Gadgetory

and we are live the Developer Preview for Android P is out in the wild let's take a peek under the hood Qualcomm is already teasing their next-generation mobile chipset with a new modem in tow and Lenovo moto might be laying off more staff we've got a lot to talk about so make sure you're charged and ready for episode two nine five of the PocketNow weekly recorded March 9th at noon pacific this weekly podcast is where we dissect and discuss those gadgets that make our lives mobile smartphones tablets wearables it's all the stuff you wished existed when you were a kid and Android Pi would have been one of those weird fruit pocket things you could have bought from a gas station I'm Juan Carlos bag now contributing editor at pocketnow.com joined as always by plucky podcast producer mr. Jules Wong not on the East Coast this fine evening where he's at no no no you're wrong because I am on the east coast of the United Kingdom Oh burn look at that excellent yeah broadcasting from the UK you're facing some of the same issues that I was facing on recent travels to where it didn't seem to matter what hotel I stayed at it didn't seem to matter what upgrade package I paid for the definition of high-speed Internet when it comes to the service industry is laughably poor well when it comes to our needs which is communicating to a broad audience here a massive audience it doesn't really fit us so that's unfortunate but we strive on and including with the lights here because if you are not watching this I suggest that you don't because I'm using my pixel to use a flashlight which is blinding me in the eyes and it's it's very like it's it's way too much and it's not even it's only producing mediocre results for the bang for buck well a so apparently the UK is going through like a blackout right now they don't have any lights this is the Travelodge and Norwich okay what do you expect well III understand you know keeping your room cozy but that's that's hilarious you try try like bouncing it off a wall or something right up against the wall and like this is like it's just as muddy like this and that's so you you go lens flare and then I'll join you with just silhouette mode on the podcast and now we're both equally unwatchable [Laughter] in other effects now we should we should probably kick into some actual news stories I think we're all recovering from recent travels and trade shows and shenanigans and stuff before we kick over to the news of course we do want to hear through from you the listener while we are broadcasting live there are a couple different ways that you can join the conversation including hitting the p-n weekly hash tag through the Twitter's that's the easiest way for us to get a comment noticed on the show while we always appreciate the live chat on YouTube it's it's a little difficult to keep up with if there's a crazy conversation happening for us to decipher what you guys are talking about and of course traditional email you can also get in touch with us podcast at Pocky what is email oh no email is this this hot new technology that's sweeping the globe it's it's gonna replace text messaging it's I really think it's gonna be big I think it's gonna be a big deal great in fact we have two of them coming in yes we do so we're kind of cheating in that we've kind of got an off schedule from our listener mailbag and listener take the wheel episodes and so to kind of make up for that the end of this broadcast we are going to take a look at two messages from folks that have sent them in for previous podcasts finally get back to back around to answering some of their questions and of course just whatever commentary you guys want to provide throughout the show if we think it's cool enough we'll we'll talk about it to live on the air yeah indeed I've cut with the pretense on the lighting because that would be a subtracting factor in the viewership here so I apologize for the overall you know darkness but we'll move on we'll be moving forward here so for the week of March 5th 2018 this is all the news that is fit to podcast we're finally taking a good look at Android pee with the first developer preview released this week this initial stage will last through Google i/o in early May and will be flash only for pixel phones at this point including the pixel C tablet some of the features include support for the hafe and vp9 HDR media formats and stricter API level targeting for apps which meaning that they will be updated regularly they have to be updated regularly or they will get pushed off the Play Store 5 previews are scheduled with a final launch date late in the third quarter excuse me soft banks earnings report has spoiled this name of the next big chipset from Qualcomm it's not that a Snapdragon 855 but the Snapdragon 855 fusion platform if you've heard the word fusion before think Apple a10 fusion it will be the first to have the x-15 modem that's acclimatized to 5 G's standards some jogging still on whether it hits in early 2019 or late 2018 for at least the phones that will be having that but this coming nonetheless speaking of Qualcomm the Committee on Foreman investments in the United States has put a 30-day hold on the chip makers shareholders vote on the Board of Directors this as the agency looks into national security impacts and other consequences if singapore-based Broadcom or to acquire the company Broadcom which has its own ballot of board candidates says that Qualcomm has made a voluntary investigate investigation request to the CFIUS and is denying the will of its investors Apple has reportedly been working on and off on a pair of over-ear wireless headphones it's thought that this holiday season product will share many features with Apple's own beats products like the w1 chip for easy pairing and noise cancellation as well her sauce windows10 chief Joe Belfiore has confirmed that Windows 10s will be converted from an iteration of the OS to a mode on the home and pro versions sometime next year currently enterprise users can activate s mode which runs only with optimized applications and a security tailored but restricted environment a class action lawsuit against Google and Huawei has been allowed to go forward the federal judge overseen the case refused to toss out the whole case which centers around poor warranty treatment over hardware issues causing sentence sudden shutdowns and boot looping on the Nexus 6p expect 3d boot loops in this case by June local chatter and that has spilled on to the layoffs comm claims that about a third of the estimated 500 employees at Motorola Mobility Chicago are being let go this April furthermore air prominent moto mod developer has shared his concerns but won't reveal private information on major consequences to the Moto Z line and the modular modular extent accessories that go along with it the state of Washington has passed a law enforcing net neutrality principles on internet service providers those who violated would be subject to provisions under the state's consumer protection laws that would be the first in nation to do so Oregon has a law but it only affirms what the government continued in terms of purchasing Internet service the bill goes right up against the FCC's revised rules that remove net neutrality facets the restoring Internet freedom order has written dictates that it would supersede any state law so we'll have to see if any legal brouhaha comes from this finally the Electronic Frontier Foundation has received a dump of documents from FOIA Freedom of Information Act requests detailing the FBI's practice of paying off Best Buy Geek Squad employees as formance agents would be called down to repair repair facilities to look at Geek Squad customers computers after having child porn discovered on them the e FF claims that the FBI absolutely ceases what becomes evidence for prosecuting the customer a violation of Fourth Amendment Amendment rights and as we go into the discussion on this story here I want to tap into Andrew Wallace fat produce on Twitter saying as someone and who worked at Best Buy for years I find the evidence that the Greek Geek Squad had was spying on us for the FBI sickening I don't feel that the illegal done without warrants price paid is worth the the the good this strategy might have done shame on you Best Buy so let's Rome to this what do you think of the overall assessment that's the use documents have uncovered well and this is one of those sort of ongoing and developing stories where documents are yeah when when when we start getting the actual documents you see one of the tricky things about this is reading people editorializing about the initial discovery of this practice so it's gonna take a little while to unpack what what the ramifications of this might be but I think it definitely wraps up into a larger consumer discussion on data protection your own redundancy right to repair that's actually another story to that that just got a little bit of noise this week was California introducing legislation for right to repair your consumers ability to crack open their own devices and fix them and have access to those materials and stuff so we're going to continuously run into boundaries and conflict between keeping citizenry safe and trying to maintain some notion of privacy or absolute privacy for consumers gadget you know a phone is now the main point of entry for almost every single service and piece of data and banking information and personal information that a a customer might have so if law enforcement is getting wind of certain trends like child pornography or sex trafficking or information relating to that I think it is law enforcement job to try and exercise any point of entry that they might have for unwrapped unraveling or untangling how to get at the people who might be engaged in such nefarious deeds this is constantly going to step on the toes of what we expect as consumers for our right to privacy and I think it's gonna be a generational conversation that we'll need to have in how we can rectify the discrepancy between law enforcement third Point's third party points of services cloud technologies you know the fact that you might be able to protect the data on your phone but if you back up to a cloud service well that's a hard drive that lives on someone else's server that can still be served a warrant for releasing your personal information so I think we have a ways to go yet even just getting the basic vernacular and education out of the way so that consumers can fully understand what their rights are and what their protections are and what their options are for this kind of information I'm torn on what a company's responsibility is if if they're if they're served with certain types of warrants if they're they're trying it should it be up to a private corporation to be the up holder of our Fourth Amendment that I'm not entirely sure where we should try and draw those lines or where we should lay the blame or where we should expect protection and once the fact that they were that there were employees within the company that were paid that were acting on behalf of the government without the in explicit disclosure to the consumer so yeah and and that starts to sound like an industrial espionage kind of situation but to the same token if we're talking about international you know child pornography rings which are very important that government's stem that that doesn't it doesn't it start to sound like you know this would be a covert op from an organization like the NSA or the CIA or the FBI to infiltrate what's it what networks they can to try and hash out where this information is being generated from and where it's being trafficked I want to see that escalating arms race where you know there's a part of me that wants to say I want to see the government do everything they can to try and stem bad actors in this space at the same time as I want to see the arms race for better consumer protections better our encryption a way for us to safeguard our own information at the same time and I think the the best way to get that is through sort of an open window clear transparency policy you know I don't think you can have encryption and protection in secret because then if there's a flaw or if there's a hole in that security if there's a problem with that security or if that Security's been compromised no one will talk about it so you know this is this is a bad look for Best Buy it's not necessarily a great look for our law enforcement agencies but there's also I think there should be an understanding that the law enforcement job is to try everything they can to get in infiltrate and disband people doing terrible things so I don't know that what not to defend you the trafficking of child porn but as defending the principles of undo of being probed the Constitution which allows for seizure with a warrants of property private property now where that line of disclosure where that line of letting a third party come into the picture here whether that tacitly includes the government or any other federal or no no I completely agree Jules this is why I really hope we'll get unfortunately I feel like the new cycle and this is gonna be really short because something else is gonna shock us in a week and we we might not get to revisit this in the way that I really think we should we're we're I feel this is a living breathing document when we talk about the Bill of Rights and why these topics are so important to debate in a grown-up fashion over a period of time not necessarily with the specter of a threat looming right on top of us but actually when everything's cool and hunky-dory is exactly when we should be trying to unravel where we move forward as a society because let's say the practice was this is completely hypothetical i I'm not well-versed enough in the story to say that this is the situation but to me it rings a little bit like the way that you can request or serve a warrant to Apple you know if someone's got information locked up on an iPhone I feel that should be the safest of all that a consumer can rely on I feel it's law enforcement job to battering-ram their way into it it should not be a technology manufacturers job to build in a backdoor but if you utilize iCloud then I feel the government should be well within their rights to to serve a warrant to Apple to get information off of their services so let's say part of this service a Geek Squad was duplicating information as soon as that information is off of the primary device then I feel the privacy discussion shifts dramatically to what information is on Best Buy's servers what information is on a Geek Squad workstation and then I think you have a good faith argument for the government to requisition that information it's just again technology is moving way faster than law enforcement or our lawmakers can contend with and I think it's going to take us a long time for us to sort out what the new normal will be and once we're in that conversation the goal posts are gonna be moving on us substantially it's gonna be a very fast process with a very long conversation there's gonna be further conversation about what we do with the corporate overlords that have our data because already absolutely those servers are just getting wrapped up and up and up Oh totally and and and think about the points of failure too because you know let's say you're your iCloud account doesn't necessarily just have Apple as a point of failure because we the the sort of the full scoop that Apple was utilizing Google cloud services as part of their iCloud infrastructure so so again we're talking about an ever receding number of players at the very top of this and if a bad actor were to find a way to compromise Amazon that's just as dangerous I think to a lot of people out there as if the the government or law enforcement was able to compromise Amazon in in light of all of the security threats that we've been facing at the beginning of 2018 from the local and an individual level with chipset problems security flaws inspector and what was the other one well Grenada Laporte says that's the constant element with digital security we don't want criminals to go on without being discovered well we don't want those agencies to infiltrate our devices leaving the doors open for malware's water cry somewhat oh that's right want wanna cry wanna cry inspectors so for me I think the only thing that makes sense for a new normal is a rapidly escalating arms race between consumers bad actors and law enforcement and and as long as we have a very open conversation about what the next phase of security is going to look like who's going to be involved in the implementation of that security and what consumers can do to better safeguard their material I think that's the only thing we should be able to rely on in the near future I feel like realistically a corporate our businesses are going to be the proxy for biz consumers in that situation but we have to move on lots of other topics again see I want to try and deescalate this a little bit here as we get into more of this topics that we'd like to be talking about you know just as hardware nerds but we do have this other little government bit here with the CS suffice I'm gonna try and make that into a pronounceable acronym suffice intervention into broad comms acquisition efforts here Broadcom has been very active and very public in terms of promoting its acquisition bids for Qualcomm they be combined they'd be the just mobile semiconductor Overlord on earth basically so there's a lot of reason to be interested in what's going on at the very least and in terms of this core bit at the moment Broadcom is still a Singapore based company they're filing to read domicile in the US they say they're gonna be able to deduce that on may but there's question as to whether the Committee on foreign investment would still have jurisdiction over investigating what national security impacts on this deal would be much less the other the whole the whole package here because of the antitrust worries and other regulators across the world so this is but this this little issue here is holding off the board of directors votes that is was bound to happen on March 6th now that's going to be on April 6th and we'll see if investors choose to keep Qualcomm board of directors as it is right now or whether broad comes board nominees gets put on and they get to hijack the destiny of well I think the most important company in our industry right now yeah definitely one of the top players and especially I this this seems like it's the wrong political climate for Broadcom and Qualcomm to be making this move I mean especially when we were covering the the woes from law enforcement agencies regarding the advisory against Huawei and ZTE products Qualcomm has kind of become a little sweetheart company in that it's American so even though Broadcom has offices where do they have offices isn't it like I said before I think it was 2015 San Jose but like it was 2015 they were a US company back before then and then they read ama south for tax purposes right but but again that's also that's also one of the things that's gonna be sticky in this political climate they seem to be not not quite outrightly hostile or xenophobic towards telecommunications giants that aren't necessarily American but there does seem to be a flavor of that discussion happening throughout these different sort of regulatory discussions and merger acquisition discussions so III really think that just because there's so much money involved and eventually at some point the top players will find a way to wedge this I think this is gonna be a speed bump I don't think it's necessarily gonna halt the the the joining of these two mega corporations but I think we're gonna see that that sort of security theater conversation the sort of we're making mm-hmm a good-faith effort into looking into this acquisition from our federal government which will be a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing if if these two companies want to join then they're gonna join yeah well if they wait what if it doesn't want to join and the other does want them to join so it's more of a war between two big a corporate it's it's all just numbers man I Broadcom will eventually be able to put numbers out there that Qualcomm shareholders will eventually say yes to it's a lot they cut this the third offer which is the current one was four billion dollars down from the second one and that's after like this big deal with nxp which revalued it at a higher valuation of whatever the heck and so it supposed to be more money oh I'm not saying it won't be hostile but eventually I mean this you know it's kind of like mafia politics right eventually there's gonna be a number on the table higher or lower that Qualcomm shareholders are not gonna wanna say no to less do they wake up with metaphorical horse heads in their beds yeah I can appreciate that argument move on from that and into Android P how about that finally something that we can get the Nerds excited about I guess right well excuse me man I can't shake this cough yeah definitely some interesting things I'm packing with with Android P especially in sort of the light that were in sort of the time that we're in with competition iOS taking a back seat for new features on iOS to clean things up Android I think finally finding its feet I'm not necessarily too upset with manufacturers that might be skipping over Android eight Auto to skip to 8.1 and I think right now we're gonna be in a good culture of refinement and optimization definitely some new features that we're going to be excited to be playing with an Android P but it seems to be an ongoing conversation with Google to rein in manufacturers just a little bit more a little bit of lobster pot here a little bit of refinement there factors that one of the aspects that they have a of the rein and they've adopted too is the cut out the notch and whatever late you know there's one place where hardware is gonna be the key factor in terms of Android catching up I feel the discussion on that is maybe a little short-sighted that supporting alternative screen shapes and form factors doesn't necessarily stop at the knotch so let's say you want foldable bendable displays let's say you want dual flip-out displays let's say you want a smartphone that's a compact or if you know that matter we like your matrix scanners on your face for whatever purpose not just for security but for just face right I get that but it's it's going to be something that software always reacts to you because or at least like a wide base platform like Android instead of Samsung with its own experience UI or whatever they can tailor their own thing and they could be the first on proprietary hardware as about yeah but but the the first who does it proprietary typically it typically that's terrible um so we can take back to the Kyocera echo and say like you know what not having actual good operating system-level support for this dual screen implementation really hurt that product and I feel there are some significant teething pains when we move up to a product like the ax em in this is a great hardware idea of very well implemented very well executed that feels really clumsy when you're switching between some of these different modes so I don't want to get too hung up on just the idea of a flip-out display but again making Android more Hardware aware I think could be a good step towards future implementation of more radical departures from the rectangular glowing slab that we're at I think I think the media in general just gets overly hung up on this this unibrow discussion because of the iPhone 10 especially with blue was it Bloomberg that set the tone of the discussion where the only thing they talked about on Android P was the knotch oh that's but like really I mean it's no they dedicated two minutes of TV news broadcast to only say that the that the major update coming to Android was that they were gonna copy the notch on the iPhone 10 propped up the column that was good it was like in itself there's a snowball effect I get it I totally get it but you when people you know look at this and see and say why they start to dig into the factors that are going in my favorite word is factors today and they're they're talking about getting to the point where alright this hardware necessary this estates this people are demanding bigger displays better than ever and whatnot and sure that may be a part of it and that might be what it takes to fit in the selfie camera or the earpiece or whatever well I just I just mean even even down to simple things like look at the LG G 6 and we had teething pains just supporting rounded cut-offs for the display you know the you know just making Android aware of that was a tricky endeavor in the the very initial launch of that product so taking that kind of pressure off of manufacturers where if they want to do something you want a perfectly oval screen for no good reason you want a roll up a bold display that then changes depending on what parts of the display are actually visible to the consumer those types of things I think play a big deal of course the disappointing thing is going to be the the first implementations of this probably will relate directly to knotch phones which I think I think the notch is terrible I think it's absolutely horrific design for the implementation of an all screen front face and I think it needs to tragically die in a dumpster fire but what I do see is the potential for this is getting Android out of hard-coding a specific kind of aspect ratio and resolution and giving those tools to manufacturers and developers so they can more easily implement you know modular foldable and and design shifting implementation that Android can play with much easier than it currently can I think that already happens at the Android developers level at the with the studio and whatnot in it's up to them just you know I mean it does it does but we can always make those tools better and again I point to the axon M in that I don't feel the user should have to push buttons on the bottom of their navigation bar to tell the phone oh by the way I want you to mirror this I want you to go fullscreen with this or I want you to you know like I go split-screen I that that that feels like an Android Ice Cream Sandwich style solution to user interface and navigation it doesn't feel like Google can proactively work with your behavior to feed you the kind of content that you want kind of solution and it's because ZTE is doing something that Google isn't looking to do with Android there they're cramming an extra feature on there that isn't really native to the way that Android interacts with hardware so as to avoid this topic you didn't have been hyper focusing on the notch but to avoid that becoming this segment here I want to talk about the media side of things multi camera API that finally letting app third-party applications do their things with however many cameras these manufacture just want to step onto their phones as well as the hafe I'm not sure or high hi whatever that a gif yeah the successor the imminent successor to JPEG and also vp9 HD are wondering what your take is on that especially after Apple has been adopting - I don't know that Apple is properly supporting vp9 other than what might be built into application level support no and any time we start talking about moving forward on media codecs and compression I'm gonna be a big fan of that it'll help having Google involved with image compression because even with the iPhone moving over into this style of image compression it's it's taken a while to get good consumer support across multiple services and editing and different different solutions that people might want to use for uploading and sharing or editing uploading and sharing images I kinda wished that Google had maybe made a little bit no more noise about HEV C but again because apples doing it Google is now tacitly supporting in YouTube and on Google photos so they don't necessarily need to make a lot of noise about that they can keep trumping up vp9 HDR but I won't really consider vp9 a solid solution until a pixel comes out that natively shoots with a better video compression than what they're currently utilizing where I can still I can shoot HEV C on a wall way and I get great image quality at significantly smaller file sizes I can shoot phenomenal 4k video on an iPhone with great image compression great file sizes I want to see that on a pixel if it's vp9 great duly I'm excited I want better video at a smaller file size that's ultimately all I care about but if they're not going to natively build that into and we're gonna keep playing this game of well the phone shoots h.264 and then it gets uploaded to a server where it's then rerender din to some kind of streaming acceptable format that's not a solution that's not a way to go well I mean maybe Google has its reasons for not being too excited about a GBC is licensing yeah anyone does licensing but you know whatever I mean there has to be a better solution for this and Google has the infrastructure and resources at the end of the day it's just like there is a solution and people are using it and Google's not in that discussion directly at all so that makes them far less relevant when we're looking at improving the situation for people to have better video that followed smaller Peter hatin on the tweeters great points a gadget guy would be the first to say new screen screen designs aside from the glowing rectangle idea we could get back to something people are really interested in look at no Nokia with the banana phone nokia 8110 we know this creates interest which I'm looking at this right here it's with the knotch yeah that's remain it was with a notch with the Motorola bat-winged logo for it that's one layer a lot of imported whatever this phone is I'll use that segue in just second but also Peter Hayden says plus michael fisher mr. mobile never did get his runcible which was the the circle round thing that was like a phone was made out of plastic from the Great Bear in our island of plastic trash or whatever the heck it look like kind of like an offshoot of if you ever saw the movie it follows they have this weird like PDA phone thing that looks like a makeup compact with a circular screen and it's supposed to be anachronistically futuristic for this sort of low income area in in Detroit diner kinda hilarious oh yeah totally for the record he did actually get around to getting his device and reviewing it as well I would be very remiss not to note that so go look it up our UN CIB and also we do have just a from from Peter hating to that Apple apparently did drop support for vp9 in favor 265 again I mean we've been working with h.265 in the consumer space since the Samsung nx-1 I mean this is a really well understood codec and people companies not supporting it now are basically just impeding progress because it's great and it works great and it it does exactly what we want it to do in trying to free up bandwidth issues and storage limitations the fact that we're not on it is hilarious in the worst way possible it could I mean make it a standard essential patent and then we'll to be talking about something but yeah maybe maybe that has to happen we'll move on from that speaking of Motorola just a few seconds ago little sad news better the layoffs that might be happening as well as the ruminations of what is what's comprising of those layoffs here so for a perspective I believe just maybe a decade or 15 years ago we were talking about 40,000 a Motorola's ranks mm-hmm at this point if if the cuts are coming as they say they are at the third one third proportion that we're talking about here we could be looking at 3 350 at best Wow yeah and this is this is coming lenovo took over in 2014 i believe and if i look back into things at least the the the company was still in five figures 10,000 at least so from pants that is that is a rough blown especially difficult for the industry where i think there are a lot of us that are feeling a bit nostalgic for some of the more exciting days of smartphone manufacturing a same thing like a company like HTC facing a number of woes and their earnings report coming out and being not particularly motivating that the company might be writing at it's course after Google buying out a significant part of their smartphone team it's a it's upsetting i I I kind of just hope that what this means is we'll see a more focused Lenovo moto I he's so is okay both Peter wins their focus ah that's that's exactly it Peter and Andrew in our and our we're having a Twitter conversation about just like the insane number of Motorola badged devices that are apt to come out where the Moto G series used to be a very simple argument for an entry-level to mid-range er phone now spans I think what seven different products for 35 beats mostly I've 5s the g5 S Plus the g5 s special edition like getting getting these disparate teams between Motorola engineers and Lenovo engineers all working on the same page might have been a bridge too far and unfortunately ways well but that's it is lenovo owning the motorola brand who's gonna get let go of people in house under lenovo's umbrellas or the people in house under Motorola's umbrellas and if that means that we can get a more focused approach to how they're developing products this is a this is a problem we've detailed with other manufacturers too like LG making certain phones for some regions with some features that other regions don't get that's a bad way to position your products having a million different Moto e variants doesn't help move the needle getting consumers acquainted with your products and teaching them has said they want to strike a chord in the premium market in the toughest not to crack the US and they have not been successful at the low levels of the employments that they have in terms of the US where their native market is so and they're trying to do that they're trying to replicate that elsewhere in the world I get that and they might think that China might be the best place to do that but they're so like even in Lenovo zone brand where the premium just been pour their own bread phones have done very poorly it's the sense isn't there they can have they can have their people work on a Motorola brand and it'll make all the sense of the world but they have never struct anything premium that has been a big success or at least at a big enough success reportedly to offsets losses in China which but that's that's the that's to read I'm getting on this news here so yeah but I so don't think that you can have split focus between Motorola branding and Lenovo leadership and arrive at something where they're gonna be a bit more focused we do have a couple tweets on this from fat produce I wonder if the moto layoffs are a result of the moto mods failing as a strategy Allah the LG g5 that's an interesting hypothesis but I don't feel that the accessories division is necessarily you know gonna be the the sticking point here III think just phone sales and getting excitement and getting people up front probably a bigger problem Lenovo needs to focus on marketing this comes from a clay pot at Chatty boy and actually I gotta say I think Motorola does a good job of advertising the United States I see pretty heavy rotation on all the TV channels it's more again when you when you're banking on something like modular you have a different kind of conversation with consumers and educating them as to what your platform has to offer and that's an uphill battle and again we would only be into the second generation of limo dozy phones that support that feature and I don't think that feature really becomes consumer viable until we're through generation three and then I think consumers start to take that more seriously but at the same time smartphone manufacturing seems to be settling into a good enough place where I think a majority of Samsung and Apple customers don't necessarily feel their phones are lacking anything specific you know I I could put a better speaker on there but okay that means I need to put my phone down and then it's a speaker and then I can't use my phone because it's my phone as a speaker you know like that's that's a hard conversation to have to try and inspire consumers as to why they should switch teams to a modular device what else would they have other than being like Samsung rather than being like LG other than being like Nokia I'm seeing Renato Laporte here again talking about do or what they should do because everyone has their own prescription for an ailing company that's dying the first thing the lenovo should do is get their software update strategy together so go Android one Nokia second focus on three lines with match each max two phones a year which has been the case for Motorola for the past several years also like we've been talking about this for Microsoft back when it still had a stake in mobile and that didn't really work out but there are more blocks that crumbled on them I suppose and fix the failures that have been plaguing moto since forever for example the camera call quality alright so if even if you do include good cameras on two black ships or whatever devices that really puts you up against Samsung and price bracket for that value which they reiterated III should specify that wasn't a Jules rant that that was coming in from tweets from renato Laporte that was partially so so here so here's the deal I and anyone who says they have a cure I mean we're all enthusiasts so we all have ideas as to what we might help a brand or what might what might improve the situation i I think messaging is a very important factor for a number of companies but only when you have something to message only when you have something that's about and the smartphone market is so heavily commoditized right now that I don't think any company should expect a three to five year mission where they can really crack into the market share especially in the United States crack into the market share that is currently dominated by Apple and Samsung like 85 to 90 percent of all phones sold in the United States have a Samsung logo or an Apple logo on them if you're going to disrupt that market the opportunities you need to take especially at the premium end differentiators matter you know it's one of the things that like bugs the crap out of me about LG commercials is not a single one focuses on the fact that they do have an objective best on the v30 objectively without question not open to interpretation not not not how you feel about your phone if you want the best headphone jack and the best support for high quality audio on a device it's the LG v 30 so where is that commercial where they can simply directly communicate to consumers saying this is something we offer that none of our competition can match so so for Motorola I don't necessarily know what that is because I think the conversation on modular is is a bit too broad telling the consumer you can make your phone whatever you want it to be when they're looking at the most popular phone saying well Motorola can you make my phone at galaxy s 9 because according to the media that's what I want especially opposite Samsung is a juggernaut of advertising it's also part but really not that they're crippling the body but like the chassis of the phone for the sake of promoting the freakin accessory is which this is definitely a lenovo idea because i don't necessarily look at it as crippling the device it's because i mean you look at some of the like especially lenovo in the early days of modular and multimode Windows 8 devices there was a definite aesthetic push towards making ultra slim ultra light ultra portable and so the converse the compromise to that is not being able to include the largest battery so they focused on fast charging technologies they focused on modular accessories they focused on different power bricks they focused on a number of things I could make that solution because to them you could make a super-thin laptop that then someone else could carry extra weight if they wanted more battery power but you can't build tons of battery into a product and then satisfy someone who's looking for a MacBook Air style solution this move for the Moto Z line to me feels very much like a lenovo aesthetic the Moto Z that especially the skinnier ones the moto Z in the Moto z2 you know we're looking at an ultra thin battery that's not gonna satisfy a lot of the enthusiasts and the people who are gonna echo-chamber about specs and Android phones but this is balanced by having a proprietary infrastructure of accessories and support that can build on to the functionality of that device so I get it but I still say that is one of the hardest conversations you can have with the consumer telling them not only should you buy this phone but then you can do all these other things with this phone and well most of these things are not going to apply to you but that's what you're gonna pay extra for to support the engineering the development the the the QA on a modular device if you can't crack that conversation for your general consumer in a way that they can understand when they walk into a carrier store see a display and go oh that's something that I think will benefit me then all you've done is you've confused the consumer you've made them realize that the galaxy is the safer choice because it just has everything in it you don't have to worry about buying extra pieces to slap on the back and you've kind of reinforced your competition and that's where I think Motorola has made some messaging missteps they've definitely I think done a good job of keeping up the advertising I just don't think they found the killer app for it and it feels like a work in progress that won't be finished by the time that they've abandoned support for it so we're gonna switch segments and talk your listener meal just about three minutes but I want to make this final point before we do so if if modular just to be crude about it is a problem that needs to be fixed by getting rid of it that's the solution all right so what can Motorola do in the premium space where it is a prerequisite to have a superlative on there and it's not just enough to have being you know camera because oh samsung has this freaking adjustable aperture thing going on and oh there's this trick in that trick software - AI there's a lot lots of bombardment going on already where's the worst the superlative and where's Lenovo's justification in even fighting in $700 $800 ranges at this point that's my question to you oh all right well I mean just to take a stab on it the the the problem is is that you need to make a superlative somewhere I mean notice that I didn't claim that the superlative for the V 30 was the camera it's the best camera for me but I completely understand why that's a much broader differing opinion kind of situation than Beck's bro but Dax bro I mean you I got math on that there's science back in me over there laughs like four four yeah right no so the the the problem is that a company has to go out of their way to create a niche where they can deliver a superlative you know I I would be willing to posit that the best communications device of the last year was the BlackBerry key one and then consumers are going to have a conversation as to how much do they value certain methods of communication to warrant the cost of a device that has a hardware keyboard you know that that that becomes at least a data point or a discussion point that you can engage with your consumers saying you can make your phone anything is too broad III would love to see some kind of return to a more sort of a Motorola of old where moto maker maybe introduced a conversation of you know all phones have these great specs all phones have these solid cameras audio screens are looking really cool we're the only manufacturer don't don't look at essential we're the only manufacturer that can offer you this type of premium build experience for a device not only business grade in the way that you remember Motorola's of old being the preferred choice for the business men on the go but then also that to match the style that's needed when you walk into the boardroom and that could be a superlative conversation do you want the back of your phone clad in customized embossed or wien leather do you want the sides of your phone to be made out of titanium or carbon fiber or another material that's truly exotic and not just another BS piece of glass shiny jewel tone device coming out of every manufacturer this year I feel that could be a conversation that Motorola could easily revisit capture the nostalgia of the Motorola brand the batwing brand and then also set themselves apart from these techie geeky discussions again it's not us enthusiasts so you've got to get general consumers onboard and I think you can win points with general consumers by saying specs don't matter they seriously don't and you can get a $400 phone with the top-of-the-line processor and a great screen and a good camera that's not important but can you get a top-of-the-line phone that's customized and built with this exacting like fine automobile aesthetic that isn't is an interesting conversation that a manufacturer could have and again it would definitely be branding and advertising it wouldn't necessarily be true but enthusiasts crying about it won't matter a skosh it won't matter at all to the consumer who walks into a carrier store and sees a display of we will custom build we this is a bespoke gadget that will fit you and and fit your style and fit your lifestyle you don't have to worry about throwing a case on this because we've got the shatter shield and we've got this and this is the best accessorized platform and got brand is superlative no but that's just that that's that's just it is that's what I'm talking about is in terms of the advertising on this and is for the optics on this shatter shield is really cool I'm just mad that Motorola doesn't make their own first party glass screen protector to go on top of shatter shield that I think solves all of our problems included as part of shatter shield but that's just me I will go to your point about five years ago I was pretty unwrapped in the Moto X and what it really brought in terms of the potential of my creativity in terms of making a statement about my phone I really missed that I want that back definitely a great thing to bring back I think it was a little head of its time actually so now I tell my years later who knows that could be one chip in the in the armor that is everyone else out there right now if it's just glass with a Qualcomm 845 and a good camera you you've basically given up I mean like specs were an HTC you twelve sound great but why would I get one over every other competing device that's gonna enter the market with kind of the same bucket oh stuff and if if that's the only thing that's entering into the conversation again smartphone is a commodity consumers need to have them they aren't exciting in the same way that they were five or ten years ago and if you're going to try and command a premium I think essential had it right I think they were talking to the wrong demographics of people they were trying to impress the wrong demographics of people and I think they were focused a little too much on some of the enthusiasts discussion when they could have entered in and said what other phone is made out of a ceramic back with a titanium frame the same thing LG missed an opportunity to say what other phone other than the v10 is durable and built with stainless steel rails on the sides of the device those words sound awesome a commercial featuring that language targeted to general consumers sounds awesome and I think it's a missed opportunity when the design team goes out of their way to do something interesting and then the company advertising department never talks about what's interesting is oh hey looks like the iPhone 10 right now and and oh there's this AI software so I think breaking away from that the first out of the pack to do that is going to have their cake and eat it too you can see full details on these stories and more hit pocketnow.com and on social media to also look for the podcast section on the site to get to this episode's rundown you can chat with us about what you've been reading up on with the hashtag pn weekly on twitter and be sure to check out jaime rivera and the PocketNow daily on our youtube channel you mentioned HTC we will get to them but first we will take a short break just a quick break from for a word from our sponsor looking to move to the cloud don't know where to begin check out the Google cloud platform weekly podcast where Google developer advocates Melanie Warrick and Mark Mandel answer questions get in the weeds and talked to GCP team's customers and partners about best practices from machine from security to machine learning and more hear from technologists all across Google about trends and cool things happening with our technology click to learn more and subscribe to the podcast at g.co/gsbc and old and I don't know where I'm going with this interaction I am totally lost again dude I try to yes and you whenever I can but I'm not sure how to back you up on this one well it's the mailbag and we have two letters here we'll start off with the Zane sure bhaji here talking about the elite x3 you remember that that phone from oil is a 2016 I told her last year it's it's old yes 20 phone with Windows 10 mobile weather for you that did also banging banging off off some sound just all all the things that you would want in a phone but with Windows 10 mobile on it Zane writes good insert time of day my dudes I work in a hotel and have seen rare electric slabs from across the globe but tonight I try to put a little emphasis and cough there but today I have seen a beast so exotic it astonished me the HP Elite x3 being wilted by the most hipster businessman and the one comment he said was it has its problems thank you for listening in and keep on sailing into the virtual sunset ziggety ziggity Zane no thanks saying I know but I love I love hearing from people that have those like sort of like wild phone out and you know sightings you know okay I saw this out in the wild this phone exactly because this was like the save here this was supposed to be the third-party savior of Windows 10 mobile or something like that a couple years ago with its high-end specs of all the features for enterprise and for even the biggest has been dying because of what Nokia couldn't do which was produce a decent flagship or what Microsoft couldn't do excuse me Microsoft couldn't do Nokia was doing great nokia was doing great and then Microsoft had to come into it um but yeah and this is the phone that's still being sold today it's gonna be sold through 2019 as the lasting vestige of a dead what's effectively a dead platform hmm and in the one comment that the person who owns the damn thing says is it has its problems so apparently this phone got out to people to customers that's just hard to get a phone and it's not being properly appreciated or it's just that it's already could not even be well it's or its tasks it's a sad state because you know a companies like HP and Microsoft kept playing this game where they dip their toe into mobile and then run away screaming and then come back a couple years later and try it all over again and this goes all the way back for HP this goes all the way back to their acquisition of Compaq I was a huge fan of Windows Mobile PDAs and then we got AI pax and then they absorbed the giornata line and we started getting these like Palm Treo competitors you could get like Windows Mobile PDA phone with like a clip-on keyboard or like a dial pad on the bottom and there would always be this sort of half-hearted attempt at making it a something that businesses would want to use as a fleet device and then they would just disappear for years like terrible support no updates no no infrastructure and then they would come back and try it and do it again and I still maintain I was in a discord conversation with with Andrew Wallace and and Renato Laporte talking about I you know we occasionally still see you know like people who opine about live tiles and and Nokia Lumia and stuff like that and and we got to a point where there were many regions in Europe that were starting to crack over 10% Windows Phone market share the United States I think we peaked up for but I was seeing Lumia 1520's out in the wild like I was seeing them here in Southern California that was an audacious device that I think helped start part of the conversation along with the note in getting rid of mini tablets is like this really consumed consumer desirable product segment and if we had only seen more regular support and more regular updates from Microsoft that I think we would have seen progress on this front instead we got this Microsoft treated Windows Phones like a desktop operating system like here's Windows Phone 7 we'll see you in 3 years when we update it but no new devices will get it and then you'll see Windows 8 and we'll see you in a couple years when Windows 10 comes out and that's a terrible way to try and have a relationship or a conversation with a consumer let alone like saying that you're supporting developers to try and make apps for platforms which then just hard and support so your Windows Phone 7 investment in making an app is completely destroyed when Windows Phone 8 comes out I imagined this one fleet manager uli he's been able to convince all the higher-ups this is a good investment the lead x3 get it for all of us and it's like hey here's the lead x3 use it now and everyone's like well this is not intuitive and it's not really good but but it was like no you have to use it you must use it properly you're using it wrong and well and in yeah kind of goes to what you know a company like HP put their necks out there to build something again they're not they're not completely faultless in this because they keep dancing in and out of the mobile strategy their mobile strategy - but you know they put it out there and it just reinforces not only to manufacturers but also to consumers why you should never stray from the iOS or Android ecosystems and that's that's a major bummer and I think I'm not gonna be surprised I'm gonna be I'm gonna laugh and I'm gonna be very hesitant to jump on board but I do feel that there's going to be this long term end run from Microsoft where again they're not gonna call it a phone operating system it's gonna be some flavor of a future version of Windows that's modular kind of like this Windows 10s mode but we can make a mode which is just for a small screen device which could also incorporate an always-on connection thanks to our new support for Windows 10 on arm chipsets and it's just gonna change the form factor of Windows so that it's more like gesture based and easier for smaller screens and it's got an LTE radio so you could make phone calls on it it's gonna be a new breed of Windows 10 mobility products I believe that that will happen that Microsoft will say they're all in support of it all committed to it it'll last for about a year and then they won't update it properly and we'll be right back where we were again with with Windows Phone again and and that's a shame because I think I think we could be doing a lot better and I think if we had more competition I think if we had a plucky third-place smartphone operating system to draw support from developers and to just kind of keep the discussion going on innovation then I don't feel Android and iOS would be approaching the same meeting point of shared UI shared application state shared feature functionality every time they announce Apple announces something that they're moving forward on Google has an immediate counter to it AR kit versus a our core depth of field blur on cameras versus new camera api's this is kind of what's leading to some of the feeling that this market has stagnated at least in the rhetoric whore which I totally understand but I feel like there are a lot of gaps and valleys and nooks and crannies that would be filled if we looked a little bit deeper into that but we're not going to because well that could be its own whole show yeah around here come on we do have a couple tweets here this is from Andrew Wallace the last time I went to a Microsoft Store I saw this phone he's talking about the HP elite x3 I saw this one on display and there wasn't even a security device keeping it from being stolen and then from Renato Laporte come to this business man's defense Windows Phone had the best mail client I've ever seen on mobile so a business man without the need of a snapchat or an Instagram could be really happy with it but you're also mostly missing out on things like banking apps and those are very important and I have to agree it it's when we started seeing that support pulled that was definitely a major nail in the coffin for Windows Phone if there was a growth at least some growth well I would be outraged at the app you know decline but there wasn't growth there was it there was an arbor and Grif so there couldn't be software growth uh you know what one company I used to make a few Windows Phones on occasion I've hmm that's a very good question what company used to make Android phones they used to make Android fields well they used to make him back in the day I think you might be segwaying into a discussion on HTC is what I think you might be trying to do a good attempt but this one this little male that's coming in from goran petrovic says what dilemma our HTC's manufacturing instrument expenses too high so they can't lower pricing or are they just too proud lowering price for their phones would instantly help them in short terms they remove the headphone jack they replace the one name they didn't even include OLED on their phones what's next another you jewelry phone sent from my HTC 10 I'd like to point that out since that was the last of the one series it had the metal going on and a dying in sign language and it wasn't a jewelry phone as as Quran says but I'm right the HTC has always had some pride in terms of being able to manufacture high quality designing even creating those designs so that's always been built in just like Apple as to some part of the price tag but in terms of other innovations they're give-and-take and I'm not exactly sure where the manufacturing expenses would be on that but certainly well I think a couple things are at play here one we know HTC doesn't have the leverage to command the most preferred pricing on all components an Apple or Samsung can walk into any office and say hey we're gonna we're gonna be using your product to build galaxy s 9s and we guaranteed this scale yeah so we need 50 million Oh what you're going to manufacture for our phone and you're going to give us the absolute razor thinnest margin that you possibly can to support that manufacturing endeavor HTC cannot come anywhere near that so even when it comes to things like Ram chip sets the the raw materials that go into the PCB or the the logic boards of these phones they're probably paying more per unit than Samsung is for what would be a comparable product at the same time if if an HTC flagship suddenly got price cuts at launch not only do I actually I really do believe that HTC is already in a dangerous position with pricing I feel they probably are trying to work with the smallest amount of padding that they can they're also going to start losing the conversation of premium products I I hate to say it this way but I think that the reason why the pixel is becoming a better competitor for the iPhone from the pixel to the pixel too isn't because Google did anything special with the manufacturing of the phone I think the biggest change was that they priced it to be more cost competitive they priced it up to be more cost competitive against the iPhone so now it looks like a proper competitor to the iPhone it looks like the Google iPhone and that price tag plays a lot into the psychology of a consumer who might be comparison shopping if you saw a Google phone that was priced two to three hundred dollars less than an iPhone well then obviously the Google phone is two to three hundred dollars less good than an iPhone and I want the best phone so I'll buy the iPhone winning that psychological battle is huge so from the enthusiasts point you absolutely correct you know when it comes to HTC technology they have a hard time competing against an outlet like oneplus where you know oneplus is able to draw on some of the manufacturing acumen of Oppo a much larger manufacturing partner and so they can be more cost aggressive I'm sure we'll see something similar when honor starts selling phones in the United States again the honor of you 10 will might be getting some pricing soon on what that might look like for the United States but again while honor and Huawei don't necessarily share a ton of direct design influence honor gets to benefit from the manufacturing acumen of the world's third largest smartphone manufacturer and I think that's that that two-factor that not having preferred pricing and preferred negotiation leverage and the psychology of we need to have a premium price tag on this product just so that we can cut a profit is probably what's hammering HTC right now I will posit this HTC has never made a name for itself in smartphones they were ODM and then they came out as their own little thing and they thought they had the ground level covered they did for a little bit but unfortunately that wasn't enough then they couldn't momentum when it came to the 1-series I disagree III think I think there was a very brief window where HTC was regarded by consumers as a top tier manufacturer Windows Phone like Windows Mobile was definitely I have where I'm doing a challenge with Erica Griffin where we're going back and revisiting old phones and so this is the one I picked is the HTC touch pro imeem this is one of the phones that really properly lit me up for for modern mobile smartphone Aang no so definitely the Windows Mobile Erica's HTC was the odium of choice for every label out there if you had an audio Vox it was an HTC if you had an ohm eight or an I'm eight it was an HTC but I think into the Android ecosystem Android would not have gotten the launch that it did had it not been for what was it the the very first Google phone on t-mobile the chin the g1 and also the Nexus One in the Nexus but also don't forget that the Evo was a major player for Sprint for 4G no even the first the first Evo totally stole the conversation away from the early days of Samsung until Samsung got smart with their line of phones the first Galaxy S which had differing models on every carrier the Evo was a big deal phone and there was like I remember there being a segment on what was it was a it was on g4 before it was called attack of the show this was the killer Android phone to go head-to-head with the iPhone was this humongous Evo device with this enormous 4-inch screen and they had so many so much of that conversation locked up that the only other competitor was motorola motorola with the droid on Verizon and and that's that was the big fight was Moto vs. HTC until we got I think until we got into the galaxy s2 era and once we got into the galaxy s2 era because they were targeting Apple from the start for the iPhone ad that person yeah but the only the only reason why I say that that was the transition point I think the galaxy s2 actually walked away with the conversation but the galaxy s1 was split between the epic which had a keyboard on Sprint the captain was at the captivate that had the metal back on AT&T you had plastic back unlocked devices internationally it was just too broad I think with the galaxy s2 Samsung realized they couldn't let carriers dictate what every individual flavor of their phone was going to be at the same time HTC had not figured out that conversation and HTC phones were different than Sprint HTC phones and I think that that it's starting to leap down for from 2011 onwards and they try to reorganize themselves they tried to recover with the 1-series but still that was that was still a very messy affair - it took until after they lost a lot of credibility with the carriers especially after that wound up not that look yeah the one the one m7 and one of me I think we're still reasonably good performers it just came at the same time as a lack of advertising less manufacturing clout and I think the one that really hurt them I think the one that really severed their relationship with AT&T was the one a9 that was too expensive a mid-range er phone for being such an iPhone copycat that I think it really soured the relationship between HTC and 18t then HTC gets burned literally by Qualcomm's terrible chipsets with the one m9 and the recovery with the HTC 10 they didn't have carrier partnerships in place for the HTC 10 like they should have they didn't have preferred you know showcasing and floor space dedicated to that phone and and there was no way to recover from that even though they had one of the best phones of that year but all of these ingredients come down to a point where HTC's brands attraction is at an at a low at an all-time low except for smart phones sure excuse me for VR they're rising up but for smart phones they're they're pretty low and I don't think even if it hurts their bottom line to go for a lower price point I think at this point in order to spur something or to stimulate something at the very least that has to happen so so here's my hypothesis this is also what Miriam draw a Tank Girl and I talked about on her podcast before MWC there I do not believe there is any hope left for HTC as a smartphone manufacturer I hope I am wrong but I do not see an outcome that makes sense in the current business market with every strategy what well and with with again with the current dichotomy of smartphone players in the market I don't see an outcome for HTC which revives the HTC brand I truly leave that selling off a major part of their smartphone division over to Google was a piecemeal attempt to give HTC time to figure out what to do with the vive how the vive can be spun off into a separate company the HTC label has about two years of phones left in it from the designers that went over to Google so I totally expect we'll see a u12 maybe even a you thirteen or whatever those phones might be called and then that'll give the HTC corporation enough time to kind of divide up its assets and the HTC brand can crater in the safest way possible Google didn't get stuck with all of their baggage like they did with the Motorola acquisition or the way that Microsoft did when they acquired Nokia they only got the designers and talent that they wanted to make new phones the vibe will easily live on as a brand under any other company I mean you could go to steam and and the vibe is gonna be fine and so the HTC label gets chopped up with what's left at HTC and maybe that label just gets slapped on a bunch of desire level products or it gets licensed out like the way that HD hmd is licensing the nokia name for their products and it's just slapped on a bunch of mid rangers or you know like phones at MVNO carriers so if you want a virgin phone with an HTC label on it maybe it's even made by TCL and it doesn't have anything to do with the HTC of old but they paid to have the HTC brand trademark and that's that's what we're gonna see in the future I do not see an outcome for HTC to stay as a top-tier player against the competition and especially against themselves from Google as competition the HTC DNA is over at Google if you want an HTC you go get a pixel so what fun things are you doing this weekend [Laughter] you know I I'm gonna I'm gonna be testing out some microphones and playing with some gaming gear and that's that's that's the weekend it's going to be fun and chill and relaxing I'm gonna be exploring Norwich with the date and afterwards I'm going to be going perhaps up to Leeds perhaps all the way through to Liverpool I'm not sure at this point that that part of that Sunday is gonna be a little bit tricky but I'm gonna have some fun even with some rain coming and I want to make sure that this flight diversion which was caused by a storm that was ravaging Boston and is still doing so with power outages flooding and whatnot and has forced the rebooking of my flight home to next Thursday I'm going to make sure that I'm gonna spend the money I can't spend to have a decent time I I think you I think you've earned it Jules I think you're due um we did actually get a tweet from goran petrovic thanks for the comment I really appreciate it I love HTC but with metal and 3.5 millimeter jack removal they lost me does HTC have more choice than to be Samsung or oneplus a 9 was HTC killer in Europe it sold so bad that no one wanted HTC phones and their offerings in the future and and the thing that sucks is I really liked when HTC's differentiator was boom sound I really liked when they had something special to offer phones that no other company was playing with even back to their really funky I think was called the HTC surround was that Windows Phone 7 phone with the slider speaker grill like HTC was responsible for so many amazing experiments radical design language pushing the boundaries on what we could put in our pocket and I think all of that is gone I think all of that spirit is gone and and I really feel like if you want the next flavor or the HTC DNA for your next phone you gotta look at a pixel the pixel 3 I think will will be the first true representation of what HTC design designer acumen and Google software focus can truly deliver and I hope it's not a split launch like I really hope they don't do another HTC builds one and LG builds the other I hope this is a unified focused vision from Google using that HTC talent I really want to end this on a brighter note since let's say no I was just bringing that because Goran sent us Goran spent you know I understand you know tweet you know we you know we're very obliged for the privilege of email it's very very nice but I'm trying to look at something that's interesting you know we're now aboard sharing a letter from Nokia this was apparently after a press event of some sort and they were saying like people have press were already segue oh my god that's hilarious hi thanks for attending Nokia World 2010 we hope you enjoyed it and got all the information you needed as her off to the HTC press conference we wanted to give you a little HTC press conference ok the HTC cam tomato and cheese not the most exciting sandwich an energy bar in case you needed a boost a giant foam finger to use during the Q&A just make sure your question gets answered a pen and pad for doodling ear plugs and an eye mask in case you feel sneezy and a few extra items to keep you entertained enjoy the nokia team guys so like you know smartphones the the smartphone wars you will be a lot more fun so yeah you know the media the press the OPR kind of had had its Verve going on and people actually there was good times man little little tear makes me feel super old so on that note we should probably wrap things up again I definitely want to thank everyone who joined the conversation people tweeting using that PN weekly hashtag and folks sending in emails and III keep making this promise and and I do mean it even if it doesn't always come to pass that we will get back on track too upper listener take the wheel and mailbag episodes at the end of each month well there you have it folks another episode of the pocket now weekly has come and gone this show is over but the conversation continues on Twitter where Jules is at point Jules yeah maybe harass him a little as he traipse is through the UK probably use a little a little tech commentary and geekery to join the conversation and I of course am humbly at some gadget guy pocket now is around the web on Twitter Instagram Facebook Google+ YouTube and our home site pocketnow.com es stop pocketnow.com for Spanish speakers were basically everywhere a shows like this cannot exist without your support sharing the weekly with your friends who love mobile technology and dropping reviews on iTunes stitcher Google Play and wherever podcast reviews can be left once again we want to thank this week's sponsor check out the Google cloud platform podcast definitely give their show a listen but ultimately there would not be a show here on pocket now if it weren't for our listeners and subscribers who have kept us on the air since 2012 the pocket now weekly we'll be back next week with all kinds of delicious technology goodness so make sure you tune back in with one last word from our sponsor looking to move to the cloud check out the Google cloud platform weekly podcast where Google developer advocates answer questions get in the weeds and talk to experts customers and partners about GCP click to learn more and subscribe to the podcast at 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