Gadgetory

hey everyone welcome to a second try of pocket now live here we're talking about HTC know or now we're talking we're talking about facebook home we tried to do this hangout and there was a Google server error which is kind of crazy and so everything that we did is now erased into the internet interwebs stratosphere thing yeah good animation Steven so we're going to do this again this is going to be a really quick round table discussion we're talking about facebook home which of course is a new launcher effectively from facebook that replaces your android home screen and gives you updates kind of been a big immersive way of what your friends are doing it's kind of like your news feed on your home screen and it also is this concept of chat bubbles cue the graphic okay you catching me off guard man the chat bubble thing is kind of a really cool a really cool way the launcher sort of flows out of the operating system are out of the launcher and it allows you to I want to click over here Taylor looks pretty bad video is a different all right there we go so there there as you can see is a little chat bubble which is basically a persistent picture of someone's face that follows you throughout the operating system whether you're in your email your calendar your Twitter or whatever and with one touch you tap on the person's name and the kind of chat box opens up and those little chat bubbles the chat heads are stuck to the corners of the screen you can't put it in the center so it kind of messes up what you're doing it kind of floats all around so we're trying to figure out here if we are actually excited about facebook home if it's something that we would find ourselves personally using and and and all about oh these guys here we've got I'm a Steven and Taylor we are all probably a different demographic than what facebook had in mind for facebook home because we're we're older we kind of gotten to the Facebook thing in college meaning we didn't grow up with it from middle school to high school like the generation before us did but nevertheless we are still low tech so we care a lot about this stuff so to start things off just to get some context dear I want to talk about how you guys use Facebook so that we can kind of paint the picture here so let's start off with Stephen how do you use facebook I do not use Facebook and I used to it's sort of you know trailed off over a few years and I think I haven't even logged on in about a year and a half now so for me facebook is a thing of the past alright that's quick count canceled not cancelled like it's the river the password alright that's that's good and it's good that we have you here Stephen to represent the person that doesn't use facebook for for various reasons Taylor what is your facebook usage look like i use facebook primarily and actually only for friends and family and that's personal friends not really people i meet online or even really old high school friends or on there but i just kind of ignore them I've hidden most people from my newsfeed so I log on every day but I don't really use it all that much so you this every day after your morning cup of coffee when you walk down the hallway and well you know where it goes from there yeah facebook is an awesome way to pass the time when you are on the bathroom in the back okay I may how do you use how to use Facebook how often you use it same is taylor i use it pretty much in the bathroom or coffee just to keep up with family and old friends I I live in a city where I don't have all my friends are in my hometown or all my brothers and sisters are out of here so that's the only way I connect with them and that's the only reason why i use it so even if i have a ton of friends I all the people that I have accepted our people that I actually know but still you know I don't keep up with everybody I guess I'm i'ma I've been a bad facebook user for the past year you can see it that's all right there are all different kinds of facebook users the most common of course is the stalker variety those that just sit there with the stream open and see what other people are doing but never actually participate themselves so the question now becomes really don't admit it mark might be watching he's gonna take your account offline you must participate be part of yet it must be a social person sorry suck sorry so the operative question here and the reason we're having this roundtable discussion is to talk about whether we would use Facebook home meaning whether we would replace the launcher that we have right now which probably contains stuff like a link to your email link to your calendar maybe a widget showing you twitter updates or whatever if you want to replace that with a completely immersive facebook experience and I guess we'll start off with Stephen I guess the bush ever used even is this something that would make you go back to Facebook you I really can't see that happening from what we've seen of Facebook home it's impressive it's it's great that someone's finally done something like this I don't think it's going to be enough to personally draw me back into to everything that Facebook is I still think it's an important piece of software though because while the alternate launchers have been available for the longest time now it's kind of been like a techie thing to do we haven't seen a commercial company really release a product like this that for a mass appeal so even if you know I personally are not going to be jumping on the facebook-owned bandwagon here I really am intrigued to see what other companies do with it you know if we see other social sites or just sharing sites release their own spin on this I think that could be really interesting yeah and and that's a really good point we were talking about earlier which is that this can open up this new space of launchers I mean the techies know that for the longest time since the beginning you've been able to replace your android launcher when you hit the home button what's happening on your phone is that it's launching an application that is your launcher and and you use your launcher all the time people call it your home screen or whatever and the glorious thing about androids that you can change your launcher now imagine having a launcher from amazon or from ESPN Oh label I mean autoroute go broke yeah you should go you would go broke but imagine if imagine event amazon created a launcher where if you have this thing on your home screen it would send you deals or free things or in exchange for using it you could get like coupons for ten dollars off of your mouth or something this facebook home thing is opening up his possibility of all of these different third-party launchers beyond apex launcher a nova launcher and an ADW and all those awesome existing launchers will go back to you Taylor do you see yourself as using Facebook home for your full-time launcher on your android phone probably not as I said the first time around i use facebook primarily for family and my sister at a child last week and if it weren't for facebook i probably wouldn't have known that um because we just don't stay in contact too closely and I don't need a home screen dedicated to my sister's awful as that may sound but but if you had facebook home if you had facebook home and your sister had the baby you turn on your phone on the lock screen you'd see this information well I'd probably end up seeing something else that we don't want to talk about my friends post terrible pictures what do you think I get but if there were you like I said Google+ as a Google+ home I would totally use it I wouldn't I star when he was home I totally would you and use a google plus home what about You Jaime would you use a Facebook home or even a google plus some what do you think I'm definitely gonna try it um the problem with facebook home would I think it's a bold move just a Stephen I feel that it's a full boob that Facebook is doing I feel that the launcher is kind of it's a different way of doing Android there's no widgets here it's like a an immediate launch or photos where you can do messaging but I'm a little skeptical first of all because the facebook application has never been good on Android oh yeah it's tough it's it's always been terrible you don't know what native did you notice how they went native and you thought it would be asked iOS but it's not it's still climbing no it is still clunky and so I'm really skeptical that this launcher is just gonna be a clunky launcher so but I guess my first thing would be I'm gonna give it a try if it's good then I'll bet it'll depend how smart is this is this launcher because I have a thousand people on my facebook but I don't want to Steve farmville updates or photos of their new farms or stuff like that I want to see updates of people that I really care about so it depends on how smart this launcher is to know what I want that's two and the third thing is their messenger sucks it still sucks so even if you get the bubbles it is still something that I avoid because it's just terrible it's just always clunky and never updates on time it always forgets to alert me and so therefore i'm more of a whatsapp guy and so i don't know i'll obviously give it a try but if on day one it won't you know make my experience with my galaxy note 2 any better than i'm just ditching it that's the way it's gonna be yeah something to mention about messaging is that with facebook home they integrate SMS and Facebook messaging and facebook like just likes to act as a facebook Messenger is like V thing but it really isn't there's there's whatsapp there's email there's I message there's so many messaging platforms that facebook is just just another one in a sea of many um so I guess I guess I just felt but I just wanted to say basically for it to be great like facebook wants it to be you're gonna have to be your own curator yeah you're gonna have to sit there and sift through all the crap and hide it from your newsfeed and then it will look decent unless they have some intelligence built in which I don't think they do because I think like hi May most people have stuff in their stream that they don't care about and if Facebook got smart and understanding like what stuff you actually care about and what stuff you don't and and they kind of leave it up to the user like you can easily unfriend there's an option to hide things from your new stream but most people don't want to do that especially those of us who have had like five years ago went gung-ho with Facebook and added 500 friend dear Aunt Sally who you've never even met in your life for some reason you're friends with her um if Facebook home had some filtering ability that was better than what you get in the app and I think that would that would be compelling kind of kind of like Pandora if if something showed up on your cover feed and you just gave it a thumbs down it doesn't let that person know your thumbs down it but it doesn't show up again that would be something like that would be great but they don't have that there's no curation it is your newsfeed that was it was on the video that I watched it's just straight news feed yeah yeah I think that there's something interesting obviously facebook is very clear on their demographic um that's the reason why the HTC first is a cheap phone it's it's a mid tiered a kind of an ironic phone because you get a terrible camera 5 megapixels not ultrapixels 5 megapixels for a phone that you're supposed to take photos with to show on facebook um but you know it's clear that Facebook is clear that what they want is to tailor to teenagers and you know it's obvious that they're gonna start there sadly teenagers are more moving moving into the iphone group than android or at least that's my personal impression i see more teenagers with iphones then with android phone so it's gonna be kind of interesting to see what goes on because i'm not sure a teenager is gonna be it's gonna want to be stuck on that HTC first we keep hearing the teens are moving away from the Dai phones aren't cool anymore or not it's a it used to be an aspirational advice expensive thing that mom and dad only had then the iphone came down in price and they left the old model and they kept doing that and I think that I I think you're right Steve and I think now that they want the galaxy s3 they want the they want the HTC One they don't want the distinct an iphone anymore and I can or jump this okay gorilla case let's something time I was saying earlier about Facebook being clunky on Android we've only heard about this coming too I mean the first maybe a mid-range device but it's got you know a modern ship on there and the bones would be the phones we've heard that the app is going to come out for our you know talk to your phones from this year with last year's it's ever going to be available for the galaxy yes to what if you don't have a relatively moderate phone we never be able to use you got a great man upgrade to the HTC first but you gotta get the HTC one son I mean I should be there marketing message yet the HTC One soon again I think that it's a very bold move from facebook I I want to give it a try I I will obviously give it a try but you know it's not something that I'm gonna forgive and wait for software update it's either gonna be good or it's gonna go back now they do have a rigorous update schedule that's a monthly they were saying every month is they have a monthly update cycle for their apps the Android app on facebook still sucks even though it gets updated every month so i don't really i don't i don't think that that's really bad come hell yeah well now i mean i agree to that sucks but who knows so stuffy so i'm gonna i'm gonna say a couple things and then we're going to quickly talk about the HTC first and then we're gonna wrap this up but we want to keep it short so to answer to answer my question about whether i would use HTC home the answer is no because it doesn't play to the way that i use my phone I I use my phone as a tool as a Productivity tool to get news and information and do email and I need that stuff front and center and I need widgets to be front and center and I need the versatility of the android home screen to bring all of this stuff into my launcher so that when i turn on my phone boom email boom calendar facebook is like a small portion of what i do on my phone it's entertainment I don't want entertainment on my phone but I could definitely see people that would want this front and center like the people who whose lives are their friends everything that they do is around their friends my my wife's cousin 13 year old girl she spends so much time on Facebook I think it makes me cry because I just think about all the time I think about all the time should be spending reading books or like doing chores for her parents and um and it's just it's ridiculous so sort of this 1990 okay we need that we need to bring back the 90s man yes we do those were good years is good years they're forgotten so they're not forgotten all right I'm still listening to him to be party to go hey send me that on Spotify sure no prob but still good guys the wrapping things up here we've got this new phone the HTC first which I think it's gone under the radar a little bit because we've all been fantasizing about a 4.3 inch phone that has a high resolution screen we're at 720p and it's got the qualcomm snapdragon 400 which as i recall is the it's a dual-core chip so it's I think it's the successor to the s4 vs for the s4 vs 4 so it's not quite the s4 pro it's probably a little bit weaker than the s4 pro and of course the 600 and 800 are the best of the best so this is a really fast phone and I'm kind of thinking you take that phone you put cyanogen mod 10 on it or even you take the phone and you install apex launcher so that Facebook home was gone you've got a darn cool little phone what do you guys think about the the first then the voice isn't bad before 50 off-contract I mean that's no Nexus 4 but that's a lot better than you know galaxy s4 is something or 50 not bad but here's working I mean you can get a nexus 4 for a lot less money yeah I know that there are two things about this phone first of all apparently you can turn off facebook phone a facebook home and you can run stock Android on this thing which is interesting but you know you can it you can turn it off really yeah apparently you can obviously it's it's still it's still in rumors but apparently you can which is which is cool I mean it's a you get stock Android on this thing but then you've got the nexus 4 so it makes you wonder I mean why are you gonna spend so much money on this phone will you go for a much cheaper better phone what criticized the no te that the nexus 4 is is 4.7 cuz I'm a so you got a good point there what LTE and and also the phone it's not that thin it's it's think it's got soft touch plastic I think it's going to be one of those phones it's like yeah I feel so good in the hand whereas the nexus 4 even though it's cheaper and has a better processor I don't think that's the most comfortable yeah it's got a carbon fiber on the back and then it's amazing there's the trash now um as far as the chips that goes I think the thing it's built on a smaller nanaman nanometer process which means it's a more fast or a faster more efficient ship than like the s4 pro so it's only dual cores but it's probably faster as far not maybe clock speed but its enemy it's gonna be fast and it's it's only 720p res and it's it's it's gonna be a good phone and if you can turn off the facebook home thing and just use it as like a sense 5 phone I might be knocking on some doors to see what's up I'm so stock it's totally stock yeah I said you would have to hack since fine on it oh snap I'd do that son you know how we roll alright so we're gonna we're gonna end this hangout here we've got another hangout coming up 2 p.m. today pocket now live were you guys who are watching and by the way thank you for watching can come on and talk to all of us and see what's up michael fisher will be on Tony will be on uh who else see you guys will be on Tommy nah me there's other guys so it'll be it'll be me me up those other guys and Michael will be here to answer your questions and now follow these guys on social network we've got Taylor at casper tech follow him he demand we've got Stephen Stephen shank he demand to what up and then we've got high Maat Jaime Rivera with an underscore in the middle and i am brandon minimun like cinnamon minion yeah listen listen just before we go just one closing question for all for you Brandon do you think that Mark Zuckerberg made a point in that phone shouldn't be about apps and instead about people because yeah we do we do want to can I in my opinion we do want to connect with people yes true but that's not the only thing I mean there's life beyond facebook and i think that when we grown up we've learned you know there's life beyond facebook can I stop you oh wait a second and the last thing the last thing you forget the second thing that I hated about that phone is that apparently within those software updates there will be ads on Facebook home at some point yes when I was getting too Zuckerberg can say it's all about people but all this was about this whole entire thing was how to get ads straight on your home screen it's pretty freaking smart exactly what it was if I were a facebook an investor I'd be pretty pretty excited by that news totally but this is not about people this is about ads on your whole money it's about believers in it's about Zuckerberg yeah but but what philosophically jaime proposed a good question and we ask ourselves this all the time what should be the center of your phone experience you've got android which puts apps at the center you've got windows phone which kind of tries to go away from that and does information and then of course iOS is is back to the apps thing I don't know I i like apps i I don't like going in and out of apps constantly but there's really no better way yet there's widgets but they don't always work so good thing that there's still potential in this industry to actually innovate we're going to end this hangout now we will see or I will see and some other guys from pocket now we'll see the rest of you in just a couple of hours 2 p.m. eastern join us for pocket now live gentlemen thank you for joining joining us here and we'll be getting an HTC first in for review very soon yeah so the provider ciao yeah