Gadgetory

and we're live so oculus is aggressively pushing prices down on virtual reality will they win back consumers hearts and minds Samsung is gearing up to reveal the second generation of Bixby will Nokia continue to ignore North America razor might might reveal a phone borne from next bit and when your phone ages our performance slowdowns all in your head we've got a lot to talk about so make sure you're charged and ready for episode 2 7 4 of the pocket now weekly recorded Friday the 13th in October at noon pacific time this weekly podcast is where we dissect and discuss 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 by this time in the month you'd probably already eaten an entire bag of Halloween candy by yourself I'm Juan Carlos bag now senior editor at pocketnow.com joined as always by a plucky podcast producer mr. Jules Wong on the East Coast how's it going buddy boy I mean Walgreens had it since August start something so I mean you should have had plenty of chance to do that also of all the months to have Friday the 13th perfect this is yes this is perfect as soon as we're done with this podcast I am going to go buy and download the evil within too and fire that I might even live streaming I don't know I haven't done a gaming broadcast in a while but maybe I'll actually fire up my very first playthrough on a horror game there get your scene machine right and as you might have noticed if you're watching the live stream we are joined a third window on this podcast friend of the podcast my co-host for the online geek book club keeper of the Star Trek gifs mr. Andrew Wallace thanks so much for joining us this week's podcast well thank you for having me I appreciate it yeah the Milo or thirst not working but if you guys want my contact at both what's wrong with your system this is the most hilarious hangouts bugs you know for us uh it shut down our live broadcasts for three months while we were trying to figure out audio issues but whenever we go live your lower third you know kind of a light deal well we can remember we can get the PNG on you sometime and just stick that over there because why there's been a proper overlay yeah yeah exactly yeah it's my art on we can get you something going on there alright whatever works for you this time around because you're talking with us so yeah all right Before we jump into some actual tech tomfoolery we do want to take a quick minute to thank this week's sponsor and that is Dee brand manufacturer of custom vinyl cut skins for a variety of different products different tech pieces I rock one on my razor laptop obviously they've been promoting pretty hard for the release of the new Galaxy Note 8 and the new iPhones I'm looking to maybe get one when I finally get my hands on a V 30 again I think I'm gonna switch over to one because uh you guys recently caught our iPhone coverage I don't know if I'll be able to show that well I don't have autofocus on on my camera my beautiful camera right now uh so I managed to nicely Nick and cut into the front face of my iPhone 8 and it was totally the I was wearing cargo shorts I was crouching to get a low shot with with the Lenovo the Lenovo fab 2 pro slid right out of my pocket from a height of about a foot and chipped right into the front face and the the aluminum band around the iPhone 8 plus I was super disappointed by that and as the situation that totally would have been prevented by having just any extra little bit of traction on the back of that phone and that's one of the things that dbrand excels at these custom laser cut skins that perfectly match up with your device different colors different textures I'm a huge fan of the dragon skin skins that help you hold on to your devices better protect against scratches and I think they look pretty cool too again it's the thing you want to customize your device they've probably got a color a look and aesthetic just for your device if you head on over to dbrand comm you can check out all of the various devices that they that they support and it's pretty numerous there probably not gonna you know travel into some of the the smaller phones that are less popular but your major brands your major products out there MacBooks if you want to customize your macbook you'll be able to find a solution at D brand and of course we will have links down below in the description of this podcast where you can jump straight to customizing an iPhone or a Galaxy Note 8 and yeah they've been pretty good to us they've actually supplied us with a couple extra skins it's just that disappointment of of like whenever I have them on the phone and people complain that I have a skin on the phone instead of just showing off the phone in real life because of how fragile our smartphones have become I have become the convert where I keep my phones in cases or I keep skins on them pretty much all the time and it's a pain when I have to tear the skin off to shoot the review because that's not how I actually use the phone so that's D Brande Brande comm check out those skins hit the links down below they'll they'll know that we sent you sent you over to them that I'll definitely help us out here on the podcast and we thank D brand for supporting the pocket net weekly you know I hear they're opening up a position for Dragon Slayer I mean yeah I suppose it is not cheap man I mean that's that's a high turnover position keeping them fresh dragon skins I'm kind of surprised that they do real dragon skins so that's great especially these days that's a liar we're getting through fall winter's coming you know it's indeed well if you want to survive the cold days of fall and winter with us here on the pocket now weekly we'd certainly love to have you along just talk with us on the Twitter's and the Facebook's and wherever that hashtags are sold appraised loved with hashtag P and weekly and we'll be able to see your comments as they happen during the podcast because we love to look through that feed live also podcast at pocket now dunk this way you should send your emails if you can't catch us live that you want to get to us and we'll build answer you like that as well so hash tag being weekly podcast at pocketnow.com you choose the means and we'll respond to you however we can we already have a couple tweets coming in with the p-n weekly hashtag some fan mail for jewels from at I fill world hey one try not to leave out jewels this knew who was gonna happen last week we had Joshua Vergara from Android authority and Tekken T and he was on the pocket I was almost but I was almost about to take a week off because I was like they're the same Josh actually was in The Gadget Lab and and he was this when you have that human interaction I mean it's things that I love about like the Joe Rogan podcast it's two people actually sitting face-to-face and the conversation just naturally you know sort of steamrollers over everything else and so I mean I was really appreciative because Jules was jumping in like with important pieces of information and to try and keep us on track but we knew rails on it yeah yeah I had to keep time on you guys and force segways I had to stop on Joshua said boys because he loves those in as a you know engine previous Android Authority podcast myself I was like yeah yeah this is gonna be pretty painful so I might as well just pretty painful or pretty amazing or amazingly painful amazing amazing amazing amalia we've heard it here first folks we're making up new words some news I don't know about but I feel like probably talking about some tech news would be appropriate 2017 this is all the news that is fit to podcast the oculus go has been introduced at the latest connect conference Hugo Barra and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg say that they believe this $199 device will be accessible to the next billion users getting into VR developer kits are coming out next month sales begin early next year HFD global head of operations Rex Frey Homer says that the Nokia eight is not properly banded for the US and is implicitly trying to say that the us for now promising future devices for the country presumably the Nokia eight will perhaps be shattered by Nokia nine that we may see soon huawei mate 10 said to debut next Monday new Intel shows that it is working with a 20 megapixel sensor as well as a 23 megapixel center at the back the largest sense units since the Chinese OEM partnered with Leica to optimize output Samsung is expected to release version 2 of its BIG's piece aren't assistant next week and its developments in San Francisco oneplus has apparently had a device manager tool time step that has interacted with the screen on and off times as well as other little bits and pieces that have gotten a little a little core of users pissed off in a way there's a flashable file that can stop that behavior but oneplus insists that it's offering better services have been after sales support with that info Wells Fargo has rolled out 5000 ATMs with NFC readers for Android pay ECM pay and Apple pay you don't need your card anymore with that pen you just have to top and then put in that pin too and Razer is loading up for an event all the hints leading up to this point including spec dump with Snapdragon 835 and eight gigs of ram so the big question for this week is are we ready for the gamer phone is next bit going to pull all in for this is TX gonna have an element in this end they also have oh yeah which was that micro console thing that ran Android and it was closed off and it was just this weird thing they took up that - what do we expect from this are they good combined kick right off with you man I mean so you just recently picked up Agua we made 9 you're not rocking a traditional North American phone manufacturer you've been you've been digging it oh yeah that is a company like Razer have the cloud in a way that even Nvidia couldn't with their shield tablets garner you know a significant market share do they have the potential to crack into a foam market a device that I think a lot of consumers are very conservative to switch over to does this look like they might have the answer on gaming where Microsoft fell apart where a Nvidia fell apart and we're even motorola struggles to showcase gaming as a platform for the for the Moto Z well that's that's that's an interesting question because what I'm thinking is what what can razor bring to the table that you gaming experience wise that you can't get from another snapdragon 835 device you know like I would feel like it would come to one pricing is gonna be key just because it's hard you know as we've seen with the essential phone and all these others it's hard to get into the upper upper tier price range so they'd have to give a lot of bang for the buck you know whether or not you're gonna have a certain level of VR support and I think a lot of it might be down to just the handset design itself yeah to try and bring this particular audience in because what's gonna brew what's the big question that they've got to solve is what's gonna bring people to their phone rather than to galaxy and especially if they can't get carrier deals totally cuz that that's a big problem you know because most the people especially around here in the Midwest where I met most people go through the carrier's to get their phones well they have they have to come out of the gate with some sort of deal that honestly more than maybe just sprint display tucked into the back corner of a Best Buy isn't gonna do it for ya yeah on the second to bottom shelf next to the joysticks because you know like my hypothesis Jules is it takes a brand about three years before consumers will start taking them okay taking that company seriously do you think Razer has the fortitude to stick out losing a few fights in the market just to establish a foothold on consumer mind share I think it's establishing a foothold through carrier partnerships because we have already talked about this about a few months ago where they set up shop in Hong Kong this big flagship razor store and they you know it's sort of prophetic in the rena they partnered with the local network three and its parent company Hutchison and they've you know they have this special plan they also say that they're working with hardware and you know these projects so I feel like there's a lot of you know this was obvious this was coming up in the first place and that carriers should be aware especially in Asian you know hardcore gamer markets where this kind of niche thing from a brand that's well known for you know if anything gaming hardware is known for its panache its optimizations for you know tactile function and just you know colors LED lights yeah that's funny um in in uh on Twitter using the P and weekly hash tag from a Trina Chang and I'm afraid the razor phone will just be an RGB accessories right on the same point as usuals more than a real mobile gaming breakthrough just pretty colors and I should say that this is as always this was always referred to as a mobile device its own person just because you can pick it up and move it around doesn't mean that it's gonna be a phone that's that's a very good point exactly because especially when like the teaser person in the in like the picture that they sent out was like holding it horizontally like a switch or something maybe it could be a great switch competitor I don't know because it the image that I saw made me think that it could be almost the size of like a small tablet like what if it's the size of the fab tube lenovo fab 2 pro like that would be now it could be interesting which was you know a you know just it really depends I'm just thinking I'm worried about carriers being done shy off of it because was a pea rate and the saying and and Twitter the like you look what happened with the Xperia Play and Verizon yeah and David Baptista Silva also brought up that same point too on Twitter if consumers wanted a gaming phone then vices like the engage in the Xperia Play wouldn't have flopped I think the n-gage probably had a few more issues going for it with the remove the battery to switch the game in the the Taco Tuesday sticking out the front of your face look I can manic the rest of you that's super racist the thing the thing I I have concerns with and it's why I feel like Microsoft might have missed the boat you know you had this great idea of Italian with windows phones and Xbox but the the farther we get out from some of those flops the more I have to wonder since we rely on our phones for so much of our daily lives there's a potentially battery draining usage like mobile gaming work I think we're kind of consumers are kind of ready I think the switch shows us that it's ok to have a second device on you for a specialty purpose if that's something you're really into like if you're really into high quality audio I think it's you know there's an argument to be made for a niche consumer to look at a branded media player if you're really into gaming you can leave your phone battery alone you don't have to go out and buy the most powerful phone on the market to play some mobile games you can also invest some cash in something like like the switch going to your point back to your point tools that maybe it makes more sense for razer to sidestep the concerns over primary gadget usage and look at a companion device something that plays really well in your mobile lifestyle your mobile ecosystem but is entirely gaming focused and not something that you have to worry about also making phone calls and snap chatting and you know doing all of your go I should say that you know we were talking about Razer we're talking about PC heart but they're the most expertise in as opposed to maybe some of the more as the switch because they have unique you know Hardware Coronado for them I the wonder the reason why I wonder if maybe were were barking up the wrong tree with phones though his razor has experimented with gaming tablets not a few very unsuccessful attempts at trying to break into Slate mobile gaming especially around the time of early Windows 8 this might be the right time to come back to it though you know I think a mobile hardware has gotten powerful enough that you can deliver a pretty compelling mobile gaming experience especially with advances in game portability game streaming where maybe I am running something off of my PC that's just dumb lis connected to a mobile interface again I'm looking at you know some good horror horror survival games I want to run them from my PC because that's the proper experience but if I don't want to lose out on continuing to progress through that game maybe I could for short bursts migrate it over to a tablet and and connect remotely just just watch as they have remember the old a Zeus is n pad phone or whatever just imagine a Robin just plugged in the back of this tab oh the poor little Qualcomm 808 in that Robin dog yeah melting down to try and deliver a good game stream yes well that's and that's the other thing too is as far as processing power like with with razor's used to being able to put a super souped-up graphics card you know and whatever laptop or their laptop they're gonna build but they're kind of stuck with GPU that they've got really so it's all gonna be about the peripheral experience really well in 1080 really like the exciting idea could be something cuz I I think Razer was ahead of the curve on so like my my razor blade it has a thunderbolt port which is great I mean it's it's a it's a fully open Thunder bowl I can do anything with it USB C or Thunderbolt 3 but the idea for Razer was to sell that peripheral of having an external GPU that you could connect over that that protocol or that interface I highly doubt that a mobile device is going to tap into that but I think Razer has an idea of some kind of modularity usage specific scenarios where you can plug things in adapt certain experiences to where you're at so this could go hand in hand with that ecosystem when you're at home with your laptop and you can plug it into that really hot GPU you've got a killer gaming experience when you're on the go and you don't want to have your laptop with you maybe it's just the screen that interacts with your gaming hardware at home and that's how you have your high quality gaming experience I think that there could be some potential there sounds like quantum computing to me because if we're referring to okay well I was gonna say like a be nice for them to do some partnerships like say you know how you know you've got say maybe have some sort of steam link functionality or have course I would never do this but have some sort of origin or Bethesda you know be kind of interesting to have to be able to bring that experience to your mobile device and then plug in whatever Bluetooth peripherals peripherals you might have that joke I mean like why I keep crashing back hard into PC gaming is I get super cranky knowing that if I buy something for a console it stays with that console where I can I can load up the original fallout through my Steam account I mean this is what your wife is for basically this is you gotta get your way into yeah you gotta get them toll well my wife works for Activision let's not make oh yeah that's nice I'm gonna be in trouble that anyone said horrible company we've got one other tweet the cover from urban tech daily game machine first phone second functionality over aesthetics basically a tank with front-facing speakers and a massive battery that could be kind of compelling I think that might have some crossover if a company went out there and said it's for gaming but it's gonna do everything else really well and it's got a six thousand milliamp hour battery to last you two straight days of use because as long as it's got a kickstand then we're set I love it like I was digging through old old drawers and I found an old HTC with a kickstand denied you know this is actually kind of nice yeah they were they were great you know when I was at when I worked at Best Buy we had all the cash what was the evo 4G LTE in that little stand every one every other one I'd see they'd just be snapped off phone six came out III I wasn't working for pocket now yet when the iPhone six came out I did a video telling people like if you're going into Apple stores and purposely bending iPhone 6s then you're an ass you're a jerk and people actually fought me on that consumers need to know that the phone can Bend like that's the stretching of property is not the right way to do that don't be a jerk how about we just live our lives with this idea of don't be a jerk I do want to know well like the success of that channel coming down to a certain flavor of gadget destruction porn that he does phenomenally well in his consistency in how those comes apart I mean it's so compelling even though I myself hate watching phones get messed up we should we should have we should have them on especially when I made fun of them in my April Fool's video I I did the scratch and Bend test on a sweet potato I do want to briefly on the Wells Fargo story because I think this is sort of an interesting development in how long it takes a techni stablished technology to catch on but now we're starting to see some consumer attraction and NGO is kind of wondering about your thoughts um since you're in the Midwest and we've had some of these funny conversations since Jules and I are coastal elites and we have all over the hottest technology when we go grocery shopping to tap and pay have you seen any traction on Android pay or Apple pay in your next woods I actually have finally started seeing traction there's a lot of course chain places will have it a lot of other chain places won't have it for some reason why it might have changed recently but for a long time know that high V which is big here in the Midwest and in Illinois also didn't have it but we're getting a lot of sources are finally finally getting it the nicest thing for my situation if as I had a legacy card on there for a long time because you know we could use legacy cards when they first rolled it out and so I had my card on there knows great until they stop support of it and then I couldn't use it until PayPal became a supportive method and that is actually a big thing that a lot of people actually hear that I've talked to didn't even realize you can use PayPal with it I've gone into more than one I've encountered more than one cashier who's been a little bit confused wanting to look at my PayPal app or the Android you know Android pay app but it's it's starting to get traction and now that because there's a lot of small banks out here that don't support it so having PayPal is a big thing with it right the only thing I'm worried about is with the ATMs you know how gosh you'll see those scam ATMs where they'll put like the the whole ATM like over the top of it it's as they can get your card information they'll just have to have a little thing now with a little NFC tag yeah I mean I mean the skimmers were also kind of it's it's a flat it's a zero-sum game with that because I feel like that is just as easily not detectable if you're in a rush and whatnot are having a fake NFC there you would have you would have to find somewhere to have some sort proximity to both well this is something I'm woefully ignorant on isn't the point of a system like Apple pay or Android pay you are interacting with an NFC chip but the transaction is encrypted not encrypted is is basically creating a dummy account number for the solo interaction of that one purchase so if you were to skim that data you might be able to intercept one day but it wouldn't work for future payments right that's true that's true yeah yeah you're right on that mmm good thinking and that's why we have these protocols in place so that we I don't know it it's pretty funny I mean like has we've been seeing a lot of a lot of larger companies moving over to tap and pay functionality for a in my neck of the woods here in near Encino it's funny that local businesses the more family-owned and the mom-and-pop shops are still mostly focused on chip-and-pin like you still need to have a card but they're high-tech has been moving over into other services like square or iPad based point-of-sale services so you don't have the old-school like credit card machines that you'll see it like a big-box store instead it's like an iPad on a special stand with a credit card skimmer or a chip reader and that seems to be the more popular solution there so a lot of them are now starting to support tap and pay but we've seen the adoption rate actually it has been kind of slow because people haven't been wanting to invest in the traditional more expensive point-of-sale systems they've been wanting to use more mobile gear for that well one thing I'm wondering too is my experience for myself has mainly been Android pay specific Apple pay is debt bike kind of here by default is you had a much bigger roll out just because they had they have much finer control on that like my sister's been using it for several years but you know so it's just one of those I figured I'd put that out there well and the consumer education because I don't think a lot of people out here realize that just because there's like a little sign that says it's Apple pay compliant that it's most likely also Android pay compliant they just didn't want to pay for extra stickers wallet I see Google Wallet everywhere still I I like I loved the name Google Wallet I like that better than Android pay oh yeah I'm so sad that it got so is I do have what because of Isis you got oh well it became soft card and then it's slowly softly disap I don't care just like Isis it was something else we should probably change topics yeah yeah I was about one thing if that is I would like to see ATMs just um completely no interface on the ATM just tap it to a NFC reader and do everything on the phone like I think we're about well in time for that just have just do the pan on the phone do the whatever the head that that needs so I agree I just think the timing on this will probably take a little while because we have to get to a point where we assume that even the the the the most economically challenged members of our society have access to a device that can handle that I mean it's the frustration when we're still seeing like $200 entry-level phones that omit NFC like that's some kind of luxury accessory so where III agree with you Jules like I think it's something that's right around $3 part that you could stick into the back of the phone I mean just imagine if your phone price then went up to two hundred and five dollars total by this phone if it were five dollars for four ninety five I would buy it in China they have oh gosh what was I was watching recently the the video about the the gentleman who makes his own iPhone as well as the Lori post on phone yeah yeah what's the app that they use it's kind of a mix of Facebook and a lot of others if they use for a lot of payments and does that not it didn't look like they use NFC to me no we chat uses um QR codes I believe oh yeah cuz I mean that could that could be I mean gosh if they had that as well - that could be good for the for the people who are getting you know $50 a smartphones to be you know it would be it's just kind of funny how reticent North Americans were to play with things like NFC tags and QR codes I remember you know like those those initial like tap stickers that you would get from Samsung you could program them to do different things at the same time everyone was coming out with QR codes and no one was scanning them and well I think they would have used it more if that if the actual app built-in camera app supported next room because that's the big thing motor roll is the only one I know of off the top of my head that did that and then because I have to go download carpet or wrap it and do it no no because because and I think you're right I think the problem is one of you like I complain about Apple the problem is one of conveyance where I believe modern Samsung phones should be able to scan our codes but it might be through bixby vision I could totally be lying and someone's gonna correct me on that very shortly just as a viewer at rena-chan is confirming that NFC transactions create a unique key for every transaction so it's probably more secure than if you use a credit card swipe I was wondering what the tokenization process was in the where the tap was going but whatever you know I think that's that's right that's all right yeah yeah I think that's pretty good so I do want to move on to speaking of security and security issues I do want to talk about oneplus because I think this is another minor black eye for a company that this year has not been handling the consumer discussion very well on their products and features just because you have a forum doesn't mean that you can necessarily do all these things you singlehandedly and not really address they can see what concerns in the way that you you know you would like to yes you serve this is for your own good don't to do that like we've seen that before and I think this is a major misstep for a company because they're trying to build their fan base up by appealing to I I think the the louder contingent of Android fans know the never settle the flagship killer this is language meant to emotionally target the tech-savvy ur Android fans out there who are also a cost-conscious this is exactly the wrong group of people to upset yes what are your thoughts on on their reply cuz I I feel like a lot of people will feel insufficient to address well it's like with Google I mean if it was Google and they had that reply I'd be a little more accepting just because we we have a lot more user there's a lot more user facing products that benefit from all the information they gather right that like products that they come out with and that they incorporate into their devices that that we get it's from that we can use every day one plus I don't really it's a lot more foggy with what they're using that for they say they need it I mean it's just if they're I wouldn't have as big a problem if it was just they were just transparent about it what they were gonna use it for specifically and it's like we're using this to improve X feature x and y features on our phones well I mean it comes down to trust level at that point but yeah you know I transparency is the big thing especially for cuz I mean we we like transparency you know right as you viewers and then people who know how to use these nuances of our services devices that we use but yeah I don't know it's I wish they'd elaborate a little more well in joules I mean so there there is obviously a process that you can engage in if you go through the developer settings to disable this kind of and turn it off you actually have to uninstall like through it yeah well well there okay so there is one Advanced Settings menu which you know I mean you'll be able to just tap the android logo seven times in that little area or whatever and then you can get to it but like actually really stop it from being you know all torn down you should definitely run the ADB code it's it's a simple but that's like a bad Douglas Adams joke just waiting to happen in an unmarked lavatory with a sign that says beware of the leopard is that you have to go about finding because ADB can be really intimidating to someone even as if this is an enthusiast who who hasn't liked Fermi exempt for example the last time I am messing with ADB was on my One m8 that I soft bricked like three times messing with it so you know it's like I'm staying away from that you know oh yeah I mean I just recently wrapped up our xperia x z1 compact review and I went through about two hours of flashing firmwares to try and enable the fingerprint sensor and I'm almost positive I am doing something wrong in flashing a new firmware but I still couldn't get it to work and it's not like I'm not at least somewhat familiar with these types of tools and a little more tech-savvy than your average bear and it still was something that I couldn't get working when it comes back getting back to one plus I think one of the things that bothers me is when we were tracking this information that there that they're collecting on users going back to your point Andrew we might be more permissive of Google tracking our data and and rightfully I think we're getting more benefit from it but I think we also have additional trust that Google probably has a more secure bucket and is doing a better job of keeping us anonymous with that data then one plus is because if I'm reading because one plus right yeah this it's just like literally your serial number attached to the usage in a big bucket where if that were compromised people would have access to some some fairly significant privacy you know attached data on how you're using your phone and I don't trust a company as small as one plus under a larger umbrella of the company that also owns OPO to guard my data like I would Google who actually creates the systems that were utilizing this information and we had to find this out ourselves to exact just like that blue Shanghai adopts a firmware deal where a security firm had to find this and you know the two weren't really forthcoming with what that data was being used for there were doubts and even though everything has been sorted out with blue and Shanghai tips to the point where they had to take off Amazon you know get off of Amazon for a few days before coming back that still has left some doubt in our minds fears so it's kind of just not a good situation in order to play down these things and say yeah you're like we're not sending this over to the CCP so yeah I mean one people it's getting less and less you know my my old argument was well I'm just boring you know and what are they gonna want with my use that anymore that excuse me more with how much that they're gathering I was odd yeah well if you don't have anything to hide then you'd you're good criminal I I you know I there's a lot of stuff well in silly things too like yeah I'd steal anything it doesn't mean I'm a criminal or I'm engaging in illegal activities it's just I don't I don't want that to be freely accessible someone has a narrative strong enough and the intent malicious enough you're going to be you know dating for bride well and and I do think it'll be another sort of cultural and and this is gonna be sort of a cultural and etiquette thing that shift between convenience services products as we start getting into a more augmented reality world I mean literally the view from my eyeball is something that will be trackable information so we are still going to keep running into this perpetual debate over privacy security and convenience but this I think is a good example of how to do it wrong hashtag oneplus doing it wrong um I do want to quickly a company that I will not accompany a service that I've only used sparingly on my note eight are we excited about Bixby 2.0 do you think that this is gonna bring something fresh to the table in a world where Google is actually getting really aggressive with their Google assistant strategy it's always the problems of third-party developers and that rarely ever comes true in devoted you know dedicated you're focused thing it doesn't come out like that he comes in trickles and those trickles eventually die out if they don't have enough media coverage or not enough people use it or whatever X so I mean I don't know and especially because those third-party developers there was a very limited frame in which they could get involved with the first version of Bixby so I mean if you weren't on the ground floor if that's you know where the elevator Lee but lead up to so yeah are you using Google assistant Alexa are you use anything like that um I've used Alexa well I've used Google assistant for you know the basic things Alexa I've used it to play the Jeopardy game once we like the Seinfeld trivia game oh yeah I've already exhausted the entire run of all of the the different questions that they've got oh yeah there's a you know I think a Samsung is is really their marketing is wrong for bixby but they need to be honestly I think that because these since they don't have the access to all the the sheer amount of data that that Google has that their disposal they really should be marketing it and concentrating towards accessibility for people with I feel like you know people who might be blind or happy you know that's something I feel like that they could actually that you better think Google does right now or because they have functionality for opening up specific after doing specific things well that's something that I don't think they don't they don't necessarily need to have all the amount of data that Google has at their disposal to be able to pull off something like that and have a good foundation to build on right and and everyone's thinking while they're marketing ads basically use this instead of Google now or Google assistant that is what people already set in what they're using but a lot of people there are a lot of people out there who use smartphones who and smart devices who would very much appreciate the better accessibility features in Android I feel I mean when you're coming in through this a clean sorry-sorry when you're coming into this clean the whole AI digital assistants space that XP key is supposed to be something very convenient for you OneTouch access and then boom you're right into it as opposed to if you're already into Google assistant Cortana or whoever the house you're dealing with you it's an annoyance you can't reprogram that to be a system but the services you feel are don't hey don't do the things the way that Google used to do it that Apple used to do it it's just not you and you're having a very very hard time it just it's it's all about first contact I feel and if this is the first contact great for Samsung if it's not they don't have a means of adjusting those use what do you what do you mean by first contact you mean like a users first experience using it with that with the yes I think that's also one of the reasons why like Google has gone through several permutations of their voice assisted search you know like from Google now Google cards Google assistant and they're really not different services I think part of this is if we rebrand it call it something new people will try it again and see that there's a lot more functionality especially because Bixby's rollout was so hamstrung like it took a lot longer to get to English speakers than I think Samsung intended there was a lot of negative sentiment or negative commentary regarding a useless button on your phone before we really had a chance to play with it to your point Andrea I think one of the things that it's done phenomenally well are macros mm-hmm making macros more consumer accessible so that you can deliver a very short or small command that triggers a number of different outcomes to to your point Peter hatin using the PN weekly hashtag the idea behind bixby is good and it can be good at reaching inside apps if this were assistant we could see a better product like sort of melding those two ideas together from Renato Laporte is Bixby IFTTT enabled that makes things so much easier to connect with other services I don't believe Bixby has any any ability to use IFTTT and that's if this then that where you can set up services for different macros for different services which would be actually I think a really compelling a really compelling usage scenario for for Bixby and then from David David Brown at David B Linux on Twitter as a blind user Android already has accessibility services that work well Samsung already ported talk back so maybe this is also sort of a overlapping things that people who utilize the current accessibility services might not necessarily need to have my questions not had a huge amount of experience with using them firsthand as far as you know needing to use them but I'm wondering do they go kind of step into the apps like say could I could I say like I'd like to be able to say take a photo and and share on Instagram right something like a two-step sort of thing but are you concerned about all the blind photographers out there I'm being obnoxious ly facetious it's not blind I'm not allowed to make that joke well send your hate mail to my cooperate and thing once you have released yourself from these barriers the accessibility settings on a phone camera is that culture appropriation kind of culture when it comes to that but I think they can just equip themselves with lights real cameras and then take the existing light fields and just be able to 3d print those into a you know somewhat tangible form and and touch those and then they'll finally realize what what's like and you know it's kind of it's great speaking of cameras we don't have to spend a lot of them in fact we shouldn't spend a lot of time in this next story the the may 10 20 and 23 megapixel cameras are what I I don't think Huawei joins or rejoins the camera battle this year I don't think anyone's gonna be impressed by higher resolution do we think that this is gonna deliver anything else in addition to more dots to edit or what would they do to make their cameras more compelling well this effect there two times zoom ability because before it's it was because they had the the smaller megapixel camera and then the the the greater one and that allowed them to kind of do the the photo you know the pho two times zoom is this going then being almost equal good effect that at all that's one that I'm curious about well I I don't think more resolutions gonna be a problem I think more resolution will actually benefit zoom because you'll have more room to crop to then sample the image and then to blow the image up or or I wonder maybe could this potentially be something like a resolution hack like what Sony used where you would have like a 20 megapixel sensor but then the preferred output is closer to an 8 megapixel image which allows you to better remove noise and preserve detail right and then ask about the noise yeah well in Huawei phones we aren't afraid of noise yeah I mean like Andrew and I offline like I heard this photo of Lex sleeping and she's lit by a hallway light like again like completely outside the room and I took it from from my mate 9 so not even the wider aperture on a pee on a p10 plus and it's just like it's grainy and it's gritty and it's dark and it's super high contrast and you're like this is exactly what I wanted from this phone yeah yeah she's about to kill someone in her sleep isn't she oh no it's great because again I'd you know toddler sleep in the most ridiculous positions and she was just like but the graininess and the grittiness yeah exactly that's that's more sinister and you know you could use that to your advantage sooner or later we're gonna make my daughter sinister dude all toddlers are evil we know that but I think she's one of the more benign evil toddlers I want to jump into the class or that we get to the main to the main topic for the rest of this podcast but HMD executives saying that the nokia 8 9 I arrived in North America 1 are we surprised too can a company build a smartphone brand following or build brand loyalty by continuing to ignore North America does it make sense for them to try and play in North America I have no idea except for a Lolita and analog where Motorola has launched the Moto G 5 plus and the Moto G 5s plus whereas the less to keep wool lesser specs non plus versions of those devices didn't make it over to the US I think blowing on what they can make the most of the scattershot approach in the u.s. doesn't necessarily work as well their most successful phone here in Nokia that is as so far is the Nokia six I believe you know and well and it's just a matter of getting them in front of people you know like my best buy that I go to you like they had a quad way phones up like the honor eight they had the mate nine had a couple of others up there for let's say for a six between four to six months then they took them down they have so many ones up there now but it's just a matter of you don't if you don't see it people aren't gonna aren't gonna they people are a lot more hesitant to buy if they can't just feel one in their hand and that's a huge huge barrier and I mean I'm not seeing any Nokia's that aren't Windows phones in the wild at all yeah I still have a couple friends to actually to specifically that I know of that are on lumia 520 s there's people who do nothing but cover the absolute bare minimum basics you know in checking their email I think one of them like will occasionally tweet and like I bought this phone for $80 so if I smash it I don't care and those phones are still running like crazy outdated software apps that haven't been updated but that's what they want they can text they can email and that's that's about it and here's a little odd thing we're not a little port with the P n weekly hash tag the Nokia eight is not even banded correctly for Europe where our bands 30 and 41 they're cheapskates on the mode oh and that's disappointing to have a Nokia name on that and to not have good radio support that's like the whole point of a world like that was the whole excuse for the us thing like that person that I just mentioned at the top was like hey it's not properly branded for the US sorry we would to give you 110% of our support well where's 110% support for Europe hello it's like I would like to see Nokia now come to the US and basically try and fill the niche that the 1+1 filled like I mean I think that I think they could do that build material I get some of the cost in the build materials down use the nice Nokia a polycarbonate design that they had you know like on the the 1520 and whatnot and because I think that's really if you're not gonna go through the carrier's going at that price point is your safest bet I feel like as far aside from you know making money off I think that's another that's another question but actually just getting your foot in the door I feel like that something that would be that's a lot easier to break into a third gonna skip the carrier's no I'm glad you brought up the polycarb it's just a shame because I I seriously doubt hmd is ever gonna walk us back to that high quality plastic cause it was such a great feel and right now everyone's super impressed by glass or ceramic or something slippery and I just I went off on like another rant I forget where I was oh I was I was on a set I was gonna I was on a shoot and someone else was there and they were just talking about the the other sound guy I was working with how he just switched from an iPhone to a pixel and one of his reasons like I didn't want the iPhone 8 I didn't want a glass back phone and then it caused us to go down this rabbit hole of hey you remember that Motorola the head Kevlar hey you know how like moto had leather hey you know what would be need is carbon fiber you know any other material instead of glass that can still have wireless charging but still connote I dunno quality product I'm still waiting for my denim phone hello I told like literally from the denim update I want a denim phone I want you by stitching on the back to show off how that matches my 501s I've always wanted that --cork skin that was on the m8 that they would that one like that was actually the very first video of yours I've ever saw blonde and I didn't even really it was yeah like one of the first videos ever saw of yours it was some a manufacturer who were not going to mention in this podcast cuz they're not sponsoring it true no it was that was a phenomenal feel in the hand it was such a great skin for that phone III I loved it it was it was phenomenal oh yeah like we could wrap up the news block because we we have to talk about VR real quick oculus rift dropping a 199 dollar all in one unit VR headset it sounds like this is they're sort of piggybacking on their relationship with Samsung driving the gear VR do we think that this will move the needle on consumer VR do we think that this ship is starting to pass people buy like 3d TVs were I don't know I really don't it's it's like smartwatches where we thought like all these uh market analysts and these reports keep saying hey this is gonna be explosive by 2020 we're gonna see five times volume and whatnot and we're already half way from those 2015 estimates and yeah it's been kind of weak and you know we haven't been feeling it's it's only now that we've really dug into the cellar part of things and that's mostly thanks to well perhaps nearly all thanks to Apple watch so right yeah I don't think that I'm not sure if this is that kind of development if this is the cellular of VR that we should be looking for yeah it's it's I would like I think that I really like the approach what part of the approach that LG did with their VR viewer with the g5 it long as the VR viewer didn't stink like it did you know like having where you could just plug it into the the USB C port send it down or whatever or have it on a little side here and be able to kind of look around for me the only things I'd use VR for is if I'm like laying down and looking up at the ceiling and watching like you know movie or something but yeah I mean it just depends I think it's better that's getting the price is getting lower because that's gonna get into more people's hands and just kind of we're gonna feel along and see if it sticks six I hope it does but I think AR is kind of taking steps ahead right now and within the last six months in perception definitely I think AR has the more exciting potential long term but one of the things I've been kind of curious like I've been really trying to Rack my brains what are some of the usage scenarios that we can get consumers excited about virtual reality especially now that we are hitting lower price points $200 is still a lot of money but it's a lot easier to engage with that as a platform then you know when oculus first launched you were talking about multi hundreds of dollars to purchase a headset and having to run it off of like a $1500 computer and so I posted an informal poll on the pocket now Twitter account have you ever worn a VR headset on an airplane and to me this this seems like it would actually be a great usage scenario we all hate flying it's a terrible experience so why not escape reality for a couple hours and watch a movie that like you were saying I want to lie on my bed and and be all alone in my own movie theater that could be a really interesting way to get to consume a film and out of 800 votes six percent of people said that they have actually flown and worn a VR headset that's actually a lot higher than what I thought it would be that's terrible like that's definitely not an adoption rate that developers want to hear but I think we might be getting over the consumer fear of face computing right like Google glass had that horrific ly negative consumer response because it was two Borg e on your face now we have a few trêpa depe din dividuals who are willing to brave the social reaction of putting a computer on their face in an environment like an airplane and I think if that starts to trickle if that trickles into more of a flow and that flow becomes more of a river that might actually help move the needle on less expensive VR hardware when we can find a few usage scenarios where it makes sense to cover your face with geeky stuff I think that that could actually show some potential long-term I mean you see the pictures it's it's just a extended little goggles thing and it's not like Borg yeah as you said total wires coming off the back like it's a like that's great because like what I think is hilarious is that oculus is solution looks a lot like daydream in in it's just complete and total simplicity and instead of putting your phone in the front of this case I think that's a big problem with daydream right now is again you have to put your phone into this container it's gonna destroy your battery life it's gonna run super hot after about ten minutes I'm sweating buckets and I never want to give someone else my daydream viewer there's there's the gunslinger game that I love playing but I can only play it for about ten minutes at a stretch and I'm dripping with sweat by the time I'm done playing it because my pixel is just roasting away and on my face the UM the galaxy actually does a much better job on the Qualcomm 8:35 but it's still running really hot by the time like although I have noticed that your forehead has been a little bit more fit these days yeah I'm trying trying to get away from having my you know double chin in five head and they're like I'm generally trying to shrink all dimensions but know if oculus is solution here I think is a viable one because it doesn't rely on your phone it's self-contained it's not gonna kill battery life by having a companion device powering it this could be the compelling next step into indicating consumer is interested in this type of usage and I think it's a much better fit for potentially getting schools onboard if we're gonna need to use VR as some kind of educational bar these things about educational platform yeah yeah yeah indeed so we're pretty happy for that and we're pretty happy that's we're all here to talk about some hot takes the sound effect would come in hello anyways we are here to talk now in an abrupt transition over to Apple to the iPhone and two older iPhones in particular especially as newer and newer software older and how you can use them they all get so slow once you install the new operating system update says everybody who owns an older iPhone that's what they say that's what they say is it true though they're all dirty liars the makers of three marked the benchmarking platform that has been pretty popular although that you know they've had they have more competition so there's more data blah blah blah take these numbers at your own risk they have run some tests and have run a plethora I mean we're talking about all the way back to April 2016 so that's through iOS 9 on the iPhone 5s 6 6 s and 7 and we don't you can take a look at pocketnow.com for the bar graphs ourselves but they are pretty consistent the GPU performance on the iPhone 6s actually well the iPhone 6 actually went up in the latest like by a good decent Chuck but it's mostly been a pretty consistent ride yeah the only phone according to their benchmarking the only phone that showed any type of degradation was the iPhone 7s CPU performance through the various iterations of iOS 10 iOS 11 and we're talking by I think a margin of error degree you know the amount of the amount of performance degradation that we saw so the question that I would have of their testing setup I would be I don't believe that these were real-world used phones with personal data accruing different data bases being backed up contacts calendar individual personalized usage throughout the day apps that need to be updated that don't always perfectly clear their cache or their data bases when they're being used you've got a lot of flotsam and jetsam going around and daily abuse that have phone experiences so like a phone that gets run really hot the battery that starts to degrade the chipsets that's starting to get a little more worn out I mean even just the tech the hardware concerns we might see you know maybe it is just like a two or three percent drop in performance over the year that you really use your phone as your daily companion but then you add that with other apps that are being updated other software that's being updated and I think that all don't have the same live API libraries - that totally up - absolutely because I think one of the things that's funny is that they were saying that it's that one of the quotes from the article that we posted on pocketnow.com conversely apps designed for an earlier version of iOS might not take full advantage of optimizations in the latest version of iOS so an even you know a newer app might be more graphics intensive might might actually tax your phone Hardware more but the older app might not take advantages of operating system optimizations and improvements and tax your hardware here's the thing that I feel is kind of being missed out upon is that we open these apps all at once are we trying to get open one app and then it's taking too long so we you know just get out of that right pin another app it's how we use our phones in part that kind of exacerbates this slowness behavior and we're just looking at it and just it's just so frustrating and you think that this is all part of Apple's design we know for for a long time we have known that this is all in the design of planned obsolescence absolutely Apple has a has a concerted has made a concerted effort to make your phones run terrible and they even talked about it during their keynotes where they they say that this phone is gonna be so much better than that crappy old phone that you're using because it's the best iPhone ever now Andrew you use a huawei mate nine so you have no idea what we're talking about because of the machine learning in the hallway making you impervious to your phone aging over time have you had any experience like I think those of us in Android land are probably a bit more sensitive to slowdowns because the Android ecosystem is so much more open and that updates come more sparingly so when there's a bug fix or an optimization it goes through this ridiculous process of manufacturer to carrier to device as opposed to Apple where it's a bit more you know company to customer what I mean so how long have you held on to like the phone that you're you you used before you picked up your mate nine and do you feel like it was running consistently similar to when you first pick it up or did you feel like it was starting to show its age where did we lose Andrew you frozen if lost oh he's frozen in the arm folding position I mean he we know he has a heart out I'm not sure what now he was he was mentioning before we were gonna jump on the podcast too that he was having some issues with his cable car and now you know he's he's like giving us a little cheers on that front and I never took in an Andrew - if you were watching the live stream that he needs to get a new profile photo cuz like me there's less of Andrew than there was when he took that photo he's looking a lot better now and so I'm gonna make fun of them yeah there's there's more beverage unless Andrew just making my hair great yeah well and again another reason why you need to take a better profile photo than the one it's it's it's wholly inaccurate to actually describe what you look like right now but so I was gonna say so the phone that you had before your mate 9 did you feel like it was starting to slow down with age boy what what were you using before you pick that up well I have a my my v10 which like software you can't really tell because that 808 was yes is a dog yes and it I mean it got hot battery life was not great but even if after I bought a new battery I mean I literally can't I have three batteries tear and that I would have on me in my pockets hoping that no I don't sit on any like some tacks or anything [Laughter] and so like it had trouble especially like I'm like I'll go dig it out and I'm just kind of looking like oh my gosh you know there's there's a huge difference as far as just overall but I can't separate it out just based off of software I will say software difference like I've not had the mate nine for that long but the build is older you know you know and I see performance better on the main nine however there are some UI inconsistencies that I find but I think that's just because LG's LGS as especially with nougat refined it a little but was hobbled by the processor on this and this one I mean Huggins little dumb things like like if I'm using the camera app and the raw a toggle disappears yeah you know or something I'm like what why would that change yeah all the time or I'll get some sort of issue with the lock screen where I'll pull up I'll have google play music going and it'll have do like though like the full magazine sort of lock screen you know how Kawai way does it I'll turn it off I'll turn it on again it's just like a band at the top and it looks like emui for Andrew and I are pretty big fans of Huawei devices and I think maybe 2% of the Android phone ownership community in North America have any idea what are you complaining about emui for Jewel's getting back getting back to apple real quick isn't part of the problem with individual use on something like the perceived slowdown of a phone just so highly anecdotal that it's kind of impossible to study I don't know that we can definitively point to you know the the manufacturer influence over OS fragmentation on iOS like you will all get iOS 11 but that doesn't mean you're gonna get all of the new features of iOS 11 you know we can we can reasonably point to just how disposable our phones are becoming in general as something that that you you're gonna be encouraged to upgrade yearly or every other year see this is the problem with cocky about iPhones and that need you're able to keep them from longer as heirlooms whereas Android you have more King consistencies and more of these these gaps that people can notice and that you know they can point to it's just like they're much more frustrated by those but right I feel like when they when I phone users come into this and they sort of have to deal with these slowdowns every once in a while that pop up it's just like well I have to get to my my images my photos I have to get my music I think I think they have much more of a tie of a emotional tie of a just just services to Apple because that's what I think is a great point is when you do run into a lag or a hitch on an iPhone it's more likely to stand out from the daily usage then it might on an Android device and I know people are gonna drop tons of comments like oh I have a galaxy whatever blah blah blah and it never lags and that's probably not true we're just willing to overlook a certain inconsistency in performance to a degree that an iPhone user especially a general consumer might not understand why an app update causes their iPhone to load a program longer or a game might struggle to load a level as fast as it used to we have a comment a couple comments here from from at rina-chan on twitter using the pn weekly hashtag one iphones could use more ram but they went with just enough for their optimizations so when apps get bigger the system is more inclined to lag and then he also mentions his s7 edge went downhill after nougat after his nougat update to the point where having YouTube and Twitter open at the same time was super laggy I can also kind of voice a similar concern my wife had the regular s7 not the s Evan edge and it got so bad so she had filled up her storage with photos of our daughter then moved them all to a memory card and the phone never recovered we wiped it out and it was still slower than what we remembered it being when it was brand new and she actually stole my um my blackberry key one so that's what she's using now instead so even though the 625 is not as powerful as the 820 in the s7 she seems to be happier on the key one than she was with the s7 one and you know I'd be interested with with the ADA way for example on this I wonder how much of the of the processing how much is this the issues that I was having it's most likely related to throttling thermal throttling I wonder how if they had is pipe in there if that would have negated any of that because that's I don't let me interested to see I don't think so I mean because there were eight tens with heat pipes that performance improved but the chipset never ran as consistently as the 805 so what is more powerful than the 805 but if I pull out my Galaxy Note 4 and I compare it even to a clean phone like a Nexus 6p I'll take the overall performance of the note for every single time knowing that in a burst of processing power eight the the the 6p will beat it but after you get over that initial burst it's gonna tank for any sustained performance issues it's just not fun oh yeah compromises battery and all that it's you know that's why the 625 is just so is so they're so good for that you know one one thing as far as tanking performance come back to Huawei the have you noticed in your usage I know that you had you're after the buzz and talking about how it's still a screamer I mean I'm not having mine I've only had mine for about three weeks but it seems really fast as far as their prep because I remember la way promised you know that these were gonna maintain their speed two months later and I mean as I said I don't have it but how does it been for you oh my mate nine I mean I'm actually using it right now to grind some Marvel future fight it's you know it I use it every day mostly for gaming these days but I'll still use it for the camera because I really do like the stills from Huawei cameras the only thing that really has affected performance on mine has been almost maxing out the memory card so it was like well you know we do such an efficient job of garbage collection and keeping the device running running smoother and they show like oh if you have a samsung and you have a hallway and there you've got a ton of photos and videos will load way faster in the gallery app because of this optimization if you're storing a ton of stuff on a memory card it slows them 8/9 way down accessing stuff from the memory card and that's noticeable because if you store your photos and videos on the phone it's still super snappy but that's obviously outside of Huawei's control even though I'm using a very quick memory card that's not on them when it comes to the general performance of the phone I find that this is still one of the better performers for more graphics intense games it performs better on Marvel future fight than my si+ does even though the Qualcomm is the 835 is supposed to be more powerful than the karin 960 it's supposed to have a better GPU it seems to be doing a better job of the the slowdown the lag triggers there are a couple characters that have special moves that totally kill my galaxy where they run pretty much fine on on my mate 9 so it's it's been overall a lot more positive experience than I thought it was going to be based on all the marketing speak that's good yeah I mean and that that being said with with a less powerful GPU on it it's still doing that they Qualcomm so again a lot of this is optimization because I think a part of this is the developers on future fight just have no interest in the various different permutations of chipsets out there and for whatever reason the curent seems to work better other games I think that would probably flip but that's the one that I grind the most we have a couple of tweets here before we wrap this show up from Peter Hayden I wonder if part of Apple's problem is that they support them for so long again we can talk about Apple as a victim of their own success and then he goes on to say as you say Jules that there are other inconsistencies I I wonder if when someone complains about an iphone slowing down it's because they're loading the newest version of iOS on a four-year-old phone I think at some point they gotta call it like you know you're not gonna get great performance but I can point to my s7 and say when's it gonna get Oreo and shrug yeah well my mom's an iPad through third gen like the last one with the 30-pin and she's having a problem - plus it's a 16 gig that's full so there's two sides of that coin so you know and it's a lot of it's just you know you gotta you got a sunset it and I'm David Brown on on Twitter using the P and weekly hashtag what I do to keep my performance up is to wipe my phone about once a year I'm a custom ROM guy so upgrading requires that kind of maintenance I think that's not terrible advice for most people I think you know just like you would expect to give your car a tune up between three and six months I'm not a tune up but like an oil change every three to six months we should probably start having that conversation about phone maintenance we already had that conversation it's about it's about boyfriends and girlfriends and I want to have sex it's like later [Laughter] this conversation delay well it's like I mean with with my with my v10 I did that about once a a couple months basically yeah on there and and whether it's placebo effect or not you know you can count for a lot you know what I mean like even if it's not necessarily really improving the situation for performance it just feels like you're doing something that is gonna help make your phone ownership a little less painful yeah well at least we can ease the pain in terms of ending this podcast I think because we're able to we're able to end it in a graceful and we should and Andrew I want to thank you for joining this week this was a fun conversation and we should probably have you on again sometime I guess maybe have you one again sometimes okay I'm game this is a lot of fun thank you for having me this is this has been fantastic I mean I've been a listener slash watcher since probably late 2013 early 2014 so this is exciting is all heck yeah thank you I enjoy my time in my conversation with Andrew if you guys are so inclined you can catch us on our online book review show the yes and then here's my third you cannot know who Andrew is so folks there you have it another episode of the PocketNow weekly has come and gone this show is over but the conversation continues on twitter where andrew is at fat produce Jules is at point Jules and I'm humbly at some gadget guy pocket now is around the web on Twitter Instagram Facebook Google+ YouTube and our home site pocketnow.com for Spanish speakers definitely check out es pocketnow.com for your espanol fix shows like this cannot exist without your support sharing the weekly with your friends who love mobile technology and dropping reviews on iTunes stitcher Google Play or wherever else podcasts can be reviewed once again we want to thank this week's sponsor dbrand helping protect your gadgets customize your gadgets and provide you with a little more grip so you don't break your iPhone 8 like I did they're helping us keep the lights on but ultimately there would not be a show without early 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