differences between the iPhone Sixteen-e, this
new one and the others. It's sort of like a
budget model, isn't it?
S2 (03:20):
It is when you consider that some of the Pro
models are up over the sort of $2,000 mark. There
are a few differences, and there are a few things
that are the same. So the things that are the
same are it does have the Apple intelligence features which
the SES didn't have. It has the A18 chip, which
(03:41):
is the same as the other iPhone 16 seconds. There
would be a difference in weight because the newer the
iPhone 16 seconds were, I believe, a titanium case, whereas
this is using the body, if you like, of an
iPhone 14, which is the sort of glass and aluminium setup.
So it would be heavier than a regular 16. It
(04:02):
doesn't have the camera button, it does have the action
button that is present on the iPhone 15. You know
where the mute switch used to be? It's now a
button that you can set up to still function as
a mute button, but you can do other things with it.
But there's no camera button, and there's also just the
one camera. It is a 48 megapixel camera. So it's
(04:23):
an improvement on the previous cameras in the SE. They're
also saying that it does contain a 5G modem, and
the 5G chip is extremely power efficient. So I guess
it remains to be seen what the battery life is
going to be in practice. But, uh, the fact that
we are starting to increasingly see more 5G towers around
(04:44):
and that kind of thing is probably a useful thing. So, um,
they would be the main differences. It is also USB-C,
which is in line again with the the other iPhone
16 seconds. So it's goodbye lightning. The other difference, though,
between it and the 16 is that it doesn't support
the MagSafe wireless charging, so you can still charge it wirelessly,
(05:09):
but only at sort of seven watts. So it's going
to be a fairly slow charge. So there is wireless
charging but not the not the magnetic. There's a number
of sort of magnetic type wireless chargers these days that
you can get for your your iPhone 15 and 16
and so on. It doesn't support that magnetic charging standard.
S1 (05:31):
So it's USB charging you need to go with for it.
S2 (05:34):
It's USB-C or it will support the older wireless charging standards,
but it'll only charge at 7.5W. So you're going to
be waiting a while if you charge it using anything
other than USB-C.
S1 (05:47):
Yep. So that's the new iPhone 16 E. We talked
about the new mobility aid, the Walk Smart Cane two
last week. You've discovered a little more.
S2 (06:01):
I have there's a couple of things that I wanted
to share, I suppose as a follow up from the
discussion we had last week. First of all, if you
were to buy it from the We Walk website. You
need to be aware that even if you tell it,
your country is Australia and it's a little bit sort of, um,
(06:23):
confusing because they say put in your email address and
your country to get the pricing for your country. However,
the pricing that they quote is in US dollars, but
it doesn't say that anywhere. Which means you'll you know,
you think, oh, that's pretty good for $850. But then
when you get your credit card bill, it's going to
be the 1300 with the currency conversion or 1370, I
(06:44):
think it was the other day when I checked. So
just be aware of that and then you may get
hit with the customs duty. On top of that, it
would be GST exempt, but you're still going to get
hit with the customs duty. Now the other thing that
I can now confirm as well is that Vision Australia's
Vision store will be carrying the we walk to Smart
(07:05):
Cane as well. So you can just get it from there,
get it shipped to you and you're not having to
mess about with, uh, you know, currency conversions and all
of those sorts of things. And the price is essentially
what it would cost you by the time you imported
it anyway. So if it's not on the web shop already,
it will be available quite soon, I believe from Vision Store.
S1 (07:26):
You've had a little play with one?
S2 (07:27):
Yes, I took it for a wee walk. Quite impressed
with it actually. We mentioned last week that there is
a Harman Kardon speaker in the end of the cane
in the end of the handle. Um, and I do
have to say the audio quality is pretty good. It's
good and loud and it sounds quite reasonable. Um, it
is nice to use because all of the buttons are
(07:48):
on the handle of the cane, so you can access
them with your finger or your thumb. And the other
thing that I discovered as well is that the handle
unscrews from the rest of the cane. So if you were,
you know, unfortunate enough to snap the cane further down
the shaft, you could just replace the shaft and screw
your handle onto it. So you haven't sort of completely
(08:11):
ruined a $1,500 cane, essentially. A couple of other things.
The obstacle detection does work well, so it gives you
either haptic feedback or audio feedback. So you get the
sort of. Dink dink dink dink sound. And it gets
faster as you get closer to the object and you
can adjust the range. Um, there's sort of three different
range settings, and the pairing to the app works quite well.
(08:34):
So once it's paired to the app, you know you
can activate the navigation features, uh, select, you know, some
somewhere that you want to go, etc., from the handle
of the cane so you can leave your phone in
your pocket or your bag or whatever and drive the
app from the cane. So it is, I think, quite
well thought out. What I'm hoping to do is to
(08:54):
get my hands on one for a little bit longer
than sort of half an hour, and actually do a
little audio demo, which we might be able to feature
on a future edition of the program.
S1 (09:04):
So we walk Smart Cane two. It's coming to a
vision store near you. Tell me about network radio.
S2 (09:16):
This is one that I've been tinkering with for a while,
but I've recently started experimenting with it a little more
and upgraded my hardware. For those of you that don't know,
I am a licensed ham radio operator, but you don't
need to be one to use this technology. It's a
good way. If you sort of were thinking about maybe
getting into ham radio and you, you're not quite sure.
(09:39):
This provides a way of doing a similar thing without
having to be licensed. So there's two components to this.
One is an app called Zello, and you can use
the Zello app on your iPhone if you wish, or
your Android phone. Or you can get a dedicated network radio,
which feels like a walkie talkie. Okay, so it has
(10:02):
a push to talk button on the left hand side.
It's got a little screen, it's got a little stubby
antenna on the top, and it's got a tactile rubber keypad.
These things run Android, so you can install talkback on
them and you've got a radio where everything talks and
you can use Zello on that. Um, and it essentially
(10:24):
it allows you to talk, you know, all the way
around the world. Um, as long as you've got either
Wi-Fi or cellular coverage. The audio is really, really clear
and you can set it up in different ways. So
there's a number of public channels. I use a group
of channels called the network radio channels, which are set
up by a guy called Carl G. One Ypc in
(10:47):
the UK. And if you just Google Network Radios G1 Ypc, uh,
you will find the website for that. There's a lot
of helpful information there and tells you the names of
the different channels, but you can also set up private channels.
So you could have a family channel that's password protected
and so on. You know, if you've got, um, kids
(11:07):
or parents who are travelling, you know, maybe interstate, overseas,
that sort of thing, you could set up a channel
and have a talk to them as though you're on
a walkie talkie and, you know, chatting from one house
to another, as it were, so you can set it
up in a number of different ways. And you can
you can access a number of different types of channels
depending on what you're interested in. For those that are hams,
(11:31):
if you are using a network radio, you can also
run other ham specific apps. So there's one called DV
switch and there's another called Echolink, which are also ways
of sort of talking around the world from these devices.
But if you're not licensed, Zello is a really good
thing to experiment with on the network radios group of
(11:51):
channels that Carl runs. Their motto is play nice or
play somewhere else. So you don't sort of get some
of the undesirable behaviors that you get on some of
the local CB radio channels and that kind of thing.
So it's something I've been messing around with for a
while and trying different hardware. The other thing I should
mention too, if you do want to use it on
(12:12):
the iPhone, you can get hold of a Bluetooth microphone,
which you can pair to your phone and still have
that kind of push to talk, sort of, uh, walkie
talkie feel, if you like. It's a thing called an Enrico.
Enrico B01 Bluetooth microphone. The network radio I've got is
an Enrico T320. But there's a number of different ones
(12:34):
out there, or most of them are fairly similar. But, yeah,
it's a good a good sort of way to experiment.
If you're thinking about perhaps getting into ham radio.
S1 (12:42):
The accessibility of the app. Zillow.
S2 (12:45):
Zillow itself is extremely accessible. If you're using it on
iOS to activate your Push to Talk button, you can
do the sort of two finger double tap to press
the talk button down, and then do it again to
to let it up. If you're using a network radio,
the only problem is that they don't come bundled with
the Google Accessibility suite. So I ended up using IRA
(13:06):
to get it connected to my Wi-Fi. And then I
went to the play Store and installed it that way. So, um,
that's the only gotcha is that some of the Android
based network radios don't include Talkback and the Google Accessibility Suite.
You have to install it once it's installed, though. Yes, absolutely.
Very accessible. And because these radios have got a rubber.
(13:26):
Like a tactile keypad, you don't even have to use
the touch screen. You can just use the little navy
circle to move around the screen and then press the
middle of it to do your double tap. So once
you've got talkback installed, it's pretty accessible.
S1 (13:39):
Very interesting network radio. Before we go, a reminder there
are details of this and previous editions of the program
available by going to VA radio.org/talking tech, VA radio.org/talking tech
to write to the program Damo.
S2 (13:57):
Damo dot McMorrow MC m o r o w at
Vision Australia.
S1 (14:04):
Org Damo dot McMorrow at Vision australia.org. This has been
talking tech with me has been Vision Australia's national access
technology manager Damo McMorrow. I'm Stephen Jolly. Take care. We'll
talk more tech next week. See you.
Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from
February the 25th, 2025. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have
you with us listening maybe through Vision Australia Radio, associated
stations of the Radio Reading Network or the Community Radio Network.
There is also the podcast. To catch that, all you
need to do is search for the two words talking
(00:29):
tech and Danica. Nor come usually on a Tuesday afternoon
just after it's been produced. Another option is to ask
your Siri device or smart speaker to play. Vision Australia
radio talking tech podcast. Vision Australia radio talking tech podcast
with me. Vision Australia's national access technology manager. Damo McMorrow. Hey, Damo.
S2 (00:49):
G'day, Stephen.
S1 (00:51):
Damo, we've got news of another in the iPhone series.
The iPhone 16 series was released in the last few days.
S2 (01:00):
Yes, this is the iPhone 16 E. The iPhone 16
E is available to order from February the 21st and
start shipping, I believe, on the 28th of February. This
one replaces the iPhone SE variants, so it is a
(01:20):
well as budget a model as you get with an iPhone. Um,
it's still sort of starts at, I think around $999 Australian.
It's a bit of a change from the SE format.
It's not a small phone, but this one is actually
based on the body of the iPhone 14. So you're
(01:42):
still talking about a, you know, a six inch screen
and that sort of thing. The other significant change that
people will notice is the departure from the home button.
I know we've sort of been anticipating that for a while,
but it's now not possible to buy an Apple iPhone
with a home button. So this one, as with the
(02:02):
other models in the 16 lineup and ones that have
gone before it, Now you're sort of utilizing face ID
to unlock the phone and using a swipe up gesture,
rather than tapping the the physical or haptic home button
that we've had on the seas for a number of years.
S1 (02:20):
For those who have never used face ID, it shouldn't
be all that daunting these days, should it?
S2 (02:25):
No it's not. And if you have voiceover running when
you set it up, it does give you some pretty
good guidance on how to set it up. Um, I
don't find it a problem. It works in the dark.
So if you're the sort of person that reads a
book in the middle of the night, that kind of thing,
you'll still be able to unlock your phone. It just
takes a little bit of getting used to. In terms
of knowing where to position it relative to your face,
(02:46):
and also if you don't use VoiceOver but you have
limited or no eye control, there is a thing which
you can switch off, which they call attention mode, where
you have to actually be looking at the phone with
your eyes so you can turn that off, which will
help to make it easier to to unlock and recognize
(03:06):
your face. So that's just something to sort of be
aware of.
S1 (03:10):
Remind us of the differences between the iPhone Sixteen-e, this
new one and the others. It's sort of like a
budget model, isn't it?
S2 (03:20):
It is when you consider that some of the Pro
models are up over the sort of $2,000 mark. There
are a few differences, and there are a few things
that are the same. So the things that are the
same are it does have the Apple intelligence features which
the SES didn't have. It has the A18 chip, which
(03:41):
is the same as the other iPhone 16 seconds. There
would be a difference in weight because the newer the
iPhone 16 seconds were, I believe, a titanium case, whereas
this is using the body, if you like, of an
iPhone 14, which is the sort of glass and aluminium setup.
So it would be heavier than a regular 16. It
(04:02):
doesn't have the camera button, it does have the action
button that is present on the iPhone 15. You know
where the mute switch used to be? It's now a
button that you can set up to still function as
a mute button, but you can do other things with it.
But there's no camera button, and there's also just the
one camera. It is a 48 megapixel camera. So it's
(04:23):
an improvement on the previous cameras in the SE. They're
also saying that it does contain a 5G modem, and
the 5G chip is extremely power efficient. So I guess
it remains to be seen what the battery life is
going to be in practice. But, uh, the fact that
we are starting to increasingly see more 5G towers around
(04:44):
and that kind of thing is probably a useful thing. So, um,
they would be the main differences. It is also USB-C,
which is in line again with the the other iPhone
16 seconds. So it's goodbye lightning. The other difference, though,
between it and the 16 is that it doesn't support
the MagSafe wireless charging, so you can still charge it wirelessly,
(05:09):
but only at sort of seven watts. So it's going
to be a fairly slow charge. So there is wireless
charging but not the not the magnetic. There's a number
of sort of magnetic type wireless chargers these days that
you can get for your your iPhone 15 and 16
and so on. It doesn't support that magnetic charging standard.
S1 (05:31):
So it's USB charging you need to go with for it.
S2 (05:34):
It's USB-C or it will support the older wireless charging standards,
but it'll only charge at 7.5W. So you're going to
be waiting a while if you charge it using anything
other than USB-C.
S1 (05:47):
Yep. So that's the new iPhone 16 E. We talked
about the new mobility aid, the Walk Smart Cane two
last week. You've discovered a little more.
S2 (06:01):
I have there's a couple of things that I wanted
to share, I suppose as a follow up from the
discussion we had last week. First of all, if you
were to buy it from the We Walk website. You
need to be aware that even if you tell it,
your country is Australia and it's a little bit sort of, um,
(06:23):
confusing because they say put in your email address and
your country to get the pricing for your country. However,
the pricing that they quote is in US dollars, but
it doesn't say that anywhere. Which means you'll you know,
you think, oh, that's pretty good for $850. But then
when you get your credit card bill, it's going to
be the 1300 with the currency conversion or 1370, I
(06:44):
think it was the other day when I checked. So
just be aware of that and then you may get
hit with the customs duty. On top of that, it
would be GST exempt, but you're still going to get
hit with the customs duty. Now the other thing that
I can now confirm as well is that Vision Australia's
Vision store will be carrying the we walk to Smart
(07:05):
Cane as well. So you can just get it from there,
get it shipped to you and you're not having to
mess about with, uh, you know, currency conversions and all
of those sorts of things. And the price is essentially
what it would cost you by the time you imported
it anyway. So if it's not on the web shop already,
it will be available quite soon, I believe from Vision Store.
S1 (07:26):
You've had a little play with one?
S2 (07:27):
Yes, I took it for a wee walk. Quite impressed
with it actually. We mentioned last week that there is
a Harman Kardon speaker in the end of the cane
in the end of the handle. Um, and I do
have to say the audio quality is pretty good. It's
good and loud and it sounds quite reasonable. Um, it
is nice to use because all of the buttons are
(07:48):
on the handle of the cane, so you can access
them with your finger or your thumb. And the other
thing that I discovered as well is that the handle
unscrews from the rest of the cane. So if you were,
you know, unfortunate enough to snap the cane further down
the shaft, you could just replace the shaft and screw
your handle onto it. So you haven't sort of completely
(08:11):
ruined a $1,500 cane, essentially. A couple of other things.
The obstacle detection does work well, so it gives you
either haptic feedback or audio feedback. So you get the
sort of. Dink dink dink dink sound. And it gets
faster as you get closer to the object and you
can adjust the range. Um, there's sort of three different
range settings, and the pairing to the app works quite well.
(08:34):
So once it's paired to the app, you know you
can activate the navigation features, uh, select, you know, some
somewhere that you want to go, etc., from the handle
of the cane so you can leave your phone in
your pocket or your bag or whatever and drive the
app from the cane. So it is, I think, quite
well thought out. What I'm hoping to do is to
(08:54):
get my hands on one for a little bit longer
than sort of half an hour, and actually do a
little audio demo, which we might be able to feature
on a future edition of the program.
S1 (09:04):
So we walk Smart Cane two. It's coming to a
vision store near you. Tell me about network radio.
S2 (09:16):
This is one that I've been tinkering with for a while,
but I've recently started experimenting with it a little more
and upgraded my hardware. For those of you that don't know,
I am a licensed ham radio operator, but you don't
need to be one to use this technology. It's a
good way. If you sort of were thinking about maybe
getting into ham radio and you, you're not quite sure.
(09:39):
This provides a way of doing a similar thing without
having to be licensed. So there's two components to this.
One is an app called Zello, and you can use
the Zello app on your iPhone if you wish, or
your Android phone. Or you can get a dedicated network radio,
which feels like a walkie talkie. Okay, so it has
(10:02):
a push to talk button on the left hand side.
It's got a little screen, it's got a little stubby
antenna on the top, and it's got a tactile rubber keypad.
These things run Android, so you can install talkback on
them and you've got a radio where everything talks and
you can use Zello on that. Um, and it essentially
(10:24):
it allows you to talk, you know, all the way
around the world. Um, as long as you've got either
Wi-Fi or cellular coverage. The audio is really, really clear
and you can set it up in different ways. So
there's a number of public channels. I use a group
of channels called the network radio channels, which are set
up by a guy called Carl G. One Ypc in
(10:47):
the UK. And if you just Google Network Radios G1 Ypc, uh,
you will find the website for that. There's a lot
of helpful information there and tells you the names of
the different channels, but you can also set up private channels.
So you could have a family channel that's password protected
and so on. You know, if you've got, um, kids
(11:07):
or parents who are travelling, you know, maybe interstate, overseas,
that sort of thing, you could set up a channel
and have a talk to them as though you're on
a walkie talkie and, you know, chatting from one house
to another, as it were, so you can set it
up in a number of different ways. And you can
you can access a number of different types of channels
depending on what you're interested in. For those that are hams,
(11:31):
if you are using a network radio, you can also
run other ham specific apps. So there's one called DV
switch and there's another called Echolink, which are also ways
of sort of talking around the world from these devices.
But if you're not licensed, Zello is a really good
thing to experiment with on the network radios group of
(11:51):
channels that Carl runs. Their motto is play nice or
play somewhere else. So you don't sort of get some
of the undesirable behaviors that you get on some of
the local CB radio channels and that kind of thing.
So it's something I've been messing around with for a
while and trying different hardware. The other thing I should
mention too, if you do want to use it on
(12:12):
the iPhone, you can get hold of a Bluetooth microphone,
which you can pair to your phone and still have
that kind of push to talk, sort of, uh, walkie
talkie feel, if you like. It's a thing called an Enrico.
Enrico B01 Bluetooth microphone. The network radio I've got is
an Enrico T320. But there's a number of different ones
(12:34):
out there, or most of them are fairly similar. But, yeah,
it's a good a good sort of way to experiment.
If you're thinking about perhaps getting into ham radio.
S1 (12:42):
The accessibility of the app. Zillow.
S2 (12:45):
Zillow itself is extremely accessible. If you're using it on
iOS to activate your Push to Talk button, you can
do the sort of two finger double tap to press
the talk button down, and then do it again to
to let it up. If you're using a network radio,
the only problem is that they don't come bundled with
the Google Accessibility suite. So I ended up using IRA
(13:06):
to get it connected to my Wi-Fi. And then I
went to the play Store and installed it that way. So, um,
that's the only gotcha is that some of the Android
based network radios don't include Talkback and the Google Accessibility Suite.
You have to install it once it's installed, though. Yes, absolutely.
Very accessible. And because these radios have got a rubber.
(13:26):
Like a tactile keypad, you don't even have to use
the touch screen. You can just use the little navy
circle to move around the screen and then press the
middle of it to do your double tap. So once
you've got talkback installed, it's pretty accessible.
S1 (13:39):
Very interesting network radio. Before we go, a reminder there
are details of this and previous editions of the program
available by going to VA radio.org/talking tech, VA radio.org/talking tech
to write to the program Damo.
S2 (13:57):
Damo dot McMorrow MC m o r o w at
Vision Australia.
S1 (14:04):
Org Damo dot McMorrow at Vision australia.org. This has been
talking tech with me has been Vision Australia's national access
technology manager Damo McMorrow. I'm Stephen Jolly. Take care. We'll
talk more tech next week. See you.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com