Gadgetory

girls alright hello everybody and welcome to episode 339 of the weekly brought to you by pocket now and xda-developers recorded on this Friday the 4th of January 2019 Happy New Year everybody this is the show this is the show you turn to for all that you need to know about the technology that makes us go from folding 5g phones to the gizmos you couldn't even dream up as a kid aids Georgia Vergara what's going on everybody I'm of course your host of the pocket now weekly and I'm joined by some special guests this week for our first show of 2019 first off the person right to my side and the reason why we have this particular set up so we can have both of us on camera this is ESO Rodriguez editor over at gadget match and her gadget match yeah all right um now we do think that Jaime is going to join at some point he's now on the west coast so he's more on my end of this of the country at the moment but we don't know really where he is at the moment but I don't know but filling in as well is he's coming in from the cold is the tech young gun slinger Mario said a photo hello everybody it's good to have you back yeah always a pleasure all right um what are you healing from by the way I always forget where you're podcasting from Minnesota so those are the cold there's it's colder than here yeah oh I'm dying now yeah yeah well it fluctuates you know not right now it's a little bit nicer I can actually go outside and not not loose my hands if I don't wear gloves but uh so what what would that be in Fahrenheit because yesterday was 50 or 40 by you yeah I was 45 degrees Fahrenheit last night you know i-i've been here for like three and a half years and I still can't do Fahrenheit so I couldn't tell you I could tell you it's like minus 500 just oh yeah oh just a like a flake then I drop dead yes Julie says that's about 18 to 20 degrees yeah yeah Fahrenheit yeah all right but I speaking of which jewels of course as in the booth and he'll be taking a look at the chat so make sure you let us know what you want here on this podcast also don't forget that on Twitter you can let us know what you want to hear about using the hashtag was it P and weekly alright I'm gonna start sweeping alright so let's go ahead and jump into our stories for this week now this first story that we're going to talk about it seems like everybody and their mother was talking about the earnings report from Apple so Tim Cook himself wrote a letter to investors just sort of trying to give some reasons as to why the forecasted revenue for Apple in q1 of 2019 was going to be lower than what was projected and there are a lot of different reasons for this I understand that everybody might be thinking about not only the product releases maybe product cycles maybe even the iPhone is not quite as popular as people thought it was anymore it's declining in popularity absolutely not Asia it's not oh really yeah so after the low E well I was thinking I thought you were talking from personal experience coming from I did switch to Android which is something I never thought I would do so all right so like to be fair there are a few things that we should cover um there are not only do you have the 10s the 10s max and then the 10 R so you do have a slight dilution of just the iPhone brand itself you also have a number of other products that came out you have the Apple watch series for the new iPad the iPad pro even a new MacBook Air that's true so even though you have a lot of different products coming out but still have a lower revenue than was projected is this this is spell bad news for Apple what do you think Mario well I mean I think us expected and you know if you consider the launch of the iPhone and nearly coincided with the 2008 crisis and ever since we have this kind of macro economic expansion every other phone company has seen a decline bigger the Kleins in this like ultimately it's like oh I think it and there being five percent effective loss and it's yeah it's the first decline but it's not like yeah I think it was kind of something that that was old that should have been expected at some point again you can't keep that sustain growth forever that says you know Tim Cook did list a bunch of different key items so we could go over some of them are interesting some of them are expected some are you know related to the us-china trade war and sanctions and also like the cycle that holly was about that the iPhones were released after the summer instead of a little bit later in the year like the summer release cycle kind of kind of cut into the key our really sad which is an interesting way of putting it and also like we've already made very clear in the last two episodes of the weekly we are not equipped to talk about political stuff but there was also another reason and joel's just write it up also iPhone battery replacements what I feel like this was one of the most talked about points on Twitter from anybody any tech pundants any youtubers and new tech journalists we're talking about how like the battery replacements third party battery replacements are really cheap so people are just able to replace the batteries and move forward with them but it probably wasn't the biggest killer as Jules is saying here of iPhone sales or just Apple revenue in general but the fact that it was brought up is kind of interesting especially from a company that tried to throttle battery usage all right update at some point yeah yeah well do you see a lot of iPhone tens and 10s is like kind of around where you are cuz I want to focus on this generation because this is definitely where that they hit seems to be I think at least in Asia and the Philippines are a lot of people who use iPhones but you can see the difference now as opposed to before where it becomes an aspirational device people are leaning towards especially from where I am from all the OPOs and the vivos and the Huawei's everyone's wall-e has been killing it and because if they are coming up with phones that cater to what people want which is mostly a good camera on a phone like they've been doing very well so I've actually seen people who are users like me who are more into the lifestyle space who used to work on iPhones but they've been switching to always they've been some people even switch to is Samsung so it's I think there's a definite although I don't think it's as that's drastic as what you see in China where like companies are actually giving what discounts to people who would buy Huawei phones and throw away their iPhone so it's crazy I mean even in Japan Japan has a really specific phone culture Japan Japanese people have iPhones on them but I think it was last year when Oppo finally entered their market so you see the change it's definitely not as strong as before Apple has been slowly losing their target market how about over in Minnesota you know you do see a lot of iPhones here I guess it's just mostly like in the United States like especially the area where I live which is kind of like app town and then I spend a lot of time at the college campus so you see a bunch of iPhones right that said I don't see a bunch of the golden iPhone so that's actually kind of nice but you have like that little distinction I'm the only one who has the tennis maxing gold yeah yeah I haven't even seen it's not even a proper gold yeah I still kind of cringe every time I look right I'm still on the fence about it personally well but the fact that I don't see the brown phone it's called brown because Brown it's not gold yeah yeah if anything the fact that I don't see it kind of tells me well I don't see that many people are leasing kind of like my it's certainly my friends circle like I've got 11 to friends but two friends bought the bought an iPhone this year but they just went for the regular ex just because they could find it cheaper and I guess I mean they didn't need all this stuff and like personally like even in my case I've been a tech fiend for so long but I personally feel like I don't need to upgrade at all this year with my note 9 and 60 one of our one of our chat people saying that Robin is saying in the chat phones are too expensive people just want to replace the batteries to not have to buy the pricey phones like it's weird how we're in this place right now and this is the last point I want to make before we move on next it's another Apple story so we can still stick with Apple the the whole idea that Tech is no longer long-lasting like it can be because the specifications for performance can last for the next two to four years but the actual hardware itself is actually made in such a way that you have to replace it but I just thought of something do you think that the iPhone what was that that ten are contributed to like lower sales because instead of buying the more expensive one this is we review the 10r and I'm like I'm totally sold on it unlike before when I'm like I'm gonna get the best Apple iPhone now it's like this phone is actually a good phone it works and it costs $500 or something to that effect but okay I would agree with you there if they didn't also have so many other products that should have made up the gap right right and and hi Mei who again I mean I I wish she was in right now but he would say he's such an advocate for the iPad pro but it looks like not so many people bought it so also because an iPad pro costs more than an actual laptop yeah yeah well speaking of products that Apple should be releasing but for whatever reason have not you were talking about lifestyle well one of the most popular Apple products of the last couple of years is a lifestyle product and is the airport's yeah so one of the accessories that was supposed to come out not just for the air pods but for the Apple watch and also for the iPhone itself that has wireless charging is an air power mat and we heard about this like way long ago there's still no word not happen it's not happening like it's it's so weird like they're just they're also way back in September of 2017 that was was when this like story first broke and since then no word whatsoever like what is happening don't like third party manufacturers already have stuff like this I mean if it's I mean if it's Qi wireless yeah like I could charge the iPhone Sena smacks on the pixel standard yeah exactly but this supposed to be a this was supposed to be a first party right accessory that you could lay every product you have including a wireless charging and the old earpods case that was the other thing yeah air power for the air pods you do use what I was charging a lot all the time yeah in fact like the one I'm not an Apple user right but the white the one way in which this frustrates me and I'm kind of like borrowing a Brandon's philosophy here he always says you know whatever Apple does everyone else follows which is true I would I would love it if this came out because I want more attention put into wireless charging like it has stagnated for so long most manufacturers that included include really slow solutions or package really slow solutions even Samsung's fast charging fast wireless charging standard which only delivers 7.5 watts and it's still very slow and it really heats up like it doesn't surprise me this is not out because it's not it's not easy to write to get this to work in a way that doesn't degrade the battery because of all the heat that the energy transfer produces like this phone every time I put in the wireless charger it really really heats up now I don't mind because I'm in Minnesota if I want to pick up my phone and like I want to use it on the way to the store or something that's great because it's warm and you know it's my own hand warmer but it's not that great during the summer that said it's still very slow steel frontals I would like it if more attention came to this space so I could see more Wireless charters more phones with wireless charging it's kind of disappointing that Apple's not actually following through with this because yeah if they would have released it already then by next-generation we would see all the other manufacturers come up with their own super wireless chargers well there's some there are a couple of good questions on this topic in that you're right Apple maybe they're not quite the innovator that they used to be because they're coming in to wireless charging one wireless charging was already a thing friends who used to be the kind that would be able to like dress up a feature to make it seem like they were the first ones and that's really not the case here I feel like they could have done it if they just would if they would just make the wireless charging case for the air pods mm-hmm because in terms of truly wireless earbuds that is still largely oh yeah I'm actually really like the air pods which I kind of hate saying they are actually quite good like you are really good and you talking about how it loo your mind yeah it was pretty dope but also are they are the this whole idea that they might actually be having engineering problems also like it's is is all of this really tearing into their as you say the reputation that they had yeah definitely hmm I mean my dad was a hardcore Apple fan he would stay up and watch the keynotes just because what also you're using a yes but also because my dad was such a hardcore Apple fan he migrated the whole family into Mac's like at some point he was just like nothing else will work better than this you have that you man one of your cars has those stickers okay so our German Shepherd is named Mac oh but because I never seen level yeah but even these days he's like he I think he they saw the keynote for the was it the pen yeah after that he was just like yeah I was underwhelmed they're not the same Apple anymore I don't feel like it's worth it to get a new phone he has been on the 8ec he's using by phony and he just doesn't feel the need to switch he doesn't feel like it's worth his money I think is the main right um kind of a hot take from our chat here Apple will be from Louis Louise Louise Louis Apple will be walking in the same footsteps of Nokia or Blackberry sooner or later I got here I'm if they're not careful yes you're absolutely right but I'm gonna adventure to say if it's gonna happen it's gonna be way later than you think this kind of stuff the the revenue stuff this kind of a lack of innovation in their products it doesn't hurt companies quite as hard as you think it's a slow burn Exhibit A HTC yes yes yeah everything is Jules is saying mom didn't fall in a day absolutely speaking of which Jules also brought up a different rumor here that speaking of wireless charging apparently show me who were probably talked about a little bit later or they seem to be working on 50 watt wireless charging you were saying how your phone gets really warm Mario isn't that concerned yes I mean like like just to give listeners an idea the fast charging stand that Wireless frustrated stand of same some producers he has its own fan and the fan is often louder than my computer fan like that that's how how intense he can get sometimes like I'm not saying like when I'm fooling like gaming or something but but still and I'm like doing like a duel or even triple monitor setup browsing the internet and doing a few spreadsheets and stuff the freaking phone fan but not phone fan but the charging phone whatever it's louder than our computer yeah Wow pretty crazy it's in the phone still super warm you know it's still charged it's really slowly so I'm not sure you know whether they're gonna be able to balance that I mean I always find wireless charging to just be the thing that's like I'm not doing anything else right exactly take a shower but see this is why I sign you the other day about how I hate that portable wireless chargers oh yeah they don't make sense if you're walking around and you can never put them on properly oh so you're saying that your wireless charger heats up that much and you're in Minnesota what if you're like Asia no no I like a tropical country you that that's that that's gonna die yeah yeah final final thought from one of our chat peeps Richard I personally think that wireless charging is overrated a great idea but I don't think we're fully there yet a hundred percent I think that there's there's a certain company comfort there's a certain convenience to wireless charging but your lifestyle has to fit it rather than the other way around which is our point and can I think that what you just said honestly I'm not into the whole wireless charging thing because I like being on my phone a lot if I if I put it on the stand it annoys me because that means I'm just I'm like on my desk typing well it's propped up so half of the time I really still plug my phone in yeah yeah alright so we were talking about Xiaomi for a minute there here comes the big story we don't know if this is confirmed or whatnot but there are some clues apparently Xiaomi according to good old Evie leaks Evan Blass was he put out a video on Twitter that was showing a four by three display tablet essentially a tablet where the two sides like an envelope would fold in and it becomes an 18 by 9 16 by 9 ratio phone I honestly want this to be true that looks awesome it looks cool yeah is this for like like how come no one's thought about this method of folding a phone I mean why did they have like notches you'd you'd think that in technology everyone's gonna be like smart and innovative and yet like most phones have notches and now they're coming up with hold phones like why there are a couple of clues in this video that point to Xiaomi not only the fact that it like everything on the phone was Chinese but also there was the me store spotted on one of the home screens how do you feel about uh how do you feel about this this concept Mario I think it's actually really interesting I'm actually very excited because I know that other companies are working on it so obviously Samsung's working on it Microsoft is student rumored to have been working on a surface phone forever now they actually confirmed that they're working on prototypes from whatever I think it's really interesting and there's like a lot of things that you can do with this kind of design for instance the first thing I thought when the screen was folded it's like you could have it so that you know it's like effectively you also have a screen on the back so it's like when you fold it it's like screen off front and screen on the back kind of like that that phone that came out recently that I like screen on the back and be like yeah yeah so that's pretty cool because like it's not like um I mean it's kind of like that um the axe one phone the axe on em get you screamed like that's like it's kind of an Oscar not really right but but I like that idea as well so you also get the utility of having to displace when you fold it up they'll be nice and then again you can like turn into what that way I mean I'm concerned as to like obviously they're they must have thought of this and like engineered in such a way that this doesn't happen but like you know when you fold it so much what happens to like the hinge the portion of the display and and so on and so forth whole lot right I have to admit that fold just seemed too good to be true right yeah it was so like the way you were talking about wallpaper TVs right and it's kind of like that like you rolled but yeah also that concept also kind of pisses me off because yeah it's great to have a TV or a display that's that thin but then it's connected to this big old box that still has to do all the process right so all phones go that way at some point like just got to put like a modular thing on the bottom to make it work I want to point out too though that this is a shot in a very dimly lit place well so was also was the Samsung yeah yeah and we have so that I'm just trying to say that there could be like details that we don't see from this video I don't feel like if we do this in real life it's not gonna be that seamless I guarantee you there's a brick on the back and when you fold it is like it when they fold it flushes with the brick on the back but otherwise it's comes out and it looks like this fat T we folded phones in a lonely place that's what it seems like he's like dim the lights I don't want anyone to see exactly how this works yeah yeah which is fine but like the moment that phone comes out it's gonna be like the notch it's gonna be it's gonna be once the notch came out every other manufacturer was like we got to figure out how to reverse engineer this and that yeah like figure out how did how to change it out this is like the second one right ever what first was the Samsung foldable one well LG was talking about folio displays for a while he was that famous thing where yeah it was like neither were they were like they were just like bending it it wasn't really folding but it was it was like yeah and then they put the technology to their TVs yeah well you know we're talking about about that at the time I remember the rumors were like guys is it gonna happen and I just released the G flex which was like really not know what we expected no we wanted I will admit though I kind of I kind of missed that before we move on this kind of fold or the half and half this kind of fold definitely yeah it looks cool and I don't know I feel like it'll work better than the half enough okay okay great yeah I think this looks better it's more interesting and if anyone if anyone can at least attempt it it'll be Xiaomi I mean they helped bring back the slider phone for like a minute so one other thing is you get if you want like technically wouldn't you be able to just fold one of the sides and not get like the full screen but still get a bigger screen yeah well I mean it's still gonna be an Android phone so it may not be seamless to it yeah but anyway um okay so we're gonna go ahead and talk about the Moto Z for play so some renders have come out basically anything that that points to the Moto Z for still having a lot of the same tropes that we would expect from a XIII or any of the phones we have up until now also the play version of the Moto Z line happens generally has a lower spec processor generally the 600 series of Snapdragon which probably points to this phone not being at all 5g compatible so it's probably not going to be that type of phone however it does come with a tear drop notch it comes with the same moto mod pins on the back it also has way that a single camera so no dual cameras or triple cameras in this case but yeah the return of the Moto Z line the z4 plain particular I think the last one I might still have it actually the last thing the last one we looked at was the Z it was a z4 so the z4 play is just sort of like a more affordable one mid tier device all right can we look forward to more from this from from moto in 2019 like I know that they were pushing for 5g a lot and 2019 is gonna be all about five Jeep in terms of just devices like do you get excited by moto devices you know the first time I saw I learned of what do you call this the mods I'm so excited but then it's like I really still don't know how to feel about them it's like they haven't if they're gonna click they should have clicked mmm but it still hasn't clicked to me I guess and it's like wow that's cool you put something on blah blah blah blah and they're still doing it and it still hasn't clicked as much I guess yeah I'm a little warm up it's also kind of cut at the knees right because it's always a Verizon phone like you can't really get into many people's hands when it's only on one carrier like this yeah it's a great advise and you know they do some great stuff I'm not trying to throw shade or anything but yeah moto Z's generally are all found on one carrier mmm the z4 play as Jules is saying here has a wider distribution so it's a little bit better but you're not getting the absolute best version of the Z any thoughts Mario yeah I mean it's it's still surprising that they're sticking with moths so I mean when when they first announced the original motive see they they said that they would support it for free generations back then I was like really I mean this probably sounds like something I'll be writing about in two years how this was a broken promise but no they did and now they're taking it to a fourth generation and it doesn't seem to stop but I agree that it even though they keep pushing it hasn't like really found its its spot it just doesn't it hasn't clicked indeed it hasn't clicked like the moths themselves a lot of them offer functionality that I would much prefer if you bake that functionality into the phone some capacity like if there's a speaker in there right exactly it would give me a better camera on the phone itself yeah so it obviously something like a projector well that's a different use case but like bad are you just give me a better give me a bigger battery a better battery life and so on it's interesting I've just never been too excited in fact like at this point I'm I'm almost wanting them to move away from this and go back to okay just make a a traditional phone with a traditional design because also you know keep in mind that there's only so much they can do while conforming to that standard right conforming to it has to have the back has to have have to have this dimensions and the pogo pins need to be here and that limits the internal distribution of components in the arrangement I just want I just want motor to move on at this point like again it's not gonna be well I guess they knew they might be 5g compatible because they're releasing these ridiculous motive motive mods I have a little chip and it just like a whole chipset in it for the 5g functionality which is ridiculous um Jules is over here saying this is just stalling because I remember when the I remember when the 5g mod was announced when Moto announced it with Verizon there was talk of this being the last generation of moto mods and then they go ahead and double down on it by making a 5g mod and she's like what he said it's it's sort of stumps it and makes it look like a certain way and that's the time when you have creation for I'm gonna go all out with the colors and everything yeah you know this I love cute looking phones like no matter what you say I will go for the colorful ones I will go for the gradient once and I this just looks very you know what utilitarian yeah exactly I'm gonna look at this phone and I'm not gonna care because it's like it looks like it's 2019 they should do something about the gods I don't know maybe a cover a case that that might help but yeah they put a little piece of plastic on them yeah so they have all these phones with oh sorry all these phones with beautiful colors gradient designs you have leatherback special edition phones you have all these fancy things and you give me this phone we'll just have the same specs like was pointed out like it's a it's basically a vanilla phone yeah and then you have to spend more for stuff that you'd expect other phones to do by themselves and it doesn't look as well so it's well and this is coming from Motorola which they had modem they had moto maker like he had the cutest phones you know like you could make it you can make it your own you can make it as cute as you wanted you can have the bamboo backs that let the letter backs like them they were innovating on the design front like really innovating at you absolutely absolutely they need a mod they're gonna make a mod that you can customize on moto maker [Laughter] alright so speaking of companies that you may or may not be hearing too much compared to of course the incumbents the the mega companies as they may be called we have Nokia and Nokia has been making a bit of a splash of the last year and a half with some good releases there are some people who are very much in love with the Moto the Nokia 701 yeah everyone really loved that phone and now they might be they might be going all-in with the Nokia n9 mm-hm so there's a lot of rumors coming out about the Nokia 9p review and okay yes there's going to be a lot of different specifications are gonna be rolling around but the one everyone's talking about is this five lens camera we talked about this it looked like a Photoshop thing when we first talked about this but it keeps coming back what do you call that um some people don't like looking at like stuff with holes in it it's some kind of phobia yeah but I thought this was a joke effort as a makeshift tripod chuckle Toby had yeah of course Jill's new right but I mean at the time where so we went to a lantern festival last night type of low light photos with a pixel three and people were commenting on my tweet saying like wow they're that these photos were taken with a one camera set up and at a time when this is doable I don't think five we need five cameras what would those cameras be I don't think anybody even knows exactly what my super wide one for a portrait I don't know all of them all of you have types in there but you know what I find really interesting about this is that okay we'll talk about the true I almost said triple camera will talk about the Penta camera in a second good throw an infrared camera like that oh yeah oh there you go yeah it's January not October what I do like about this though is that one thing that I've always enjoyed about Android is that you can get really good specifications without having to fuss too much what matters is what brand you like the most yeah so you can be like oh yeah I'm down with Samsung I'm down with og I'm down with all this now you have snapdragon a 45 6 gigs of ram 128 gigabytes of storage a 2k display peer review the pure display do you get all of that and now there's no keel on the side and I'm like that I like that exact yeah and not just that but enjoyed one that's probably like the thing I like most about Nokia phones now um as for like the camera bit you know I mean swarf reminding listeners so this is not the Lumia Nokia right like this is a HMD like if you think back the they had it was it Lumia 1020 right they had like the crazy camera that we can even like go back to that and say yes they have a proven reputation of camera that they can in fact make a good camera phone because this is not the same company so it's just the same brand specifically the same name so that's the thing like can we really expect a lot out of this now if Hyman was here you'd probably be like you know my may 20 Pro has four cameras and that's great and that's true like if you have a company like Huawei working with a company like lekha they can make a really good camera phone well these guys got Zeiss clubs yeah yeah that's true so I'm you know you're right it knows because like I just find it so funny that like that that's what the back might look like let's take a bow it looks like I mean I guess movie Thor it's how stuff looks if you if you bust it out everyone's gonna be like wow yes 5k yeah that looks like a robot yeah you get that wow factor yeah that's the set itself looks good otherwise so like it looks fine it looks looks very 2018 which I'm not sure if it's the best thing to look like in 2019 would an 8:45 and all the other kind of vestiges but there are going to be there are going to be some changes in hardware design in 2019 because we're trying to leave 2018 in the dust and that includes certain things like notches so that is why everyone is really looking forward to what the Samsung Galaxy S 10 is going to look like and that's where our next story is about so that we potentially may have the first live photo of what this will look like and I know you have a lot of thoughts about this but essentially you know there are of course going to be like case manufacturers and screen protector manufacturers who already have reference designs for what the phone will look like so they can have their products available for the launch of the font so those are clues in and of themselves but clearly from other leakers like evan blast you have like a photo like this that has okay I don't know if it's mirrored but it looks like it's on the right side of the phone the the hole punch also clearly one camera on the front so we're not gonna get any dual cameras on the front so drill says it looks like it's mirrored because I think everyone is thinking it's gonna be on the left but either way you got a hole it's in the corner and it's that's where the camera is and that's how you get a full court full screen experience without resorting to a notch I mean I'm so mad they can't even fix Instagram stories with a knotch mm-hmm now they're gonna put a hole in it yeah I'm gonna smudge it up so much because it's just like in the middle of everything yeah this is the case I'd rather have a bezel on top okay you rather have bezels yeah not an arch but bezel yeah oh my gosh I hate the not so much whatever like if I had a notch I'd turn it off okay mmm I don't see why we can't be honest with ourselves if if you stop making the knotch happen it's never gonna happen it's like it's just ugly it doesn't make sense it's ugly and I don't see why it's such a big problem to have either bezels or like I do flip up so what do you call that slide up yeah now though I I'm a huge advocate of the slider returning but I don't remember if it was you Mario or somebody else when we were talking about it that said the one problem with the slider phone is that it kills IP ratings yeah because there are bits that can get yet yeah quite literally you're making an opening into the phone yeah how many hours in a day do I shower and do I need to bring my phone in it as opposed to how many hours in a day do I stare at this ugly freak and not I am I can't get over it it's ma'am I'm never gonna I'm gonna coop the Jules's joke here Lisa is tearing this a new one then juices just fill the phone with the epoxy that's a terrible idea Jules oh my god Mario yeah I mean my hope is because it seems I'm doing it but you mentioned an Instagram like these companies cannot just ignore the punch hole or whatever like they can't ignore the knotch because this is gonna be the biggest phone of 2019 so they can just like be caught and say oh well our app doesn't properly work with this right okay I'm sure same sex probably like working with them behind the scenes to pre update their apps so that this doesn't happen that would be what I would hope would happen right this particular pictured looks bad but but if the picture itself looks about it doesn't mean that the phone looks bad it she's like the pictures crap like oh wait it's a leak I'm like yeah right it's look like it is like one of the bad leaks right cuz it's it's it's got a K's on it that the wallpaper the wallpaper sucks which is actually that's right like if you think about like these companies like they mark they they price spent a lot of time thinking what wallpaper do we want with our phone we want this phone has to have the right wallpaper and we're gonna use it on our marketing material for a whole year it's got it's gotta look good they have this ugly wallpaper and then everything is everything else blurred they blurt everything like even the stuff that would possibly never lead to a an ID right like if you have the gallery on your phone you don't have to blur that every phone has the gallery on the home screen right so I kind of bothers me I can't I can't tell like I can't tell anything about the design the aesthetics of the actual phone and the only thing I can kind of miss your it's okay there's this much diameter for the hole that's it that's all I get is a it looks like also the thing that's really I'm getting kind of triggered by right now look at the bottom of this leak it's full screen gestures and I'm shy like I'm I get it I can get used to full screen gestures I know that this is our future but I'm never gonna be happy at first I'll get used to it I'm never going to like seeing it on the outset because there are these three lines on the bottom that yeah literally for like swipe up from this swipe up on the right to do this swipe away I left to do this are you're probably gonna mess it up when you're swiping up you put a hold because you don't want a forehead and yet there's a there's still a bottom bezel it's like what are you going on here you're missing the whole point punching it within it so you don't have bezels and then put a bottom bezel yeah yeah whether or not this is the phone it's probably the s10 we'll probably have a hole they already released a 8 with a hole and it's like I guess I'm just scared of 2008 P 2019 will be the year of the holes as much as I don't it's a hole haha okay you stop there but as much as I hated the knotch I feel like the hole would probably be on the same level okay oh we got to go to our next story but I will say the one thing I wanted to say and I think I said it one time before that a hole isn't the perfect spot to cover up the back button on some apps so yeah a little worried about that all right so we we are unfortunately in a bit bind right now as far as the country is concerned the the government has been shut down for the past 11 days and one particular branch that needs to be open for products to make it into the US is also closed for because of that the FCC okay so in particular the offices of engineering and technology so apparently is it 14 days Jules my bet I don't know I'm bad a pulpit 14 from today okay so oh that's right I was reading from the article this is a this is from a few days ago okay um okay so the FCC itself is set to shut down which means that all the approvals that have to be done for products actually make it through the FCC and then become manufactured and then come into the u.s. that branch is not gonna be operating we don't know how long that's going to take I mean again I don't want to get into why the government showed that right now because it hangers me but but the the fact of the matter is that there might be delays and one of the big delays might be the phone that we were just talking about because it's gonna be one of the first phones that's supposed to come out of the u.s. yeah what I don't know what we can even say about this other than this sucks like yeah this is kind of bad right first it sucks I mean that's the first far right like I don't know like like I mean obviously we can't really tell at this point whether this will impact like we also don't know how like how extensive of a procedure like the approval is like it just might be the case that if it's just like yeah we're gonna stamp this report that some third party did and that's it like I don't know really how but but if it is extended for I don't think it would be extended for another month certainly but how I expect this to be resolved now that there's been you know a bit of change in Congress so we'll see we'll see what happens don't know I know you're not it's just I guess it's just sucky for you yes yes she's not a u.s. person the variety of phones that we have it's crazy yeah like at this point I can't even count with my fingers how many phones that we have make aside from the Samsungs and the apples and the whatnot we have the vivos and the oboz and all these other like we have local phones we have other Asian phones like you just cannot imagine the variety and you're not getting any of those Chinese phones and no you're not gonna get this awesome for any other new phone for that matter and I'd like again that sucks for you yeah that's all I can really say well I mean okay so maybe this will be one of those weird opportunities for us to be like you know you're not gonna get the new phones for a bit until we resolve what's going on so maybe you can just learn to appreciate the one you got yeah yeah hashtag mindful you know but yeah and it's funny how we're having this problem and we're going to see yes like tomorrow is when things are meant to be well yeah when things are meant to be announced and potentially released in the US and they may not even be able to be released I guess welcome to my world because from my side of the world everything gets announced in the West and then you wait for it to trickle down right if you're lucky if it happens after a few months you're not if it's like half a year or a year they have to wait in Argentina was the same like us always like the new Galaxy would you know like the Galaxy S would come by the time the Galaxy Note is already it's just gonna be a simultaneous release alright so moving on to our next story now this is one that I will admit I don't know to I I know the name I don't know too much like Mario D are you more familiar with projects solely I kind of I mean I've read about it it's just like it's been like on some kind of backburner I guess now we know why maybe it's interesting so you don't haven't heard about it it basically uses waves to detect your is it's just the electromagnetic spectrum to attack your actual hand motions some distance away from the receiver and then it parses that into some kind of gesture and that way you can control a user interface kind of remotely we're not actually mmm-hmm sorry interacting with the glass or some dial or whatever and it's cool like it can be used for like smartwatches it could be used for home appliances I don't think it would be used for smartphones because I study holding the thing yeah the last time we did an experiment and the tech industry did I should say the last time an experiment with no touch gestures was yeah this is the Galaxy s4 oh my god yeah a little sensor on the front we can be on scrolling do you remember the ads for that like the x-ray they had like the pool party and just like nobody's ever gonna do this yeah nobody's gonna use the release the actual unpacked it was I think it was their first ever unpacked like they actually called it unpacked it was in Radio City Music Hall it was a Broadway musical and it was yeah let's just say it wouldn't really fly and we already very political climate I get that it's not something that feels like it's useful I definitely feel that it's not a key feature but honestly I could see myself using it like okay okay and I don't think but if I were to learn how to bake and make a mess in the process I'd be like oh what the but again that's what this my displays are for for kitchen stuff it's perfect like if you your hands are messy you know you've been I don't know needing some doll or whatever but if there's like a timer or something that you need to like dial or anything it's cool that's cool there's no denying that there are scenarios where it would make sense it's just a way to presented it was just way too tone-deaf and freed them to sell it as the main point like it would be a nice addition but like for it to be the highlight I guess some people are excited about this because it makes it seem like we're gonna make it to that Minority Report thank you I almost said we're gonna make it that Minority Report a thing and if it's not a SmartWatch but the thing is gonna look weird if it's not a spoiler so much it's over here like no but it does look cool the video I saw is basically someone like snapping mmm I'm gonna make the if it was controlling the was it was it a watch or something watch I could see you totally doing that where there's a little your screen you can touch to do something you're still going like this with your hand above the one yeah useless main takeaway from this whole thing though is that I feel like there's some technology going on in the back end because Google and Facebook are arguing over stuff that we don't even understand like I was thinking when I first read this and like what what does Facebook have to do with frequencies right sake Google is where I add friends and post photos why are they babbling with frequencies frequencies and stuff but they are and like the reason the whole point of this whole program being able they want to see you want to track your hand that's not so far away the only reason they proceeded was because there was a compromise oh sure so the whole thing here is they're going they're going there yeah and you gotta find every little Dino track it's a little scary it's a lot scarier actually you know it's like I would be fine make I'd be like like by ghosts but we let them track us so that we can have faster YouTube and faster everything as AT&T is trying to prove with their 5g speeds it's that way but there's a butter butters but are a kind of they're not really there okay so we're looking at these two these two screenshots here from speed tests speed tests on that so what we're looking at here is about 200 megabits down which is okay I still get mad when I see upload speeds that are wait but they're like 0.1% of the down yes don't pisses me off but apparently these speeds are not quite as fast as all 5g is meant to project house 5g I'm good this is a very specific question what what does 5g look like at all in like your part of the world oh yeah probably in some parts of Asia sure when the Philippines definitely not but you have to realize that in the Philippines it's a mirror of how a lot of markets are yeah in that region of the world if we're talking about Singapore for tiny buck I don't know I pay probably for talking about China sure that's gonna be great but in a lot of areas we're just one thing better internet it doesn't even have to be forged like a lot of the time 4G is a problem wealthy is a problem yeah so at this point in a lot of places in the world no one's even one thing to get 5g if they can't even get the four G's yeah hierarchy of needs yeah I agree yeah um someone in our chat be Floyd says AT&T 5g speeds they just rebranded 4G LTE to 5ge yeah can we all just keep saying this five gen-5 yeah they actually they're actually doing that which is crazy Wow like they they're yeah and it I don't know I mean it's it's fine it's early gen whatever also just for listeners the the numbers that Joshua just recited were from obviously not a phone because we now have like cheap phones yet is from hotspot that AT&T is selling and some user already posted it right and uh and yeah the disparity was like ten megabytes down and I faked the upload looks like just like again like this very small gap yeah yeah and the latency was the same um yeah so I make that plain all the time here like even hi May whenever he's on back in Honduras in South America like he's always saying that his 4G his LTE speeds are much more reliable than his Wi-Fi speeds we don't have that here like you yeah you got to basically be on Verizon to get that kind of consistent LTE speed and like I said that to like if we can't perfect our own LTE why are we even thinking about cuz 4G LTE is part of the grander picture of 5g yeah so we're already cutting ourselves off at the knees by using something that's not amazing and perfect to create this whole new platform it's it's it's good but I bet we're gonna be hearing a lot about 5g in 2019 obviously it's gonna be one of the thick hot trends yeah the choice and we're gonna be talking about that in a little bit but that does it for our first part of the show we're gonna go ahead and take a little break all right okay so quite on the set for this part I have to read an ad that's why all right the pocket not weekly is supported by triple bytes the job board for coders no matter where they come from and really it shouldn't matter if you got a degree from MIT or Princeton software engineers come from all walks of life and many of them didn't even think it would be there jamm that girl who runs a few too many homebrew servers for obscure JRPGs she writes the guy who got tapped by his boss to maintain mobile apps for the business he writes to but the problem is sometimes you can't really put your experience into our resume and expect big tech companies to hire you fortunately a triple byte you don't have to worry about that you take a quiz you land a first interview with one of the many well-known firms like Apple like Dropbox on Adobe and then go on to a second interview and then boom you're in in fact triple bite is so confident that you'll get in that is offering a one thousand dollar signing bonus for PocketNow weekly listeners just head to triple bite com / weekly that's triple B YT e.com slash weekly thanks to triple buy it for supporting engineers and supporting the weekly all right we're back in right before I got into the break Jules was saying the word 5g will be banned in 2020 and by then it'll be it'll be five GH ve - age - finally so there's a there's a thought that we wanted to do in the interim between our two big segments here we're gonna be talking about the top trends that we may be into or very much not into moving into 2019 but here is a question that I wanted to pose to everybody what is the phone the daily driver or the phone of 2018 that you're bringing into this new year like what is what it would have what is the one that you're relying upon us as that as the clock turned let's start with Mario cuz you're I can see the gears turning in your head for me it's probably not nine I mean it's like a tough big between the 60 and the not 9:00 for me the thing is like the note 9 just like again while it's charging little small things like that it has everything there right the 60 to me it's like actually more enjoyable phone to use surprisingly enough like if I want to just like lay back and browse my phone I'll just you see the 60 but if I'm going outside or if I'm you know driving up somewhere or going on a trip going to some event or whatever I'd much rather have the note 9 and you know it's serviceable like I can't even see what I mean I say this every year with the notes I guess specifically the notes but I can't see what Simpson would do that would make me want to upgrade and to be honest they don't do much I still upgrade just because I like the phone so much I should put like an extra pen and then you have chopsticks I don't know where that came from it's just the moment are you hungry I I might be the moment it got in my head like I thought it I was like I have to say this exactly IG IG v G of 5 I mean I do love that s-pen though yeah yeah as an influencer uh-huh yeah that's what I wanted to say in my review of the note night I wanted to say because I I came up with the term this phone is for social media junkies I wanted to say I've had friends who are non techies like these people have lived on their iPhones swore by their iPhones but they switch to the note 9 and they love the selfie features of that S Pen so what are you taking is that what you're taking from 2018 into now yeah wait you have way more phones to choose from okay no so I'm just gonna be truthful about this I I switch back and forth between the pixel three not XL no notches yes the XL is much it's crazy stupid but that being said and this is a surprising pic for me too and you see news beyond this phone for so long it's the Oppo find X Lambo hmmm Lambo though only difference the only difference the only difference is that like people are going crazy over fast charge but I still maintain that Opel has the best fast charge technology it's literally zero to a hundred percent in 35 minutes and this is what I've been living on and for the first time after having been an iPhone user for years when I am so used to freeing cables and carrying a power back everywhere I went like I plug it in for 30 minutes it's the 30 me taking a shower or putting on my eyebrows and it's charged so it's awesome and like honestly that phone screen that is a real full screen phone well you're well I don't know where you put it but I have the me mix three in the house so speaking of full screen display like that's that's what we're gonna be using I'm plan that's the phone I'm bringing with me to CES I'm trying to finish the one +60 review right now just for me and there's already one pocket now but I'm trying to finish my review of it and I have to say I adore what oneplus is done I adore it it's great and I was I will admit that I would I would first go for the McLaren Edition than any other edition but you kind of you you can't really go wrong if you happen to be on t-mobile you're gonna get a monthly plan a cheaper then the 1 plus 60 is a really compelling choice and that's what I love the most about it we have a few people in the chat here Max is saying I want them mate 20x next I know a lot of people oh we have that the big one you have it yeah it's too big I mean ok this is a thing with me again I'm a very specific type of user like I mean it's distich it's this big my my hands can't even grasp that thing so uh Abraham says s 9 plus until 2020 you certainly could as long as a battery doesn't crap out on you yeah uh Henry says any phone over 6 inches is too big for me before I got my P 20 light it was over 4 inches which was too big and then Snead says I really like my moto x4 as much as my pixel to XL I would maintain that the pixel 2 XL is still a pretty damn good phone you could still use that now if you wanted in 2019 but speaking of 2019 let's talk about some trends that are gonna be happening we know we have a suite we do have some glimpses into what's going to happen we're gonna get even more starting as soon as tomorrow when we go to see yes Mario are you gonna be reppin at CES I know I not this year I gotta go to Florida kiss my mom at a house and she really wants me to go check it out I know yeah I am bracing myself for the work for the next few days yeah it's gonna be pretty nice TK will be out for XDA though right yeah yeah yeah and I think Michelle will be going too ok yeah be sure I'll be going so yes probably meet at some point all right cool so why don't we start with you then since you're not gonna be going to see yes yeah what what trend do you think is actually gonna turn out very well in 2019 and also we're gonna ask you what you think will be the worst trend of 2019 ok we have a few examples in our little worksheet here but like in anything that you want to talk about well I mean I guess not see us related necessarily cuz it's probably gonna take a while for this to trickle down I think that I feel like camera pinhole will turn out well but I don't think I would like it per se I think that in the end I Satan will probably do a really nice presentation with galaxy yes 10 and I think that reviewers are gonna like that phone because they like D s phones in general there good phones so it's gonna get good reviews the fact that it's gonna get good reviews will probably make the phone a success like a relative success again because we see this market decline but it is still we gonna be one of the better Falls of 2019 as expected and it's gonna carry that punch hole which you know it's what it is it's it's it's still one of the more interesting design changes at same so we'll have done and then other companies will follow suit so other companies will follow suit and they'll come with their own punch holes they're gonna be smaller and they're you some of them are gonna be at the middle and at that point why don't you just include a water drop knowledge but you know we're gonna see that we're gonna see that and I think that it'll get to a point where it'll be everywhere and the phones are again phones are gonna market it they're gonna market it like a thing just like you saw a bunch of volumes actually market the notch which was crazy you're gonna see owners market the punch home which it's it's less crazy there's a it's kind of like a thing it's like more of an interesting design feature and it's gonna be big doesn't mean I would like it probably be buying a phone with that what a punch hole just because like we just said do I need to upgrade no will I be the one reviewing these phones for X date probably not I don't even I wouldn't want to I just I'm not interested in in it but it's gonna be make whether I like it or not our chats going nuts about the pin hole right now oh boy okay so that would be what you think is actually gonna work in 2019 what do you think is gonna flop what do you think is gonna land right on its pinhole face I mean I don't want to say if I GE but I had to say five you and I'm gonna there - yeah if we say like million camera phones yeah whatever like we've had this right like don't yeah it's gonna nobody's gonna pay that much attention to Nokia it would be more interesting if she was something that Samsung was doing and it failed and and all the companies have already proved that it can work like why wait so foldables I don't you know maybe late this year they'll be released who knows but if I GE the phones with IG are coming out soon and the service is not going to be in my opinion what I expect it's not gonna be noticeably improved over 4G LTE certainly not the kind of higher-end of LTE so that's gonna have people wondering why why are we doing this now and and that's the thing it's gonna be a slow process we're not gonna see the improvements right away but what worries me is that we might not see any improvements right away any improvements at all like any anything tangible that users can point to and say my phone is doing 5g and it benefits my user experience in such a such way you're not gonna get that word of mouth if there's no noticeable improvement that people can point to and as we said we saw already like the speed difference doesn't seem to be there as far as like the AT&T 5g hotspot in particular goes if it's not there for the snapdragon a 55 and the X 24 module that the 30 X 50 yeah the X 50 modem well yeah ah then we're gonna be in a real trouble I think so that's why I used to be a what do you think well obviously I hate the whole bunch whole idea that that's about making controls happen they're never gonna happen I will I will keep saying that until 2020 or until I figure out a way Instagram stories or something figures out the way to fix it but I highly doubt it they haven't fixed it on the knotch they're probably gonna fix it they're probably not gonna fix it so you think pinhole is still gonna be a it's gonna suck it's gonna suck but like every single trend like the notch will end up with pinhole yeah phones which sucks I want the foldable phones to happen okay so I don't think they will okay I don't think we're there hmm I hope we get more say their phones yeah later phones were cool when I was a kid slider phones are still cool now if the whole point is getting a full-screen phone just do the slay there guys gosh oh hey yeah IIIi think I last week said I wanted to pour one out for the slider phone this early because we just got them back and now the pin hole is appearing so sliders are gonna die before they even have a chance to like see it slider phones are just fun yeah you know it's it's the whole act of doing that lady thing whether it be the mimics - whether it be your vivo necks or your opal find eggs it's always an amazing experience and it's been a while since just on a fundamental level hardware has been this fun yes probably the only phone that's done it is yours Mario the no.9 like yeah actually have fun with the s-pen you can use it in preamble that's true that's actually very true yeah like when you when you slide I haven't done it yet because we were still fresh what the me mix three but when you slide it down you can get a new could be a sound effect yeah yeah yeah sore cheating and like yeah a little nice effect yeah you know I walk around so people like okay what's so funny about Slater phones it's like you'd think other people would know this but they don't really like you can walk around with a Slater phone slide your phone all you want but the person sitting next to you won't notice unless they're staring yeah and I get the same reaction over and over with a fine X it's like I'm using it flipping around playing with it and no one cares until like I say something or they ask me what phone I'm using they look at it and actually see the the camera tomorrow and that's when their minds are doing yeah so it's it's a great thing because it's a fun thing to use it's something that isn't too flashy but there's still that wow factor and there's no hole do you prefer the the motorized version or the that's the thing though people don't really like the motorized version and I get it like you've been telling me that it's gonna die but we live at the time when they after two years we switch phones which is fine yeah so I mean honestly I thought it would bother me more but it doesn't after a while if Noor molasses and it's just fun the built-in fidgeting that's a new feature actually like Mikey Miami makes three hands-on for vodka now started with me just quickly yeah yeah in our chat max is saying faster in display fingerprint sensors I agree with that I would say we should be seeing more of that if you ask me though the trend that I think is going to flop I think is gonna be 5g but it's not gonna be like a dead flop it's just gonna be it's not gonna be quite where should be yeah no one's gonna actually look at it and go 5g is here let's all rejoice but no no one's gonna be rejoicing because there's still an LTE to that point it's just unlike certain trends like let's say slider phones or the pinhole camera which the whole world more or less can experience 5g isn't something that will be impactful it's you're gonna say there's 5g everyone's gonna say okay this or that but certain parts of the world will not even get to see that anytime soon yeah so true I would have to say I think the trends that I'm looking forward to the most I think will actually truly benefit people will be better wireless audio I think that companies are going to be diving in a little bit more Qualcomm already announced their chip that allows for independent streams to truly wireless earbuds which is awesome and that means connectivity way better that means the audio will be better but I also think that just in terms of mobile audio what we're seeing right now are phone manufacturers creating the USBC earphones that and their phones require because they're the ones who took away the headphone jack in the first place but I want to see actual audio companies I want to see boast jump in I want to see Sony's audio division jump in I want to see audio technica I'm using a pair right now I want to see all of that all of those companies dive into the world of mobile audio headfirst yeah because then we're gonna get great sounding audio whether it's wired or Wireless I'm actually really looking forward to whatever truly wireless earbuds are coming out and see I'm trying to get a beat on like who who's gonna be doing in what new futures are gonna come out because I love that oh yeah I think on some level there's a parallel universe where I am that guy from her exactly exactly but so speaking of specific users and specific user basis what I love that happened in 2018 was tech because we've gotten to a certain point and think we're like you more or less can do stuff ready your mid-range phone can do what more or less a tiny like part can the the flagship phones can do yes like it's basically there's a line we're all tech is over does that make sense yeah yeah so that being the case manufacturers are able to cater phones to people who are less techy like people like me my portable especially yeah I think my demographic had it good when it when it came to tech the previous year because again we soft phones that are marketed to users like me like the s-pen for example one main selling point was that it can take selfies mmm we have seen beauty modes going crazy we've seen beautiful leather-bound phones we've seen all these gradients and the fact of the matter is this is a demographic that has been left out a lot and that just shows me that that is taking it to a place which allows for more inclusion more personality yeah also which is what's been kind of missing a little bit let me see here we got a few we got a few things coming up the concept of the slider is a Peter in the chat the concept of the slider is great but the BlackBerry Prive didn't take off the way it could well I would argue that the print I would argue that the prayer was less a slider phone and more a keyboard phone which is where it faltered the most so they tried to they tried to use the slider concept to reveal the keyboard what we're talking about here is a slider to reveal other things a keyboard will never take off on a smartphone now that's just that that's just the truth so I think giving I think giving the print a little bit more credit than that would be and I let me see here if black brain were to make this again now with their newfound experience yeah I mean I that a new Prive we're due for one I think it'd be great to see what they have coming up next let me see Craig had the slider phone from the matrix it didn't last oh and Nokia released the same phone last year the banana phone they actually did it that's okay I think yeah I think that pretty much does it I mean if you want to let us know what trends you're into for 2019 what you think is gonna do great what do you think is gonna flop also let us know what phone you're taking in to 2019 make sure you let us know on social media you can also email us and it's on that note then I'm gonna go ahead and say that is it for this show catch up on what the weekly is talking about by reading our rundowns at pocketnow.com slash podcast also make sure you make your voices heard by emailing us like I said podcast at pocketnow.com we're gonna talk about twitter for a bit Mario is at Tech Young Gun that's ta CH y ou n G UN there we go ISA is at CSIS said that's si si si ID yeah there you go Jules over in the booth is at Point Jules and I am of course J VTech T you know me I'm JV I love Tech and I love to drink me some tea pocket now is at pocket now on twitter facebook Instagram and YouTube in English and espanol where you can find more news on the pocket out daily which I'm a does unfortunately it was not on the show but hopefully we'll see him we are going to see him obviously for next week at CES where he also does parking out a do every weekday we'd certainly appreciate your feedback through reviews and ratings on Google Apple Spotify overcast or wherever you might be streaming us because without you we would not have been able to make this show for your eyes and ears for now seven years straight until next week hasta LaVista baby we'll see you all in Viva Las Vegas