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okay Oh your life alive alright I'm gonna give it about five seconds this episode of the pocket not weekly is brought to you by ops Jeannie how many times have you made a mistake today frankly we all make them but some messes are worse than others so if you want to get your devs and Ops teams alerted and ready to go when things turn wrong with your business get ops Jeannie because with ops Jeannie your next incident doesn't stand a chance visit ops Jeannie comm to sign up for a free company account for up to five team members no credit card required that's o-p-s gen8 comm never miss an alert again with ops Jeannie from at least folk never miss an alert again from ops Deanie from Atlassian it took me a second there hopefully you'll be around with that Jules hey everybody I'm Joshua Vergara and we're rolling out looking for America's greatest diners drive-ins and actually it's not that show because we're just making a joke here because it's episode triple 300 weekly brought to you by Pacquiao xda-developers recorded on Friday the 22nd of November 2018 Black Friday if you will Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrated but a special greeting to those of you out there who might be listening to us in your cars as you escape the droves of people just trying to get into the Walmart store the targets for the best buys of the world here on Black Friday as it is upon us I am Joshua Vergara what's going on everybody and we have our crew of gentlemen back in the helm Jaime Rivera and Brandon minimun how's it going guys um a quick shout out I don't think I did this over the last couple of episodes but quick shout out to Helena's stone for that one episode that she did with us while I was gone but on that vein we also have another guest today as well we want to give a really warm welcome she's been with us before but in the year so since then she is not only proven herself to be one of the brightest voices on tech critique on YouTube but she's grown her clout with some of the biggest names on it like Casey nice that you know when we when I saw you at the 1 plus 60 event I was you saw me I was like should I say hi to Casey should I said Casey and you're over there like it was okay it's nothing but tech 88 aka Jacqueline Dallas welcome young yeah thank you so happy to see um what's in the background they're like where are you located you know it's actually I get SSL atomic gives it a green screen is it real it's like trees and stuff it looks good I think it's a little overexposed so the Logitech see Tony is not doing an amazing job but yeah it looks really good in a row and stuff try on MacBook Pros webcam that'll kill you yes as you want to or if you want that and a terrible angle you can use this one I finally used it on one of my daily video chats with my girlfriend and she's like changed the camera I don't want to see this and it's the day after Thanksgiving so after all of the crazy eating I I know my body yeah a little bit I'm on a diet so no all right cool oh yeah and that was the maple X Pro a little bit of a note from Jules I want to make sure to give him a shot oh he is in the booth today so you might be hearing from him as he chimes in in our chat alright so we are going to jump into our stories for today we have quite a bit of them but we are gonna go through some Black Friday stuff as well but let's start off with a phone that is coming up and apparently the Samsung Galaxy S 10 line up it's not just gonna be one phone or two phones I might even be up to three phones are slated to be announced or at least presented at CES 2019 which I mean after all of the stuff we've been through over the last couple of months to say that we're looking forward to CES 2019 might be a little bit of a stretch it's been a crazy few months and it's only getting worse talking about a stretch have you any idea how many weeks you're left know exactly the overwhelm that we're not even there yeah okay so with them being presented at CES 2019 they might even be available for purchase as early as February so this isn't even going to be an MWC type device anymore like they used to be well the thing is there are separate rumors one of them is like yes we're gonna see them at CES but then the other is like we're gonna see an other unit an extra unit like let's call that the Galaxy S 10 ultra yeah I heard about that yeah so that's apparently the one that's slated for MWC which is the one with 5g and what else was it it had six cameras that is our that is our new frontier apparently with Samsung I mean all these new phones exactly well okay Jack did you watch the developer conference Samsung's at all yeah I watched into it you watch some of it okay so six cameras this whole like punt like whole punch like yeah yeah so what are your thoughts on this s10 what it might bring to the table you know honestly so I've been a fan of like Samsung Galaxy devices for like the past couple years I really think they're doing a great job and the cameras especially for me like I take photos all the time my smartphone they're really good so five or six right it's a lot right but if they can actually do something with it and not just use it as like a marketing line I'd be like excited to see it someone's head is exploding I feel like cuz it's it's it's just gonna be four on the back we already had the meet 20 Pro which yeah we call it the stove on the back and then you have the front-facing camera but now there's gonna be two selfie cameras so yeah maybe I'm a huge fan of the wide-angle though yeah I'll be down for that if the if it's a wide-angle on the front with the audio quality that we've come to expect from Samsung cameras recording and stabilization you know so the pixel doesn't have stabilization on video with that wide yeah it doesn't that's the it's like the biggest missed opportunity but I will say this the pixel is definitely a camera it's not a camcorder the main cameras are great for video don't get me wrong but if you're vlogging with that front you're not gonna have a good time yeah they focus more so on photography especially because if you look at like the audio quality on it too definitely not the focus there yeah it's a jarring change I just released my review of the pixel finally asking who is this for and there's a section where I recorded it with the front-facing camera the audio like goes from here to like below the floor it's like it's a huge change anyway we're getting we're getting off topic here and your thoughts on the new Samsung Galaxy S 10 potentially every year there's a rumor that the phone's gonna come out the Galaxy S then the the phone's gonna come out earlier and earlier like January February and year I think they're actually going to bring it out early because it's the 10th version and there are going to be big changes finally and I think they're going to be significant don't you think they need to take more time I mean I don't know I it's I think that the more they space the phone the better I mean if they launch at CES with like I've got enough phones to review for like MWC next year yes like I've got so much stuff right now it's like damn it like I don't want to do another comparison because I need just I just need to get done with these reviews so by the time CES happens like there is still buzz for products that we're currently covering yeah yeah do you have a huge queue still Jacqueline I don't haven't yeah what your last phone was I have like 10 videos I have to make within like the next month oh my goodness yeah I'm trying to like be like Zen about all of them be like I'll get to it when I get to it but then it obviously you know it doesn't stop like it'll never stop hitting invitations man it's like yeah which is awesome like it's yeah I still get excited for all the events I don't know it's just I I love a break like every now and then and it goes crazy crazy crazy like you do MWC it's insane but it's probably my favorite show and then it's done and then you have like a couple of weeks like chill like for the next two to three weeks well right now it's like they don't want to stop and then they've got their holiday deals and then every all PR is like pitching back like how about your list for the holidays and how about your list and like yeah keep us in mind for your holiday guide oh yeah yeah that whole thing I'm new to that and I'm yeah I've been getting those demos as well so Jules is telling me here that you know speaking of one of Samsung's competitors just just kind of staying on the topic of CES we might be seeing maybe LG come out the woodwork because apparently they're keynoting the entire show which I didn't know until now and I'm like okay that's a bit of a push yeah would we see the foldable galaxy or at least the LG foldable at CES like oh that's so let's remember the LG G flex it was owned like every CES we had a G truth that's true you know and so I think it's it's probably time for it to come back yeah with like would like a Snapdragon 835 or something like that exactly something has to go wrong like I'm serious like what now LG what are you gonna miss now mm-hmm all right well shifting gears a little bit going from I mean CES is obviously something that we're gonna talk about going down the pipe but let's go into the past a little bit when we talk about Apple so Apple apparently even though they're never going to give out the official numbers apparently based upon a couple of moves that they're making perhaps the current phones are not really selling as well as they were hoping out in Japan the Wall Street Journal says that Apple is doing its best to boost the sales of the phone but another report is claiming that Apple has resumed production of the iPhone Tim yeah not the 10s but the past model mm-hmm so I mean during the keynote didn't they show all of the like last four generations of phones and said here here's the lineup that we have like I thought that they took the 10 off the list no oh okay well apparently yeah okay so Jules the same they did pass models are usually produced when there's enough demand to justify that and apparently there might be just enough to man or well maybe what they're doing is they want the 10 line to include the 10s they just want to have sales go up no matter what way they do yeah it's a lot of the same materials too because it's just like an S upgrade they probably have a lot of inventory left may as well make it ya know I mean the last time I think Apple did that was like with the iPhone 4 they had this like variant in India that was of lesser specs for the iPhone 4 yeah so it's at the time of the iPhone 4s and iPhone 5 already and then they decided to still produce the four but it wasn't available in all markets so that's that's interesting they have a contract to produce a certain number or to buy a certain of screens from their display manufacturers and so they have to buy those anyway so they're not going to build the tennis tennis max10 are they're going to put that into another phone that might actually sell a little better but but another thing that I heard about that that the news in Japan was that you know they were like highly subsidizing the 10r yes that's the one Apple was highly like offering crazy incentives for Japan to sell the 10r yeah honestly I'm kind of surprised like I really thought that the 10r was gonna sell well just because like thankfully the general consumer is there enough difference to justify in a thousand-dollar phone I don't think so I really thought that it was gonna do pretty well and I'm surprised that it's not selling that well at least in like the u.s. like I kind of knew that it wasn't gonna do well and the reason why is because budget phones nothing that's budget like anything that's budget in this planet cost 700 bucks let alone 800 yeah that's not budget territory like at all I mean their entry level iPad is 350 bucks there's a five nearly $500 price difference between that and their phone yeah it's just no like if that iPhone would have been priced at 550 or 650 which was the price of every iPhone before that like like right now I'm working on the 1 plus 60 review and it's like it's hilarious that the oneplus 60 right now is still $100 less expensive that every iPhone that's ever been sold yeah every like every iPhone was always priced at 650 but I feel like it's stupid because like people buy iPhones for this software in the ecosystem like I feel like all Apple products are always more expensive than we all think they should be but people are still buying it for like the ecosystem and stuff like that and you know yeah and there are companies like Sprint and team Sprint particularly has this deal where it's like iPhone forever where you get a new iPhone every year and you pay like a monthly thing and then Apple has that Cuddy call iPhone upgrade plan they have that iPhone upgrade plan where you can swap your iPhone every year and you also get AppleCare so yeah I plan and it works really yeah cuz I use an iPhone and an Android phone so just like made sense like because I'm like always reviewing the new one it made sense to just like you that plan yeah yeah no and I mean you get AppleCare I mean that alone makes that deal really good but I didn't think that 10r was gonna sell I'm like the colors are pretty but I mean Brandon can tell you I mean Brandon really loves that phone oh please I've been using I made four I mean forced me to use it for the last week and it's just not worth 750 the camera actually quite terrible oh no I had some hopes for that camera because it's a it's a quote-unquote cheaper Apple but oh boy was good yeah I thought the cam was the same as a 10x me too but it's not it's just it's worse especially in low-light you take a low-light picture and there's a good amount of light but then you zoom in and there's just noise and soft detail and it's just it's not as good as the tennis I think you're just predisposed you really hate that phone no I approach it with an open mind time I come on as he takes a drink you see that alright so um well the I don't know I'm just it this this brings up the question for me and I think this could be the final thought on this particular story like we were saying during our reviews I did the 10s max review here at pocket now for for anyone and then the iPhone 10 review came out very recently I meant from Jaime and the whole question was do you upgrade from the iPhone 10 to the 10s and it was kind of a hard question to answer but now if you're look if the iPhone 10 is back in production like is that the phone you get other than instead of the 10s I think Jeff I would not get the 10 yeah I wouldn't get the 10 either I would like that camera was bad that camera was really bad like you get a 10s and like dude in my comparison I was like okay the the differences are significant okay yeah in the camera department alone that the differences are significant and everything else no I don't think that the camera was like terrible on the 10 but I feel like now with the 10s out I don't think it's worth the short-term price difference to buy older phone okay that's fair that but it's just like the the iPhone sense camera was bad compared to every Android phone that launched last year like it didn't matter what I compared it to and then we had pixel to excel and then and then the b20 procane is such good cameras on phones and then the galaxy s 9 also killed it and I was like oh my god poor poor icon I'm sorry oh my god so even an even the 1 plus 6 in dynamic range would just it would just obliterate the iPhone 10 in dynamic range mmm yeah I do remember that that's something that I've always that's something that I haven't enjoyed about the tennis max is that pictures are always like they're not flat because because they they don't lack in color but they like in contrast so yeah that's not really the term but that's what they were going for it they were going for high shadows and making sure that everything was exposed right using their like smart HDR and it just made for pictures that just it's not the way I would edit them they just aren't so I feel like yeah I agree that I do a lot of camera comparisons on my channel and like when I was looking at especially video of the 1 plus 6 and the iPhone 10s the 1 plus 6 was so saturated that it was kind of hard to like bring that back and tone it down whereas a guy phone it wasn't great to start out but I think you have a little bit more editing flexibility than a phone that over saturates and like over adds contrast that's that's a good point all right so we have a few more stories here um let's let's talk about one of our old friends moto I did the review of the z3 and I'm actually I made me happy to see the picture on the article here that's that's my hand and that's my table but oh man it was great it's it's it's over there somewhere where I'm never gonna remember it again but it was just weird to review a Z device without any mods so it's not necessarily the fault of anybody it's just a phone did not come with lots so I wasn't really able to give the full experience of it and one thing that kind of made me sad about the Moto z3 was that this is supposed to be the last time that the current moto mods were going to be supported apparently that's changing because with the Moto XIV or apparently the current moto mods will be supported by it and it's it's still kind of it's not truly confirmed yet but obviously moto is trying to create more devices that will support the eventual 5g moto mod so of course everyone is really excited about 5g we're gonna hear a ton about it pretty soon and apparently this particular device codenamed Odin is only going to be on Verizon again it's the only carrier that has this word that is associated with it so it's gonna be another Verizon exclusive it's not gonna be a wide seller because of that you know I don't know there's this whole thing that we have here where we think that moto does make some pretty cool devices they have pretty cool concepts but yeah the it just doesn't seem like they're it seems like they're kind of shooting themselves in the foot a little bit when it comes to some of these choices any thoughts on a moto z4 are you happy for moto mods to be continued you know I actually I've always kind of liked Motorola devices but I've never actually tried out any of them would like the mods and stuff I don't know I think you have more expertise in this I've never I've only tried out like the Moto G 5 like they're more budget option Oh gotcha the G still managed to be pretty cool devices like it's alright as far as pricing goes and yeah but the Z's they're like they're trying really hard and it just doesn't seem like they're executing perfectly but you kind of give them that nada that pat on the shoulder for being like ok you're trying some decisions that are just I'm like what like snapdragon 835 on that you know on that latest Z no you know like PR not sending any moto mods I'm like what am I supposed to play with here cuz the reason I don't have moto mods because they asked for them back after the z2 review yeah and so is like what do you want me to do this with like that was one thing and then the other I'm not gonna go buy these things like are you crazy and and then you know some of these moto mods weren't really great like the Hasselblad was really bad now one was a disappointment for sure yeah yeah I'm shocked it has Allah was willing to put their brand on that thing like I'd like there are camera like regular smartphone cameras to take better photos but I guess for me it's just they made certain decisions like that shatter shield display on the previous model not optional like that's all you get which means like my my review unit is scratched AF it's really bad and you know for some people that's great I don't care about shadow shown so it's just they keep doing these weird things really weird things that you know are not trendy at all very experimental yeah yeah for sure speaking of experimental Jules just just mentioned that the Z form might be using a non 5g version of a future potential processor the Snapdragon 855 which to me is like okay I get it that you want to to cut the cost and then put those costs into promoting the 5g moto mod that that itself is gonna be more money on top of a device yeah like that's gonna be more money on top of a device that could already support 5g out of the box but then you want to have this extra piece on the back but if gradable so you know that's that's an exciting marketing line well this was the thing that I was saying earlier on when we were when we really were getting into 5g talk and I know everyone's kind of sick of like some 5g talk and whatnot but this is this is really where our industry is gonna be going so two three years from now when your internet is really fast you're gonna thank us for really diving into this kind of topic but what I was saying before was wouldn't it be a bad idea to have something like a separate peripheral for 5g when processors are already going to be supporting it at the earliest six months from now yeah that's exactly what's happening a moto right now ads like thickness and cost and like what if you forget it I don't know I don't think that's like the best decision to do that neither neither but you know it could just tell us something I don't know if you guys remember every single time that there's been a deployment of a need G it requires this like there's this like growing curve and so if you remember like when the HTC Thunderbolt came out probably too many years ago it had her like the modem was completely separate from the chipset it wasn't until later that they were able to integrate the modem into the chip and so obviously there was it was very it was not optimized at all like it was bad it was really bad so I don't know man I I have a feeling that 5g might not necessarily I think that there's gonna be that we probably will go through a stage where probably next year's phones will not necessarily either I don't think many phones will bring 5g next year like I feel it they'll be 5d capable or that it'll probably be optional and you pay extra for that variant that includes the 5g and i and i'm and i'm i don't know i could just smell it the modem it's gonna be like a separate chip in the phone if you buy it or i don't know man something like that it's also the infrastructure might not even be fully in place exactly to take advantage of it so final question for everybody so are we thinking that it's better to just sort of upgrade this upcoming year and set out all of the first gen 5g phones just kind of sit out all of the ones that are really pushing 5g super hard and just not worry about them for now I would say that if you live in a city that is likely to get 5g sooner like you know San Francisco New York then yeah get a 5g phone because you're gonna have access to that a lot sooner but if you're in like the middle of farm country then should probably wait a long time or significant but see but see that's the thing so the whole 5g wave is the fact that getting connectivity to this farm country is gonna be easier because of a millimeter wave I think it's still gonna take longer for them to bring it out there true that true that but you know millimeter wave has that advantage it's literally HF frequency to a certain degree I guess and so it's it's easier to spread it out like you know I don't think it to get it out there but do you have to build to make that happen and also I feel like it like depends on pricing to like how much more expensive is it going to be to get five gene is that really worth it to you well a hot take from you then is speaking of first gen devices we're talking first gen 5g how about first gen foldables would you be down for that first gen are you gonna are you gonna be an early adopter or are you gonna tell people let's chill and make sure that it's good first you know I think for the general consumer that doesn't have a ton of money to spend her as gonna get a ton of devices I don't think that they should do it because I feel like there's gonna be a lot of durability issues and it's gonna be really expensive for me when I'm constantly reviewing a new phone like every single month I'm definitely gonna want to try it and also like years ago I always wanted a phone that was like small and then like slide out to be full-size and this is like a little different but I feel like it's a similar idea so like that gets me excited that we're moving in a way to get like a small form factor but a big screen when we want it definitely gonna want to try it but I think that the Samsung one is like what was it like 1300 or something like that yeah something like that yeah it's expensive yeah so I just don't I don't think that's good for the general consumer especially a first gen product when second gen is probably gonna be significantly better okay I agree with Jacqueline that this this this is not going to be for the general public but for us it's like the dream so we've been waiting for for a very long time its form reform back there where if you have an own device like then transform into a tablet when you need more supriya it's about I gotta use it you know i think i think i'm just still favored by the by the axon I don't know man I I think that this is a solution in search of a problem because you can buy very cheap Amazon fire tablets right now for like 200 bucks we've been doing we've been doing it for so long you know it's just the thing about it is do you really want to haul a thick phone in your pocket just because you can turn it into a tablet is the question - good point yeah that is the question so back in the day when we used to use like the slider smart phones it made sense because all of us were carrying this dumb holster and are in our felt and so the phone will fall in there and it wouldn't go into our pocket and you know iPhones changed that work the phone became much slimmer there was no secondary but you know portion or surface and so you were able to put it in your pocket and now we're ii and so the holsters died like they would big died and so the question is are you really will like if you grab the necks on em and you try to put it in your pocket that thing does not look good like at all that's a phone from like three years ago in like five years from now these foldable phone we'll be the same size as regular phones and they will they will open up I mean it's there's me no compromises it's gonna be the same kind of footprint as a regular phone but it opens up to have a tablet I don't I don't feel that's gonna happen Brandon because battery technology is not there yet battery can only batteries have only gotten denser but not significantly so every single technology in the world has has miniaturized every single one except batteries yeah battery technology is like one of the most like one of the things that we actually need the most like long battery life and there's been so little improvement exactly exactly and so if you think about it the biggest problem when you have three displays on a product is you need more battery that's true is gonna have like it's gonna have like two hours of screen on time we're gonna go ahead and pick up the pace a little bit for our final stories on this segment since they are all pretty lights but I want to give one quick shout out that last story about the moto mods and the Moto z4 was made possible by XT developers who are ported on many of the details behind that story so good shout out to you guys XDA all right so you mentioned HTC a little while ago I'm a so let's let's talk about that a little bit okay so HTC apparently so they haven't gone away and the U 13 is apparently going to be a thing but there is going to be a shift in how the U 13 the theoretical u 13 will be will be put out and apparently it's not going to be a flagship anymore it might become something else it might become more of a mid flagship and according to a source that Phandroid it's going to follow the you 12 plus but it's going to be not a full flagship phone is this a move that now granted hopefully the price will be a little bit lower but is this is this a shift that we're okay with with HTC or is this even more of the nails in the coffin as as it were I hope that came up on that stream I love they see I just I I grab the you 12 plus and I'm like Mike what are you guys thinking all you needed to do was to graduate the Utah what was that no not the you 11 yeah the 46 piece yet grab the you 11 and you know put it on edge to edge screen over that design that's gonna be a great phone but no they they came up with this like these like weird capacitive buttons that work horribly and that you could peel off like like it's funny because of my are calling here Sam I gave him the phone initially for him to do the Spanish review and he's like I'm done here have a better response it was like I don't want to use that thing so you know honestly I still have like a soft spot for HTC because I love their m8 with like the boom sound speakers and I feel like at that point they were still like kind of a player in the industry as I struggle with these headphones um those are pixel buds no there okay so what happened is I was like oh my way to the office I was like oh no I forgot headphones I went out and I bought these like cheap $15 headphones and you're actually the worst anyways so I have like a soft spot for them but the last couple years I don't know what they've been up to you honestly yeah definitely Brendan you've been like like a zit word you know you return to this particular stage have you been watching the HTC let's say growth or D growth if we can put it that way after the amazing original HTC one the m7 I tried the eight and all of the subsequent phones and I just stopped I gave up because they were all they all were disappointing so I stopped you know HTC was on top a long time ago but I I've stopped caring since the m1 or the m7 and then so sad because like xda-developers like the name XDA came from a sub brand from HTC oh yeah XD so XDA HQ tech i mate all these were HTC sub brands here's a fun fact Oh - which is a carrier in Europe came out with the XDA phone which was a spin on the the phrase PDA you know personal the ex was supposed to imply extreme so the extreme digital assistant and so that was the original XDA device and I don't think a lot of people know that it's a little one fact do you do you have one no but Wikipedia does a few I feel like we should hunt that down particularly had a ton of variants like it was on AT&T it had like four buttons on each one on each corner in addition to a d-pad it was just it was weird I but those really good times and I still have a ton of HTC products I do I wish them well it's just like right now even with this pixel 3xl which is pretty much an HTC phone if you think about it oh I'm like my god like I could totally tell this was not made by LG and I'm sad there was a time when like like the pixel to excel was not my favorite looking phone but it didn't look bad and it felt really light it felt really good and then I grabbed this phone and I'm like my god like there are corners cut on this design yeah I mean I I I will concede the design of the pixel 3 is a little like it there's so much more that I could have done to streamline the overall design there are good things about it's it's it's like I said like I said in my review it's the most disappointing phone that I use every single day [Laughter] alright so speaking of Google and I'm staring right at my pixel 3 sitting on the the pixel stand right now Google assistants apparently is now even more integrated into our iPhones yeah this is kind of cool actually a cool quick warning so anybody who's listening right now and they have their hot words turned on apparently now you can activate Siri and then after you activate Siri you can program a phrase but typically it's of course okay G okay Google you could say that and whatever comes after that we'll go straight to Google assistant as it is installed on and I found bridging that gap just sort of in the iPhones like one thing that I loved about the 10s max review was that I did have to feel like I was actually giving up too much because you can download all the google applications all the Google ecosystem can work pretty well on an iPhone and now this is just another step towards that yeah do you even use Siri do you say I use Siri for reminders like I'm like oh I don't want to I don't want to trigger it right now but I say hey that name and then I say can you set a reminder for like whatever time bring my headphones which was not successful day or whatever it is I never use it for anything else okay it's like set an alarm for tomorrow with this or set an appointment for that or setup set a reminder that's pretty much all I use Siri for that soon how about assistance in general like is Google assistant one of those I used Google assistant quite a lot to be honest yeah so I have never used an echo there's one behind me so I can't say the a-word right now oh oh but I so i oh my god so i could literally be out in the balcony and I could from the balcony talk to it in like whisper tone from a distance and it'll like in the far field communication from that thing is it's wow like so good really good really really good do you know what blue light on the top of the echo if when you trigger the a word there's a there's a lighter blue light that goes to where it thinks you it hears the voice it's a fun little little fun fact I'm full of them today think about like the Google Home Hub versus the echo like the echo one that has a display - oh yeah oh oh the show that the small little dot the bigger one with this it's like a bigger oh that's great it's like a little bit bigger than Google Home Hub yeah that's a screen is a screen battle in this case yeah let's talk let's throw that let's throw the portal in there let's throw the Facebook port number - kidding are you getting a home hub Declan I think so you know for Black Friday actually this is like convenient timing it's $50 off so it's only 99 versus like 149 it's good dear read off your entire affiliate link Jacqueline Minsky Yeah right alright cool so we have one last story one thing really quick and as it turns out Xiaomi has been making so many moves lately one thing that was not mentioned in this story or one one of our topics was not that Xiaomi bought outs really popular Chinese company made - and me - makes these phones that are only available in Hong Kong China Taiwan that take incredible selfies because they add so like their beauty mode I'm not the mean you mean the ion otha the Ayane phone exactly and yeah it's it they're all about their selfies and I was actually really impressed with what they did on there even though I'm not a beauty mode advocate but my girlfriend Lisa is is definitely that's like her favorite phone but anyway show me buying on me to means that that phone might have more distribution so kind of excited about that but on the other hand Xiaomi just opened 500 stores in India all at once which broke a world record they are in the Guinness Book of World Records now because of how many stores they opened it's pretty awesome okay so they I did see I did see that they're going to open up some use some other stores and other markets they did just start in the UK I saw a me store in where were we Paris when I was there a couple weeks ago which was kind of cool and apparently there's gonna be a major US announcement on December 8th which I only just now like found out via this story too bad when I'm not gonna be there but anyway Jacqueline are you gonna be around for for that I think I'm actually gonna be away for that - oh like what I don't know what they would be doing but like what a me store in the u.s. excite you guys sells a lot more than just phones like exactly yeah they sell scooters which would be perfect in New York they sell apparel they sell saris like they've got a lot of stuff and think about Xiaomi products is like for example I have their wireless chargers and even if even if that wireless charger does not include a fast power brick if you use any quick charge three power brick on it it'll provide fast charging to whatever phone you put on it no nice yeah if the phone is compatible with fast wireless charging that charger will provide it and that charger is literally twenty dollars twenty dollars yeah they offer really good budget stuff that like I feel like if they launch the store in New York people will just go like not necessarily knowing the brand and then just get like good tech products that don't like break the bank yeah no no they don't break the bank they don't break like oh my god like they're mimics it's a ceramic phone for 500 bucks yeah high-end specs yeah full spec pull everything it's just the only thing that's bad with that phone is that software but then they make money out of that software so I totally understand the existence of it mm-hmm yeah honestly no that's like one of the brands that is really like exciting to me this year like I feel like they have a lot of potential with their devices this year this company is also somewhat invasive because there are products that I didn't even know were developed by Xiaomi and then I look on the side and there's a me logo there the oculus go is a Xiaomi developed product yeah there's a real animal side that everybody I have an unboxing mine yeah so when you unboxing you finally look at the the invite because I don't know if you you've probably seen it on social media right yeah you've I it's via oculus goes yeah I saw that that is so cool which is pretty dumb it's still in its box dude it's like it's we went one time last year and it was always pretty awesome Brendan how do you have any Yami products at all I have to say right Xiaomi products Xiaomi no but it's super interesting to see the wide array of products that they have you know they have the smart rice cooker for China their air purifier they even may even make a smart toothbrush it's I'm serious if you go to you go to me.com it's just unbelievable how many products they make and their stores I mean Josh we were in Shanghai and so you if you remember after we did that tower you know there was the store below the tower in right in front of it like the store was packed and it was so well distributed it had everything it had from what do you call these like hoverboards they had hoverboards they had they had absolutely every like they had fans they sell fans it's crazy only random things they sell Isis they're controlled with Wi-Fi so you can have the me app and control everything yes exactly the only problem with that is though if they were to open up stores here and start selling their ecosystem stuff the me app has to work here and I think that's their biggest hurdle at the moment because I tried using that thing and it did not work with the smart bulb that I that I got and and the other thing too is up until that point the me app only really worked on xiaomi phones which was kind of a weird way a weird thing that they did in any case one more thing from Jules over here the while they have a lot of ecosystem sales smartphones have been their biggest breadwinner so thirty three point three million phones in q3 and it's a lot but it's almost not surprising considering how ad costs did they sell these phones at that's true I feel like if I asked my friends nine out of 10 people will not know the brand oh yeah hundred percent and it's the hardest thing to pronounce that's the thing but in China they are they are huge it's literally fandom it's like like I think people in China they are fans of iPhones first sadly and then second would be Xiaomi like they go crazy over that and it's like I'd like their business model is like the most interesting the only reason why Xiaomi is possible is because Google is not in China that's just the way it is because they control the App Store and they literally control that apps will pay to promote themselves on the App Store and that's how they make their money and that for them a phone is just a terminal where as they make their income out of out of out of their stores and you know just like most of their executives are ex-google most of the challengers like their high profile executives all came from Google so you know it's that they literally it's like if they built the the next variant of Google in China it's it's weird yes actually yeah there's a lot there's a lot of experience in the Xiaomi upper upper echelon and it shows you know they're they're very successful company despite being only in some markets but they're there going hard in India and India loves their Xiaomi products alright so with that those are all of our stories for this first segment we're gonna go ahead and go into our break and we'll be right back okay the bacchanal weekly comes to you with the help of caseta by Lutron and today i want to talk to you about casada by Lutron smart lighting control brought to you by Lutron pioneers in smart home technology with coz-theta you can schedule your lights to come on at dusk so your family always comes back to a well at home now it's all about now it's not about changing all the bulbs you're going to have to replace from time to time no you're not you're actually gonna be changing the light switches it's pretty easy to do you just need a screwdriver and 15 minutes once that's done every light bulb becomes a smart light bulb all you need to do to control them is flick the switch or tell your smart home assistant to turn it on or off that makes lighting your home fast and easy how easy well Jules our producer has been testing the switches out and it's really helped him out in the morning even after 6 o'clock is still pretty dark out where he is so no thanks to daylight savings time and the coming of winter but that's why he said his bedroom lights to turn on with his alarm so that he can get up get showered pack his bags and not miss the damn bus to New York again in any case get smart lighting and get it the way in any case get smart lighting and get it the smart way with caseta by Lutron search for cas ETA or check out Lutron comm to learn more caseta by Lutron welcome home it's a peace of mind alright so we are back and I actually have an idea for our Black Friday episode we are going to talk about some Black Friday deals in a little bit but this is a this is an idea that I had for a video that won by the wayside once I got done eating our like luncheon feast yesterday because I just I died yesterday for like four hours after all the food I'm fine I'll be okay it's just I clearly can feel like my body hates me after yesterday but I hope everyone great thanks for giving and I said you know all of us here on the panel can talk a little bit about what we did on Thanksgiving and whatnot but you can go ahead and say a little bit about that but what I really wanted to ask everyone is because it's Thanksgiving or it was what what were you most thankful for in this year of 2018 when it comes to tech and I can open it up it doesn't have to be smartphones per se but you know 2018 what do you think before this year let's start with Brandon actually I kind of want to start with with Brandon over there yeah so mine is kind of weird and it's it's not necessarily something that occurred in 2018 rather something I've rediscovered in 2018 that's fine and it's going to sound really strange with hang with me for a sec and what I rediscovered in 2018 was satellite radio whoo very strange but about 10 years ago I got a new car and the new car had satellite radio with a free like one-year trial and I'm like oh this is cool turns out satellite radio 10 years ago was terrible the audio quality was probably around 100 kilobits per second which is under CD quality the reception was so poor where if you went under a tree which you do frequently in the suburbs the signal would crap out and then the programming was kind of mediocre I mean you got Howard Stern of course but besides that the channels were kind of weird there's like top 40 there was jazz and classical and things like that this year I gave it another try and it has made my life measurably better first of all the reception issues are solved I guess maybe the new the new antennas are much better or the satellites got stronger or something the audio quality has improved and most most importantly the content has gotten so much better there are radio stations with fantastic playlists for really anybody I'll just give you a couple of examples they have a channel called fly which is 90s hip-hop like the good stuff like Tupac notorious b.i.g Bone Thugs like none of this like black eyed peas crap that you hear on the radio so fantastic DJ's great playlist with no commercials of course I even found a station for hard rock from the 90s and 2000 so you got like Korn Metallica you know if you are in the Hard Rock it's just I was a hard left Breton it's it's so good and of course there are apps on all devices so you can listen all your channels in different places it's five dollars a month which is kind of annoying if you're already paying for Spotify I was about to say Jules was just throwing shade at you it's an expensive version of Spotify radio than huh it's much better than Spotify radio because human beings are curating these playlists and they're just fantastic okay it's so good so that there's also a lot of spoken word content on satellite radio isn't there like there's it's almost like there's podcasts but it's yeah talk radio right and human beings have good taste that's the present company excluded how about you Jacquelyn what uh what have you been thankful for in 2018 um alright so I feel like I'm thankful for one device and not necessarily like the device but what they're doing differently so I just made our viewing the up of fine decks a couple weeks ago and I'm thankful that a company is trying to do something about the knotch and like well I don't necessarily think that it's like the best thing for the consumer with durability issues and an expensive price I think it's really interesting that a company is like really actually thinking about it so much that they like redesign what we're using a typical smartphone so I'm thankful for that but I'm also excited for what that means like the future of a bezel is this place you and I are you know right on the same wavelength Jacqueline because I was going to say my short answer is my practical answer is noise cancelling headphones I finally got my first pair this year it was at the very beginning of this year and it's completely changed my travel like I love noise cancelling headphones now and in my case I have the Sony Mark twos I know the more threes are out now but I love those to death but I was actually going to say in in in the video that I was gonna do until I food coma the I'm actually thankful for the notch like are you really I may not like it I may not enjoy it but it's because of the notch that we have the fine X it's because of the notch we have the slider phone back and it's because of the notch that companies are actually trying new things so yeah and a weird roundabout way I think we have to give a little bit of gratitude for this aberration that appeared ah yes alright I'm Jaime oh my god Jules you want to shine man with what you're thankful for first I have no idea no I think Jules Amiad but ok so for me it's wow this it's interesting because I don't think I'm actually thankful for anything in particular I'm just thankful that companies are back to being excited about making good stuff we went through a slump over the last couple of years we're company companies were not really making money out of phones and so we solid the mess of a few companies we saw you know companies being coming coming up to you and keynotes being like yeah phones have gotten weird but we've got here this really awesome phone which was just as boring but you know it wasn't really anything better and I'm just I'm happy to be part of a ton of events as I've had and to see this like push and excitement from these companies just working hard on on coming up with better things I feel that we've it's like if the period of mediocre products in technology is ending I've noticed that even less expensive products are really good like the poco phone IV I feel that these products are necessary I feel that so here's the thing I come from a very different background Latin America most of my friends will go crazy over one plus 6 they can't afford one you know even a one plus six and so for two you know for them for them to be able to buy a poco phone for example or stuff like that I feel like the push that honors making over bringing like really high quality products at a less expensive price point for all the changes in the design that we've seen I just I feel that we've got our we've got the iPhones that cost an insane amount of money and I'm actually not thankful for that because I feel that technology should the democratize itself and become more accessible to people and not stupid expensive as it's been in certain products and so I like the push that other companies are doing in pushing the bar and making every making technology as accessible as possible you know that's me a mint that's good yeah I'm a I'm is thankful for job security and it's really great that we have like evolution happening still you know cuz you're right that's slump we were all feeling it it was it was pretty rough to be honest and we were we weren't sure if we were just gonna end up repeating ourselves for the next two years yeah I remember a year ago like everyone was tweeting like that like Oh bored with smartphones like what's gonna happen and now we have so many different ones yeah if you're watching the live version of this right now I don't think I'm a is a is thankful for shoddy internet well in that case I'm gonna go ahead and say what Jules is thankful for Jules your sweetheart thank you for saying this I'm thankful for the people I've met in my career in tech blogging people like Laura Fagan Kyoto huesemann Michael Fisher rain hey Gore Jacqueline Brandon Jaime njv and also Stephen shank shoutouts you Steven we want to get you on the podcast as well by the way brother um but yeah I mean that was sort of the shift that I was going to make like me remember we're all thankful for all of you as well you viewers listeners all of you who come to PocketNow xda-developers any of our channels as well thank you so much for sticking around with us and yeah so thank you for oh you know what now that I just said that I just realized I haven't been looking at the live chat I'm not listening to our fans are so sorry I will open that up but while we get into our Black Friday deals for today Brendan I know you have maybe just a few minutes left so we're gonna go through these deals that have to do with some high profile devices so would you pass or play on these deals that are coming up oh hi make him back and he's moving I'm thankful for the times when the power doesn't go out in my country which is not today oh no that's the Internet no no powerful power outage man and the Kalinka it's bad so let me walk out into the balcony and say goodbye to everybody the power comes back on in a little bit I know just having to I'll just head to a coffee shop that's the way all right all right oh boy all right so we're gonna get into a couple of these here so the first thing and we were kind of we were kind of talking about this a little bit before the show Apple like if you if you wait for Black Friday to be the time where you buy an Apple product and some sort of low price you've you've probably been disappointed every single year because they just don't do very deep discounts on anything it's just not gonna happen at the Apple store but this is what we have this year so gift cards are going to be given if you buy certain types of products I have them up here so you can get a $50 gift card if you get one of the older iPhones anything from the iPhone 7 so the eight plus you can get a $100 gift card if you get any of the iPads you can get a two hundred dollar gift card for $200 or rather you can get a two hundred dollar Apple Gift Card if you get a Mac that's why I should invent to say yeah okay you Jacqueline you said before the the show that that's kind of cool but isn't it just kind of disappointing like this yeah to be honest like I feel like they're student discounts are so much better than their then like their holiday discounts mmm like I don't $200 for math like what does a Mac start at like what like $1200 I guess that's good because then you can put that into like dongles which is kind of inevitable at this point um which itself is a sad thing to say like oh I got this gift card I can put it towards products that this laptop should have in the first place but you know I'm not trying to throw shade I'm sorry Brandon Apple products with the gift card like there are two things that I kept thinking about this number one the barrier of entry is very low I mean very high rather it's not low enough for most people who look towards things like Black Friday to get into these products but also even if you buy one of these products it's an Apple store gift card you're still locked into whatever Apple gives so is this something that you would buy up Brendon I rather just have a discount on the product itself because if you have a two hundred dollar gift card you're probably gonna roll that into like the purchase of another Apple device I mean you're not gonna like put it in your iTunes account so you can buy 100 $2 apps you know you're just going to end up having to buy more Apple products and I just rather have the discount like the scanner it's awesome because it's clear right they'd like here's the product and here's a little bit of money towards assessories yes pretty much and I can't even really think of a I was so close I said this went after the Apple Keaton or that happened a little while back I was so ready to get the MacBook Air if the specs were going to be good and they just didn't really live up to what I wanted them to be but that's really the only Apple product that I feel like I would want to get maybe the Mac Pro but that's three thousand dollars and then you get only $200 on top of that in a gift did you see though that B&H is having a giant sale on it right now on the Mac bro yeah oh I did not see that I just know I don't need it so I'm not gonna get it but yeah I saw it on Twitter though I think it was like a lot off like maybe $600 off like an expensive one mm-hmm oh that's cool yeah up to up to $500 on forty five hundred dollars worth of purchases so interesting that's still a lot of money anyway anyway Brendan's gonna go in a little bit so let's get your thoughts real quick on Metro by t-mobile I almost had metro pcs it's Metro by t-mobile so apparently they're going to be giving a free pair of air pods when hold on real quick I think are superior when they decide when when consumers decide to bring in their own iPhone over to the carrier or they buy a 32 gigabyte iPhone 6's success is a little bit further back in the in the generations but you get a pair of air pods are you air pod users you guys yes love when I read that right now clearly yes right now he's really making me love the a proposal ya know I love the airports I use them every single day without like a question I fit the sound quality I love it if that was improved on the second gen but they're just so convenient they're so good so they are they are incredibly convenient and by the way you have to have a fifty dollar or more service plan with this entire deal to even get the air pods but they are free and they are a rather expensive piece of kit that go along with your smartphone so I wouldn't be surprised if anyone really kind of scoop this up one quick thought from you Brandon before you go since this air the this this these air pods are being made available number one on discounts and number two as a freebie if you take up this deal over at Metro by t-mobile is this a sign that a Gen 2 is someone on the way like our Apple trying to burn through their stock in order to bring gen 2 to the market so happy was speculating yeah so it people thought that the gent a would come out in q2 quarter four of this year but it didn't so yeah I mean I personally hope so I want to see what Gen 2 would be like for the air pods so if they're trying to burn through stock right now I mean let's let's bring on Gen 2 let's do this yeah yeah for sure well what that guys I got a roll out all right whew I'll go Brandon thank you so much for coming on yes all right our next deal for today so have you played with the palm at all Jacqueline so I just got it last Monday but when I initially got it it wasn't able to be set up or something but now they just mean help me that we're good to go so I've seen it I've held it but I haven't used yet okay so it's in your possession yeah I'm excited though I I want to try it out but it's it keeps it's almost like an oversized smartphone a SmartWatch in a way like isn't that one of the functionality of it is supposed to be like yeah it's like the phone to keep you away from your phone but I also feel like I may be a little bit partial to it because I think it's really cute like it's just like it's so I'm like I think it's cute like how can you not so how do you feel about it having to be tethered to a bigger smartphone like is you're basically a two device carrier at that point no matter what yeah I mean I don't necessarily think that there's anything wrong with that just because like on the Apple watch series like the new one series four I think it is you have to buy it like $10 plan a month if you want to use it also it's just like it's attached to your phone and also I don't think that you could ever use the palm phone as your primary phone anyways so what it really makes sense to like have its own line like do you really think that you could use a three-inch phone every day I mean okay so it would it would dramatically change though my daily habits but I'm looking at this photo right now and by the way everybody as far as the Black Friday deal is concerned Jaqueline already has her so I guess I'll answer the question of its exclusive to Verizon but it's available today and tomorrow if you're listening to this on Black Friday for 149 that's half of the original contract price and $200 short of the full retail price that's actually a pretty deep cut so I don't know I'd be interested in it for that amount of money but aren't you on it I'm sorry you know the deal ends today this this article came out yesterday my apologies you are locked into a contract yes and that is the problem but as far as like the palm goes in general I mean I'm looking at this photo and there's there are icons for everything from Google photos to Google Drive to the Play Store why couldn't I use this as a primary phone that's the part that disappoints me about this you know like it should have that functionality okay yeah I can see that actually yeah I also feel like if it was like less like let's say the phone was priced at 150 dollars permanently no contract I feel like this phone would sell so well I get arranger dollars yeah that's a hard sell I wonder if Joe's Jules is down for this phone he was like I don't care about any of that I want it that phone with like a good keyboard like that's that's what that's what would really do it for Jules I I don't know I feel like you know if voice dictation were better like this would be the perfect device you could like hit that icon and just talking to it but yeah you know it's I would change my habits you know and this would probably be like my my new age when you aged like like soon like I would love to have a Zune again to just have like really good audio coming out of this phone if it had a good DAC it would be my audio player no matter what that's a good point actually yeah like there are certain media things to this device that I feel like would actually propel it a little bit like maybe it's an audible device maybe it's a podcasting device stuff like that you can listen to this story podcast on the Palm Pre for example but in any case we do have one final thing to talk about here and it's an interesting it's an interesting thing that Samsung did just announced that they have their foldable device granted they did turned on the lights there's we weren't really able to get a really good look at it it looks chunky honestly but it looks chunky that's the that's the biggest problem I have it but in it may or may not be like some sort of a game-changer now what we have here are many different names for the galaxy f the galaxy flex the samsung flex are there different names that we can think of or splice really what we're gonna go for it because LG kind of started in with the G flex yeah and the G flex is kind of a different I don't yeah there's a lot of phones that use flex I don't know I think I guess the point across from what it is hmm but yeah I don't know do you think that's a good name like you think it's gonna sell well with like if like someone said oh like you of the galaxy flex you think that like that gets people's interest or like you think there's a better name for that I don't like it being part of the general like casual lexicon because we've already had that whole phenomenon where people don't even call them Android phones like is that a galaxy and then if that were to happen again some was like is that a flex and I just don't like it doesn't sound good to me you know and then LG what Samsung is tentatively naming it the Galaxy flex but LG is about to come out with their foldable device lord knows they have the G flex so it might they might actually have a stranglehold on that patent or rather the trademark of that name Huawei is starting to get some trademark names done as well mate f the mate flex these are my favorites the made flexi sound and the mate fold his fold would fold B I did not like that one duo at all it fold I don't know it's like flex sounds cooler flex Jules is trying to direct you to make me do some sort of dance routine because of the Flex II know I don't know where that that even came up I don't have a dance called the flexi but in any case the oh there's a thumbnail now okay so let's take a look quick look at this we're getting a little bit meta Jones is showing us the thumbnail for today's show but in any case like what would be I don't know I can't think of any other names that could I don't think it's a good idea to just call it f there's just let's just get that out of the way first like the Galaxy F there could be way too many jokes about that we're going flex is you're right fold may not be great does that to stay with F yeah could they do a different letter well what what are the word like describes what it is I'm not too sure the galaxy crease yeah well maybe told you I love that well I mean this is gonna be one of those conundrums we're not gonna know and so maybe CES MWC but it's crazy you know like we we not only have the upcoming flag ships that are coming out I mean from LG we're probably going to see another another G series another though the v series is gonna be later on from Huawei they're gonna see the P series but then alongside these things are going to be these concepts phones like these foldable phones like we were talking about being inundated by phones before this is gonna be a crazy season especially because all the phones are gonna be like expensive like really pricey but yeah yeah I agree with someone said in the group chat that Samsung already had a phone called the galaxy f I don't know if that's like sure or not but I feel like that would have been the I feel like that would be when was it the it's like a mid-range device I feel like and this was from years ago though like that's from a long time ago I remember they had like those lines kind of like how the LG line has like the L line I remember they had the L line God thank God we don't have to cover those anymore because they would always be like more than one variation of each and everyone anyway yeah I mean to go through all of them but yeah with that I feel like we would I feel like we did it so no answers from us over here so let us know what you think the foldable devices should be called you can of course tweet us at the hashtag P and weekly and let us know that and also if you're watching the live version going into the comment sections let us know that as well and get on Twitter to tell us what you're thankful for in 2018 as well so we're gonna go ahead and call it on that one let me go ahead and head down here that is it for now the weekly is just as much a conversation as it is a show so make sure you make your voices heard either in the comment sections down below or by emailing us podcast at pocketnow.com on twitter Jacqueline is at NB t88 YT now I understand where that's coming from but is there like an you just spell it out every single time to people yeah you know honestly I'm going through trying to rebrand and get here things I emailed some people with that Jacqueline but no response yet but yeah that's definitely something that I'm trying to do oh nice well make sure you follow her all over the place and also her channel as well a great voice in the tech space um no and we're happy to have you on feel free to like let us know whenever you want to be on again and yeah you know you're on the short list like I said like I say to most of our pretty much everyone of our house I love everybody who comes onto the show now one of our one of our mainstays on this show Jules our producer extraordinaire Jules has been in the booth chiming in from time to time and he is found at Point Jules I'm a who unfortunately had to leave because of a power outage is at jaime underscore to Vera and Brandon who ducked out a couple minutes ago is that Brandon mini man and I of course am JV tech t you know me by now I'm JV I love tech and I love to drink tea pocket now is at pocket now on twitter facebook Instagram and YouTube in English and espanol where you can find even more news on the pocket now daily and pocket now add audio every weekday we would really appreciate your feedback through Google Apple stitcher pocket cast wherever you might be streaming us because without you we wouldn't have been able to make this show for your eyes and ears for triple three-episode straight so that's that and whatever you're doing stay fresh be safe today on Black Friday if you're listening to this while you're out shopping I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and we are going to see you next week