Gadgetory

and we are live is Apple failing Siri or is Siri failing apple also Amazon is recalling six different models of Amazon basics power banks is yours affected Android wear will be officially rebranded as wear OS and Broadcom abandons plans to acquire qualcomm which is kind of a big deal though we've got a lot to talk about make sure you're charged and ready for episode two nine six of the pocket now weekly recorded march 16th at noon pacific this weekly podcast is where we discussed and de sect those gadgets that make our lives mobile smartphones tablets and wearables it's all the stuff you wished existed when you were a kid and talking to your computer was a science-fiction dream hello computer hello so i'm juan carlos bag now contributing editor at pocketnow.com joined as always by plucky podcast producer mr. jules wong are you finally back from your adventures in travel yes I am I am I don't have any jet lag at all so oh he's a machine ladies and gentlemen yeah only had like a little nap at the beginning of the flight my snoring disrupted my I was in the middle seat of the middle aisle so I was surprised to find that my side partners had moved away from me so I got the whole little section to myself so I could like stretch out my legs and and watch science without being disrupted by or having to like be uncomfortable at all well I'm glad that worked out for you I can I can definitely attest to the manly power and aggression of your support well I'm glad that you have realized that although Jaime Rivera has taught me some pretty cool tips so he is a manly and powerful no purple indeed indeed well if you wanna not sleep through this podcast as we are broadcasting this live at 3:00 p.m. on Friday March 16th happy st. Patty's Day in advance to but uh do participate in our chats we have this going on on Twitter with the hashtag P and weekly whatever your comments you make will be able to track that hashtag and respond to them in real time and if you can't do though do that you can email us with your questions and any thoughts that you happen to have at podcast at pocketnow.com i had to remember that for a second I was like it's not the hashtag it's the it's the email address email is hard it's like trying to remember someone's phone number and it's not it's not a Twitter handle so you can't use the Hat you have to be the outside they asked me that the not the pound the at so I'm right it's yeah and and that you're old enough to still call the hashtag a pound sign which is hilarious so you know I mean and people my age are still kind on that threshold in most of the many ways would just call them a hashtag it's it's it's the Twitter or the social worlds that are combining and controlling us and taking over our feet and we made the joke on on Newegg now last week about algorithms taking over our lives and I just saw that did have you seen the I mean you've been traveling so I know this is probably a no but you should check out there's a documentary on what an algorithm even is and how it impacts your daily life and it's actually a pretty well produced piece of media I really enjoyed it yeah I love all these formulas and things that are set by people in order to achieve a certain results between the ranges and the things and you have to stop me right here because otherwise I'm going to go into different you know I you know so yes please join the conversation we already have a couple tweets coming in using that PN weekly hashtag of course I see mr. Andrew Wallace mr. fat produce on Twitter a guest of the podcast and a longtime viewer I'm all we I always get his name wrong the meme wrangle on the mean guy also tweeted some some people I don't know yeah we're get to that question a little bit mr. Peter hatin also joining the show thank you so much we always appreciate that conversation that live chatter definitely hit that P and weekly but I think we need to jump straight into some news because we've got some big news that we're gonna be covering after the middle of our show in the ad break but we also have some really interesting stories the top stories from pocket now this week just all the smartphone and mobile news that's fit to consume indeed for the week of March 12 2018 this is all the mobile tech news that is fit to podcasts the information spoke to former Apple employees working on Siri who have said that the company never had a cohesive vision never had consistent and strong leadership and has been left behind by the likes of Amazon and Google speaking of Apple the company has plans for a March 27 event to address the needs of educators it's expected that new iPad pro models in 11 inch in 13-inch sizes as well as an entry-level 13-inch MacBook will be announced Amazon is voluntary making a recall six variants of its Amazon basics portable power banks are deemed at risk to catch excuse me to catch fire and cause damage to skin and property users should check on pocketnow.com if their item is affected and if it is contact Amazon for disposal and a full refund Android wear is becoming layer OS Google announced the branding change just ahead of Baselworld the world's lost largest trade show for jewelry and watches the move acknowledges that Android OMS have less to do with the platform than legacy watch brands and the fact that a third of device activations in 2017 were paired with iPhones HTC is working on a project called imagine what we've been calling the Yi 12 what we believe at least Evan blast reporting for VentureBeat has been told that this would come out this could come out at the ye 12-plus instead not clear if we'll be getting two devices at once or if there's just one device that we're talking about it has four cameras edge sense 2.0 a bigger display with less of a bezels and much much more well there have been a few delays it should be out late this spring and finally today's the day sales begin for the Galaxy S 9 and s 9 plus deals are all about and again you can check pocket now for those and or at your local carrier if you want to if you pre-ordered your unit in the US and are on one of the CDN carry CDM a carriers of the nation you may have gotten a Verizon SIM instead of the Sprint one that you wanted Samsung and Sprint have apologized and customers are getting new Sims shipped overnight so with all that going through let's start at the top talk about Siri and talk about the claims here me by again former employees as well as one of the heads of the Siri team at the time when I knew that between 2010 and 2011 they were working on Siri which they had acquired from as a startup that was spun off of a paramilitary kind of a private business and between 2010 and 2011 it sounded like they had a bunch of trouble between both Apple maps which was in development at the time and we ended up knowing how much of a disaster that was at launch and Siri which would like it was a novelty but I couldn't say that it was popular or like it was a days like Siri was acquired and it was a product of its time we've been trying to crack this nut better voice actions better voice controls since the early days of cell phones not even if smartphone and I recently took a spin back using an HTC touch pro and Microsoft voice Actions from that time you if people remember blackberry there were different apps and services you could use for enhanced voice actions like Vlingo that everyone was trying to get us to that science fiction masterpiece communicate with your gadget with your data and with your services by uttering voice commands so Siri for when Siri was acquired by Apple I think was sort of that step towards trying to catch Apple the iOS ecosystem up to the functionality that these other platforms had Microsoft's voice actions were I mean you had to memorize what the syntax of your command was but it was pretty capable and it was still one of the best voice calling you know like you know call my wife and it would call my wife and in like it seems to work even more consistently back then than our current super smart machine learning assistants work today every time I say you know I use my wife's name it'll pull every contact that has my wife's middle name which is almost all of the female members of my family so my wife's name is Marie and I was I call Marie back now and they'll be like well do you mean Christina Marie Bridget Marie Ann Marie you're like no no I don't Google I've been using you for years you should know who my wife is by now and I have to set up like a nickname so I am some way I have to remember that when I want to call my wife I have to say call wife I can't use my wife's name so you know I think most people would be of the I don't think there'd be a lot of disagreement that Siri has not kept pace even some of the more recent updates to Bixby while I don't think Bixby's in any danger of reaching that critical tipping point of being the voice assistant that wins its delivering some really formidable macro functionality you know your ability to control multiple actions with a single command is pretty awesome and you would think that Apple with its ecosystem really trying to get home kit and and home automation up off the ground that they'd be leading the way on that Apple makes agreement for ecosystem all the time but they don't seem to have found the push for what gets Siri not only up to the rest of voiced assistance on the market but what actually surpasses them and I think that's it sounds like within the company itself there was not much coordination in bringing Siri to be more advanced in to be more like an Alexa or a Google assistant because these tasks you know voice calls and and messaging you know they seem pretty simple at first and then you get more complex and you have to and you want to be able to pay for something or you want to link to some other document in space and that I mean the team it sounds like just hasn't been coordinated enough they didn't even know that home pod the home pod the smart speaker that they were working on since 2015 was it was a thing until just shortly before it was announced so and that's definitely I think one of the biggest challenges it faces a company like Apple where you no longer have a design guy at the top of the company and you have a relatively small team I the the we say the team at Apple and it really does feel sometimes like there are very limited resources for such a humongous such a such a wealthy organization not just blew it yeah it's not just like B team it's multiple teams that work on their own thing in Apple's leadership trusts each team to be good enough well enough to handle these things on their own and at some point when the convergence comes it's always how much kind of traffic they run they're they're you know sort of they run their organization almost like skunkworks you know where they're keeping projects highly secretive even from other members throughout the organization and then because of that these individual members on each team become very fluid so when iOS has a problem they're probably drawing resources from their machine learning or from their OS X departments to fill in the gaps to get projects finished so they can meet their their shipping dates like Apple is notoriously good at not missing a shipping date iPhone 10 notwithstanding but lately that I think that's men products which are less finished then they used to be in sort of the history of this company and more aggressive changes coming that this company is gonna have a much more difficult time keeping pace with if they can't find ways to better coordinate and better distribute their resources across the entire organization so one of the former leaders of Syria let me just try and see if because it's not Scott Forstall Scott Forstall was the overhead overall head of iOS and he was tasked with Siri but then he passed it on to the Williamson excuse me this person named Williamson in order to work on it and this and he said this decisions concerning technical leadership of the software and server infrastructure were made by employees below his at level and while he was responsible for getting the team on the chair on track he said that Siri was a disaster after launch it was slow software was riddled with serious bugs and it seems and he says those problems lie entirely with the original Siri team certainly not me and also I kind of feel like there's a branding problem for the most virtual assistants we've we've I think there are people currently using modern iPhones who their perception of what Siri can and can't do is still informed by the first generation of Siri that they used and they're not they're like well Siri couldn't do this and it was terrible for that and they don't they won't go back and re-educate themselves as to what the platform can do now and I think that harms Apple because they get less good information on how consumers are using those services I think that's also one of the reasons why we've seen so many false start rebranding a 10 from Google Google assistant Google now now on tap all of these different initiatives which have all danced around the same kind of let's our cards you know like what will proactively serve you information will try and respond to your needs in real time well try and anticipate your needs in real time and every every like year or so they change something enough that they call it a different product even though it's all the same general idea it's Google Voice Search and you know we'll put a new name on it and then it's gonna feel like a new product and that's gonna be exciting and consumers are gonna want to try it again I think Apple could actually benefit from some kind of shift say you know hey Siri is Siri is evolving into this and we can call it something new and we can move on and this is a radical new paradigm for your ability to communicate with your phone even if it's just what would have normally been a very you know minor iteration or iterative improvement it might get people trying their voice assistance on iPhones again or trying to push the boundaries again and that could give Apple much better information as to what they need to do next to keep pace regardless of the big steps that they would want to take in order to revitalize interest in Siri they're gonna have to still do some of the back lots the background basically to get these interactions more I mean when you think about in Siri was meant to be an airport guide of sorts where to be a lot of things I mean ear but you know when s RI or what it was spun off of us RI that was their first kind of thing and then it was supposed to grow out of it just a you know it was supposed to grow and rose the database at high I don't know that there's you I don't know that Apple has the patience or the fortitude to actually in-house iterate Siri and improve Siri to where she needs to be I think we're looking at some strategic purchases some you know such strategic acquisitions bringing a couple other teams on board I would really like to see a major manufacturer take a hound seriously because what a very small team of people were able to do with natural language processing and the speed of which hound can process queries is pretty incredible it definitely doesn't stand stack up against Amazon or Google now in terms of what those platforms are capable of but just the starting point where hound was that incorporated into Apple's ecosystem what series backbone could be really formidable and I would catch Apple up a long way towards what consumers expect if Apple were to acquire hound that would be a very interesting move but I don't think the hound is in that certain market since they're already they already have Shazam which is supposed to really help them out I think that and even then you know they're running into roadblocks in terms of the actual acquisition process so they can't really work anything you know that yet and with the move that they've done financially in terms of the repatriation of their profits and whatnot with repatriating profits you could actually say oh well now you can legally spend money in the United States acquiring companies again yeah but they have a whole bunch of share buyback programs that they still want to do so that's why invest in your company and invest in talent and you know you know invest in R&D when you can just buy back stock this is a this is from das otter on twitter using the pn weekly hashtag is having multiple offerings for assistance a good thing for customers in the end infusion can cripple the user in choosing which one for them and is also complaining about my audio apparently there's some delay on my audio which I'm not surprised because Google Hangouts is awesome what do you think Jules I'm fairly negative on having multiple voice assistants on one phone I don't think that really helps anything in terms of that like stuffing and Alexa and Google assistant and oh here's our own OEM maid thing which I believe yet HTC has done this with the you 11 the yeah that was that was interesting well the you 11 actually had three you you could have it was the HTC Sense companion it was Alexis Alexis Alexis Alexis and Google assistant so I mean but if you didn't really need all them at once and you you to it they'd be like unit text or at least you know if you could use them you they'd have to be very specifically tasked so and I don't they the consumer to memorize which service what they don't have the regiment to do that really I really think that the company that had the best take on this was instead of trying to reinvent the wheel all they did was add a front-end and some additional functionality and that was Motorola back when Google was making their big push for voice Actions and controls moto added just a little layer on top but it was the same general backbone and it afforded Motorola users just a bit more flexibility like even just retraining the phone to respond to a different hot word you know that wasn't revolutionary change but that meant that the phone was was personalized for you and any like that's the same thing if you're listening to this podcast over speakers and you have an echo in your home and I say Alexa your echo is gonna respond to it whereas we should be able to say at this point retrain the local hardware in a secure fashion so we still maintain security of the platform but so that you can call your assistant of choice by whatever name so that it responds only to you that kind of that kind of stuff still drives me crazy that we haven't seemed to trigger that kind of customization or personality and moto had that I what on the the Moto X to you know like the droids the droid turbo and I remember them slowing down over time where you put in a query and it would just take for it like it would log them notes down and it would take forever to send it to Google and whatnot and yeah it's just but hopefully that would be more I don't think you would be able to integrate it directly but it would be more seamless these days hopefully if you don't make your own voice assistant then you don't have control over the platform and I think one of the things that did that did harm Motorola's approach was making a front-end for google service meant when google changed things on their service they would have to adapt to those changes and sometimes those changes wouldn't necessarily jive with what Motorola was trying to accomplish and I think that was one of the things that slowed them down but instead now what we have is this arms race of reinventing the wheel there are so many things that I think Bixby does really well but unload to use Bixby especially when there's a dedicated bit of hardware that's their primary method of interaction with Bixby that stupid little button on the side of the phone that I really can't stand so instead if there was some way that Samsung and Google could coordinate those efforts just a little bit better that Samsung phones still have this increased enhanced capability and Google's probably running to try and incorporate it into a future build of Android but I would prefer having one way i I named my phone Franklin and I can say hey Franklin I need to do this can you pull up this app and then if it's Bixby or if it's Google now or a Google assistant it doesn't matter I don't care who actually opens the app and does the thing for me I just want to be able to talk to my phone and have my phone figure it out and I still think that was a huge missed opportunity for outlets like IBM I think IBM could have made a humongous argument for killing the app I have a digital Butler that does everything for you and you don't have to push square get app to do this thing you say hey you know hey IBM Watson what's a good sushi restaurant within two miles of me and book me a table and it'll go and take care of all of that stuff for me and I don't have to worry about you know futzing with different user interfaces or specific commands I really think that could have been a huge consumer win if any company at the business sector of this had focused their resources on the commercial market well speaking of those markets I want to turn our attention this markets actually and go into a little bit more specialized into the education market where Apple is trying to do a little something here with possibly we've been hearing about a new MacBook Air but even cheaper than the current $9.99 price point that they have right now and there's also a word of a refresh of the regular iPad the nine point seven inch size for like 300 bucks kind of deal that we have going on which is I mean I don't see any other people it's easy to assume that education you know everyone has a MacBook when you're going off to call it and you're in the creative field and whatnot and there are iPads too because the apps are all optimized and it's on a big screen it's you know it's it takes people into a very specific kind of experience when they're being educated about something but I feel like we're going into the same kind of discussion here with smart assistants whereas you know series being left behind by Google assistant in Amazon Alexa Microsoft and Google has been optimizing their platforms with the Chromebooks and windows 10s which is gonna be a new kind of laptop thing going on they're going to be they're changing their ways and that they're hoping at least Google already has a good bit of growth to show for it Microsoft's hoping for that too especially with the surface laptop they it seems that that has been performing pretty decently so now it's apples turned I'm wondering how both of these play into the strategy here I I have a lot more faith in Apple iterating on a new iPad for education rather than a MacBook I just don't see a lot of excitement from Apple about their current offerings of desktop and laptop computers well I mean not to get not to boil us down too much but wouldn't a 799 macbook me oh my god it's Apple I can get this for a very very affordable price no no there's and there's also a part of me that wants to say as soon as you try and youth market like that like this is the MacBook for kids going to school immediately that's gonna be the least desirable product that Apple has ever released and it's kind of like when you make like a Kia for the youth market and you advertise it with break dancing hamsters the majority of people I see driving that car are like senior citizens who are very cost-conscious and don't really care about image as much as they wanted you know an inexpensive go go to the grocery store vehicle you're used to fight yeah oh you script a girl in your iPad pro ad to say what's the theater that's that's exactly the point that I'm getting at is apples excitement over their product lines we know majority of their money comes from iOS and if they're gonna continue to make inroads into education and fight back against some of the negative stim negative stories that have come out after recent initiatives like LA Unified using iPads that program crashing and burning in a very expensive and very embarrassing debacle for Los Angeles I if they're going to make that play I think Apple probably has more momentum more talent more energy playing put behind the iOS side of this and I think it's gonna be the better argument against all those products that you were mentioning Chromebooks and Windows 10 modular and mobile tablet configuration devices right now I think those offer the better bang for buck and if Apple seeds that market then it's really difficult to climb back and so that means that a kid's formidable years where they're educating themselves on technology and consumerism they're gonna have Google products in their hands they're gonna have Microsoft products in their hands if Apple doesn't have a to ninety-nine offering that can compete with a good Chromebook or a good streamlined Windows 10 multimode PC then they're dead in the water so I think that ad as cynical as it is and as dumb as it is that you know you get what's the computer ah it's it's so terrible and it's so like anti millennial that it makes me want to like I don't know it makes me want to break Apple products I I'm so frustrated by that terrible ad but it's not wrong from the corporate perspective that that absolutely is I think where they should be focusing their energy a couple things I'm worried about with the timing of this release is that one we're headed into this is all intended for the next school year for the next late summer fall season and we're only going to be learning about the Sun next new software features that might be coming for you know educators are for it it's the general audience during WWC in June and there has been the recent kind of worries about Apple messing about with iOS to engage it for services rather than being a more of a QA smash the bugs kind of thing going on so there's a whole there's a worry about software now if they can address that during this event which is happening in Chicago at a local technical prep high school they I mean I would assume I would hope that they would address some of these little things and not just you know say code them teach people how to code for Swift and look like that now that's um I think that would be a good idea well no I think there's there's definitely options definitely potential there too I I don't know I just kind of feel like Apple's grip on the education market I don't really feel that there I mean you talking about coding in Swift I don't really feel they're taking advantage of their fashion branding for the education market like they could be and I think a lot of their momentum is really adults who have a fond relationship with Apple because it just works making purchasing decisions for students and I don't think that always gels with what would actually be the best opportunity or the best tech to outfit kids with and I also think that we're gonna be seeing a generation of school kids coming up that are gonna be significantly savvy er about how they're going to interact with data and services coming forward and eventually they're gonna be getting to points where they are they're making decisions for how they're going to interact with educational materials and it doesn't seem like apples really joining that conversation like they could be or like they should be so one of the platforms that hasn't been joined the conversation in wearables at least you can make an argument for the art traditional kind of mindset for Android wear is Android wear because it started out as oh hey let's get all the Android OEMs to make smartwatches it's going to be a big thing and they realized oh people this isn't as much of a growth market as it is for us to sustain this kind of thing whereas other you know the more legacy watch manufacturers is they're all interested this is a great way to rejuvenate watch sales for them and it's oh hey look at this there's a screw this is a screen on our watch that's pretty interesting that's new I'm gonna get that as what a 60 70 80 year old or someone who want you know want to be fashionable or who has always had a watch that is still kind of a growth radical for them so we're less pretty good idea in terms of a name I'm not sure how bad let's do it with the iPhone bit but yeah that's a well it's a good idea well I look at what we're talking about we're talking about Google not finding exactly the traction that they wanted cooling off on that market for a short period of time where we haven't heard a lot of really hot Android wear news and now they're coming back and rebranding and they're taking away Android because of the you know sort of the relationship where people are using wear watches with iOS and they're calling it something new do we really think we're going to be getting some new boundary-pushing platform of services and performance no it's gonna be a big improvement over what Android wear was the same kinds of little bug fixes and security patches that we're always getting but they want to have people talking about Smart Watch software again and the an easy way to do that is just to change the name of what that platform is so I like that this does make it feel a bit more inclusive any consumer confusion that you could use an Android wear watch with iOS this should hopefully help abate those concerns or help re-educate those consumers but more than anything else we're oh s I want to see excitement from Google again and by calling it we're oh s to me this means it should be an operating system you can wear not necessarily wear on your wrist maybe we could see some return to Google trying to iterate on a heads-up display something that you know we could maybe look at Intel's vaunt technology so you don't have the same sort of Borg look with a weird offshoot on your glasses anything that would move the needle on more organic interactions with brief pieces of information the watch is a great piece of technology from its earliest inception on the wrist that with a one brief little look you can get an important piece of information the time and now we can also expand that for notifications and health and fitness and whole range of other things but tiny little snippets of information up at eye level would be even better and we we we all sort of get this if you're a techie and you're into into these this kind of content the SmartWatch is not to undo itself the Smart Watch is an evolutionary stepping stone towards some other way of training consumers to interact with products and services just like the Bluetooth headset isn't really worn anymore we went through that we went through that phase and we learned a lot from how people used audio for phone calls for voice actions and then we used that to improve the core functionality of the services behind that hardware the Smart Watch is cool I wear a SmartWatch I like wearing a SmartWatch I hate having my phone make any noise but as soon as I have something better than the SmartWatch I'm gonna go back to a dumb watch or just like a basic fitness tracker or something and I want my information served up even better than what the SmartWatch can deliver and and that's where I think we need to build towards I don't hear that conversation coming from Google my husband's coming from anyone it's not coming from it's not coming from the companies that want it being involved with it and it's not coming from the visionaries that would be in Google but but it completely is it's coming from companies like Garmin who they're trying to rework how you how you receive information and how you can control information in your car it's coming from Intel again working on a laser projection system for your eyeball it's coming from Microsoft as they're working into mixed reality services and there they are iterating in the back end startups that have that at this point we need to be utilizing it if not Google Google will not be paying attention to that since they're trying to at least grow subscriber base or grow a user base out of this and those things which are great you know it's gray in the background but we need to be able to build that up know about growing a user in a subscriber base do you put out Android wear 2.0 and then completely disappear from the conversation for a year is out you do that but it's also you have to be able to listen to someone and you they have to be able to grab attention from Google in the first place they're like really grand so what what what did they do that we also criticized Microsoft with Windows Phone you came out with Android wear 2.0 you disappeared you didn't iterate you didn't provide new functionality I get these my new little updates that they can change you know the font and they can change some of the layout of my alerts and then the first big piece of news we get from Google is that Oh we're gonna change the name and these are all the waters that will have the name change is there a new word on functionality is there any new word on mic is is there any conversation that they've learned from consumer behavior with a SmartWatch that they can use that Android wear 2.0 was strangled by its by the then-current ecosystem of om that said yeah now we're just gonna drop this because the the sales were not helping them and whatever helped that these legacy watchmakers I think we were doing their own track but it was like they sort of relied on Google to do its own thing that's not entirely true though Jules because Android wear 2.0 had Casio fossil diesel huawei the Huawei watch 2 was a wisdom Android wear 2.0 launch but also my love dropped out for a while Rowland did you got Tommy Hilfiger I mean like Android wear 2.0 wasn't strangled there was more wealth of choice and more wealth of opportunity than Google had ever faced but for those who do work Google is responsible for the software so where was Google for all of those manufacturers those those companies don't leave the software and hardware in conversation interactively advancing the form factor the we're just doing what they know manufacturers those manufacturers are responsible for the software in the features that Google is supposed to provide them no it's not but they're not but that feedback loop wasn't prone wasn't making available the innovation that the platform needed you get what I'm saying well no no no this is you're putting you're putting the chicken way before the egg here Google is the one who's responsible for dictating what Android wear is and is not capable of and so if they can't just go it rewind hardware that doesn't fully embrace all of the features of Android where it's still on Google to say well we've got LTE capability we've got this capability we can do this we can do all day heart rate tracking and even Google's more direct initiatives like their partnership with LG produced very poor experiences for consumers so that's not on fossil it's not fossils responsibility do not Android where's spec sheet to consumers it's fossils responsibility to sell an attractive timepiece and if I look for that and if it were can't generate and if Google can't actually move the needle on that then it's not gonna be tag heuer it's not gonna be Mont Blanc it's not gonna be Hugo Boss always look up the techie and geeky side of the discussion to try and make that play this is all this is all on glued I don't think so because they went they're not a hardware company I keep going through this time and time again and it's the users they're the first four speakers and except for a smartphone I was a mission that was created after the initiation of Android wear when they had pretty much no idea does the buck stop with or is that is does the buck stop with the people that Google partners with I think the buck stops with Google oh I'm not saying that the buck stops doesn't stop with Google oh but there was no room for growth there was no room for technology that is not true because the Apple watch decimated Android and Tizen and absolutely room for growth consumer it was at this it was it was its own hardware and its own ideas about what feedback they had had from current users where as the Google ecosystem diverse as it is open-source as it is was not really fit we found the fundamental flaw of Google strategy if they can't iterate and if they can't support their manufacturing partners then they need to do it themselves and if the pixels of commentary on smartphones where was their commentary on wearables mmm-hmm again that's on Google Google wants where to be a success they need to make it a success even Microsoft had to dictate what the future of Windows 8 and then Windows 10 was going to beat with their own hardware I don't know where Android wear 2.0 left Android OMS with the the smartwatches initiatives that they didn't follow through with and but that had let but that took away any data that Google would have used to perhaps retune something as it's running Android wear then you're a part of the Google ecosystem in Google yet no that's not right no Frank customer uses those and again we're talking about different audiences between an LG SmartWatch and a Nixon sock SmartWatch so yeah and even from that fitted base I think we could have Android wear evolved into a more DeMars platform than already Oz if it were just based on that and that's why we haven't seen the framing the the innovation the the software features that I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna put a cap on this because we do need to move on but I'm gonna put this out to our audience the success or failure of Android wear is that on the company that makes the services and the software or is that on the manufacturing partners somehow not living up to the feature set and the software that was provided to them drop us a comment drop us a tweet hit us up on the youtubes on Twitter's or shoot us an email podcast at pocketnow.com I'll be curious to hear your thoughts on that real quick I do want to cover this HTC u12 because basically it looks like HTC is making an LG v 30 and that makes me sad how so well LG 30 it's it's a V 30 combined with what was the freaking like phone that Huawei was pushing around with friends not not to me 10 no it was the mid-range it was the mime on six and right yes that was the one that had working I was I was gonna I was gonna say it's basically a V V 30 from the back with the dual selfie camera from the V 20 and III if you were just gonna stay with LG no that's what I was gonna say is is that that's that to me that's what it sort of resembles and and that to me just sort of kind of further lends credence to my hypothesis that whatever was in the pipeline at HTC all of the top talent is now over at Google because this is not particularly inspired smartphone manufacturing and I left the company before you know 2016 or has freaking like this this phone apparently was in design or something and for the past what six twelve months so every day that that would you know but even sadder like HTC looking here at the market and saying hey you know we could rip off the LG G six I don't know if I could give LG that much credence I are you kidding me this looks exactly like I'm not sure about that man sure that this doesn't look exactly the same it's like it's like it's like are yours and listeners out there using the P n we clears up on the email whether or not you feel that the concepts and the mock-ups for the u12 look exactly like LG's last year smartphone manufacturing or is joules right and that this is just such an organically easy to adjust with the little bandit oval mask around a dual-camera sensor with a circular fingerprint sensor mounted right below it what are your say influence of design over the rear of these three people who are more familiar you then I would I would take away from that conversation that we have a very strong fan base on pocketnow.com I I think you have every opportunity to play your case to the same the same viewers oh we both reach out to you every week it's tough for the podcast man this is this is this is imagination Network yeah speaking of imagination htc let's talk about that six inches 1440p snapdragon a 45 blah blah blah we've heard these specs before cameras 16 + 12 megapixels at the back which we haven't heard anything about the purpose of those cameras what results those are designed to achieve and then there's also edge sense that little thing that was on the pixel - when you eleven that way you'd squeeze the sides um now there's gonna be a 2.0 we're not sure if there's gonna be new hardware or a change in hardware and what that means for its purposing I'm not sure if this whole experiment with the squeeza interface it has been a success what do you think I I think it's emboldened HTC to continue with that as a gesture just because it was still on the pixel like I think that's enough for them to keep it and because of the way that those teams were we rearranged between HTC and Google I would imagine that they would keep some sort of synergy or consistency in that side of the platform so so whether or not we see crazy functionality it's basically just another way of putting a button on a phone right I mean that's all it is it's it's a shortcut it's a hardware shortcut and they didn't want to have a big speed button and now having gone back to like the note 8 for a little while I I did some some stuff at pocket at Newegg we have the note 8 that looks exactly like the LG G six know the the note anything at all like the D 6 joules I feel like you you might make a wrong phone camera fingerprint sensor flash oh you mean the fingerprint sensor that's offset in a rectangular window to the side of the camera as opposed to the raised camera module 30 and the circular fingerprint sensor which sits just below you mean that what you're talking about school cameras on the back of the phone or other layouts for remember camera flash that's always cooperating the Samsung of 2015 man you know that I'm song of 2015 Jules I really don't trust your eye for design so we should probably hit up our sponsor right quick as we're getting into the and this this week's episode of the pocket now weekly is brought to you fraud by the Google cloud platform and what can your data tell you with Google cloud platform use machine learning at scale to build better products Google clouds AI provides modern machine learning services with pre-trained models and a service to generate your own tailored models our platform is now available as a cloud service to bring unmatched scale and speed to your business applications it predicts so your business can thrive click now to learn more about Google cloud platform or go to gqo slash get cloud AI and we thank them for supporting the pocket now weekly Peter hatin on Twitter I'm agree I'm afraid I can't even save I'm afraid I agree with Kwon this time you're just wrong as wrong and in my last name which is a lovely hashtag P and weekly continue the conversation over there I know you their opinions already but hey I'm just I'm just here I'm gonna I'm gonna leave this up to the democracy of our viewers as to whether or not smartphone design has become so Jules I'm leaving in my mind why sure sure but you're not gonna change my mind about it just because it all generic hey you have to do to place earned about changing your mind if our viewers say you know it was a unique design and a unique concept the l16 from whatever company that you like in the whole night you know nothing Lytro the l16 which had 16 cameras on its back I mean it was made by right row then yeah sure light right the company you're talking about is light row all right that's no that's not that's not a debate Jules I know you want to fight me up this week it's like but it's it's light light row made the light field camera but light made the l16 light made the l16 okay I mean that's a fact not fake news but what does that have anything to do with HTC obviously ripping off the v30 like obviously I was well I was trying to make a transition over to Broadcom and qualcomm because the news this week is that President Donald Trump you're not you're not yeah I know you've given up all in like assumption or of yes and here I was trying to this you made the ad break and then and then we got went onto the side side I can't yes and when I have no idea where you're going with that Jules but you're right we probably should talk about Broadcom because that is a really big deal in the world of business again it's a continuing story that we've been watching unfold and I think with a lot of trepidation there are people been concerned about these mega corporate mergers and this is looked like a fairly hostile acquisition so at the same time that we started getting stories out that Intel could be getting into this race and looking at Qualcomm politics on this have gettin have gotten viscerally aggressive with the Trump administration reaching out to say they would not be in favor of this or they would be outright banning the potential of an acquisition and I two days ago Broadcom complying with the Trump order and walking away as seemingly completely walking away from their plans to try and acquire walk-ons what what do you think will be the ramifications because it looks like it leaves Qualcomm in an actionable position like it looks like now Qualcomm could be up for grabs from any other major corporations that wanted to throw their hat hat into the ring - well I was just about to say that's was this was a pretty interesting week in terms of the troughs and peaks of the drama around this deal because Intel doesn't necessarily have an interest in you know Qualcomm in itself it is worried about Broadcom I think Intel has its hedges against Qualcomm in terms of Apple because it's doing its own modems and it's also working towards 5g and with but with the biggest client that you could have with Apple they have the interests there they're gonna stick with it meantime if if Broadcom were to put into put itself into the picture of Qualcomm I'm not sure exactly how that would actually work out since the assumed position that Broadcom would take was that oh they're not really going to invest in 5g and that would leave Intel fighting off against other companies like Olaf Chinese firms Kwame tsmc perhaps more and that would really shake up things in the sector and would leave 5g more towards manipulated more towards China which the US would have an interest in keeping the definitions and standards of Internet protocols away from that since they consider them a big security threat seriously not only just from the corporate perspective but also our government and law enforcement perspective - oh yeah this is this is intertwined here so like let's start back with the Broadcom here because they announced this week that they were going to read domicile from Singapore to the u.s. in April and that was one month early that was they previously announced that they were gonna read domicile in May and now there's going to be April and you know what dates that they were going to redownload Sal on April 3rd that is just two days after before the qual comes rescheduled shareholder vote on the the the Board of Directors which broad count has a big interest in and a ballot of nominees ready to go and that scheduling was due to Qualcomm the the deal being investigated by its the committee on foreign investments in the US and they were going to look into this and rod Khan has been very hostile against Qualcomm in this respect because they said that since they're read AMA signing in the US the CFIUS doesn't have jurisdiction over them and wouldn't have jurisdiction over them after the read ama something happens and with that move of making the Radames out date earlier than expected well that kind of triggered the CFIUS to advise Trump at least in my view to advise Trump that this deal may be happening in Trump said all right yeah sure let's put the kibosh on this so there was a lot of gesturing from broad coms part and it just didn't work out so I think one of the interesting parts of the commentary coming out on this and thanks for that recap I I've noticed a lot of people talking about Qualcomm being able to breathe easy or this Broadcom merger this Broadcom acquisitions not going through and so now Qualcomm shareholders don't have to worry about pressure from other venues with Intel aggressively getting into the radio space working with Apple for modems I really think this makes Qualcomm look like it's still not completely strong enough to fend not strong enough to fend off an outside influence trying to acquire their base and I think Intel would be a company that our current administration our current government wouldn't necessarily be as afraid of them acquiring qualcomm and that that would lead to this you know again this mega team-up this mega force that could exert a lot of pressure over the future of 5g standards and protocols i think there's still a much quieter possibility of qualcomm getting optioned by a player like intel I think with the baggage that they have already with antitrust lawsuits from Apple and all the other regulatory agencies for their prior practices of just you know holding over CDMA chips above clients heads without you know if they didn't agree to the certain contract that's being debated right now it's not it it's what's not sure to take a big hit on Qualcomm it's definitely a specter over their heads yeah and that is going to be a big factor in whether a company like broad Kahn was that could be aggressive in its investments and is willing to you know cut down on you know make big big upfront purchases big upfront expenses to deal with all these kinds of things in order I'm not saying it's very likely and again we would we would see a lot of noise on this front and I'm sure other other regulatory agencies would get involved I'm just saying I think there is the outside chance that if Broadcom got this close I don't think Apple would be too upset if Intel pushed the button on acquiring Qualcomm and they already had a working relationship with Intel the psychology on that I think would be a lot different than Broadcom making the play again total speculation there is no evidence to support that Intel's trying to move into that space with that kind of play I just think because Broadcom showed how close they could get to forcing an acquisition forcing Qualcomm to the table on this that I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that another player I mean I'm bringing up Intel is a specific company but anyone with deep enough pockets could also make this Intel is is that it's the specific country it's the number one in the and I think because of their failures in the cellular cellular sector you know they not being able to get 3G or 4G properly to a clients and it's just this makes sense they would be able to argue that this is a different sector that they could work in and hopefully appease regulators and regulators in their view um it's plausible it's very plausible and yeah but otherwise I don't see TSMC I don't see if you keep going down the list yeah the company that just popped into my head that it would be hilarious like I would support this acquisition just for the comedy potential of like Apple walking in and just paying cash like apples had so many problems with Qualcomm they just say f it we're just gonna buy you they just walk in with briefcases and briefcases and briefcases full of money they just go here well what we'll do we'll fix this problem right now and we're done I mean yeah that would be hilarious and great and you know I it would it would be a circus act the problem now what I would see with problem with that is just again Apple would probably only use it as a parts farm and we totally know it doesn't even make sense for portfolio under their purview it really doesn't is just to me it's it's that like it would be hilarious you know like oh you wouldn't you wouldn't help me buy clothes while I went to a competitor big mistake like it would be the the sort of you know apples final kiss off to their relationship with Qualcomm they're just quiet for the sake of selling it again chopping him up like Richard Gere I have no idea why a pretty woman on the brand I need to watch hilarious I have not seen that all right well I should watch more with Richard Gere than I am you know I I very much enjoy Richard Gere's performances I think he's an accomplished and capable actor and surprisingly good answer as someone who studied some tap he's not bad you should check out Chicago good times I don't know what I'm saying here in terms of this this formula on the hashtag P and weekly you 12 plus of course from vinny effing madrix equals LG g v1 6 minus 2 divided by 30 and that's what the you 12 plus is I think it's pretty clear that Vinny is saying that the basically the unholy love child of the LG G and V series - a couple of their numbers I mean totally it's just you know I really want to take the formula seriously for a second and 4/30 know 230 that's fit that's a 15th and then 6 - the 15th is 5 and 14 15 so I don't know where that's going but yeah good good job but wait a minute what's Roman numeral four or five G well it's not really know what G is interchangeable with the Roman numeral P which was I believe was 400 so what is that 400 - 500 g guy I mean like I want to make sure I have that right I'm gonna look it up right now it's like CD because that would be 400 in any case I want to ask you one more question or the or this this question at least from who is it the the meme ranked Lots who asked which phone from MWC 2018 would you be most happy to molest I mean like that was that that was that joke he was making they usually go Malaya no I can't say that something else have a hands on I guess what would be yours um actually I'm so I mean the galaxy s 9 is being really well covered with right now I am really apprehensive I don't want to use a word like apprehensive I'm I'm very concerned and very interested in seeing what Sony can pull off this year I I keep coming back to how much I enjoyed spending time with the Xperia XE one compact and watching them shift up their design and go to a two by one aspect ratio display I want to see like does this really solve some of the problems that consumers say they have with the brand or is this really like is this kind of a lost cause at this point people have figured out the team that they're on and you can't really change minds or increase market share just by adopting the same specs as other companies so they're they're actually the company I'm most interested in spending a little time with right now I I really still want a Nokia phone the new age you know fast Android updates and yeah all that stuff so and I feel like for me you know as a toughing you know going guy probably the Nokia 7 or 7 plus it's a mid-range err but it's you know it's not it's it has that kind of some somewhat unique design again I like I really don't have the I for for taste or whatever but in terms of I mean when you hear we describe the HTC hue 12 is being oh it's it's a fingerprint sensor with two cameras on it like that and and all other phones are like that too like that that's that's I know we're not really following his formula exactly because you should be doing PEMDAS but Roman numeral G minus V minus six minus two divided by 30 equals twelve point nine so that would be 12 plus well I mean I would I would have used the G for a thousand because that's like the usual kind of assignment it gets grant isn't that M yeah well no that's Roman numerals but but G isn't really a traditional Roman numeral for anything CD would be fat it's the Roman numerals for hundred DeeDee is 400 well that is one yeah but you could also just write gee that's I mean I'm I'm looking at it right here on the internet so I obviously no one's lying on the internet obviously that one is lying on the internet man no one ever lies other than Internet why would they and Roman numerals ivx LCD em that's the policy here alternative forms my goodness all right so that's that's the most important takeaway from our little deep dive it's one point nine and so that would be almost there yeah for us it's all well twelve plus that's actually that's a great idea I mean but it's it's just so common it's like it's like freaking countdown and you have to get twelve point nine from a whole bunch of meaningless like oddly meaning symbols mmm yeah good times so we do have a couple other comments here who's wanting an axe on eight I am definitely on board I really hope we have fun by nine right just any follow up to the axon as a proper straightforward flagship especially if especially if they can keep up with some of that audio be 97.1 acts on G minus four five Jim Brimble using the PN weekly hash tag I've been thinking for the last ten minutes why doesn't Apple just by Qualcomm and then you went and said it that would be hilarious I had one other comment here that I wanted to get to okay get to it please come on you can do it get back come back oh it was a we got this really great little conversation going on Twitter just about IBM Watson and how IBM kind of fell apart in that regard unfortunately it's a couple people moving back and forth so I I can't read all of those tweets but I you know I think it's just more evidence that this space has and then decided yet on how you interact with a smart assistant digital machine learning AI whatever you want to call it but we watch companies build up a whole bunch of mindshare in that arena and then never seem to capitalize on it I look at Microsoft with hololens I look at IBM with Watson some really high concept stuff and then when consumers finally get their hands on stuff they're using competing products which are probably not as good but you know no one's actually making stuff for those consumers so it's just a shame that they tend to fall apart just as they get to the finish line so I'm I know when criminate myself one more time but back to design for one second and back to HTC I I think you're wrong like one of the under-covered things that we couldn't or no one paid attention to basically back at MWC 2018 was her keynote and Sharon the chairman chairwoman of the company said that maybe 5ge because of the manator ization of all the parts and you know eventually we'll have all the parts so that the phone doesn't have to be this slab or something it could be any any other shape like a and we've seen experiments with runcible with a circle I I just want something to be another shape I just want a triangle I want like a hexagonal moldable you know like that's what I want to see that's what is in the end that's my main message here so just do something with the x and y planes and go and like bring them Z into it you know I don't disagree I just think by the time we start getting to well and and this is actually we talked about this either last week or the week before the the notion of Android P actually giving manufacturers and developers better tools and better capabilities for Android to intelligently recognize the the the display the form factor and resolution that it has on tap could help usher in III think circles could be really interesting to play with two in the meantime though with we changed the shape of the phone I still don't think that completely addresses I think it would be exciting and I think it would be fun but I don't think it still completely addresses the sort of paradigm and the metaphor that we use to interact with services I think the only way we really move the needle on improving the ergonomic and the social etiquette surrounding data in our constant face is to get away from holding slab o glowing ranked angle up to face and blocking out the rest of the world around us and that's why I'm way more excited by AR and heads-up display initiatives getting that information organically into the places where our eyes are supposed to be looking and seeing if we can keep those interactions as efficient and as brief as possible so I'll be really curious to see where that comes from I think there's a huge opportunity for a true disrupter in this space now that smartphones have all kind of agreed were rectangular slabs of glass on glass and that's how the phone works I think a company has a chance to come in and say wow but we could do something different and every time we've gotten comfortable that's where we've gotten the original iPhone or you know Android has walked into the space or the pcs been revolutionized or game consoles have become livingroom computers every time we've gotten complacent that's when something really shakes up the market in a way that we weren't expecting before what we need is the adiga pill from the YouTube chat which I've just been able to pull up and read the tiny print out of it perhaps a modern retake on the Sony Clio with modern specs and Android or sailfish running on it but you know it's shaped like that well I mean there were a couple different cliches weren't they I mean I think he's talking about the one that had the flip around screen that had like a little a vertically mounted QWERTY keyboard with the clay not I don't think Sony made that I know it was the PDA thing yeah that's what I'm saying it wasn't that it was that the clay was the PDA yeah that's right but I'm not sure what I think I think there I think there were oh I don't know what a Clio I didn't hear you say Clio I don't know what a Clio is but I do believe there were two different cliches one was sort of a Star Trek communicator form factor and one was like a teeny tiny micro laptop factor but I think they both the the CLE a was built all about having the flip around screen so before Lenovo did the twist you had you know you opened it flip the screen around closed it back down and it was just a regular Palm Pilot then you could open it flip it and you'd have a keyboard that you could hide under the under the display yeah that's just we need more of that honestly I mean not I would have liked the Gemini if it but I only got like the first freaking prototype or like the pre-production you that I've had so I could test not the keys properly and I found it to be kind of sad in terms of the type of experience so and it's just unwieldy for me in general so nothing that large please anyone well in and I think there's another I I spent a couple days trying to make an HTC touch Pro Windows Mobile a slider keyboard phone my daily driver but there was something that I loved going back Windows Mobile it's basically a pocketable form of Windows XP I in in a form factor that was just a teeny bit bigger than a Nokia candy bar I would really like to go back to that having a smaller but thicker phone that could expand shape in some way and offer up you know sort of a streamlined experience when I need it a more robust experience and then augment that with a smart assistant AI or heads-up display in my glasses something else where I could move more pieces of information around and I could use that more modularly with all of the other accessories that I already am going to be investing in there was something really charming about going back to that firm factor and I wish it was something we could still experiment with today I'm I am getting a little tired of like well we've got another six inch screen phone and it's a tube line one aspect ratio and it's glass with a glass back and that's how you make a phone I I think that's gonna feel like the death of the smartphone as a platform if our design stays that stale this so we let's hopefully something will make us excited in a smart phones again in terms of industrial design but until then but I guess they get to keep boring us in the way that they want to well I mean that's it that's before if the the revolutionary and disruptive change doesn't come from a Samsung or doesn't come from an apple it's gonna come from someone else so this year I think will be interesting to see where they put resources towards to hopefully capitalize on doing something that really does shake up the market and I have every every belief that a Samsung could do that it's just whether I have a concern over Apple because of how safe they need to keep iOS for their revenue but I think any company could conceivably do something that would that would take consumers by storm it's just how much risk are they willing to engage with and one more question here from fat produce hey Jules what phone would you use for the old phone challenge oh boy this is gonna be a tough one for me and I haven't fought this one completely through the the parameters would have to be set really weird but maybe perhaps Nexus one I'd love to see you know proto Android stage kind of dilemma pre its I mean when I'd be curious about Windows Mobile or even Palm OS as well but you know at least you know there's good the background to those things would be less familiar to me and would be and it would be more limited to what I'm already used to yeah and well like I know you know the old phone challenges you know it's supposed to you know restrict yourself and and and enjoy the experience as is as presented but I don't know it's still you know you want you to go back there it's kind of a foreign land to be a way to foreign land they've had that's not so I think what's sort of charming about checking some of that stuff out is hey know we've we've come a long way so yeah it's a IIIi think you know going back that far it is it's it's like we had a completely different metaphor and a completely different user experience in mind than what we arrived at today and the assumptions and the predictions that we were making back then really have nothing to do with the current consumer commodity device that we all have to carry around with ourselves today hmm indeed I think I enjoyed this show we had a red wine and we have our spicier shows yeah one trivial argument and then one kind of as you know some substantive volley going on there it was very nice well and and we would definitely hope that folks join that conversation shoot us some comments Judas some messages hit us up with some emails III want to hear what you guys have to say about our various topics of discussion and debate but folks this episode of the PocketNow weekly is now over the conversation continues on Twitter on email on various messaging platforms of your choice you can catch Jules as at point Jules on the Twitter's and I'm humbly at some gadget guy pocket now is around the web on Twitter Instagram Facebook Google+ YouTube our home site pocketnow.com and if you speak the Spanish check out es pocketnow.com shows like this cannot exist without your support sharing weekly with your friends who love mobile technology and dropping reviews on iTunes stitcher Google Play or wherever else a podcast review can be left once again we want to thank this week's sponsor the Google cloud platform I definitely check out what their services can mean for your business 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 in what can your data tell you with Google cloud platform use machine learning at 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