Gadgetory

hey everybody welcome to the cnet dialed in podcast today is Monday March fifth and we have plenty of phone and mobile technology news for you today for you guys who don't know Mobile World Congress was here and now is gone it was last week in Barcelona and we're going to give you a quick rundown of what happened there just in case you missed all of that crazy smartphone news rolling out of the show and we also are gonna talk all about all sorts of cool things like specifically we're gonna talk about the future of bluetooth which some people may have forgotten about that bluetooth is still out there and exists and people use it and love it yeah it's true it's true man um and then we're actually going to chat as well about the I bone 30 I've had three sorry my god ipad 3 so yeah I got phones on the brain I don't know I don't talk travels that much but yeah so the I had three this is a apple week you guys can you believe this it's pretty much we have two days until the press event supposedly will kick off and after that it'll pretty much be Apple news forever or at least for opera seemingly forever for about maybe about a month or something so well you know just gear up for that and we're going to talking about all the other news as well that we have been watching so we are joined by linen la the awesome Lynn law in San Francisco hey lint and we also have Roger Chang here in New York and he's going to chatting about his experiences when he finally gets out of that phone booth hail you still in that fun but uh yeah actually that's my apartment oh no they don't place a la cena so that's really the only thing i can afford is that is that phone booth but you know what during rainy day definitely glad I had that phone booth that's right you know at least you can put something in there and the man behind the dials we have Steven Beecham good morning everyone howdy morning's Lyon and we are basically just gonna be chatting real quick so let's just dive in and see what actually happened at Mobile World Congress so I wasn't there but I was watching all the news as it rolled out roger was there he has got plenty of tales to tell but just really quick we're going to just launch into kent Germans a quick piece and wrap up of the show and you know as it turns out there are definitely folks that were real innovators like Nokia they had their Lumia 900 I believe elected I'm sorry they say it sorry the cs they launched the 900 but they 80 808 PureView which the 41-megapixel camera yes but unfortunately it's on symbian so no one's gonna buy it yeah okay I it's true wow really that's not right that's terrible so it's a little tease it's like we've got this awesome camera but it's on symbian so that is such a letdown but in any case it's still pretty high-tech camera gear to arrive in a smartphone so yeah that's pretty cool there have been some pictures out already um some test shots of photos taken with the 808 PureView I suggest you guys check it out it's really good it's it's more like you don't lose any quality in the pictures when you zoom so no it's kind of amazing how far into it you could zoom these pictures that are taken on this little small camera phone he actually there's a picture out there someone had taken of HTC CEO Peter Chou and along with the nokia CEO stephen elop and they actually zoomed into Peters press badge or his uh his mobile Congress badge and that's crystal clear his crazy how it's a small part of that picture but when you zoom it all in get expected to be blurry but it was crystal clear very impressive Wow so can actually see a use for that in real life maybe zooming in on someones you know menu from rafita way just for us how useful that is but spider-man journal it's cool trying to cope with some sort of use I guess it's you know it's good for like Rama shots in that type of fellow it's important no it's not the sleekest phone if you hold it it's got the sort of oldest thing that sticks out of the back of the phone where were they see jammed in the 41-megapixel sensor so it's you know it's not exactly a sleek film the still cool yeah and actually didn't you have an interesting experience where Nokia decided to take you and a bunch of other tech journalists out to test the resolution of this device and involve something with a mountain top yes well basically nokia for a little while stranded us me and a couple of other reporters out in the mountain in Barcelona which is not exactly a place you want to be when you know you don't speak the language you don't actually have that much you know the currency there but basically they they for one the Mobile World Congress press events they were taking us out to dinner at a observatory at top of mountain in Barcelona fortunately the bus driver got lost ended up in this narrow road where he couldn't cross so they just basically told us all to get out and walk the rest of the way that's like 20 meters you know it'll be fine so there we are it's about I think 2020 reporters from various blogs and media outlets and we're walking there in the dark and it's higher elevation so it's a lot colder and we walk about half an hour we realize or the Nokia folks realize that Observatory is a good 150 feet above us and to actually get there from where we were would require us to actually climb the mountain so you didn't didn't bring her hiking gear we did not bring our hiking gear now and the the best part was they couldn't get any service on their nokia phones that's a great moment where they're like i can't get touch the bus driver my phone just will work up here oh my gosh but ultimately all worked out we we end up having to actually turn around and walk back another half hour to to the bus which it was actually ultimately his faulty he actually found the right road and it only took us 10 minutes to get there after that but but they they let you take pictures with this phone right or do they even bother no no they didn't they didn't bother that point is dark I mean I brought my own camera so I sort of snapshots but it was a you know it it's a lot of shots of the mountain but that was that was the idea of the whole thing is to get get people up on that mountaintop well that the idea was the observatory and we actually was really cool we got a chance to look the telescope check out sort of the close-up view of the moon the idea being that sort of adjust the zoom capabilities of this telescope this sort of what inspired the PureView it all sort of ties in we didn't actually use a pier view that much until dinner they you know the exact sort of you know had the phone out we got to test it a little bit but so they actually let's take pictures with a uh yeah yeah yeah okay that's and you know overall I mean the Nokia folks were very embarrassed about that yeah and rightfully so but ultimately the reporters you know we all seem to take it all in good spirits we're all actually it's kind of a funny bonding experience me granted we were bonding over bashing nokian how poorly this was planned but it was a good event and you know we don't obviously hold any grudges against nokia for getting an autumn out you know travel and in foreign lands is always fraught with lotsa peril so yeah so yeah so let's let's uh you know glad you made it back to us from Barcelona and we'll definitely can't wait to check out the peer review if it'll actually make it to the US yeah that you know it's highly I probably won't but maybe they'll integrate the technology into their other phones that's what they're saying it's going to show up it'll show up in a Windows Phone eventually cool all right and then quickly you know I did a quick piece on the power of bluetooth for dotto so you know folks who don't know there's a new profile of Bluetooth out there it's 40 and it provides a whole lot of new features like increased throughput also NFC support and also they're really pushing this low energy performance so basically it will improve battery life by you know a huge significant amount so that is something that's folks will probably want to check out just because I mean I don't about you guys but I use bluetooth pretty much every day and I use a stereo bluetooth headset which is just awesome so I mean they're always snafus with bluetooth but i think the standards getting better and a lot of these new gadgets like these watches like a Roger you're at the the night FuelBand yep event where they talked about this device which is using bordado and then you know it's basically going to be a fitness device and able to track your activity and all that stuff and talk to your phone too so there's a whole lot of new products out there there's a new watch you know from basis that's also a fitness product so we're going to see a whole lot of new innovation around that technology so hope you guys can you know check it out and if you use bluetooth let us know we'd love to hear how you have you actually use that technology and then of course we can't not mention the fact that you know Apple is having an event for the ipad 3 which everyone is expecting on march seven so there's so many rumors out there have you guys I mean what would you guys what you guys think is going to be this priority like what's going to be well I mean I think it's there's seems to be consensus out there that this is more of a minor upgrade to the ipad 2 we're talking about a higher resolution screen probably updated software so minor tweaks to how the body looks doesn't seem to be kind of a huge step up or a huge revolution in terms of a new tablet so even gonna be like thinner at all or actually I from what I understand i mean these are acquainted all just remember speculation but it seems like it's gonna be little bit thicker and that's to accommodate the high resolution screen ok what do you think about the home button last week I heard there was going to be no home button then I heard this one me two buttons or 22 new buildings between awesome yeah good one on the back one on the fry think I also think that invite was just so cleverly done I think it was a shot of the ipad on its side which I think yeah like it was going off yeah tilted it too yeah they had tilted it yo so there won't be any home button freak anybody I think a pretty sure the home but will still be there yeah you have to have a yeah I mean I mean I need it but then again you know isn't it true that Android Honeycomb not honeycomb Ice Cream Sandwich doesn't have the yes yeah they'd have taken out at least the operating system doesn't require you to have any kind of like hard buns yeah but if you notice a lot of the Ice Cream Sandwich phones that came out during mobile Congress still included those buttons right the home to search the back button you know the vendors don't want to let go those hard buttons so can't trust the hardware understand i guess the software yeah well i mean it's just it from what they've told me you know they've done tons of studies on how people use their phones and you know people still want sort of physical dedicated buttons as opposed to these soft keys yeah and also a lot of times you know seems like soft keys will just kind of flip around or disappear and you're you're wondering like where it how do i get to the settings menu i don't even remember you know and you don't get that multifunction ability to because a lot of times you know you're used to using honor about you guys mom used to using the menu key is the you know for everything for you know whether whether I'm in like email or whatever app on in that menu key serves so many different functions it's easy to use and kind of sad to lose that you know um so I mean Lindy you have an iPad right right yeah but I have the the first iPad that came out and we like it but we haven't filled the need yet to update it but maybe with ipad 3 we will especially with the higher resolution because that's something that we're really interested in and um the the whole thickness debate i think i wouldn't mind having it a little bit thicker if the resolution widow would be better this way yeah i feel like with the iphone 4s and for just sort of set that standard your kind of used to that kind of resolution when i switch back to an ipad 2 or ipad it's a little jarring that the you know it doesn't see much crisper clear as the iphone anymore yeah i mean maybe it'll be a higher resolution with edge-to-edge glass no buttons the same thickness as the head to that same price and maybe even quad-core mmm that would be nice that would be nice and but that's what most of the you know most of the competitors out there now are in quad yeah yeah so yeah that would be it'd be cool well you know stay tuned we'll have folks live blogging that event yeah actually on Monday we're going to do a live broadcast here in live stream the event with Molly and brian Tong so come to us you mean wednesday well yeah I'm wednesday morning 10am so come check out the live stream everybody yeah it'll be fine that'll be a wild ride I'm sure very cool and basically just going to chat really quick about NFC i understand that kent german also out in Barcelona was able to check out some of the new applications they had a booth there demonstrating NFC which is a near-field communication and just showing us what you know all the different abilities and things you can do besides just mobile payments on on phones and you know i'm all for NFC you know i think if it can be used to two pair devices to set up settings without having to enter all these details you know you can just bump two devices together and yeah nokia actually has a great they have a great bluetooth headset that connects via NFC just sort of tap it and automatically recognizes it no need to like fiddle buns or enter codes it's actually dead simple works really well I like this harking meter right here I'd love to just wave my phone at a parking parking man trying to get change I see so many ways to that can go wrong I know right like walking by each parking meter you're like filling every part I'm waiting for someone to like you know figure out how to make it fill up your google wallet with all the money that virtual money that's inside of it you know the problem and I spoke to a vendor about this at Mobile World Congress was made they love to have NSC in in every phone that they make but right now it just it's a cost issue you know they have to get their phones under certain costs for the carriers and right now I don't see it's just there just isn't really a demand for the services so I mean there's a lot of sort of pie in the sky thinking about what you can do that a/c but mobile payments is sort of the most i guess real goal that they could actually accomplish with NFC so that's sort of why you hear a lot of the discussion around that but yeah as can match them there's just there's so many more things you can do with that technology yeah I can't wait till it actually starts to work in ways that people can use every day cool all right well uh I think we're gonna take a quick break if that's okay with everybody is doing I'm going right back talk news oh yeah that's right I'm just working on my delivery hey everybody we are back you're listening to cnet dialed in we are doing all the new smartphone news that's coming out of a war Congress and also the new ipad 3 which is supposed to be coming out this week of course there are other news going on besides all of that we've got really quick we've got a rumor that the samsung galaxy s3 could hit as early as april so of course we don't know where how what you know it was sort of a something that was announced or cited by our korean affiliate ZDNet korea so we're going to check those rumors and see if that's actually going to happen turns out that it may not may not actually happen there's this update response from samsung basically saying it's not really that's not going to be April isn't going to be when they launched it yeah so we're looking at it closer I think to the end of the first half okay so which is basically which is not what they said which is what I my sources have told me but they also said that they're going to be tweeting their announcement Oh greater there uh mountain date or launch date for the phone so so we stay tuned on Twitter we have to keep our eyes on tweetdeck 24 hours a day you're not already doing that that's oh that's in my life I can't do that no I do i do I just I just hide it you know like to look like I'm doing other things besides that so and then of course another the other rumor that we have uh well actually it's more than that it's basically a confirmation that Huawei is going to be making the mytouch phones for t-mobile that's a franchise that HTC was the first to actually provide the the phones an LG then LG you know briefly um you know I think HTC is probably most successful with that the LG products we looked at were we're okay you know but they're not not exciting you know smartphones have changed so much and it sort of feels like my touches is like a something that's used as a entry-level smartphone to get people excited about them but it seems like smartphones have become pretty much are coming closer and closer to the mainstream now that you wonder why you really need a mytouch kind of device like that but but you know we'll check it out we'll see what Huawei has and they're definitely a new player in the smartphone market and we also have another I think that both huawei and ZTE are both Chinese manufacturers correct yep there and they're actually they're fairly large in the the mobile devices business already is just we're not aware of them because they don't really operate in the u.s. they haven't they haven't had a lot of success in the US the the carriers just for whatever reason haven't really um warmed up to them yet they've done well the prepaid business because they make really cheap phones yeah but at Mobile World Congress both of these companies it went big let me see why away and gt's brands everywhere while we brought out this giant Pegasus that was created out of the send smartphones which was pretty pretty impressive and true a lot of gawkers out there and the this wall way agreement with tmobile sort of shows that you know they're starting to break in with the larger carriers so you're starting to see sort of wall Wayne's ET follow the same path that HTC had one when they were try to break in and create their own brand here yeah so I mean I mean we looked at ZTE product I did personally the ZTE Warp which was on boost mobile you know it wasn't bad it wasn't it wasn't extremely high-end feeling at all yeah to put it kindly but it worked and you know wasn't bad actually oh sorry I actually sat down with a representative from whoa Huawei about three days ago and just to go over what they had plans for the United States and what their kind of strategy was and I like their view on they have like a very egalitarian view about how everyone should be able to have these kind of good quality affordable smartphones and I liked that vision that they had especially so it's almost like a smart phones for all yes do the people actually ties team over really well right right that's their whole thing they want to get feature phone users to upgrade to smartphones because they're not going to win over the customers verizon AT&T but they can still try to get some of their own nature film customers to upgrade yeah I mean hopefully they can shed some of that you know lower end kind of funkiness that people are a little leery about you know they kind of don't see them as an aspirational brand yet right well I mean at the show you know while we came out with the Manischewitz greatly named ascend d quad oh yes smartphone which they claim is the fastest smartphone in the market yeah they made a lot of claims there they did make clear there's a quad-core 10 inch tablet yes yes and that yeah I got a lot of heat because they wrote a post on that and and of course that I knew there was a you know the ax sous which we call it transformer transformer prime yeah and that was technically the first quad-core 10.1 inch tablet so I don't know if with splitting hairs or what I'm sure they're splitting hairs I mean that's so ridiculous though they've got a lot of fun I got a lot of spunk sort of have to right huawei so anyway we're get let's the quick lunch the next story oh um soul in you said that the you're interested in this square right there's this a new app called square register that kind of allows restaurants and retailers to handle the stuff that they usually would using their cash register with this kind of ipad app and it's kind of nifty because it could also help with sales data which is really important and and you could instead of printing receipts and stuff they could just it sends it within the app and things like that so it's pretty cool we know it's basically like a one-stop like set up shop and as a you know entrepreneur you just have a little stand and immediately an ipad and you're ready to go to take orders and run your whole little retail outlet that way yeah and be interesting to see how it could like integrate with a google wallet and other see enabled devices if everything if every you know monetary purchase could be through and iPad or some sort of app you know I use square quite a bit actually I have have like a little side side business recording studio and I use square on my phone when no band is trying to pay me or something I'll have cash and I'll be like oh I take a credit card and swipe boom done it's really easy simple it's real fast so and you're also going to take a picture of them and send them a receipt so it's kind of cool oh yeah that is very cool power of one do you have money but built building this out for restaurants like this I mean if you look at this picture it looks looks like a you know like what you would see in a cash register a reg at a restaurant real simple to use that's that's huge for people yeah like a like those things it's funny because those those what do they call them like POS minor service quite a certain point of sale yeah the software like Aloha there's like defeats like Aloha some of the other names I forget but this those are expensive for restaurants to buy and if they can I ASAP that's killer yeah huge deal so awesome and then now we also heard about at Mobile World Congress the LG wcd 800 another awesomely lovely name for product um relative yeah yes but this is a tablet and you know of course you know so okay so we have so many tablets being announced and shown but what's really interesting about this is that it also comes with a cradle there's planting with the cradle that will also do wireless charging so right on the box it will do in what's the phrase inductive charging so basically just like a power-mad or competitors from giorsal make these products basically you just put tablet or phone or whatever on top of the pad and it'll just charge up you know without any wires or house or anything like that so that's pretty cool hopefully we're going to see more of that in more devices soon yeah I'm speaking of a wireless a new kind of ad came out from sprint advertising google wallet and we're interested about it because sprint also made another new saying that they're going to incorporate google wallet and ten other devices and the the video is kind of cool it's a lot of theoretical uses of their kind of beam application on the Galaxy Nexus and my friend and I actually used the we we both had Galaxy Nexus at the time and we used it to kind of send back and forth like apps and contact info and web pages and it was kind of cool it's like a neat party trick if you had to see what it'd be like and what kind of part is you go to I wonder where you just wanted to show others for no reason yeah check out my web page and then you kind of like put the phones in the back yeah you put the phones back to back a little fun bumping grindr than them and then yes and then Wow no I'm just saying I bless you right usually you literally do bump it anyways and then you send over you know pages and other cool things and it's nice it's it's it's cool i guess so yeah so while it will come to sprint and if you guys want to check it out sprint has the video out so you guys pool alright and we had one quick review that actually went through so Linda you were able to take a look at the ZTE chorus on cricket wireless yeah that's right it's not a smartphone even though it kind of looks like it and has some bread browsing capabilities but the biggest thing that I liked about the ZTE course was the move music um it's a music service program that kind of lets you download a limitless number of songs and albums and the the user interface of the music service is kind of clunky it's a little not a very enjoyable experience but I did like the audio playback because um the the phone comes with this great I can't I can't remember it now but it's a certain audio playback that's enhanced and it has really good like speaker system and also hearing it through the headphones I really enjoyed it for a for such a for kind of a phone that's not high qualified feature pack phone it it plays well with music if all you're interested in is music and you don't need all that fancy stuff so it's almost like a like a a boost sorry what is it beats audio on the cheap in a way and you get a listen to all the albums it's interesting because like if you hear a song like over starbucks thing or or wherever you are and you kind of want it you could have it within a couple of minutes and on your phone that you can play and the subscription fee is included in the plan or do you have to pay actually it's part of the plan it's part of the plan so that's kind of like that sleeps big sort of differentiator pretty cool with our service and we'll get you free streaming music yeah I've been really popular that's good yeah you know what I you know t-mobile should do something like that to be honest they need they need to yeah um cool awesome and the phone is itself is what it's like fifty dollars yeah so with like a 3888 38 even lower I even lower yeah that's an odd number yes very lucky chinese know yeah I guess it is that's from amazon and then okay i discounted dad yeah yeah cool alright and then the other review that's in the pipeline i'm working on right now is the it's a bluetooth headsets and motorola elite sliver it has you know we're still work on the review just got it in friday afternoon but basically it it's really cool comes with this little case that um you put the headset in and it also operates as a battery and you can carry with you and even crazier is it has a NFC chip in the bottom of the the charger / case and you can in theory bump it up against a phone and you'll be able to sync it and prepare it that way without having to go through all this menus and stuff so that's pretty cool when I hope you know try that out hopefully that'll work very well it's also very small and stylish looking so look out for that review this week and that's about it for reviews I know that we got a few reader emails this week we got a note from and Isis is kind of funny we got two emails both with people with very similar names but I swear they are from different what we didn't make it up we have Eddie who is hailing all the way from Melbourne Australia which is pretty awesome and then he asks us you know what do we think of the lack of ice cream sandwich phones at Mobile World Congress you know and you know he wants to get our opinion on that he also wants to say that he loves us and he definitely wants to keep listening so yeah man we love you to definitely keep listening and we'll be chatting so so yeah what is this like there were only what two three actually there were requests were quite a few HTC had a whole body she's he had a whole bunch while we had a bunch no gee I mean actually there were a good maybe dozen or so right Ice Cream Sandwich phones there's a lot better than CES a lot much much better they're very sad at CES when there is there were still a decent amount of gingerbread phones though yeah well i know that sony Sony had their Xperia was it the peu peu exactly I don't you you'd go there yeah no I was laughing at that when I saw the stuff really guys but those those I mean they're very stylish phones but they are running Android Gingerbread and also dual core not quad core so that's been a letdown and then so the next email we got was from Edward and he actually specifically has a question about the huawei mercury on cricket wireless want to know if it's a decent by so i know that we're actually reviewed this phone recently Jessica dull court the amazing just go who's actually yeah she's uh yeah she's so recovering for my craziness Mobile World Congress so but she reviewed this phone and gave it a three and a half stars which is pretty good for a device like this so basically good about it is it you know for that the price i believe it's it's pretty low i got a double check the prices it seems like it fluctuates all the time but it does have Android Gingerbread and an 8 megapixel camera plus a 1 point 4 gigahertz processor which is pretty good the battery life not so hot and I think you have to remove the battery to get to the SD card slot which is not so great either so you know there's a trade-off there but I believe that we like the phone it's not a bad Android device it's not cutting edge but you know it's it'll do you for a little while so that's our tape anyway I think we've pretty much run to the end of the show thanks to all you guys for coming I know that Mobile World Congress was such a wild adventure and it was tough to get one back you know but I want to say you know if you want to reach us all you have to do is send us an email at dialed in at cnet com and send miss episode voicemail at eight six six four zero two two 638 and will definitely listen and reach out to you if we have any questions about your your comments so definitely won't love reading an email and also if you want to check out the blog all you have to do is go to dialed-in cnet com or subscribe directly to our podcast at podcast cnet com and also the other cnet podcasts that we produce so I want to thank everybody for joining us bye guys thanks guys you