Walt Disney World to introduce new phone recharging program

[kamik86]

It's not the electronics that make this difficult. It's the software. Anyone who's really concerned about this can just set the USB options on their phone to "charge only". In this mode the *phone* will prevent transfer of data over the USB channel. That said, most cell phones locked down for consumer use limit USB data transfer to media anyway, and I can't imagine why a company that sells phone chargers would want your vacation photos.

Of course, the other option is to buy a cell phone that has decent battery life and avoid the problem entirely. My BlackBerry Priv (runs Android) can easily get through a day of moderately heavy use on a single charge. No dead battery concerns, nothing extra to carry around.

Yes anyone that knows what they are doing can set there phone to fix this.

However anyone who knows anything about internet security won't be dupped by a phishing email either and we know that those actually work quite often. I think there would be alot of people that wouldn't know to do this on their phone.

Also I would want to see one of these fuel rods to see how tamper resistant they are. I would trust a company not to gather data they haven't put a legal disclaimer that they are tracking in a terms of use (because the company would be stupid to do that when most wouldn't read the terms of use anyway).

However I don't trust that individuals wouldn't add a device to the fuel rod to collect this data for them. I mean people have been known to add card skimmers to vending machines and gas pumps. This wouldn't be that different.

 

[kamik86]

I understand and I have a portable charger that charges my phone 6 times before I need to recharge it but for someone who is on vacation and doesn't have one this makes sense. Especially for someone like an AP holder who frequents the parks.

Let me clarify something...

The service makes sense. People will forget their charger or not have one and really need a charge and pay it.

However I wanted to point out that someone who is planning ahead and a bit organized can save $20 bucks off of this purchase if they get a decent deal off amazon for a better charger which would be more convenient then this service. Especially if they were going to order the fuel rod online or at another location earlier to save $10

the service makes sense, I just think for people that plan there is a better deal. Other bonus of having your own longer charger? That would work anywhere even where there isnt a fuelrod drop off point.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Let me clarify something...

The service makes sense. People will forget their charger or not have one and really need a charge and pay it.

However I wanted to point out that someone who is planning ahead and a bit organized can save $20 bucks off of this purchase if they get a decent deal off amazon for a better charger which would be more convenient then this service. Especially if they were going to order the fuel rod online or at another location earlier to save $10

the service makes sense, I just think for people that plan there is a better deal. Other bonus of having your own longer charger? That would work anywhere even where there isnt a fuelrod drop off point.

Well I do agree with your points but they have already been mentioned on this thread multiple times about purchasing cheaper or better charging capacity. Heck I purchased $4.99 (regularly $54.99) 6,000 mAh capcity last year at Nebraska Furniture Mart on Black Friday (as I already mentioned earlier in this thread) so yeah can't beat spending $5.00 for a portable charger that will do just fine in the parks. The point however is that if you find yourself...for whatever reason...needing a charger while you are in the parks you now have the ablity to get one.

I mean last time when I went in 2011 I spent a pretty penny on sunscreen in the parks that we forgot in the room (we were off-site and that day we had taken the free shuttle to the parks there really wasn't a time-efficient way of going back and getting the suncreen) so yeah if we had remembered to bring the sunscreen we wouldn't have had to spend the money especially since it's a decent chunk more expensive than buying it at places like Walmart but since we did forget I was really glad they sold it in the parks.

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

Hearing the batteries are 6400mAh

Sorry to be dumb what is a 6400mAh battery? Is that a good thing?

I like this idea btw...

 

[rteetz]

Sorry to be dumb what is a 6400mAh battery? Is that a good thing?

I like this idea btw...

That's the battery capacity. Your phone has a certain battery capacity as well.

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

That's the battery capacity. Your phone has a certain battery capacity as well.

Thank you!

 

[mikepizzo]

It's not the electronics that make this difficult. It's the software. Anyone who's really concerned about this can just set the USB options on their phone to "charge only". In this mode the *phone* will prevent transfer of data over the USB channel. That said, most cell phones locked down for consumer use limit USB data transfer to media anyway, and I can't imagine why a company that sells phone chargers would want your vacation photos.

Of course, the other option is to buy a cell phone that has decent battery life and avoid the problem entirely. My BlackBerry Priv (runs Android) can easily get through a day of moderately heavy use on a single charge. No dead battery concerns, nothing extra to carry around.

A lot of the time it's not that the phone doesn't have sufficient battery life, it's that the user ends up bogging the phone down with services that it doesn't really need. Stepping away from the parks for a moment (because the parks have Wi-Fi), if you always keep your Wi-Fi scanning, that eats up battery.

On top of that, there are some apps that are just, to be frank, quite bad. Facebook and Facebook Messenger are huge battery drainers because of all the background running it does. The SnapChat app on iOS is decent, but on Android it's terrible. A lot of apps that start on iOS port to Android because they have to, not because they want to. I read up a lot about the Nexus 6P (because that's the phone I have) and there was a considerable amount of battery drain happening to individuals on TMobile. Turns out the TMobile app that people use to check their data had some kind of Wi-Fi scanning setting that defaulted to on.

There's a lot more to talk about in regards to battery drain than just getting a phone with sufficient battery life.

 

[mab2012]

Sooooo I'm supposed to go buy a new phone before going to WDW just to avoid a potential battery life issue...over a $30 charger I have the ability but not obligation to buy at the parks should I find myself with a low battery?

I think it's great that you have found a phone that works for you in regards to battery life but really this thread is about the new charging program regardless of what type of phone you own. As far as battery sucking apps that can happen on all phone types where you download apps though for certain phones certain apps drain the battery faster.

Calm down. No, I'm not suggesting that you should run out and buy a new phone, and I certainly don't care who does or doesn't spend $30 for a charger at Disney. But most people do replace their phones every couple of years (maybe not you, it's an industry average), so I'm only pointing out to those who might be thinking about a new phone that there are alternatives on the market that can render the issue moot. It's an open forum, and my post was by no means out of context of the thread.

Yes, a bad app can cause drain, and so can poor radio coverage, but good OS implementations (and that includes OEM variations on stock Android) can and do mitigate many of those problems. Buy whatever phone you want, I certainly don't care, but don't fool yourself into thinking that all phones are equally crappy when it comes to battery life.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Calm down. No, I'm not suggesting that you should run out and buy a new phone, and I certainly don't care who does or doesn't spend $30 for a charger at Disney. But most people do replace their phones every couple of years (maybe not you, it's an industry average), so I'm only pointing out to those who might be thinking about a new phone that there are alternatives on the market that can render the issue moot. It's an open forum, and my post was by no means out of context of the thread.

Yes, a bad app can cause drain, and so can poor radio coverage, but good OS implementations (and that includes OEM variations on stock Android) can and do mitigate many of those problems. Buy whatever phone you want, I certainly don't care, but don't fool yourself into thinking that all phones are equally crappy when it comes to battery life.

1) I'm wasn't upset don't know how you got that out of my post so no need to tell me to "calm down". BTW when has telling someone in the context you were to "calm down" ever really worked if they were actually upset.

2) Don't know why you would assume that I don't update my phone every 2 years..never said that. You did however say one could just go buy a better phone. In the context of a vacation to WDW that would seem quite extreme unless you were actually up for an upgrade (which you never specified in your comments that hey fyi if you're up for an upgrade got a great tip, etc-you left it open to say "or you could just buy a better phone"-paraphrasing here.

3) Don't know how you interpreted my post to mean that "all phones are equally crappy when it comes to battery life"

To be quite honest here you're assuming a bunch of things from my post and took it to somewhere it didn't need to go. Obviously you've got your thoughts on the merit of the program and I've got mine just leave it as that and move on--done with my off-topic rant here.

 

[mab2012]

1) I'm wasn't upset don't know how you got that out of my post so no need to tell me to "calm down". BTW when has telling someone in the context you were to "calm down" ever really worked if they were actually upset.

2) Don't know why you would assume that I don't update my phone every 2 years..never said that. You did however say one could just go buy a better phone. In the context of a vacation to WDW that would seem quite extreme unless you were actually up for an upgrade (which you never specified in your comments that hey fyi if you're up for an upgrade got a great tip, etc-you left it open to say "or you could just buy a better phone"-paraphrasing here.

3) Don't know how you interpreted my post to mean that "all phones are equally crappy when it comes to battery life"

To be quite honest here you're assuming a bunch of things from my post and took it to somewhere it didn't need to go. Obviously you've got your thoughts on the merit of the program and I've got mine just leave it as that and move on--done with my off-topic rant here.

I felt you were reading an awful lot into my post that wasn't actually there, so I guess that's going both ways. Sometimes tone comes through differently than we intend. I don't really have much of an opinion on the charger thing either way, and my primary purpose in that post was actually to point out that any concerns about security are probably unfounded.

FTR - I said "maybe not you" with respect to the update cycle specifically to make it clear that I was NOT assuming anything about your personal habits. You seem to have interpreted the opposite, so clearly we're just talking across each other.

Have a good night.

 

[LeeAndRobin]

Yes anyone that knows what they are doing can set there phone to fix this.

However anyone who knows anything about internet security won't be dupped by a phishing email either and we know that those actually work quite often. I think there would be alot of people that wouldn't know to do this on their phone.

Also I would want to see one of these fuel rods to see how tamper resistant they are. I would trust a company not to gather data they haven't put a legal disclaimer that they are tracking in a terms of use (because the company would be stupid to do that when most wouldn't read the terms of use anyway).

However I don't trust that individuals wouldn't add a device to the fuel rod to collect this data for them. I mean people have been known to add card skimmers to vending machines and gas pumps. This wouldn't be that different.

I just spoke with one of the FuelRod company owners yesterday by phone. Very nice guy, and *very* sensitive to the whole data collection issue. Why? He says he bought a competitor's product and it did collect data from his phone, in addition to pushing pop-up ads *onto* his phone. He assured me that FuelRod has not, does not, and won't ever collect data from their users' phones. He seemed to be very serious about that, and I believe him. FWIW, I have a very low BS trigger. I don't think he was lying to me.

The whole issue about someone else adding a data sniffer to a FuelRod would depend on who actually has access to the rods in the kiosks. Apparently FuelRod doesn't franchise, they maintain their own sites, so I would assume that there is not an opportunity for a third party to add anything.

 

[kamik86]

I just spoke with one of the FuelRod company owners yesterday by phone. Very nice guy, and *very* sensitive to the whole data collection issue. Why? He says he bought a competitor's product and it did collect data from his phone, in addition to pushing pop-up ads *onto* his phone. He assured me that FuelRod has not, does not, and won't ever collect data from their users' phones. He seemed to be very serious about that, and I believe him. FWIW, I have a very low BS trigger. I don't think he was lying to me.

The whole issue about someone else adding a data sniffer to a FuelRod would depend on who actually has access to the rods in the kiosks. Apparently FuelRod doesn't franchise, they maintain their own sites, so I would assume that there is not an opportunity for a third party to add anything.

Its not when they are in the Kiosks I was concerned about it was when someone else has it.

The idea is you trade it in they charge it and then issue it back out again. So lets say I was a dishonest person that watned to collect your data. If I coudl open the fuel rod and add a device I could collect your data. Maybe even have something that can connect to wifi and send it back to some throw away email I set up for this purpose.

Then I hand it in.

Fuel rod charges the device and issues it out to someone else. Lets say that is you. You connect it to your phone and didn't realize this could happen so you didn't turn off data from your charge port. You then go somewhere with wifi and I have your data.

Unless Fuel rod makes it policy to check over every device or has some type of tamper seal on the devices to know if it could have been tampered with they could still be stealing your info.