Gadgetory

sprint and HTC are gearing up for a big announcement linux and androids not so secret love affair goes public and the galaxy s2 plus one equals galaxy s3 will be checking out the latest remover rumors surrounding what could be the next big phone all that more on this week's episode of that's right this is Android at weekly episode number 94 Marsh 21st 2012 I'm antuan goodwin alongside j marker baby holla holla and jessica doll court wit stephen beach among the controls howdy ones and twos ones and twos so yeah it's kind of jump right into the news because this first one is really interesting to me and if we're starting to see like images and rumors appear surrounding the next big galaxy s phone the Galaxy s3 what's going on with that okay well um for the longest time we've been anticipating the next galaxy s phone because the galaxy s2 has just sold gangbusters around the globe like over 50 million units globally that it makes it Samsung's most sold phone ever so it's a really good phone I've reviewed it everyone else has reviewed it everyone loves it and so we were sort of wondering with Samsung going to release the next one at Mobile World Congress so that would be like a whole or announce the next one at Mobile World Congress that would be an entire year after they announced the galaxy s2 but Samsung has still been really mom so that is sort of you know gotten the rumor mill churning and the latest is a second photo of the week actually that appears to be pretty spot-on and corroborate an earlier leaked photo at least in the terms of in terms of the design sort of with a bezel around it and it shows a white face in this picture there are differences between this picture and the one that Scott Webster wrote about that was posted on reddit one of those is that today's picture which comes from gsm help desk originally this is a dutch website and BGR picked that up along with others one of the differences is that it looks like it's got android 2.3 gingerbread on it still and the other picture looked more ice cream sandwich ified so we still don't know exactly what it will look like on TouchWiz it could look like this it might look like something else another difference is that the other picture has sort of the european version of the controls below the screen and they've got sort of like that physical square button that you can push and the image that we see today has touch-sensitive controls on the bottom so that's still possibly accurate because that's what we see consistently now with the Samsung Galaxy series like the Galaxy Note has that physical button in Europe and in the u.s. it has the four touch sensitive buttons below the controls and I for one would like to see the physical buttons and you has not that I have anything against the touch sensitive ones but I just think it looks a lot cooler to have that central button but um I don't know how do you feel about the profile of it because in in the pictures on Scott Webster's piece it it looks very thin and the rumors have had it being incredibly thin too yes weird 7 millimeters the longer I look at this one with the the three light touch sensitive buttons it looks like that central button has like an outline around it it does i see that too so it may be both it may be bet it would be crazy that would be refrain so the specs on this have sort of followed the phone along 1.5 gigahertz quad-core processor could be Samsung Exynos they haven't announced the chip officially yet android 4.0 ice cream sandwich of course possibly a four point eight inch AMOLED screen of course will have an HD resolution support for LTE and some markets maybe it's also expected to have a 12 megapixel 12 megapixel rear facing camera HD video capture and playback with 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera rumors have it that that will be HD video ready with 720p video capture Bluetooth 4.1 that that's the most recent version version of it and Brian Bennett goes nuts over Bluetooth 4.0 and one touch pairing and also NFC support so you know internet chatter is suggesting that may 27th in London could be a samsung unpacked press conference in the meantime the rumors are just stacking up know about what about wireless charging because we've seen we've seen a few pieces you know circling circling the web about rumors that this is going to have wireless charging up to two metres away that would be awesome to media sounds very sci-fi though two meters it's like six feet right to like people who use real units of measurement and it's just like how long distance to sue somebody is so American trick well no I mean I'm a huge fan of the metric system but I mean a lot of people i mean i think in the imperial system but yeah it's like a long distance to be sending energy it doesn't seem like i know it just seems very GI joe science-fictiony well i mean bluetooth what's the Bluetooth range the Bluetooth range is rolling goofy bluetooth I don't know no bluetooth is like 20 20 30 feet like oh yeah if you have a line of sight yeah and if you're not doing anything but maintaining a connection run you can get about 20-30 feet with Bluetooth this just seems a little different or played out because power that's being transmitted I mean I feel like if you walk within that 6-foot field of energy transfer right there some kind of mutation has to happen to your body right well I think you're already walking through that much radio energy at any given time just being at fee net so I mean it's that kind of energy is coming out of like the dozens of wireless routers and and laptops and cell phones that are floating around if you could measure the energy be a lot but me about my health some days yeah who wants to live forever just being in this room we're surrounded by all this frequency I'm secretly hoping to develop superpowers at some point yeah not so secretly I guess that just shouted that out we've all made me feel worse thank you can feel saving here I was actually trying to scare you awesome didn't work the jmar kabhi be fearless but yeah it looks like an interesting phone big screen thin profile it seems to be what the people want I think it's going to be a fantastic yeah it's pretty much the phone that anyone would design if they can't assign the galaxy f2 was kind of a big let's get all this is the excitement built around Android kind of phone it was a it was a it was a like I said I don't know what the word I'm looking for is but one of those points were just like oh yeah the galaxy s2 that's something I know that regular people knew whether the galaxy s2 was and it attracted a lot of attention to Android the galaxy s3 could possibly be something yeah and it would be really easy for it to write on the success of the galaxy s2 I mean it will definitely be Samsung's flagship phone but it was no mistake I mean Samsung through a lot of marketing money behind it it made it global there are four versions of this phone in the US on three carriers so I mean that's that's not a mistake they brought to make it ubiquitous they are gunning for the iphone like the the the the i guess the marketing student in me is like yeah the fact they're sticking with galaxy as like a name whatever galaxy nexusgalaxy s galaxy blahblahblah that it that keeps things in people's mind repetition is what helps people remember and right it's a product family an HTC is doing the same with its HTC one family of phones which I just gave you the perfect segue come on yeah good segue so let's kind of jump into that sprint HTC have I guess started sending out invitations to an event they're hosting on April fourth now is anyone we know have one of these invitations yes we know who do we know I know do you know anyone know me uh yeah see I mean seen it a bunch of us got invitations to this Brian Bennett in New York will be presiding at that event basically a sprint sometimes does these secret events in New York they did one with kyocera and it turned out to be the kyocera echo it was this big production with David Blaine and like a cube or something suspended over New York um this might be a little bit more toned down so we did talk about the HTC one family of phones that was announced at Mobile World Congress this comprises three phones there's the higher-end HTC One X that sort of has all of the features the juice step features that you would want then there's the HTC One S which is also a pretty good-looking phone and that's going to be for t-mobile The One X is already assigned to eighteen t which doesn't mean that it couldn't come to sprint and that's what probably everyone would want but I also have this alternate theory that it could be the HTC One V which is the most entry level and there was a rumor yesterday that surfaced yesterday that that phone might come to virgin mobile and guess who owns virgin mobile super in sprint so sprint has boost mobile and virgin mobile and you know there is a possibility I mean sprint runs them I don't know if they've really like run a lot of their own events but they could be so I mean I feel like it could go either way hopefully this is an HTC one phone it would be great if it were the one x but and the x is the big one right that's sort of like dziena oh yeah just in terms of features it's a larger phone so the slightly toned-down 1s for t-mobile is still going to be a really good phone um let's see one of the overall feature so these are all Ice Cream Sandwich phones they all have well actually that's not true um well they all have an image processing chip that basically promises zero shutter lag and I tested it out in Barcelona and it was pretty awesome so awesome you know you take the picture and it's supposed to take in 0.7 seconds and if you leave your finger on the screen it will actually repeat the picture so you just have burst mode hmm so that's not even part of it anymore there's no setting for burst mode you just keep you just press and hold for like two seconds and you've just taken like three yeah that's pretty awesome yeah look that the shutter lag is kind of a it's an issue on smartphones will mean for me getting even issue on any camera getting to the camera app on a smartphone by the time I get there it's like ah the moments passed so yeah like I'm a fan of the hardware huge fan of the hardware button and any way that you can like speed up that sort of like shutter lag and I mean also speeding up focus is there something that they're working on like being able speed up autofocus um well the picture takes really quickly oh yeah yes though yes they have done that um so I think you know unless there are any leaks that come our way we're just gonna have to sit and wonder for a little while and hope well mean it's a little while it's April fourth looking forward to that two weeks yeah totally but one thing Brian mentioned was that if if it is the HTC One X that it might only be dual core rather than the quad core that the rest of the that the rest of the globe got to see right that yeah and there's a reason for that I took a look at that at Mobile World Congress as well the quad core version of the HTC One X is using the NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor which does not support LTE at this time and that's why they are switching to a dual-core Qualcomm chip for for the HTC One X for AT&T Sprint doesn't have 4g LTE yet it could be the first 4g LTE phone for sprint possibly although one has already been announced and that would be the Samsung Galaxy Nexus however it is also possible that this could be a wimax phone on 4G right whatever it is it's gonna be good I think it's gonna be good you think I think it could be more David Blaine and the really weird kyocera echo dual screen how is that not good I just realized I'm gonna be in New York that week David Blaine and we needs to call me so I can rush over there definitely rush for the one thing that uh that I would definitely rush over to it's not a good segue at all that was hahaha go on no I would tie this together um let's see David Blaine I am a fan of David Blaine's work you could say I love David Blaine what what does he use you know who else are secretly in love this is the worst take away our linux and android we've got news that let's just let's let's kill that whole segue thing and just say that linux and android we just got some news this week from a stephen Shankland that basically an article that states that the newest version of the linux kernel version 3.3 is actually pulling code from the open source google android project to be I guess reintegrated into the Linux core and what's interesting is that Android is it's no secret is offshoot of Linux and so it you know basically peeled off from the the core tree the no branch of of Linux and it was honed and developed for the the mobile space but now the I guess the the trunk if you want to call it that of this tree is actually pulling back from that branch and this is kind of like I guess what's interesting is you see this happen a lot of as Linux is developing there are a little smaller smaller branches smaller relief clients smaller version updates and beta that are happening all over the place and these things split off and some of them don't go anywhere you know they're like oh we're going to try to do this other thing we're going to maybe try to you know develop or optimized for this sort of use case and maybe that doesn't go anywhere but sometimes they do go places and they become things like a boon to or what if it was a damn small linux these like different versions of Linux and sometimes they come back to the the core kernel with the things that you learn developing these smaller versions of Linux can be used to be reintegrated back into the trunk and this is what we're seeing happen right now with with Android is a lot of the lessons that have been learned developing for the mobile and optimizing for the mobile space or being brought back into the mainline kernel so I guess the net result is is that it'll be a lot easier for developers to develop across these different platforms right right probably mean features would be released a little bit faster and updates would be released faster and things like that right right so there's there's a there's a chance that you know any sort of I guess what this is kind of a reminder of is that developments that happen in the core of Linux anything that you learn there is technically a lesson that you also learn for Android in a lot of cases and the same thing with Android so there's you know it's for me a reminder of like the sort of crosstalk between the two different ways of developing I guess the two different chunks of that development but there's also an interesting thing that Steven talks about about a boot to Android user space puts that in quotation marks and basically saying that potentially an Android developer could develop in the core kernel and then output you know a nap or something to Android instead of you know using customized tools specifically for Android in that sort of situation you'd be killing two birds with one stone no it's there's some interesting things in the authority yeah I mean that sounds like it might even open the floodgates just a little bit more for app development I mean anything that you can do to make app development easier definitely sort of speeds up the process another thing that I find interesting about this is that it reminds me sort of what we're seeing an apple space where a lot of the development and features and a nap set we're seeing developed for iOS are starting to pop up in the next version of OS 10 I can never remember what kind of animal it is lion or mountain lion mountain lion yes some sort of some sort of a panther dance wance just guessing boomba a muscle or I could sex panther out of my head now because I said that before the show I keep wanting to say sex panther by OS chinn sex panther basically is like pulling a lot of the you know that the Notes app and the the cloud integration and things that we're starting to see in iOS so this is not something that sort of specific I think too we also see the same thing in the window space where you know basically windows 8 starting to look a hell of a lot like windows mobile mm-hmm windows phone yeah there's weird start calling it that but yeah we're starting to see that so across the board we're seeing like these three different through three very different operating systems starting to do very similar things as far as the the convergence of the mobile technology and the the more deaf copy less mobile technology ecosystem yeah there we go he'll eloquence isn't that my strong point but yeah that's that's what's interesting there we kind of wanted to to touch on that speaking of the ecosystems you can't go to eco android apps are available in the android ecosystem they are and a recent study out of purdue university it it basically taught us or showed us that free android apps waste seventy-five percent of its of their power on ads which means they waste actually more power than two paid versions of those same apps and I think that is interesting what do you guys think I can understand make some that happens I mean the ads require out of 75 percent more power let's say it's interesting I mean I can understand bandwidth because they're like serving apps I mean the absolute a coupling the ads don't take up a ton of bandwidth usually they're like text in a small image but then I guess yeah rendering those things in and calling them up and then sometimes doing transitions between them overlaying them on you know whatever app you're actually doing or just those interstitial ads that yeah pop up in between each function every time you finish a drawing oh you won that game that there's new thing I'm just saying I'm avoiding yeah crawl with me draw with friends that was something Johnson oh yeah I'm avoiding that on purpose oh I just don't have the time in my life and I'm like way too good of a know you'll find the time trust it wait till you try it but yeah so the apps are basically wasting seventy-five percent more power so essentially does it pay I guess it pays to pay for your app yeah if you if you're using a free version of the app there's like another reason to help your developer out a little bit i mean you know you if there's a for me my upon personal use if there's an app that i like and it's two bucks and there's a paid version somebody put time into building that app and that's the reason that i buy a lot of apps is because i'm like Oh yes'm some dude in his basement you know just built this app in a spare time i'll give him a couple bucks for coffee so what I want to know from a developer standpoint I guess it depends on how popular your app is do you make more money selling it or do you make more money from that you probably make more money from the ads because it's long tail it's like the longer somebody plays your game for example so if you want to help the developer out then you might just sacrifice more of your battery power and just play the game often we're open the app often and serve yourself more ads and I think that one way to look at it and I think that's even more more so evident on the Android platform because I think actually on iOS a lot more people are willing to pay for the premium versions of apps just from what I've read mm-hmm and yeah I don't know if it's so so lesson with listen we're taking away because I'm I'm taking I think we're basically looking at two different directions right now between I my opinion in Jessica's offense my everyone is not really my tongue stuck into my cheek ah so the lesson is based based on both of your opinions what you're going to want to do is buy the premium version of the app then delete that download the free version of the app and then leave that on so that it continues to serve up ads to you or that is the best part are better for the environment because you're drawing less power from the grid charging your phone right I think we've got a winner yeah I found a eco eco bend on that paid apps are the toyota prius of the marketplace with that on that bombshell well we're going to take a quick break but before we do i'm going to shamelessly plug myself and the special podcast edition of dialed in that's coming up at eleven o'clock in just about 20 well whenever these guys are done we're going to be talking about early termination fees on the carriers you can send us your last-minute horror stories and tips at dialed in and cnet com there will also be an opportunity to call it in live but you can also just call us and leave us a voicemail too and we can play that and I didn't memorize the number for our show ok Stevie changes right yeah i'll then call US 1 866 402 cnet or call us live 18 when 888 900 cnet so that's it ok great guys great do you just please thanks for being here Jessica we'll be right back my dad was Oh creepy creepy voice underneath the Android Atlas thing there oh alright so uh yell it's gonna get back into it more HTC news here what do you got what do you got tell me what's up well this is HTC has been making a lot of music II musical I have noticed the dance they get involved with beef right and now it looks like they are HTC and beats audio are in talks to acquire music streaming service mog and so it looks like if the rumor is that there's already actually been a contract signed and they just haven't made it public yet so for those of you don't know magas and internet radio sort of streaming service I guess similar to pandora spotify ii i'm thinking i think it's kind of like a Spotify I think it's more so the the that you can choose your artist right right right the on-demand kind of play rather than just the radio i'm not sure if they also have I think they do actually have like a radio functionality social or some sort of thing where you can just hit play and junk starts coming out of it yeah I mean the thing about mog is that their their catalog doesn't seem to be as big as a lot of the other options out there right uh yeah i think the the thing for me is I guess I've actually used mauled on a couple of occasions they have like a partnership with BMW or something and we we got a chance to test their integration into into the the BMW sort of cabin technology suite and it wasn't that bad but I think I've at by the time MalK showed up on my radar I was already kind of like I guess committed to paying Spotify and then I really want to jump services or whatnot but that's not to say that anything is that anything negative about log service is just so no no I mean I think they have what is it 500 an active users 14 million tracks 14 million I mean it sounds like a lot but compared to some of the other options out there i'm not sure exactly what what Spotify has but I knew I do know the spot if I has somewhere around 10 million active users and right they've got to be listening to something the interesting thing here is that the standard right now as things are now is when you sign up for mog you can listen to music all you want on your desktop but if you want to listen to it on your phone that's when you got to start coming up you know all you have to basically start paying them a ten dollar a month subscription fee to stream or download music to your mobile phone now i'm wondering if HTC's plan to acquire them means that we'll start seeing some sort of a deal where oh yeah you have an HTC phone maybe you don't have to pay that premium service maybe your HTC phone with beats audio comes with a marcus and then they find some sort of other way to monetize that maybe with ADD that's an interesting huh yeah i mean it's it's a way to get them to get users to adopt that service right off the bat right now right when they get their phone boom they're in and they're locked in forever yeah and I mean they can I mean it's the potential to the user ten dollar per month savings whether you were going to use mod war spot if I think they cost about the same so I mean yeah this could be you know again tied into the hole HTC trying to make themselves a music phone company maybe or even you know just you know saying that you