Gadgetory

hey listeners if you haven't joined stitcher premium yet now's the perfect time stitcher premium gets you completely ad free episodes of hundreds of shows like comedy bang bang WTF with Marc Maron and how did this get made you also get 21,000 hours of exclusive content new exclusive originals like Marvel's Wolverine and ISA raised fruit are launching every week for stitcher premium members if you love podcasts you are missing out when you listen to ad free episodes in stitcher premium your favorite podcasters get paid help support your favorite shows and join stitcher premium today for a free month of listening go to such a premium calm and use promo code pocket once again stitcher premium com promo code pocket and we thank them for supporting the pocket now weekly we are live are we finally done with the Samsung vs. Apple lawsuit the payout the back and forth between the courts also did Apple know about iPhone 6 problems like touch disease and Ben gate Andy Rubin is going to dump the essential to phone and we're going to talk about the the HTC you 12 can HTC mount to come back while we also have breaking news on the state of ZTE we've got a lot to talk about so make sure you're charged and ready for episode three zero six of the pocket now weekly recorded May 25th at 10 a.m. Pacific this weekly podcast is where we dissect and discuss those gadgets that make our lives mobile smartphone tablets and wearables it's all the stuff you wished existed when you were a kid and a phone wasn't quite an essential piece of your daily lifestyle activities I'm Juan Carlos bag now contributing editor pocketnow.com joined as always by plucky podcast producer mister Jules Wong on Jools Wong once again made it through the spiel fumbled on your name hey I won i won i winning it life man congratulations to me I'm a little shocked at how many people have liked my tweet this morning about being able to fry an egg over easy the first time ever in my life I'm kind of a man food motivated so that smoked out at the kitchen a few times so I'm proud of myself I'm not sure that this many people should be proud of me for that know I'm always gonna give the thumbs up you mean people come into food later in life and like you know just getting out of prepared meals or eating out all the time to it it's a fun experiment it's a fun life experience like I know it was never able to put the right amount of oil on the pan just like get eggs to not stick or if they're swimming in oil or if when the freakin spatula skills like we used to have this stupid plastic spatula but it wasn't even like it was like just a stirrer thing it didn't even have like a proper edge to like get that egg flipped over and I was like wow this is uh yeah third hour in the podcast where we're gonna go over our favorite recipes I have a wonderful vegan risotto to share with people it's a vegan mushroom risotto and I think people are gonna be very impressed by it lots of grazing going on no good reason I really feel like braising some smartphone news I chose we've got to jump right in under this one conversation yeah definitely hashed IP and clear on Twitter YouTube chat everything that we need to be talking about in strata at pocketnow.com we're actually going to be holding off on our mailbag because of this new story which just broke this week replacing this whole news or this mailbag thing is the news that apparently according to congressional aides to use both the New York Times and Reuters the Commerce Department has telegraphed what they want to do with ZTE now you realize that ZTE is under basically an imports band for seven years because they violated both the terms of the whether you have violated trade sanctions first of all by doing business in Iran and North Korea but also the sentiment that they reached after they work things out with the Commerce Department the first time around and so instead of that instead of that ban they're now going to perhaps do a fine perhaps as large as 1.3 billion dollars and that's it's not clear whether that's in excess of the 800 billion or if that's being added on if that is the total amount that they will have to pay for this these infractions and they would also have to install u.s. compliance monitors and execute big shifts in their management and the announcement has not been made official just yet we expect the White House to be talking about this perhaps in a Friday night news dump who knows so well we'll have to see about it obviously a lot of the privacy the cybersecurity Hawks very eager to pounce on this especially with the the claims that ZTE haul-away a lot of Chinese manufacturers have been stealing intellectual property as well as coming under the influence of the authority of Chinese governments and perhaps doing some of their bidding or using some of their data the data collected from their users at their will so lots to talk about here and I guess well what do you think about this whole state the state of things because this was kind of imaged in many corners as a trade peg this was going to be working with a whole bunch of farm subsidies and farm goods orders and whatnot between US and China and otherwise we wouldn't be talking about this but like this it's we have the layers here just so completely and a lot of layers on this on this story now I there this has been a very delicate a very sensitive and concerning topic to try and just to discuss because it lands on so many different aspects of technology and technology politics watching people with an insane amount of power over this industry basically playing games with the outcome of how this stuff should be regulated monitored and how penalties should be assessed was I thought it was very concerning watching punitive actions that could have completely decimated a fairly large corporation worldwide again because we've had some pretty positive experiences with some of their individual consumer products you know Eric there was some good feelers there would have been upsetting to see them completely evaporated then to see like chest puffery with international diplomacy happening over this only only to then see strategies get walked back that this is this is likely getting walked back in favor of US agricultural imports I don't see where Chinese telecommunications and United States agricultural products are on the same footing in terms of future industry and future jobs discussions and how are our how our economies work getting back to this point I mean from the from the personal standpoint I'm I'm hoping this means that we'll we'll see some cool phones like ultimately I don't want to seek a cool phone I want to see an axon 9 I'm sort of selfish there I want to see the freakin concept where they have the exposed glass on the corners yeah well yeah no no I don't want to see design award 2018 bro well in the nah so it's like why make a glass sandwich when we can also make just on our glass a glass tortellini no it's not a portal it's a ravioli but but I mean like get getting back to this story again I mean there's the tinfoil hat wearing part of this where I'd be concerned about Trump's personal business interests in in what's been going on with some of the the properties that are his properties that are gonna benefit from Chinese investment in infrastructure and then what's also been hilarious you you actually leads to this in your write-up here was also been linked hilarious is watching some of the backlash happen on things like other politicians Marco Rubio coming out to talk tough about how Oh Trump is is is you know given this as a favor to the Chinese I've got his tweet up here is a quarter Rubio setter a Republican senator from Florida also share on the or we on the select committee on intelligence and so his tweet quote yes they have a deal in mind it is a great deal dot dot for ZTE in China China crushes US companies with no mercy and they use these telecom companies to spy and steal from us many hope to this time would be different now Congress will need to act again like the sabre-rattling is kind of intense and we've been we've been allowing general news not technology news but general news to sort of get away with some of these open-ended accusations of things like spying I know law-enforcement FBI CIA NSA had advisories about Huawei and ZTE product saying they could potentially be used to traffic and user data but I don't know to date that anyone has actually uncovered any any specific wrongdoings outside the normal issues that we faced with numerous companies not handling our data with the sensitivity the privacy in the security that it should so so again like we've we've sort of allowed general media and politicians to walk away with a part of this conversation that China equals bad in a way which I don't think is is really contributing to the overall like it feels like security theater it doesn't really feel like we're really discussing things that are gonna help protect consumers and an ever evolving technology landscape instead we're trying to just equate oh it's a Chinese company it must be evil and that again that us versus them or that is that sort of xenophobic approach to diplomacy I don't feel is gonna be a good long-term strategy for our economy well I mean they're trying to find a way to undermine and you know certain aspects of the Chinese government such as land ownership claims in the South Pacific Ocean or human rights violations and you know they're it's a multi-faceted scheme the fact of the matter is in the topic of trade there's just no getting over that they are the second largest economy in the world and they're pumping right against us so there is if they want to play ball then Trump will play ball he wanted a trade war he campaigned on that promise during his presidential run up and now he's getting it and he wants to be able to come out of this with a good face I mean that's his style we've seen it throughout his career even though the this may or may not end up being a loss in some other categories such as cybersecurity and whatnot he is gonna cut this as carrying out a promise that he made I mean he tweeted about it therefore it must be you know in order it must be de facto in not the fact real well it's gonna be that you're right in the Trump Ledger that that will go down under the the column of I achieved look I did the thing what I said no you're totally right there and there's gonna be a lot of gamesmanship going on in in this as sort of an evolving Oh totally and I should also mention we had that report back a few months ago about that the nationalization of the 5g network and some intelligence heads talking about that and the White House officials had to walk back that report it didn't sound like that was going to be a Trump thing in and of itself that was more of a Washington more of a you know machine kind of deal that would have been that would have had to take place and all that again was to combat against Chinese influence on the grid even though there is very limited reach in terms of Harleen ZTE in our grid I think the numbers are in the single digits low single digits even so in terms of the share of equipment that is held so while we like under five percent in terms it was like 4:00 and then maybe ZTE was even like 1% I would have been surprised of ZTE was like within margin of error yeah to be fair I mean it doesn't you know quantity is not is not necessarily what they're going after it may be giant data that they can extract from the 96% total and you know because they have that one cell tower and Pepsi they can hack your mainframes now this is from Renato Laporte using p/n weekly hashtag if the EU or the US had any proof the smallest hint that Chinese telecom companies were spying on us they burn those companies to the ground because then Ericsson Qualcomm Nokia and Siemens wouldn't be facing the this is his words not mine the Oriental Giants anymore I this this is like this is a very complex set of fields that I have on this story because of some of the positive experiences I've had with the consumer-facing section of these brands and then also my desire for competition I don't believe we see a healthy consumer market unless there's some play where companies have to face each other where they actually have to compete for consumer dollars I this is I think gonna be another one of those where there's a lot caught up in the in the in in the the sort of tribalism you know what we're chanis industry seems to get a significant bump and boost maybe an unfair advantage in some markets because of the way the government backs certain corporations but at the same time we also want to see products that actually improve upon the condition that we have right now and I don't believe we get that if we in an America have the opposite approach of trying to lock down our development and our infrastructure to only one or two players here we're artificially creating something that we're accusing the Chinese of doing if we only let Qualcomm do business in the United States yeah that's true but I mean they have been found by Chinese courts to have breached some sort of antitrust threshold and they've been forced to make good with many of the Chinese manufacturers that okay absolutely agree because this is also one of those conversations where I feel like I feel like government our current collection of governments and the regulate regulatory bodies within those governments seem ill-equipped to handle a new breed of juggernaut corporation of really like light-touch regulation doesn't really seem to work right now and I fear as a capitalist I fear a significant pendulum swing to try and overcorrect for the situation that we we currently see where it's difficult to ring that in you talk about a company like welcome and they're there in this conversation for conservative politicians the United States they're gonna be the golden child to to point to this is the company we need to let do most of our infrastructure for 5g that's become a whole bunch of talking points and buzz terms that I don't think our politicians know or understand anything about what they're talking about for this collection of technologies but at the same time as tech enthusiasts we can point to Qualcomm and certain types of business business tactics that they've employed which don't necessarily paint them out to be good guys in every single conversation that we have and we look at other mega corporations like Apple trying to get away from using Qualcomm products to soso this again it becomes a very tangled web of different types of conversations and different types of stories to unravel what is it that we even just hope to achieve you know some point what what is it that we hope well Jules let me actually just throw this this point out to you for our infrastructure and for our consumer gadget landscape like what do we hope that this will look like over the next five years stream well for an industry that is kind of ironically reliant on connectivity to be able to grow and prosper in the case of America I mean again I have to go back to it it's America first Republicans have been very keen on keeping Qualcomm in the u.s. they were fighting off any attempts to see Broadcom singapore-based Broadcom have anything to do with Qualcomm at all so for the time being at least in the start of this 5g race I think we're still in it to win it but as we go along we see better players nokia ericsson get into their gear possibly through Qualcomm zone undoing be it the forcing of si P a standard central patents or whatnot perhaps there will be some leveling of the playing field just because it has taken on so much of this animosity and so much of a it's in part of its its own blame partnered part of its its own uh structuring of its business that has really not helped them out at all they're trying to change that but it's going to take a while and in the meantime there's definitely going to be a tidal shift going on here so definitely something to look out for I really think that we'll be able to see something over the weekend so this podcast might be a little bit old by the time you listen to it after the fact but I was gonna say you heard it here first folks the axon 9 the most amazing yes this July sure let's all say that or August or something I want to go over to Apple V Samsung the aeverine it's almost been seven years right it's seven years since the the start of this or even like 2010 so eight years that is so long and we've had these series of lawsuits determining what's Samsung owed in terms of design patents that word that were held by Apple and have been infringed upon and we're talking about these galaxy s Galaxy S 2 copying the the basic design of the iPhone which is just that home button that screen and that bezel that you see right there there's no there was also the freakin co full grid of icons for apps and the home screen and what that and one other kind of things though they stuff like um pilot matters who has the patent and yeah well and there were a few utility patents too like the slight unlock feature but those were not the main bits of contention here because these three patents generated approximately five hundred thirty three million dollars for in lekha foreign tongue and untangling the whole conversation this was the lawsuit which originally posted a 1 billion dollar penalty for Samsung which has been whittled back on appeal after appeal after appeal yes last this last case was trying to determine if even the 533 million was somehow up for grabs well I mean so like that it was welded down between packaging disputes so like if the packaging was infringed able also a few patents got thrown out of the case and it was you know so it went down to like 400 million at one point and through the appeals process it went up to the Supreme Court and well the Supreme Court took a look at it and basically tossed it back to the district court to determine what is the article of manufacturer when it comes to these patents what does it apply to does it apply to the parts or does it apply to the whole of the product and we'll take this case here from law 360s dorothea Makin's the one juror told her that they found the the facade patents to have applied just to the part said the physical appearance of the phone is just the parts of the phone whereas the the grid the icon the home screens that was indicated of the whole phone and therefore it should be so that's where you see a whole bunch of these variances in terms of which phones were you know generated the most damages so if we go to the document over at five patents thank you - Florian Mueller for publishing this we see that the top raking device here is the Galaxy S 4G which raked in 75 million or nearly 76 million dollars just because of you know that design just it had everything to it that basically made it an iPhone in regards to those three patents so yeah this is a I mean was able to get their way and say that only the parts apply to all three patents right they wouldn't last for it would only have been thirty million dollars whereas Apple wanted the full million dollars are full billion dollars and this house somehow splits it along and there's some debate as to what's software design patents as to applying to software really do and or really are like or really representatives I mean like we in in how we're trying to protect certain types of intellectual property and what should we be able to protect is another long-running question that needs to be untangled by legal experts over successive generations of products it's just after a point we all need to do like is this finally done is it is it finally done are we done can can Apple and Samsung finally move on here and Apple is happy with the payout and yeah doesn't sound like Samsung will be mustering up the effort at least for now to go through post trial procedures or file appeal and that's that's what I'm really worried about like will we see that last that last Hail Mary appeal from Samsung because I always have to wonder that since this has been going on since what like the galaxy s3 was launched actually has two Galaxy S lawsuits have been going well well the verdict was in 2012 so so so we're talking six years of lawyer fees I almost have to wonder like the legal team at Samsung how close are they to matching the remainder of the payout they would have had to have paid if they just paid it upfront because this five hundred million dollars worth of what your fees for for corporate III I just it needs to be done and I feel like we can kind of move on our chat has already run away with HTC u 12 Congress which we'll get to in just a bit but we're gonna cover a few news stories first yeah indeed speaking of HTC not speaking of HTC yeah but we stick with Apple and talk about bendgate again yeah that we're covering all the stories from the past it makes all the hits this news sound like it's all coming it's frickin oldies 98.5 on your dial let's talk about this the same deal here we're talking about the same court because Judge Lucy Koh hello to you again is apparently on this case and we're dealing with a couple of these tech these tech lawsuits cuz I don't think she's super sees those web super expert I guess well I mean all judges have to be will they have to at least read and get some knowledge seeking on the topics that they cover I don't know and any case we're talking about this lawsuit that's attempting to gain class-action status and it has failed now this lawsuit would be over both touch disease which was the which is the great pixelation issue at the top of the display of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus also the reduced touch sensitivity thereof and also been gate which also applies to the iPhone 6 and 6-plus where it was just easily bendable as compared to that iPhone 5s we're hearing from Lucy COEs opinion here that Apple's internal testing determined that the iPhone 6 was 3.3 times more likely to bend than the iPhone 5s while the iPhone 6 plus was seven point two times more likely to bend and there was also talk about a more epoxy on in response so they were going to apply more underfill to the logic board to prevent anything happening to the connection of the display panel which caught in part caused the touch disease to happen underfill is used to prevent the manifestation of chip defects and display bending because as it reinforces the connections and prevents them from getting away from the substrate the plaintiffs explained Apple had used underfill on the preceding iPhone generation but did did not start using it on the Nissan chip which was the applicable display controller chip on the iPhone 6 and 6-plus until May 2016 which is 20 months after those devices debuted and while the actual full testimony the actual full disclosures of Apple and the plaintiffs are still under steel I mean this gives us a good insight into the world the fact that Apple knew about these issues before they would happen but or they they just they do I mean if we're talking about a class-action lawsuit just the very first quote that we have from the papers at Lucy COEs referencing Apple's internal testing determined that the iPhone 6 was 3.3 times more likely to bend the iPhone 6 plus was 7.2 times more likely to bend than the iPhone 5s having their legal team come out and then make claims oh well we don't believe that Apple has publicly denied that bending was caused by a fault in its designer materials like well your own internal testing is showing a trend towards this being an actual manufacturing defect and that's rationally and I'm sure again you need lawyers to untangle all of this and class actions never really appropriately deliver the the justice that they should we're gonna have to go through rounds and probably multiple Appeals and then everyone who owned an iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 who still has their receipt their original box and like all of the papers that came in the box and all the consumer protection laws a state-based which makes the whole model confusing to whoever is blind is all is is finally determined like if you have everything that you can show to prove that you had an iPhone 6 then you'll get you know seventeen dollars from this class-action lawsuit and well boy we showed Apple on that one this to me looks pretty damning and again I want to give that shout out to dude like Lewis rossman who's been very aggro about his conversation about Apple build quality he's really made me rethink things like the MacBook whether or not I'm recommending the MacBook to certain family members and he was years ahead of that discussion and now we're also seeing class-action lawsuits about MacBook keyboard defects you know so again we're going through this process again for a manufacturer that prides themselves on just working and making premium products and and and being sort of a gold standard for a consumer experience I think that they have more to live up to than they currently are for satisfying the consumer experience yeah I mean yeah I mean the I have nothing more to say to that now let's move on to the next topic again I like folks are actually lit up and want to talk about the HTC so let's see if we can hit the rest of this news yeah sure so yeah bezel is phone vivo apex it was a phone that we saw during MWC or at least vivo showed it to some people doing private briefings and immediate public thereafter and now they're going all public saying that it's gonna be debuting june 12th and the bezel is full almost full facade display and therefore it would have a pop-up selfie camera coming out of the top and yeah i mean it looks cool all the specs you need snapdragon 845 and whatnot so yeah good thank you thank you via for this hopefully in the United States thumbs up yes let's talk about bad things I'm not sure if I think you've had a you've owned a Martian or at least used of Marcia and smartwatch haven't you yeah Martian was actually one of the first watches that I reviewed on my own personal channel yeah way back in the day was a Martian then I think I got my hands on a qualcomm talk and then a pebble I had a lot of really fond memories of using that Martian and I was very upset to hear that they're they're killing this well I was pissed that they were doing a Kickstarter it's kind of the big sin of pebble you know like you're an established brand you're an established company don't use Kickstarter as a pre-order system make your own free Rooter system just be a grown-up and when I saw Martian was doing a Kickstarter it made me a lot less interested in what they were trying to do and now I'm not terribly surprised that they're basically killing it and walking away yeah I mean they've had 11 years to do what they wanted to do time to figure this out yeah so the M voice jeetu which was back to well packed on cake starter for all intents and purposes is cancelled and it's yeah it's it's gone only 480 units were shipped because the other the other the other big one in in that same vein manat its Android wear army excuse me where OS I still want to see some positive action there and I think Google needs to rejoin this conversation with a pixel watch so they can they can at least have all their branding under the same umbrella but in killing this this goes right along with the news this morning that a lot of us were picking up on and reading through of Andy Rubin pulling the plug on an essential phone - yeah no worries because that actually lines up perfect with Martian you know again it's it's a brand kind of pulling the plug on a product this one's gonna be even higher profile and I had a lengthy Twitter rant about it if you want to check that out at some gadget guy on Twitter just this notion of like taking your ball and going home you know he he Andy Rubin spent so much time and energy at the beginning of the essential launch talking about how he intended for this to be a niche product it wasn't going to be about trying to blow down you know sales goals or you know start cracking into the overall smartphone market it was about being disruptive and building up a fan base in a community and doing it organically and then everything that the company did wreaked of the same mistakes that every single tech brand has made in trying to launch a new product of assuming that they were gonna have a hit on their hands in the very first generation and not and not preparing for multiple years of struggle in the marketplace I have said this for years now that it takes about three generations of a product of consistent updates of improvements of launching new hardware and of having savvy advertising before consumers will take you seriously Andy Rubin pulling essential out of the race after the first generation of a product is only going to reinforce in tech reviewers tech enthusiasts and consumers minds that you should never take a risk on a new company you should only ever buy products that are already popular so this is another one like I'm pissed I'm mad essential had so many things that they they made so many missteps in launching their first phone but it was such a compelling device for a first offering and they completely missed the conversation about it being a luxury premium gadget they spent way too much time trying to court tech enthusiasts who tech enthusiasts are gonna be your worst critics don't go after the tech enthusiasts go after lifestyle people that wear fancy watches with a phone that's made out of titanium and ceramic and then getting to the end of this to then go well we didn't really mean it we kind of lied about all this organic community building and and being in the market and being a niche player and trying to appeal to different kind of Sensibility that was all a lie so instead you should only buy an iPhone or a galaxy because those are the only products that you know are gonna last so peace out is is so upsetting is so frustrating and again it makes me just it makes me want to take my ball and go home I guess every I guess it's predestined that we're always gonna have just a Samsung Apple dichotomy well it's definitely a shame especially with the software update scheduled they had they have been on I mean if there was any great savings star for them that was it that was they were doing month by month and adding new features all along and being really responsive and let's be clear here even though Andy Rubin you know he doesn't deny or confirm much of anything from the Bloomberg reporting that he may be selling the company I mean they they hired a bank to help them find a suitor so that's that I think that's a pretty good assumption right there and then later on Ramona later on in like and in like he freakin uh you know sent a memo to the employees and talking about how the bloomberg piece says you know would not position the company well for optimizing fundraising because you know the option is that he could go just raise money for the company to at least continue on so no it's it's it's I mean you might be able to have some of those internal conversations but it's this like the public tweet of we're putting all of our efforts towards our future game-changing products well the name is tarnished I don't have any faith that you're gonna stay in the market if you do have something cool for mobile always have multiple products in development at the same time and we embrace canceling some in favor of the ones we think will be bigger hits implicitly I guess confirming that the essential phone to would was canceled we are putting all of our efforts towards our future game-changing products which include mobile and home products just wrap this all up with his last piffy little quote I'm gonna focus on winning and not whining and really grow up like seriously either join this conversation in earnest and know what the reality of trying to make these kinds of products looks like or just stay out of it and just rest on your laurels of being the dude what made parts of Android before Android was super popular so great and I guess that's that for the moment in the meantime moving on to some of the impacts from the Sprint t-mobile merger we talked about this last week and we're gonna talk about it again this week just because there been a couple of big kind of jockeying moves going on so with the Sprint t-mobile merger prepaid markets in the US the prepaid cell you mark in the US would be controlled mostly by this new team t-mobile they would have fifty-four percent between Boost Mobile Virgin Mobile and metro pcs and what some people are doing right now or at least freedompop is doing is launching Unreal Mobile which is a new mobile MVNO operation that it would start at fifteen dollars per month for unlimited data unlimited texts and talks but and also some more advanced features from the big carriers like VPN or a single number for multiple devices and such and this is because they say that Sprint and t-mobile are playing nice and making sure that they are able to offer the concessions that they need to offer in order for this merger to pass regulatory muster so for them from freedompop I guess this is gonna be an early summer start officially this is just gonna be a beta trial for now but $15 per month trying to exploit some of the business deals going on around them cool yeah well but I think I think that's kind of interesting though is seeing like the VPN becoming a bigger selling point for for tech companies right now I I saw a press release in my email this morning that for VPN hub yeah even pornhub the the backers behind port HUD are looking at creating their own VPN service to so take that UK but yeah again positive positive moves there but this tying right into that that notion of Boost Mobile the founder of Boost Mobile wanting to take it back from Sprint and t-mobile you know competition in this space should be a bit more worrying to regulators and I think it has been I think they look at the main contract style market and where t-mobile and Sprint would make you know sort of like if you combined all their subscribers they'd still be third place yeah they'd be around a hundred thirty years they look at that and they say oh well that's not scary but then looking at 54% of the prepaid market is kind of scary so I'll be curious to see if who is it Pete Atherton the the gentleman who started Boost Mobile in Australia in the year 2000 is we right they're gonna become a Conan O'Brien sketch here but yeah so so I'll be curious to see if that kind of conversation has any legs because I think people are under estimating the economic force of that much weight in the prepaid market yeah especially the dependency on that kind of thing when you're making less than $40 $40,000 a year and you're relying on those services so definitely lots to talk about there and also lots to talk about Apple again we're going back to that topic but to the App Store and these independent developers that aren't big enough to do a subscription-based things subscriptions on their apps and but they're asking for free trials just as much as the free trial exists for those subscription-based apps and they're saying this because they just want to be able to push past the framing of model where a crippled app on display on demo for many people is just not good enough and perhaps just a free trial of the full experience this helps them establish value with the user so this is not the only effort they're going in on I have not checked since the last time I visited their website but it looks like we're closing in on 600 apps and nearly 550 developers behind this cause yeah they're also working for increased commissions so 15% which is the amount that Apple takes on subscription per year after the year mark so they just want to extend that 15% rate to everyone yes true yeah no I'm actually just kind of surprised that there's I mean not it makes sense you know Apple can can do whatever they want on their platform it's their App Store and if they want to position their own services where you can use them for free and entice the consumer into using that then I you know again why should Apple have to give the same benefits to other developers right it's all about having a free market can't tell Apple what to do okay you can't can't can't make them be fair to everybody it's their platform yeah I mean yeah their platform their apps or well not their apps the publishers apps and you know maybe not develop iOS apps again and just leave it to the big big people the you know CBS and you know ABC or like freaking I don't even know the big yeah I mean again I absolutely being facetious there it's it's one of those things where we were going to run into the power of the corporation and how much influence it has over other people's abilities to create new products and services you know so that's a that's a sticky conversation at the ISP level where you know a Comcast is gonna make an argument that they should be able to throttle or prevent you from looking up content or charge you more for certain services it's going to extend into information services where Apple the app store is an information service not a telecommunication service so what-what control should Apple be able to to to exert what leverage do they be able to exert over the market as a whole especially as they have a monopoly technically on iOS you know it's not like there's any other competition for for iOS for apps and services and and stuff like that and this is also where I really hope that web developers get severe with things like progressive web apps that maybe we can take some of the power out of these mobile platforms democratically by just going back to a web browser like instead of having all these tiny little boxes that we that we we install all these tiny little square we install in our phones maybe there is a solution where we can we can circumvent app stores entirely and I would absolutely love to see a future a near future where that happens yeah yeah and could be the blockchain could be HTC doing it hey-ho quickly wrap up with this story about the GR s4 or perhaps it's the Galaxy watch it could be the first Android wear watch that Samsung has produced since 2014 that Samsung gear live remember that one well I mean this we were I mean it's only been whispers but we've been hearing about people walking around Samsung campuses wearing this watch so yeah you know 2018 you know I I'd be very surprised if there weren't a if there hadn't been Samsung Android wear powered Samsung wearables out in the testing ecosystem Samsung started with you know Android wear as a watch OS and then moved over well no they started with their own gear OS and then moved over to Tizen didn't they have one variant though that was Android wear powered the want to say there was a Samsung Android wear powered watch all the gear live from 2014 yes thank you thank you oh there it is right right at the top of the article oh it was trying to use my brain and we all know how well that goes if there hadn't been other Samsung prototypes floating around being utilized just to see what the lay of the land was I think this definitely speaks to the issues Google has been having and keeping we're updated and keeping the software relevant making new features keeping manufacturers excited and informed as to what's going on at the same time if you want the I can wear a phone on my wrist experience I actually do think Tizen is probably the best option for that so I'll be curious to see what what this means I I think a lot of people would agree that Samsung is probably making the best SmartWatch Hardware right now and then you just have your own personal preference as to what metaphor of watch usage you enjoy I I seem to be on the losing side of this argument where I'd love to get back to the pebble like an utter clean simplicity of user of user experience and not trying to add tons of more features I want a companion to my phone not a separate phone like device that I have to manage so I don't know what Samsung stands to gain from this I think they're probably one of the more successful non Apple devices and I think they probably make one of the best non-apple arguments for being in the Galaxy ecosystem so if if they can bring some of that magic to where OS I think that would be great for Google but I think it would dilute what makes a where watch special mmhmm yeah I mean the rotating bezel I feel like is B main characteristic of any gear watch at this point I want that real bad for Android wear I want that real bad for wear OS Android wear has sorta more wear or less a sort of implemented date with that you know button crown thing but it's just you know I feel like just that being the ease of use for that and you know being a watch that's worn on your wrist and you have to actually fuss around a bit like the manual UI is kind of very important to whether or not the whole experience is pleasurable or not so I feel like you know you get them in on the ground floor if that and you'll be fine with software as long as it doesn't crash and you know slow down on in explicably like Android wear 2.0 but I mean man wear OS has been has been nothing but issues lately I feel like these most recent updates on my watch to not been good man I'm getting notifications crazy late I'm getting duplicate notifications that it it gets really funky when you switch back and forth between being directly connected to the phone and trying to update over Wi-Fi I've not been impressed I I am having a progressively less good time on the wear OS platform as it evolves and I just don't have anything that really fits that whole right now I want good notifications interactive notifications things I can actually reply to I want good voice actions so I can do speech to text to reply to a text message if I'm if I'm using it out and about I and I need notifications off my phone I do not like checking my phone to see what a notification is I just don't like I hate absolutely hate the experience of looking at my phone for notification so all of this leaves me kind of you know without a country I'm not gonna go to Apple watch even though it's probably the best overall platform right now I'm not currently using a Samsung so moving over to a gear really isn't isn't a compelling option either pebbles dead Fitbit isn't very compelling for all of the SmartWatch features and that still leaves me with where OS being my default like I'm on it by default which is the worst place to be if you actually care about this kind of accessory technology and I don't even read the notifications that I wear freakin where am i watch so it's like what's the point you know there it goes into ellipsis and I have to actually tap into it to read more well greats yeah so much for glance ability but well in from like the Huawei what would I have the huawei fitness tracker and it's like the watch way I get forwards and then it cuts off the notification and it's not Android wear it's not wear oh I keep saying Android wear it's not wear OS so I can't like touch it and then get more information it's just that was the notification you can't do anything with it you're like ah this would be so much it was so close to a pebble it was so close you know an ePaper digital ink style display awesome battery life always on heart rate monitoring it was so close but then it like had zero features for the SmartWatch side of the occasion of the of the situation and I was just so disappointed yeah well and we'll have to wait and see if all this actually stirs up and becomes a real thing I mean you know it's a year on they'll probably have something there's just what's it running so at this point we're still in the guessing stages and in the meantime we have something new we have something bright and fresh but also pretty much the same thing as last year I mean we'll give it it will give it a little credit here I mean it does have one more no it does have two more cameras because the u11 had one camera last year right I couldn't glean from Jules is very wishy-washy introductions this year's we're talking about the HTC you 12-plus bring him back boom sound speakers edge sense a lot of upset people there has been a quite a bit of debate going back and forth between individual features and what manufacturers are carrying them out better going on in our live chat right now which is much longer conversation that I can really owe to the rest of our podcast here but let's start with a goran petrovic here hi guys I am sad HTC revealed everything I feared they well of course you have been paying attention to the leaks so good good for you for doing that for cameras and tons of gimmicks and on top of it all they've heard Apple won't include the 3.5 millimeter adapter soon so they did the same 4.0 quick charger not included - instead it's gonna be support for point you know but it's gonna be it's for Plus which Qualcomm you need to get that sorted out because this whole thing about standards and branding and whatnot it just stupid and also the adapter issue it's a quick charts 3.0 again Qualcomm sort this out but also I'll give HTC credit because they do offer a freaking set of earbuds u.s. we see here but it's in it the freaking thing it's active noise-cancelling and even though it's a form of lock-in it's it's a decent mattress form of lock-in well that's exactly why I don't want to give them too much credit though because the ear buds that have been coming with HTC phones are not USBC audio devices they are proprietary headphones that work on HTC phones so it's so this is also one of the big fails if I'm on an lg g7 which has objectively the absolute best headphone experience available to any smartphone manufacturer today I did personally produce an lg g7 audio review which you guys can check out if guys want it's my own personal little side revival of talking about smart phone audio yeah so I that that is an amazing experience that I unplug one cable from the phone and I plug it into my laptop or I plug it into my desktop and I don't have to worry about adapters or fiddling with different USB audio devices or proprietary connections that that's amazing it works exactly like a standard should if I had at least a USB C audio device a true USB C audio device like you get with the Huawei headphones are USB C audio and then the adapter for the pixel is a true USB audio device then at least I could unplug my headphones from my phone and plug them into the USB C port on my laptop and not have to worry about compatibility HTC solution unfortunately is locked to the phone so I'd say you're walking around with a phone you've got your really great HTC earbuds they are great your buds but if you want to use them with anything else you can't you're stuck it's that that to me is is the absolute worst possible solution for moving us away from the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack I am very very not impressed with them not including an adapter and also if this is true that the that the fastest quick charging solution is not going to be included in the box then that to me is consumer gouging that that to me is a very is a very disappointing trend where our phones used to come with a whole bunch of accessories you pull out you Huawei and it comes with not the best but it comes with a case and an adapter and earbuds and the super charger and the cable that you're ready to use that phone out of the box right now glass on glass with no accessories it makes you feel like you're seven to eight hundred dollar purchase is completely incomplete that you're gonna have to spend at least another 50 or $100 if you don't already have solutions for those for those missing items in the smartphone purchase I don't feel like I can't agree with most of those opinions first of all because well let's hold off on the USBC adapter thing because we haven't had enough hands on time as of right now to determine if that's the case if the I said if it's true that the adapter and the quick charger aren't in the box and that to me would be that that's almost no deal-breaker for for a premium phone but yeah I mean if the use well even if the you sonic buds are Locker still locked in device so we'll have to really dive into that and in the meantime they're also struggling to again go with carriers on this because again it's gonna be unlocked it's gonna be at $7.99 or 849 depending on what you get and they're dealing with a galaxy s 9 plus in that territory right there which is already hard enough I mean in terms of like the sales split it's like a 60/40 or 7 take that between like a regular and a plus-size model so they're really lot of this really does look like it is trying to go up against the larger versions of these phones I don't think HTC has much design on trying to hit the smaller the smaller phone's battery the battery size on the u12 plus the screen size it looks like they have the galaxy s 9 plus in their sights which means pricing is going to start somewhere closer to that territory yeah yeah so definitely a lot of stuff going on let's talk about boomsound for a quick second I mean it's back in the form that it has been since with HTC 10 you got the woofer down south and the tweeter up north on the earpiece so and apparently that's going to be louder than before they always claim this sort of thing so again something to see hi-five happy to see that return I mean that was something that the HTC ten did really well there there were gonna be your personal preferences as to whether or not you liked the true stereo speakers from the HTC One m7 m8 m9 or if you liked the split high frequency low frequency from the HTC ten but having two speakers in that place unless you do something fundamentally different to a mono speaker like what LG did for the boombox feature on the g7 unless you really redesign a part of the phone to enhance a chamber of audio like what they did then the split speaker solution I think was probably one of the best compromises a manufacturer has ever made it divides up different frequency response abilities and helps fill fill out the sound but they got rid of it for a generation was a bad move so I'm really happy to see that back yeah that's back from the HTC 10 although I mean I have the Moto G 6 right here and it's got doubly enhanced front-facing speakers and I'm loving it so yeah again like Muskaan verse a ssin about us having impossibly small bezels on devices that means we do sacrifice certain types of complimentary design you know like Alcatel front firing speakers sound really good on two to $300 phones like they sound really good and it's because not necessarily because they have the best possible speakers in there but because they have two speakers on the phone and they're both pointing at your face which is the right place to point a speaking I mean you're not supposed to point it at your nose but I mean the nose is pretty low the nose nose the nose nose what's up you don't have to do it you don't have to like pull like a sideways ear bending kind of posed with our so now it's only been until the g7 that I feel like a phone has actually is actually powerful enough for me to not just shrug at a mono bottom firing speaker like okay we finally have something that I think is worth 17 times residents chambered whatever uncomfortably loud when you hold it up I mean it's it's pretty shocking and then it sounds even better when you put it on a table and then it sounds even better when you put it on a big hollow box and it feels like something that HTC would have done back in the day sounds pretty woody move mine originally for my for my test when I did test the g7 is like it sounds kind of cardboard II suck I didn't have any really good like I didn't have a good speaker cab I could put it on I didn't have like a keepsake box or a guitar I play the bass guitar I don't have an acoustic bass guitar um so instead I just put it on an old UPS box so looks super janky but like as soon as you put it on they're like oh my god that's ridiculous I want to be excited about HTC audio like that again but this feels like okay we're just returning to a sensible HTC like HTC shouldn't have gotten rid of this feature so really I'm just relieved that it's back on on one of their phones again so one step forward after so many steps back I guess I mean we said we should praise that I mean that is a smart recovery I am happy to see that it's just knowing how LG has sort of taken up the mantle of high quality audio and boom sound branding used to be the gold standard for smartphone audio it's just something that I feel has it's that differentiate er that I feel HTC has lost that used to set them apart and now you know it puts them right back in there with like a mate 10 Pro yeah that's essentially what we're looking at now the the H the HTC you 12 plus what really makes it a different or compelling option from a phone that was out at the end of last year and so it's something that can keep your ear canals happy and I realize that but what about the Front's when you're not the nose with the eyes this time and what it can capture with its eyes let's talk about the camera here dual cameras on the front yeah let's jump in well dual cameras on the front build cameras on the back the dual cameras on the the selfie side apparently helped with face ID and depth perception for that okay feature no there was also a wide-angle one wide-angle camera on the front so I don't know how if I were to approximately 84 degrees as a as a angle as a field of view I mean that's okay that's decent but you'd have to you know if you were to go for like a group selfie then you would have to push the people way back and I don't know but you know it's a good step and then there's the front two or the rear yeah the rear and we're talking about what's the combination here twelve and sixteen and the 16 megapixel sensor has optical zoom of one point eight five two two times I'm guessing part of that's got to do with focusing perhaps they have a like a actual focused motor in there which would be interesting to see although it's at an F two point six aperture you kind of shifty at that point even though they're they're proclaiming big pixel sizes on the sensor so it would be concerned about that I would be very surprised if the zoom sensor on the the u12 functions any differently than Samsung or Apple that once you get into indoor and lower light conditions that it's just pulling from the main sensor anyway well I bet you would be surprised then that the freaking you 12 plus has received a DXF mark mobile score of 103 officially beating the Huawei P 20 but not the p20 Pro which stands at 109 so I'm not I'm not terribly surprised by the overall the overall camera score the HTC 10 they've been making good cameras anyone who's been who's been deriding HTC cameras I I I would be very worried that they just don't know how cameras work in cameras they just haven't been like you know you know groundbreaking they always just seem to rise to the trend and to the performance expected of a flagship of that year but they've always been the especially getting out of the one m9 the the one m9 was a terrible experience but getting back into the HTC 10 and moving forward they've been perfectly competitive in high-quality performers so I'm not surprised to see them beating out the smaller p20 here now that they're finally getting on to this multiple image sensor system in there they're processing is likely influenced by some of the recent software changes that Google has been making - I would imagine that some of that conversation from previous pixel manufacturing has likely rubbed off on on HTC proper I'm not just the engineers who left HTC to go to Google just you know that back and forth this was a phone that was likely in development a year and a half ago so I would imagine that they've learned a few things from helping make pixel phones that that to me makes perfect sense but it's also the zoom sensor is my least favorite way to do a dual camera phone so well I mean that's what I'm going to with the hold EXO mark thing because they do prioritize that zoom factor even if a phone has a wide angle sensor they're still going to proclaim hey zoom is going to be an important factor in our testing here we're talking about 54 millimeter equivalents here on that zoom and it what this produced more detailed photos at a two times crop or something like that as you know compared to an iPhone 10 or a pixel 2 we do sacrifice that brightness that we've been talking about but also there's just a little bit more of that sharpness enhancement so it's trying to extrapolate details that yeah I'm looking I'm looking at their samples and I actually trust that DxO is internally consistent it says that I think trying to sum up the overall camera xperia me 20 minutes to talk about a smartphone camera just a camera g7 audio review is a 19-minute video I mean it's it's it's tough to get into the depth of this stuff and properly explain the experience and not just have it be 30 seconds as a part of an overall phone review you know so the same thing has to hold true for DXL you can't sum up the camera with one score you actually do need to go to their review and look at some of their their pros and cons but when I look at you know like they compare the HTC you 12 plus to the Google pixel to in a 2x zoom crop and there's a lot of extra sharpening going on on the you 12 to try and pull out that detail especially compared to the to the iPhone X which also has a zoom sensor on there I compare some of their results to some of the experiences I've had on say like the LGV 30 with a glass lens element and I kind of feel like you're not that much better going with the zoom sensor you know it it is better but only if you're doing like a 100% crop pixel peep of that detail I don't think it's so much better that we need to have a whole second sensor on the phone just to get us a little bit closer to our subject from far away because once you fully zoom in the the quality on these shots goes to garbage anyway yeah I mean we they point that out in terms of artifacting you know whatnot but those are just minor circumstances that we can you know forgive autofocus seems to be one of the big selling points for HTC's cameras this year and apparently it lives up to with short you know delays of their auto focusing system which is comprised of both this dual pixel our phase detect excuse me face detector autofocus and the laser sensing system yeah that's apparently been very well for them it's been very very fast and accurate so no so I mean yeah you get you get what you give I guess right there yeah all this is happening I quickly take on the slow motion they're only still at 240fps you think it's a big loss that they're not in the 960 game or I think we just like to see them step up to what is it one plus is at 484 this is this is another bummer that I've had with with some of these smaller players like LG 2 I they might focus on a handful of features and do them really well but then they'll let some of their fun features just sort of wither and and this is one of those things it's it's I don't believe that slow motion video is something that people are really motivated to make a purchasing decision off of but it's nice when you have it it's fun to play with and then when you don't get that or you don't get a serious improvement to it that's one of those things that just sort of sticks out is a little bit of a letdown like Oh bummer I really wish this had like that crazy burst mode from a Sony phone or you know 480 frame per second burst like from a Samsung or from from oneplus not not having it just feels like I'm not getting I'm not getting everything I want to get everything so I I guess I don't know that it should be heavily weighted in an overall review though I mean even for when I'm trying to capture photos and videos of my daughter I'm almost never thinking oh this crazy Tasmanian Devil toddler I should try and get her in slow motion no I'm really just trying to struggle to keep up to capture the highest quality images in 4k video that I can to really preserve memories I'm never thinking oh this would be really cool if I could get her shenanigans and then do like a slow-mo speed ramp or something like that it's kind of when you look at that are you thinking like hey I really want slowed down 720p footage of my kid playing at the park or do I want like really high-quality crispy juicy vibrant images or photos or stills and I can share with the grandparents and have them go and look and see and and show that off I think I think recover bring you know pepper mix you know do both and it's like kind of cool like that because differ things up III think occasionally it is but but I think the correct to focus on the core photo and video experience and not to get overly hung up about some of the fun features it's just those fun features make you feel like you're missing out on stuff when you don't have them so that's also why I think like you have the DxO mark score again even for not having a crazy awesome slow-motion feature I think their scoring is internally consistent I think they've been covering these gadgets consistently and I think the overall score there that's emblematic of what the HTC camera that's how it should be ranked but you would want to go through and pick out you know maybe you value certain types of video performance better maybe you value certain types of photo performance better and that's where you get into trouble if you only look at the EXO's top score yeah the JCB mark score is coming out soon right and the what scores the JCB mark I will see man I unfortunately I've been trying to wrap up the g7 camera review and the last week we've been having the worst maigre and June gloom in Southern California so I haven't gotten any daylight shot since I took it down to San Diego so I'm waiting to get my last couple really good daylight samples and then I'll be able to talk g7 and then I'm gonna be moving on to the one plus six sir look at the boss Barstow and freaking I don't know that he wanted I might have to because again I don't need much I just need a handful of my consistent test setups to get those last couple review points done and it's just bugging the crap out of me that it's like the lighting is way off from how I normally produce my camera reviews but not you know if HTC wants to join that conversation I would be happy to take the u12 plus out first bin but the next phone up on my list is gonna be the one plus six yeah yeah James W in the Utah YouTube chat quickly saying I do trust HTC's camera the U 11 was the top camera before the pixel 2 and the iPhone eights complained and again like I think they've been consistently solid performers since the HTC 10 I had you know whether or not you you have they have the bells and whistles that really light you up that that really appealed to you I can I can definitely understand that subjective argument but the core push shutter button get get photo get video performance has been has been top-tier like they've been no complaints solid premium flagship grade experiences for the last several years well we've had our meat and potatoes but as we move away from the camera towards the fun features that we've talked about they're building on this fun feature our own maybe it's fun maybe it's not but ed sense too with the squeeze mechanic for the you know doing not only triggering apps just with a squeeze or like a certain level squeeze you can squeeze and activate a macro like a tap on the screen of a certain app so that you can have easy access to whatever function is right there so and they've expanded that so now it's a you can do a double squeeze or a double tap or something like that or and you also have detection of when the hand is there so that it just stays in portrait mode even though you're kind of lying down reading something and still have it on auto rotate which is alright that's fine you'll have more of that screen to look at to buy one display the first mainstream HTC device even we're not talking about the yell oven plus which ding make it them North America it's the first one here so I guess that's that for us side bezels look pretty thin I'll say that top and bottom I just kind of want to ask like your experiences because I've gone out of my way to disable like on the pixel on on Samsung devices on the g7 I disable any kind of hardware that only points me to an assistant or to you know smart features like that like if it can't be remapped like it used to be on galaxy active phones then it's a button that's completely useless to me you've been rocking a pixel do you squeeze your phone to do stuff ever Hey kuan talking about i'm not sure hey oh but no seriously I mean like is that something that you use over the voice action if you have to talk to your phone and literally I did that and like I've been doing that every so often just because I can't be arsed to go in and you know say hey Google or or like go to the freakin text field and you like that I pull it out and it's just boom and I asked what I question so but that's kind of what I'm talking about though is again is this really worth building and dedicated hardware to support an interaction which already has a meaningful organic interactive quality to it through a hot word again I can't be arsed to say the heart word like that's that's part of it like it's like hey Google oh you can't you Mike oh you can't recognize that but you recognize when I say hot pizza and suddenly you're like oh let's talk about hot pizza fine great that's that's great so I I don't bother with the hot word and just rely on something more reliable like my my hands okay yeah no seriously I mean I think a part of this is all sewed and I had to give up on squeezy features because it would trigger whenever I put my phone in its car cradle really yeah that's I mean it would it would trigger and then it would just stay off because it's being constantly squeezed the entire time but if I'm driving I'm not gonna push a button I'm not gonna squeeze the phone I'm gonna use my voice which yeah that's true but makes makes sense and when you're driving but I mean I'm walking around and going through transit and you like just running and holding fifteen things at once sometimes and that's another thing too is is like I've started relying on on headphones more you know long press on on a headphone button to get to basic call features or the basic voice actions that way so again oh my god are we talking about like sippy phones and country phones we're like no yeah this is a city mouse and country mouse but but it's also like um you know I I've been really working to minimize how many times I need to pick up and handle the phone to get things done that I can do without breaking my focus on some other aspect of the world around me in front of me and if I'm walking around and I'm usually wearing a pair of headphones if I'm walking around and the basic stuff can be covered by long-pressing on a headset button or some type of voice interaction that way and I don't even have to pull my phone out of my pocket then that's something that's been appealing to me more - so again i-i-i i guess that is again it's more of a subjective experience but I'm really curious I'm what what what does squeezing a phone bring as a gesture or an interaction that we need that kind of hardware increasing the price of the phone to cover stuff which already has another solution I don't know I mean between like going through the headset just the deal with playback controls I don't have I don't happen to have a assistant button on this thing because it's a well this is not it but somewhere in this room is is the Bluetooth headset that I used to go outside but yeah it's like it doesn't have an assistant button and it's just like it's a cheap low thing that I got because I lost my other pair of headphones in a like you know while I was traveling and even then it was a tiny little thing it was a little nub and or like it was something that was like you know you have to do hand out acrobatics just to get it and press it in a certain way so that it actuates so it's like well okay fine then I'll do something that has more surface area that has more you know of less of a margin of error to using sorry you rest of the audience Jules and I are just gonna run a little headset tech support here right now yeah yeah totally I'm mr. Wong if you could you know just describe to me what headset you're using let's say over the years it's that as long as you had some kind of like phone answering button that you just could long press and that would activate the assist no it's it's it's not it doesn't have an embedded mic but even then it's okay okay what-what does have a mic but even with my job my job I never really actually well first of all I don't I don't really get calls and Moammar spam so well kind of like waited for me not for answering calls what I mean is is even when I want to do something tactile to activate voice assistant it's I still don't want to get my phone out of my pocket I just push the button and then voices then the Google assistant activates again like I'm not gonna squeeze my phone when I'm walking around because I usually have headphones on yeah but totally and you've been habituated to do that because it's you know it's kind of like the controls that you go to more often than I do and whereas I I'm kind of like well I don't even take calls and I just end up at like holding the phone out anyway it's like a stupid person with a bluetooth headphone like you like the phone out and well it's like it's like I don't Jules I write we've untangled something I feel like we could make your life easier man I think I have to actually search for it like which but am i turning the headset off like just like hold the button I mean like you know well for your particular one it's right there and and I just found it again again why would I you know but I just don't see it like that it's not it's not an assistive button when I'm walking around like I don't want to be handling my phone anymore because they're all so flippin fragile now it's like dump anything done just just by going to my the headset mic on my on my headphones then I'm moving into my motor g6 for a review and this is Saul glass so I have to be very kind to it before I have to send me back to the person so it's again on this whatever finish it this is the paint what not there's low glare but I don't care the pixel I mean I was I was very upset with how easily the black picks chipped but man that felt good going back to more of a matte finish feel in the hand I was just go back through a bunch of old phones and picked up my Lumia 930 man this is a good feeling phone I miss this this this was a phone that I was excited to handle and I never had a case on it going back to the u12 plus Raffaelli from the YouTube chat HTC u12 has a dim display we're talking about Super LCD 6 marking a return to the upgrade cycle for that kind of technology I'm not sure what go into is entailed with that so I'm gonna you know brush up on that but we have all the support for the standard color gamuts srgb DCI p3 also supporting HDR 10 streaming so hopefully we see Netflix and YouTube follow suit in supporting the device over there and yeah this is it is it is gonna be HDR compliant yeah though III guess I I don't know what is the brightness on Super LCD 6 I mean LCD technology mostly used by HTC but I mean it there's no real kind of thing going on here in terms of well who makes it I mean how it there is some comparison to amyloid but it's a you know it's kind of an anonymous kind of thing going on people are assuming a brightness just somewhere vaguely beyond 600 nits which that puts it behind the g7 so definitely but I'm not sure where then you know the skin and also I would like to see minimum brightness too because this thing has the the moto active display but this is an LCD the Moto G 6 so it has to turn on the whole display in order to deal with that so yeah that's uh it's kind of a bother for that kind of thing yeah I don't get super so I prefer him LED displays I just like the contrast ratio and how ridiculous ridiculously oversaturated the colors get on on EMA LED screens but I haven't been super cranky about picking up LCD screen phone so I've never really completely understood the people that walk around with an assumption that LCD is garbage the g7 has actually been a pretty good argument for how you make an LCD display brighter like it works for TVs and yeah I guess when I'm when I'm really looking at like movie content I can kind of see blacks or dark Gray's instead of being completely off pixels but the overall daily phone usage has been great so as long as I can read an HTC u12 screen in California daylight then I'm gonna be fine it's gonna be fine and it'll also bring some other advantages too like if we started getting some more of these like super high refresh rate displays I'd love to see that become more of a trend to you know that the the razor phone was disappointingly dim but then when you fire up content with a high refresh rate like that looks awesome so I'd love to see if we couldn't combine those two somehow with crazy fast refresh you know refresh beads with a super high brightness mode I mean if they get the right supplier for that kind of thing out now supera whoever makes Super LCD might not want to look into that in any case I'm hearing I'm seeing this number 319 it's being pulled out which is kind of I don't know like it would be too low yeah I see I see the tweet goran petrovic on the p-n weekly hash tag says 319 nits I I would I would be very surprised if it were that low III I can't believe HTC is gonna put out a phone screen that dim but either if I'm wrong I will likely not acknowledge it and say that you know as long as you don't look at it freaking uh daylight are like direct sunlight it's good we fine people well it's gonna be fine folks 319 nits that would worry me that it wouldn't even be it would be very difficult to read in indirect light in daylight outside that that to me would be very concerning if it were if it were really that dim and it didn't have any kind of burst or high brightness mode when you were using it in Auto mm-hm yeah so I mean medev brightness going on there as part of the you know their software suite which is a still light as ever still kind of just very decent very plain I guess I mean since well it's been since since five but it's been a little bit long in the chief now so hopefully nobody from the more garish you know HTC and and emui LG and EMU I could learn a few things from HTC walking back the more garish design elements of previous phones but um you know there's got to be a lot running under the hood if you've got custom hardware like squeezed features I mean one thing that I am good am grateful for is the six gigs of DDR 4x ram standard I mean that's that's finally you know we'd have to freakin deal with four gigs on the freakin galaxy s nine or you know I mean you're playing less turns but like we always make that like the weird mid I I would really just don't don't change the performance of the phone for different tiers of the same phone just make the storage the deciding factor between like a device that's your entry-level gadget and then you bump it up from 64 to 128 or 256 and that's that's how you determine how the phone's cost it for whatever reason that makes me super cranky when I see a phone come out well I mean the base model has four gigs of RAM and 64 gigs of storage and then the nice version has six gigs of RAM and 256 like even with that molten you know that much more storage you're not going to you know utilize all of that ramp you be able to have you know certain sections of that in instant memory just so that you can do tasks though you've been fine with four gigs in 128 or four gigs and well not it's not been common with 256 but you get my point like that's not something that is really storage dependent or I mean it shouldn't be but for whatever reason manufacturers tend to link those so I'm just happy to see that six gigs is standard so what will say that that's at this price of course it has to be standard all right well but I mean again what did the Galaxy S 9 Plus launch at this is the phone that they've likely got $725 I've no no no the s9 + didn't OS 9 + 840 right so for $50 less than an s9 + that's that's the argument HTC is making so you know you don't need that this price doesn't guarantee you 6 gigs of ram and so totally but I mean you know you have to look at the market that is buying into the larger phone market still are we still looking at that same market from 2015 where peoples tend to favor 6-inch phones for whatever reason and people are still very happy to see text I'm saying is that was that was another opportunity for HTC to fail and they managed not to so I'm saying is just because the phone's expensive doesn't mean that the manufacturer knows that those hardware components are gonna make a difference to tech enthusiasts Lois straws here to you know save HTC I feel like that you know they've done pretty ok I'm not I mean we haven't talked about the the translucent blue color because I think well I have visuals and a freaking audio podcast but yeah like the hands-on video so if you were watching the YouTube livestream of this then you at least got to see some of I may get Iveta molesting yeah yeah I I think this is a fine phone and and really I'm gonna put this up in the same thing like when we had a conversation with with Nick a couple weeks back we were talking about the g7 I the the the situation isn't you know what are they doing is that enough is it good enough do they deserve to get attention like that's not the question it's this is looking like it's gonna be a great phone it looks like it's going to be a very good phone I think the biggest problem facing a lot of these manufacturers is that they seem completely unwilling or unable to join a consumer conversation with traditional advertising with good marketing and with a consistent approach to telling people about why their products are interesting and HTC is still in a position where they can't really do that and I for the life of me I can't understand why they're gonna go after some gimmick with like a celebrity in their commercials and they will probably have a whole bunch of aspirational marketing which doesn't really focus on what makes their product different or interesting or fun and then a week after the phone is actually launched all of those ads will disappear because they don't want to spend money on ad buys or billboards or magazines or anything like that and then they'll wonder like well why isn't anyone talking about our phone two months after it's launched you know it's you talking about your phone you months after you launched it it's almost been a decade since speaking of you the years bringing back the all-time best smartphone brand advertising campaign that he should have been building on that this entire time and I think they would be a lot more successful or at least have a bit more consumer mindshare than they currently have you're getting into the third generation of the pixel and Google spends a ton keeping the pixel active in in advertising in marketing it doesn't just disappear after the phone launches you see pixel billboards and pixel commercials after the phone has been has been released I I imagine that we're going to see some significant growth in pixel sales after the first two had some teething pains getting to the market and consumers are gonna see Oh Google really means it they're actually sticking around they're improving upon these things and you're gonna get a lot more good well from tech reviewers and enthusiasts there so when you search for that content it's going to become a lot more SEO friendly and everything is going to go their way HTC keeps disappearing from the conversation LG keeps disappearing from the conversation and it gives consumers a reason to ignore them like there's no reason to invest in that ecosystem if the manufacturer doesn't look like they have faith in their products yeah yeah and that's the question that the whole HTC Google deal has left us with what will they do with that billion dollars will they just leave this behind and focus on the niche blockchain and VR phones that they have planned for us or well they actually make a good-faith attempt at keeping this thing around into 2019 time it's it's a brand on the ropes and I think everyone has their quick-fix solution on what what would make HTC compelling again I think my big argument would be be big be public get this phone into consumers hands outside of LA San Francisco in New York be aggressive in talking about this product in every type of media I mean get those ad buys up expose consumers to this and then also have a have your talking points down on what differentiates this from from a galaxy if you were only because everyone likes to have this argument like oh well they should have priced it cheaper than it would win like that never works if your argument is you should make the product cheaper and then I would buy it that person was never really going to buy that phone anyway not in a way that would have made the company the manufacturer a profit which means that that's unsustainable that that company is eventually going to wither and die so you know you can make a compelling argument the same thing that happened to essential you can make a compelling argument for why a phone costs more this has been the big win for Google the Nexus was never going to be a consumer focused device because consumers were going to look at it see that was cheaper less expensive than the iPhone well that means it's not as good making essentially a prettier Nexus which doesn't really impact the cost of manufacturing the phone to a significant degree instantly made that the Google iPhone and consumers were far more willing to take it seriously as something that could compete against an iPhone the HTC has all the right stuff it has all the DNA and then they just whisper like LG has some really compelling reasons for why you would want to pick up a g7 over a Galaxy S nine but then they just mumble instead of like standing up and saying here is our thing if you like this kind of stuff you should buy it it just flabbergasting I do not understand why they're going through multibillion-dollar corporations are going through making these things and then ignoring that consumers don't know that this is horrible you freaking got people on the whole you know freaking hot words and buttons now and then this guy reaches like complaining couldn't you just use the okay Google or hey Siri well like half the time they don't respond to me like that so oh gosh I mean I just leave me alone leave me alone with my phone right but yeah so um we're gonna have more coverage obviously on the HTC u12 plus coming up we have a video up already you can check out sort of our initial early reactions some stories about other you know HTC u12 plus coverage including a brief right up on the DxO score that you can check that out too I might eventually get around to reviewing it I don't know it's HTC is becoming a company like Sony where they seem to hold off on certain reviewers and then they just sort of disappear from the conversation again so again it's it's tough to tough to spend time with the phone really feel get a feel for what it's like to use it suggest who the phone might be a good fit for and by the time you've gone through that whole process like the company's already sort of pulled out of that conversation anyway that's so it that's been a difficult moving target for HTC in some of these conversations also yeah yeah well well we're gonna have to see where that target moves to and we'll where we'll try to hit it as we can into our reveal process and hopefully we get some more discourse going on because I mean HTC can't do it alone I guess well either thing is they can't rely on us they know the game or themselves but I that's probably as good a place to wrap this up as any apologies because we were we were kind of talking about trying to get back to a normal schedule for our listener mailbag but we did want to spend some time talking about that ZTE story right at the top of the show kind of pushed our schedule around so we will get back to that I promise we will get back to that because we do we do have one more week in May we might as well you know really kind of focus on that next week I my calendar in my brain is off for some reason I thought this was our last I'll take the green I mean technically you know it's a June first on Friday next right I mean say our end of mailbag is on June 1st so tune in next week where we're gonna go through your viewer submitted questions and comments via the p-n weekly send them in send them in podcast at pocketnow.com and really well podcast at pocketnow.com so folks this show is over another episode of the PocketNow weekly has come and gone but the conversation continues on Twitter where Jules is at point Jules and I'm humbly at some gadget guy pocket now is around the web Twitter Instagram Facebook Google+ YouTube and our home site pocketnow.com and if you speak Spanish you definitely want to check out yes pocketnow.com shells like this cannot exist without your support sharing the weekly with your friends who love mobile technology and dropping reviews anywhere you can review a podcast help us get some more eyes and ear on the show once again we want to thank this week's sponsor stitcher premium they're helping us keep the lights on here but ultimately there would not be a show if it weren't for our listeners and subscribers who have kept us on the air since 2012 the PocketNow weekly we'll be back next week with all kinds of delicious Technology goodness so make sure you tune back