Gadgetory

hey guys it's joe with pocket now calm and my last video was a little bit different than some of the videos that you've become accustomed to on pocketnow.com instead of being kind of an intro with a hands-on man behind the camera perspective we did kind of a video editorial was a little bit longer it covered quite a bit more topics and went into some detail on some topics that were kind of peripheral to what you'd expect from the website it was an experiment to see if you guys liked it we asked you to comment and you did and you loved it so that's great that said I'd like to introduce you to the very first android guy weekly so welcome to the first episode of it the android guy weekly this is going to be a format where we give you editorial information and then we hope that you will take the opportunity to join in the conversation and participate in the comments which will help us not only grow the topic but it will also help other people who may have different opinions different views that's what we love about our audience but we also want to help grow this into a weekly event a weekly show so if you've got suggestions for topics make sure you let us know head over to pocket now calm and click on the tip us or one of my articles and click on the contact me link right there under the the byline but that said let's get right into today's topic so I've been carrying around a smartphone for well years honestly I started out with PDAs you guys remember what those were they didn't even have phones in them some of them didn't have Wi-Fi most of them didn't have Wi-Fi occasionally you'd have one with Bluetooth but if you wanted to get your data onto it your calendar your contacts your email your PIM that was the word that we use back then the acronym if you wanted to do that you had to physically connect it to your computer and synchronize all of that data which was kind of a time intensive process but then you could carry it around with you if you wanted to reply to an email you could you couldn't send it until you got back to your computer in we of course know where that went we started getting cellphone radios and Wi-Fi and all kinds of cool stuff inside our PDAs so we could be connected all the time in fact with Android you don't even need a computer anymore it can be your computer you don't have to have itunes you don't have to have the zune software you can just literally open it out of the box put in the battery in the sim put in your gmail credentials and you're done you have a fully functional pim PDA smartphone everything right there out of the box that's one of the reasons I like Android so much not to disparage the other guys but it's a phone I shouldn't need a computer to use my phone there are some reasons why you might want a computer in the mix and some of the stuff that I've done in the past regarding hacking and whatnot kind of requires a computer but those are peripheral activities but at the end of the day it's still just a phone it's got a relatively small screen most of the time it doesn't have a keyboard there are some sliders and I've kind of preferred those in the past what with the g1 the epic 4g and even the g2 but the keyboards are really small too kind of hard to use they're good for her and cranking out an email or text messages or whatnot but as far as a Productivity tool smartphone really isn't best for it it can get you by in a pinch and mine often does but it's really not that great for being well a laptop replacement so what can you do for that well the industry saw a need and that need was tablets it's essentially a netbook not really a notebook or a laptop without a keyboard luckily with Bluetooth we can add keyboards very easily we can even add a mouse on some platforms so you can have a near laptop experience with a very lightweight device that has usually internet connectivity that has all the apps that you familiar with from your smartphone and well it's ultra portable and the batteries on last for 15 18 hours compare that to a netbook you looking at five to eight and a laptop two to four if you're lucky so you've always got to stay close to being tethered to a wall outlet the bigger you get tablets fill that niche but a tablet just like the PDAs from yesteryear well they're really not all that productive they're not all that helpful unless they're connected if you have to go back and plug into a computer well you may as well just use your computer right so carrying around this this slate this pad if you will doesn't do you much good unless you're connected that's where things get complicated and that's the subject of today's android guy weekly so I've got a smartphone my smartphone has a data plan some people have unlimited data like me I'm one of the old guys it's kind of fun limited at five gigabytes they throttle me down to quote unquote here's my air quotes for you up to 2g speeds and it's painful I've done it before it's terrible throttled speeds may as well be no speeds they're doing themselves a disservice there by throttling but that's an editorial for another episode so let's get back unlimited data plans are great even limited data plans a two gig cap that's probably okay I usually don't go past two gig I'm right on the defense with that however some someone's I'll go above that someone's below that but it's all there on my smartphone and we're back to the size issue now I've got a Galaxy Nexus that's one of the largest smart phones out there there are a few others that have bigger screens but that's one of the biggest and we're talking just shy of what five inches on that guy it's huge in fact it's so huge it took me about a week to get used to it just holding it in hand and being able to reach to everything I've got big hands and I can't even use it one-handed and hit every point on the screen I've got to pull out another hand and use my pointer finger to touch some of the parts of the screen just because it's so big my thumb won't reach so let's look at the next evolution and we're back to tablets tablet is supposed to be a two-handed device now most of the time it's one hand holding the tablet the other hand poking at it just touching the screen moving around typing in whatever it may be launching those birds against those pigs all kinds of stuff that you can do with two hands but it's two hands and it's big right now the sweet spot for tablets is 10 inches which is significantly larger than a smartphone and that's kind of why that form factor was introduced 10 inches is kind of the sweet spot for netbooks of course they have a keyboard with the most of the time and that's a good size screen for doing stuff doing productive stuff not just email not just applying games not just looking at your calendar but seeing the big picture actually working on documents working on spreadsheets working on well more than just a very short response to an email getting in there looking at your whole calendar view for a month or even a week it's kind of hard to do on the small screen of a smartphone but a tablet is great but I don't carry my tablet with me all the time why it's one other thing my phone I have in a holster on my hip all the time it's there twenty-four/seven okay I don't sleep with it it's on the charging cradle then but you get my point with a tablet it's something else to carry going back to yesteryear again it's the Franklin day planner you know those big binders that had calendars you know paper in them you wrote your schedules in and whatnot that's a tablet that's today's tablet and it's big and it's bulky and I don't carry it around with me as much as I should as much as I'd like to partially because it's so big partially because it's not connected it's a Wi-Fi only device ah but they have connected tablets don't they of course they do you just have to pay a separate data plan for it you know essentially doubling your costs which I don't think is very cool at all I've got a smartphone with data I've got a tablet I like data why can i use my smartphones data on my tablet well i can but that might cost me as well because I have to sign up for a tethering plan to use that same amount of data I don't understand that maybe you carriers can shed some light I know it's all about the money and all about the bandwidth and all about the keeping offenders from using their fair share yet whatever you just want me to pay for two plans I get it that's okay that's business but I don't want it and I am sure a lot of people out there don't want to do that either so what do you do now you've got to carry not only a smartphone but a tablet with you another problem with tablets and this isn't a rail on tablets video okay another problem with tablets is let's say I only want to carry one device great I'll carry a tablet a connected tablet with a data plan but now I don't have a phone great so I either have to use skype or I have to go to a VoIP solution which you can do it's relatively complex and more for the geeks among us I haven't even done that on my phone but you can and at that point your tablet and I'm holding a tablet up to your no that doesn't work so you got to have a bluetooth device to be able to it to communicate not that nice there's some sweet spot that we're missing there and that's really where we're kind of at the cusp of an evolutionary shift or so I think I could be wrong and if I am of course we'll look back at history and see that but if you have a different idea of where technology's going make sure you let us know in the comments so let me pull out my crystal ball and let's see where I think tablets and smartphones might be going in the future so smart phones are three four five inch tablets are 10 inch what's in the middle 7-inch 7.7 if you want to go with the the Galaxy Tab 7.7 it's a nice in between size it's smaller than most of today's tablets bigger than most of today's smartphones gives you that extra room that you need to be able to do productive stuff make this a tool not just a toy like some tablets kind of are you know you get it so you can relax so you can be entertained so you can head it off to a kid and have them entertained while you're on a road trip or in a meeting or you're doing something grown-up and they're bored fair enough I am I the only parent who does that okay seeing hands out there okay go ahead put your hands down all right so we've got all this stuff that tablets should do and they're not really doing because of the utility factor the size and the connectivity so here's my prediction tablets are going to shrink down in size to be around seven inches eight inches somewhere they're just small enough to be portable Karia belen and able to you know use we're still going to have the 10 inches out there don't get me wrong the iPad form factor is not going away the Zoom not going away but that's going to be for another niche people like me maybe people like you we're going to shrink down we're going to miniaturize we're going to go with something that's small enough that will carry it with us and not be burdened with it but big enough that we can actually use it and have it be productive which then brings us to connectivity now right now I basically have my phone set to portable tethering all the time not cool because that sucks down battery in my phone and I need my phone to be a phone so I can get phone calls on it that's kind of what it's there for but I have to have that on all the time so my tablet can be connected all the time now of course when the screens off I don't need it on either device but you get my point sucks my battery life down and really isn't that the opposite way to look at things shouldn't we have our data plans on our tablets I mean we have Wi-Fi devices or Wireless bubbles or portable hotspots or whatever the branding is that essentially is just a a cellular connected device at the office we have some sprint devices that have 3g and 4g built in t-mobile and AT&T have theirs it's just a puck essentially just a little square a rectangle who knows what shape it is but it has cellular radios in it kind of like a router built in and can let you connect to Wi-Fi with up to five devices to it share that amongst those five devices so that's great it's another thing I got to carry with me why not combine that hot spot technology that tethering into a tablet which has a bigger battery so honestly it's going to last you know quite a bit longer than even the puck would and longer than smartphone would using that you know the tethering why not do that now your tablet your portable tablet not your 10 inch tablet becomes your wireless access point but that opens something else up if I have a data plan that I'm paying for on my tablet do I need voice well on the tablet it would be nice but not not necessary because i still have my phone with me do i still need a phone if i've got a tablet that's not portable and if so then do I just have my voice on the tablet and use a bluetooth headset to make and receive my calls you know of course I could use it a speakerphone if I wanted to but I just need that device so then smartphones do smartphones go away are we going to start seeing a resurgence of dumb phones of flip phones maybe we're all they are is voice they don't need data because you've got your tablet with you maybe they'll become just a bluetooth handset for your tablet that has buttons on it has the you know the typical phone format but all it does is connects to your tablet your tablet is essentially your communication device and your phone is the thing that you've talked into sends the signal to the tablet tablet takes care of all the data back in is that possible is that in our future maybe so it kind of makes sense to me does it make sense to you let me know in the comments positive negative whatever and see maybe we're going to evolve that way what do I think the catalyst is that would actually get us that point voice over LTE now we've talked about that a little bit before voice over LTE is like voice over IP except it's over the LTE network how are they different well primarily voice over LTE uses LTE as its as its conduit whereas voice over IP can use any data connection as its conduit voice over LTE pushes a lot of features to the back end pushes it to the carrier's infrastructure like echo cancellation noise reduction stuff like that so you don't have to have extra hardware like if you wanted to do that with voice over IP or even traditional cellular telephony you'd have to have a second microphone on the device to listen for background noise and then an algorithm running with enough processor power to cancel out that noise from your voice before it sends it down to the cellular network it can be done in fact it's being done but voice over LTE can do it on the LTE back end rather than the front end on the device itself so once we get voice over LTE and your device has an LTE connection do we need traditional cellular voice my argument I say no at that point we'll start seeing old phones go away yes there's still some dumb phones out there we'll start seeing smartphones kind of go away and maybe even turn back into PDAs that have some phone like capabilities through bluetooth to your connected tablet that tablet then becomes your hotspot it becomes your portable productivity device it becomes the conduit through which you make and receive all of your phone calls is that what the future is going to hold I don't know it kind of looks like it might and really I kind of hope that it does what do you think how do you think things are going to go forward now it's your turn let us know in the comments down below keep your comments productive if you have criticisms of course send those right to me because we want to make this better for everybody if you like this format of course give it a big thumbs up so you can share it with your friends subscribe to the video channel if you haven't we've got lots of other weekly shows that you don't want to miss subscribing helps get them to you in a timely fashion and of course head over to pocketnow.com to read all of our tips tricks solutions news articles editorials there's really just too much to list for pocket now and the android guy weekly i'm joe levi you