Gadgetory


All Cool Mind-blowing Gadgets You Love in One Place

LG G Flex, Galaxy S 5, & wooden Moto X excitement - Pocketnow Weekly 072

2013-11-29
we at pocket now have a lot to be thankful for this week we're busier than ever our YouTube channel just passed 500,000 subscribers and we're deep in the planning stages for the new years technology shows but more importantly we're all still in the business of reporting on mobile tech and that's something we all feel pretty lucky about I think so we'll talk what's happening in the mobile tech world will fill you in on some of the fun stuff coming down the pipe and we'll take questions from your listener male on episode 07 two of the pocket now weekly the once-a-week audio podcast where we discuss smartphones tablets and the state of mobile technology in 2013 I'm your host Michael Fisher editorial director at pocket now and joining me on this black friday podcast our voice is familiar to our loyal listeners from the eastern time zone chief news editor Stephen shank is giving up the start of his Friday night to be with a Steven good evening sir oh is it very well sir and thank you for being here at this hour and from some hours in the near future somewhere in the goateed expense of utah android guy Joe Levi is with us as well gobble gobble to you brother yes what can I say no no josé living in the past isn't he Joe is in the the future well he's I mean you know hit four o'clock yeah right his four o'clock I mean our four o'clock is the past yes Steven but Joe's four o'clock is our six o'clock right sure yeah it's unfortunate this is the the podcast and nothing more visually based or we could run that gift from scanners of the games head exploding cuz that's true here for me right now I know we've been ridiculously busy and that's part of the reason we're recording on a Friday night we have BF news is what i have in the rundown which means oh right black friday which is today i think we ran a bunch of black friday stories today so as little secret listeners I asked Steven shank to put together the rundown for today and I've been so busy today that I actually haven't gone through the rundown so this is going to be a like a nice surprise to me and something I was rag on who is it guys Taylor for right for not reading the rundown and so Stephen will be talking us through the news and while we mentioned Taylor Martin i texted him at the start of his vacation to ask if he wanted to come on the air for this podcast because we were going to try and record it on Wednesday and I was actually like I just sent him a text and then i'm reading the the pocket now backlog and Taylor Martin wrote a piece called do you disconnect for the holidays where he basically spends the first 500 words talking about how like guys I'm burned out and I'm shutting down i'm leaving ain't really good bye and I'm like oh so I send in this follow-up text like two minutes later I'm like oh just read your piece never mind bro enjoy your vacation so important to disconnect from from from everything every so often so we're hoping he's having a good time but you know Thanksgiving is the day that a lot of families sit down and talk about politics or talk about religion right and my family we sit down and we talked about what phone everybody's got really so so you gonna let you know acting for the holidays we are uber connected for the holidays it's so true it's it's it's a trap like it but it was fun i had the g flex with me at my girlfriend's relatives house and it was a ball we had a wonderful thanksgiving but i love talking about that phone so much that i had no trouble spending my my turkey day mainly talking about the g flex that we we missed you today on the park and i'll live when we had questions about the g flex oh did you were there were you both on the pocket I lab this morning chance absolutely yes Fat Joe and I are practically running the sites in a media component today it's bizarre and and everyone involved in it except for us is like unaware of that so not pointing any fingers at Tony and Michael but you know whatever hmmmm taking this place down from the inside that's right is there speaking of the of the g flex is there there's two flex news on the rundown as I saw right uh yes I believe so ok so we didn't even make it to that but oh there is oh good well you fill us in on that in a second I want to say I want to have a confession to make I have been the REE were recording the show so late part of the reason is because I have spent the day this doesn't even feel right to say guys abusing the g flex and I mean like physically beating up on the phone and this hasn't been fun now I thought you were going to do the the scratch test he's talking about bending it and well we were worried yeah we weren't because my marques brownlee our friend mkbhd did a really good video on this and if good listeners if you haven't seen it you should go watch it join the two million who've already watched it because I think like CBS picked it up or something but like it's now standing video but what we wanted to do was like take it okay so we'll test the self-healing component will test the flexing but we want to kind of use it in real-world circumstances and you're right Steven we were not going to do that because we were just borrowing the unit from negri but some things happened where we we ended up buying it from from negri and in other words Michael broke it broke another one that one and then yeah no no actually thankfully that didn't happen we bought it because of some stuff I can't talk about which is the same reason a review is push back a little bit but it's all good stuff no worries knock bad news at all great news but the thing is we ended up deciding we wanted to do a stress test a torture test so that's what I've spent the afternoon doing III it just hasn't felt I mean I've dropped the thing on the concrete um that's like a kick back to the the durable phones the rugged phones that we tested a while back are you doing that kind of stuff to it no you know and not really i I'm doing all the stuff to it that I don't like watching like I don't like I don't like phone durability porn I don't like drop tests I think it all just so it makes me feel so bad and it makes me feel really bad especially when it's a phone that I really like so anyway we didn't test it to destruction that video will be up tonight it may be up it'll be up shortly after the podcast so it goes live so if for some reason listeners you are recovering from black friday and you are listening to this podcast and you want something to watch that video will be up tonight and you can enjoy seeing how the g flex holds up to being you know flexed here's what's the the screen cover material on this is it very flexible glass when they go with plastic yeah I think and I haven't been able to get confirmation on that and that's one of the many questions which should be cleared up next week I think it's plastic the display is plastic OLED right so it's not a display covering right but we know it's we assume it's not gorilla glass because grills doesn't flex like that no but I know Kourtney does make some really really flexible was a dragon glass or is it dragon trail ask something should be like monkey class because you know monkeys and gorillas and flexibility banana phones there you know it all goes together but the g flex is still intact we didn't test it to destruction or anything it's sitting right here next to me i'm still very very i really like this phone a lot oh my god so let's get to the run and we have G flex things to talk about Steven why don't you kick us off on the news my voice I'm tired of my voice at this point so enjoy a lousy huge thank you thank you I will recline momentarily take us away Steven so the first thing we heard this week about the g flex was regarding LG's plans for a follow-up now we know samsung had this awesome chart at their panelist a thing a while back showing were they seeing this technology going over the next couple years from his phones that are curved to bending and everything in between so this rumor suggests that the sequel to the g flex whoever ends up being called could arrive about the same time that the first one loves this year so we're looking at in october early november somewhere and there and just like Samsung's roadmap it's against that LG will be pushing the limits of this flexible technology and the sequel to the g flex might bend about 90 degrees so we wouldn't hold a NAPA to be flexible so you've got Nick you could hold it like a c-shape or something bend it to your face what I don't like unfolded to put it in your pocket or something you wouldn't know it 90 degrees solo el ya nour el no I know what that is but I would like him but you don't want to leave it at a 90-degree thing is how are you gonna carry her round what you gonna do mount it on your you know like the throat yeah will it come with it with the rhythm like a choker necklace and get two of them you can make a bracelet yeah it just all there was SmartWatch LG Smart Watch reflections you heard it here first um well okay so this is cool so I thought that maybe given the fact that we were hearing rumors about the G flex 2 already I thought that maybe this would be something that would be coming out and like five months but I'm glad to hear you yeah I'm glad to hear that this is just uh we're already there already thinking about the next phone in the line on the next cycle because this thing hasn't even hit anywhere outside of south korea yet so well that's the second part then I didn't get the post about this this afternoon but I saw on the feed somewhere there's talk about an international launch of the bone happening sometime next month well what do you know about that that's in time for the holidays that would be really really rare hmm I hope that's true because i want to buy one of these now i have a big problem because Steven do you know why you know what I do but there are two that I want very badly now i want the g flex from us for myself but what else do I want for myself that's also in the rundown I die I very much doubt it's the next thing in the rundown because that would just be too convenient oh you want that wouldn't ya I sure do yeah I don't think it's ever gonna get here whatever what's the bad news story say what does it say it says never ever it'll be available by the holidays and the holidays of never ever stop people to get this thing in time when night residents it's going to have this ship within a couple weeks from the end zone and you know I mean that's been part of the value proposition on the Moto X from the start right is uh just like shipping within four days so I can only imagine they will apply that to this as well one would hope yeah what do we know what the price is gonna do there unless they've really been misleading us and you're dropping the red herring it's going to be an extra 50 I mean that's what it says in the code behind the site okay so looking for the ones it down 350 for the cheapest one off contract so which sounds an awful lot like some other own that cost 350 off-contract doesn't it hey oh wait in is that truly what it is I know the price got knocked down but it is that of what it is I was trying to price it because these black friday deals I was compiling the other day there's an awesome one coming up on cyber monday for Motorola's offering 150 bucks off any Moto X you could say whoa wait it offering that off even unlocked without a contract yeah yeah and so fascinating um so take that and buy a moto G you like I'm just gonna try I'm on moto maker right now trying to build my own and it's making me log in and now I just don't yeah that's something wouldn't just give me the prices until I actually put an order through very annoying about that come on motorola will tell you how much it costs after you've already bought it yeah it comes down to Nexus 5 levels still these discounts factor what did you just do Steven because all of a sudden the podcast became very much quieter and it's so much more pleasant did you flip a switch I touched nothing Wow well then the podcast gods are smiling on us and we just won't talk about a new show or something is easily know Joe remains Joey I'm totally here shows not the problem child with the karaoke revolution revolution 2 i'm sorry right yeah I'm sorry I didn't mean to malign you you're right character resolution to as I believe in a thing called love all the importance of all right I didn't mean to get us off track there so did you did you right before I said my stupid thing did you give it did you hit us with a price or now ah i did not i can't recall it it's like 350 ish after ok so the wooden ones are fifty dollar premium the developer wants five i remember that the milk 15 fit well my god which should just not exist yeah but belapur phones are job if your phone is to develop their phone you don't want people to develop for it the end it's not in the rundown but Motorola this week also changed their developer phone policy we're no longer voids the warranty once you unlock a bit later well that is good this an overload overdue move that was that's a big duh yeah yeah that was bound to happen it should have happened ages ago hopefully we will see some official word on that soon i doubt motorola motorola was really big on shooting a moto x 2 like everyone in the world when they released the Moto X but I think that I think that they're probably this is just me talking I'd have done or know this for sure I think they're probably pretty happy with the press they got because I can't find anyone in the media in a tech media who doesn't really really like the phone and so I really doubt we'll be getting a wooden review unit but we will ask do not worry we will ask pretty pretty please yes Steven what'swhat's what else is going on what's what's next we gotta go oh yes speaking of words between you HTC m8 so we've been talking about this is gonna be the next big flagship from HTC it's gonna be the two or the 1.5 who knows but we heard a little bit more about what to expect from it and it kind of doesn't sound that great I think they're gonna pronounce it the mate the HTC mate oh that would make it would be awesome I don't know why but i would i would forgive that more readily than i would some other cutesy name and i got bored in the mo tog motel oh the if you get microsoft's new x bone console so i thought of the space on this thing the big disappointing one is mention of another 4 megapixel camera which sounds like the exact same ultrapixel them this year that doesn't seem right to me I oh no I they can't there's a commenter who makes a really good point down here who says like when the initial HTC One was rumored the rumors had a carrying an s4 pro instead of 600 so it is not without precedent that HTC might under promise and over deliver here so I just can't see them throwing a 4 megapixel camera in there again the government was pretty iffy I i guess this model number invention does not look anything like the format that HTC uses for some devices so I'm I don't trust the Providence of this particularly yeah yeah well we'll see we're still we're coming up on the point where these rumors are going to start coming faster and faster right because guys when did the HTC one announcement happened last year was at january-february what does they fed you worry them if you're wrong I'm gonna sounds it was opposed to launch then it take March but it was delayed till early April yeah I was something somebody I don't know Brennan and I covered the thing in New York and I was if there was a fun time but do you speaking of HTC One Show you've got the one max did you not I have the one max yes yes now wait a sprint one man edition yes yeah now have you been using it I have been trying to use it now what does what does that mean exactly I have been running into issues is that the case is it a bad unit er I don't know it's still inside this nice pretty box that says fedex on it you have to take it out of the box to use it yeah there's your problem oh my god I gotta boot it okay no I've I've got a nice review rebuttal coming up on this that we were hoping to have sooner than later but now looks like later than sooner just schedules and holidays and Roger I read to that yeah well take that thing out of the box at some point because you're just you're gonna want to enjoy yourself with it I don't know what to tell you about it except that you must use it to experience it and what that experience is will be your own it will be my own I've just noticed it ten seconds to say nothing at all your choice it is well that that really is what everything we do every day comes down to it is all about will tell you the good the bad the ugly but it's up to you to figure out what you want and for you to try and use what you like cuz your decision is yours and who are we to second-guess doors and yours alone specials that's who we are well what's what's the story on I don't want to leave a moto completely behind we had if you want a moto G in the United States you can get one now is that true yeah surprise surprise what yes waiting until next year but they're available now through motorola amazon just added them I think today or yesterday you know I want one of these so hard we did ask motorola for one they did not opt to give us one so i but i might just ask for one for christmas from Santa I don't know probably get one with the change at having your couch I mean yeah prices are what 180 and 200 respectively for 8 and 16 gigs orders shipping in under a week by December second yet my goodness I mean it's this kind of device that makes me wish I had someone in my life who really needed a phone right now they just get one of my mom or something lender she's not going to use it exactly like I wish I hadn't already equipped to my parents with smartphones cuz I'd be like oh man just snap these are these are really because it's like a high-yield gift right it's like Christmas morning or a tonic or whatever you're like unwrapping the thing and it's like check out what I got you and they're like holy crap it's an awesome looking smart phone and they have no idea that you only spend ice cream money on it Shh so so speaking of that Milo we're all talking like ballers I'm sorry I love her all talking like 180 bucks is nothing like oh yeah I got that yeah so my daughter has one of my old I've Galaxy Nexus phones that she's using as an actual phone now and she loves it she thinks it's great but she wants my wife's old Nexus 4 which has a broken screen because you have a nexus 4 thing yeah if you have a nexus warn you haven't broken the screen yet you will yep um she's oh she's saving her babysitting money to to send that back to LG and fix it so for 168 bucks she gets a nexus 4 well I'm gonna all this gonna for money for the case that is a rad deal dude well I a new nexus 4 relate to under box a couple months ago let's shut up don't my daughter doesn't listen to the podcast so she doesn't know the point I'm making is I said hey do you want to do that or do you want to buy the Moto G for 180 and she was like I don't know dad you're the android guy what do I want to do and so she's thinking of the the Moto G I love it I want to know what we all want to know what the results of this of this are the results are her going out and finding more people to babysit for so there we go she's gotta grow her user base or know her customer base her customer base yes he so breaking news the g flex which is in my hand now has to default disfigured deformed spots on its display at the center line the display covering is intact it is not warped but the display itself underneath now has two spots that are about the size of maybe a millimeter in diameter totally circular and I do not believe they were there before and you know this distorted its coloration what do we know when the display is on they are not in evidence I'm going into Twitter perfect white screen to verify this now I cannot see them when the screen is on it is only when the screen is off that I can see these distortions which I assume came from sitting on the phone repeatedly the wrong way mm-hmm that's that's disappointing same time same time doesn't show up when the screen is on so you're patiently had a scare with my nexus 5 where thought i had a dead pixel on it oh and I you know video app and I'm pulling up all these different videos and each of them has this run the edge of the screen it looks like a pixels missing and it's weird because I'm thinking I shouldn't be able to see individual pixels on a 1080p display and sure I've ended up just being a software artifact that for some reason blacked out this time feels a lot of the screen like five minutes I was sweating bullets there God ya know that's scary i know it remains dead pixels are like the most irritating thing to try to explain to people you're trying to return a phone too but with the nexus is just would be your 10 to send it back this is the last thing go ahead see i did download an awesome app designed to give me epilepsy both trying to think still trying to fix that pic i love those i think it's cool of dev slick devise fat I've never had a stuck pixel knock it knock on wood I've never had a stuck pixel on one of my devices out of the box lucky and I look I would this last thing I'm going to say about the g flex and then we can stop talking about it I promise we're gonna talk about song from the what is it late eighties mid 90s if you want every flex yeah yeah this oh we are not going to type it's good reference um this thing keeps trolling me because that popped up and i keep thinking I'm done with this video and then I'm not like I had to go back and reinsert something else so the flea the vo track for this video is like going to be a hodgepodge of like haphazardly inserted audio clips now have to talk about the screen thing but do you guys know that it hit it refused to heal on me for like an hour when I scratched it up with a penny so like I scratch it up with a penny I leave a big old scar on the back I'm like you ain't you ain't going to heal so I photograph at every five minutes for like 40 minutes and it's not healing I'm like okay whatever I'm done you didn't he'll go over there while I read about you and then like an hour and a half later I'm putting the video together I'm like okay I pick it up I look at it just to kind of confirm that that they're still there totally gone the penny scratches have vanished they didn't do it in the first 40 minutes but they did it sometime after that but before the 90 minute mark so this is going to be an adage for children watched pot never boils they're not gonna know what actually water-efficient scratch smartphone does not heal its own that's exactly right a watched progress bar never cell phone heal thyself yes ooh nice Joe ooh good good title for a video who I might take that and we could see if we could license the reflex for the background music yeah oh there be great alright good we have an idea we got a show we got a show all right we should record this thing all right listen I'm taking us off track let's stop talking about that Steven what's next wait there was a track no no I'm gem made that up okay they're fools and oh yeah best news ever is what's next really so one of these companies behind a benchmark app and you know we use lots of them in the past and some of them we favored more than others but the company behind 3dmark has decided to do something about these companies that I use the word cheating it because I strongly believe that's what it is but they're the ones manipulating their phones so that they perform better in benchmark apps than they do for everything else and so 3dmark said you're going to do this and they know they have in terms of service for what devices have to do to qualify for inclusion and it says you cannot gain your results this way so rather than put up with it they just delisted so HTC one the one mini the note 3 and a couple tablets I think are now bottom of their lives I love it I absolutely love this ya know black mark on them and it's wow it's great because I mean you know it's it's it's not it's irrespective of brand it's just who has you know who has been implicated in this sort of semi scandal I love that it's it's cross brand I love that there will probably be more revelations in the future and that somebody has finally come up and been like you know what no you're not doing this boom I would just love to see all the other benchmarking companies and get behind like a group effort here yes one of them is doing its not going to have the impact it needs to I think 3dmark deserves a real awesome like round of applause because that's that's really really cool I mean Joe what do you think you're the expert here what's your opinion on in terms of benchmarking well synthetic benchmarking is a flawed concept to begin with everybody at some point in their life is going to come to that realization whether you already have or whether that's something you haven't quite reached yet trust me you will and it's just understanding the way it's all put together it tries and tries and tries to create this real-world scenario of tests that really doesn't exist anywhere but it's the best thing that we can do to get a watermark to find out how this device is comparing against some other device it tries to be the equalizer and it's the best we have that said I love using them because I think they do a pretty good job at representing that watermark by going in and saying aha I know what you're doing here I'm going to immediately ramp everything up so that I score better than everybody outs because I'm already running it 100% as soon as the appt fires up yeah that's that's not the way you work on every other app out there therefore it is cheating there is no other way to look at it then you are trying to game the system and what what these guys did is perfect says next time we run a review guess what we're going to include 3dmark as one of our scores and you're gonna get a did not finish yeah dnf dragons a rest yep I a big I don't use like 3d mark by the way I'm 3 mark I don't like benchmarks myself Joe you said it all really much better than I could but I do use 3d mark just to get an idea of because you can see it as it's visually running the the awesome like world it has made up the animation you can see how well the device is performing there's a little frame rate monitor down below but you can also see whether it's stuttering or whatever is going on and it's just a nice kind of it looks good impression yeah and it's also really fun to film like what should all the me get downloads or something yeah there's like cool space ships that are built around like huge circular saws which you know that's cool i'm into that so oh i love 3d mark and yeah keep using I'm glad Stephen I again with Joe saying about how these benchmarks like freedom arc they're trying to give you a score horrible and really over simplify it black a lot of value I do think there's something to be said for just these raw computational things like how many you know gigaflops can the process to do how many triangles per second can the GPU display yeah I think there is value to having those because that gives simple easily comparable hard numbers and those are more difficult to gain teen yes yes and as a software developer you know than what I do in my other life that's occupied all of my time this week hideously don't let them hear that though okay I agree with that entirely there's nothing better than then quantifiable numbers to take back to somebody and say look this one is better than that one and I have the numbers to prove it the downside to that is the interpretation of those numbers because somebody who sees this one is scoring this and that one is scoring that and all of a sudden they think it's somehow better than the other it's got phone calls ring and sorry about that guys it's it's not it's you look at a benchmark score and you say okay that's great and it it is in the benchmark but nowhere else not outside of the benchmark so real-world practical stuff you know my my Nexus 5 is faster than my nexus 4 is it twice as fast in use probably not on the benchmarks if possibly so yeah so you just have to use it as a yes it's a relative mark of which is faster and which is not but in everyday practical use the stuff that you do with it every day and that's where Stephen is absolutely correct it's a good reference mark but it's not gospel it's a tool yes various very well summed up and I think given the current state of my own internal benchmark and attention level I think it's time to move on what do you guys shut up you like that that was the most beautiful thing ever was great beautiful I really did like it it was good I want to know about the galaxy s5 though yeah we heard a little bit more about when this I might be coming out because everyone was talking about Samsung rush in this thing to market they apparently are dissatisfied with the galaxy s4 sales I can't see why but so they always talk about it coming out really really early next year at least significantly earlier than we've seen it much in the past seriously earlier than then we'd expect suspiciously some might say so yes so what do we have claims that it could go up for sale in February or march is that correct yeah this uh if this particular member didn't mention a launch announcement previously we heard it might happen in January this was just talking about manufacturing and they say that the the real heavy manufacturing when exam so it's going to switch from some you know early production runs doing this and mass is going to happen in January and then phone actually becoming available stores februari remarks that would be very interesting i like this spec rundown we're looking at here a possible 64-bit Exynos chip which isn't going to enjoy stop me if I'm wrong is not going to make any difference to the end user the same three wrong oh damn it am I robbed um let's let's come back to that because that's all right that's yes then the chip is going to be 64 bit that lets us potentially have a lot of cool stuff that we can get into in the meantime talk about three gig of ram meantime three gigs of ram the same ones we saw on the Galaxy Note 3 and the source also describes a 16 megapixel main camera which I can believe and that's that isocell one that's supposed to be coming up next year did you say I so sell isocell we heard about this new tech from Samsung that's supposed to reduce lead over between the individual pixels so better saturation opens no that would be quite lovely now I've never really had a problem I don't think with Samsung's saturation on their cameras in fact I haven't had no problem with Samsung's cameras it's good you should look there's a sample a half of it I so cell when I first wrote about it and it's a subtle difference but if you look in the really the highlights of the image you can see that there's more color must wait I so sell what a confusing term given the photographic term is 0 that's a very descriptive term this is 0 on your ISO so yeah right anyway all this is making me think of the galaxy s4 zoom which is making me well simultaneously feel strange and slightly excited oh but separate from this talk about the actual availability of bone there's another rumor out today suggesting we might not get optical stabilization on the camera yeah yeah you know I any phone needs OAS today for me to be excited about its camera I i am not loving it on the Nexus 5 I mean I know it's not great on that cuz I'm hardly even noticing it's a bet ya know that wait for the update and they will be half good the Nexus 5 is easily the least impressive example of OAS I've used so far I'm really looking forward to that update but the battery is interesting to me i love it stevens phrasing hear reports of a way two big four thousand million power battery gotta be wrong you know it doesn't have to be around that because you know this I promise I'm breaking my promise this LG G flex in my hand has a 3500 milliamp hour battery and this phone doesn't seem like it we should have a battery that big isn't that like a sick seizure of the g flex yeah it's a big fun I know but still so I could see it happening you know the battery isn't even that big though we've seen photos of the curved battery from this unit in a photo that is at tom's hardware and now is that a curve battery or selects know that it's curved not flexible it's well I mean it's is flexible i mean i don't know i sat on the thing so it must be a little flexible it hasn't loaded yet the question that i have there is we saw flexible battery technology come up before is this battery using that or is that what we're going to see in the the reflex going back to topic tough call I don't know because I you know it takes some real stones like it takes a lot of skill to tear down a phone but it takes a lot of skill and I think a degree of foolishness to tear down a battery because the last time I heard about someone doing that like they ruined their kitchen as blue green flames like left from their phones to their seat it's easy no I did was like Nick the bag with a screwdriver like you pulled apart the casing of the battery and nicked a little bag inside and it exploded lithium-ion batteries are not going to mess with lithium owing knows yes yes so anyway uh but yeah I was just curious about that because you know that that would then open the question is flexible battery technology also somehow able to fit in a whole bunch of extra milliamp hours in there as compared to the the rigid brothers or cousins you don't know that we might have to watch that going forward Oh are we getting so excited over flexible batteries in the first place they're not technologically that far off from normal lithium polymer batteries well because the flexible battery and a flexible display means a flexible device right right what's a good enough we could be good at making flexible batteries for years now there's nothing to high-tech but there hasn't been anything like to motive yeah because the display can move so it's like a check it out the batteries in the wristband on this watch but the screen is still flat it's like I don't care go away yeah what I just gotta say what look broke Joe we don't we got all these cool things inside our phones we got processors we got radios we got Ram we got storage we got all this stuff and we're seeing such huge leaps in technology moving forward and good freakin grief the 805 we're gonna have ten down sad you don't say Machuca hurts I Steve sixth step it's funny you make the bag come on because what's that what the bit stefan constantinescu tweeted something last night like he was just like i just read an article where someone said that the snapdragon 805 has 10 gigahertz of processing power and i was like oh wait a minute hold on and i like hop over to pocket now I'm like out Joe Joe your 10 was early and chica does not it's only if there are only about only if your 80s 80s era bummer on a commercial doesn't that math work out come on but though you're not saying it has that much raw speed but you know if you say you've gotta I was gonna do a car now anyway it's too I stand by what I said because you added up and it is my wishes because it's a neo few alimony orbit system let's move on before it gets too hot too much in my members yeah all right all right do we have something to say there go ahead and finish this up in Android Joe it's an exciting exciting thing because look it's its battery technology it's something new and different and changing and it gives us the possibility that we could have finally that leap that same leap that we've seen in processors and video and RAM and storage finally making it over to batteries and I hope we're not let down by it but i think we probably will be what we been ringing had a leap in man cram speeds Ram capacity and we went eons behind a hard drive and storage it well I'm just saying look at look at all these bits and pieces that we have inside our device for getting faster ram we're getting more RAM we're getting faster buses yeah it's busted so much so much best s talk going on right now uh fun fact-- i'm going to ask Steven to switch over to Apple because we have some news to cover there and while he does oh you bet the topic I thought you were going to have a switch phone I'm gonna ask Stephen a switch over due to an all Apple ecosystem and then we'll be back no no we're gonna switch topics there and fun fact while you tell us the first topic in the Apple rundown Steven I'm going to surreptitiously but not anymore now that I've told you about it film these deformations on the phone that I'm no longer talking about look at that multi-tasking right here yeah we like mute buttons Steven it says what s first it's not now can I don't know it sneaks away all the time use isn't always yeah so I go make oatmeal for minutes at a time I come back now go ahead Steven um so I've been hearing a lot of rumors about what to expect from Apple next year and it's all very interesting it sounds a lot like the company's moving away from habits of the past we could be getting new device sizes more launches and rather just the one ipad event and one iphone event and we've been talking about you know but sort of schedule we might see for these and a lot of it's been looking to at least something happening earlier on in the year possibly a new 12 point nine inch ipad coming out of the spring this new rumor says not so fast and we might be waiting until at least the second half of the year and do you believe that giant iPad story because i don't know if i do ah i'm kind of thinking and I've had a lot of people echoing this that it's going to be more like what Microsoft's doing with the surface pro and this might be like a crossover mac book / tablet thing haha work but I just make sense with the side and it lends itself to using a more traditional mobile operating system it would make some sense I just don't see Apple being the one to do it it seems like something that's so far out there it would be it seems like almost as likely to me as Apple coming out and saying hey guys remember a sous padfone well we're making a better version of it you know it just seems that unlikely seems like something like a dream you'd have after having too much indian food or something you know yeah that's where I'm going for dinner tomorrow nice we've been hearing about Samsung working on a giant galaxy tab so I mean if Apple forget to after that came out we blame them all for copying Samsung oh yeah that's true but I mean come on you you expect something like that from Samsung it's like if somebody came out tomorrow and been like hey guys you know Samsung's putting android in a I don't know a car remote start to you know keychain fob I'd be like yeah I believe that okay whatever not Apple anyway uh so that's that's interesting what about the iWatch too because uh it's more Ottoman also be delayed so second half of the year well that actually does make me sad because you know i love my smart watches yeah i'd rather than waiting to go right no me too i understand what about the products that are already on the shelves not the smart watches the iphone i was gonna say absolutely what are you talking about they're gonna call it I pebble oh that would be very sad oh did we did we post a new story about pebbles availability by the way Black Friday special I've taken see a black friday special in one of the swords it wasn't a very good one whatever when I make it was just you get like a free gift card with it yeah a little pebble is available on Amazon first of all an Amazon and you can get the red one for the same price as you can the black one uh and different prices based on color y'all dude yes the orange one was like 250 bucks on amazon ooh yeah the black ones 140 whatever it was like five bucks cheaper than regular and it came with prime shipping so I threw that out to all my people on Twitter which by the way Michael Fisher is still winning so everyone follow me and unfollow him father Joe Levi no joke on Twitter like having more followers is winning because I have some arguments you know I was just gonna say Stephen Stephen i think is beating all of us with the most followers per tweet i think if your average is something like a hundred followers every tweet well let's uh so back to what I'm saying bucks off today only directly from pebble go get it now all right that's that's exactly this rose looking for okay somebody has it really good let's move on the iphone 5s we would maybe we can fill some orders now yeah unsurprisingly I there the demand has dropped or Apple has ramped up its production line but it's finally making enough iPhone 5s is to go around so if you were looking for one earlier and your local store only had a bunch of fives and 5 c's try again because word is now that by and large most of the stock in apple physical stores are these 5s models I haven't heard if the color availabilities gotten any better because we know the gold was tough to come by early on but with as many as we here are on hand give it a shot Roger that all right good news on the Apple front yeah well now new news on the Apple for anyway ISM and crossing by the way we have another defector in my family from the Apple camp to the Android camp that's all I'm saying normally I would if this were a different podcast i would now use the opportunity to set off some firecrackers and and use the sound board to put in applause but uh you know you know people people should just do what they want that's what I think that's what I'm saying and he didn't live baby yeah you got a note 3 and it's gorgeous and he loves it and he's huh oh no three good time good device microsoft exec says something what is it now on the run down like sneak and I like singer those segways on you wait is this an allusion to a platform fusion plans that's right cold platform usual scientists have finally figured out how to do it cold fusion I thought they dispelled that they said it could not be done it do microsoft is finding a way to do it time I downlods embedded in the surface 3 all you need is live tiles it's all you need what is the story here actually everybody needs to just know because I'm reading this on the screen and you may not know this because we're just talking about it Fusion means the coming together it's not new super secret code work like I thought it was so don't be confused like me it's just that diffusion like you said above those gaps no prob capitalizing every word in the headline so you can tell the difference ah yeah platform fusion plant so what is it what are they talking about they're talking my bringing our tea together with Windows Phone like we've been speculating is that correct yeah we've been talking about this for months and months now microsoft hasn't been sitting a lot you know giving us a lot of hard information saying this is what we plan to do by when so there's been a lot of speculation going on we've heard rumors about like when Windows Phone 8.1 comes around in the spring how we might see that start to get this process going by combining of the the online stores for RTE apps and Windows Phone 8 apps and then eventually we get to a point where we have you know they come together and we had microsoft exec saying do I have a quote from here her listen to her via in here um no exact quote but the point is that quote like it's acknowledging that this is where we're headed that we're not going to have three separate platforms in the future for some point we're getting down to it's just going to be Microsoft is going to run on your phone is going to run in your tablet everyone in your laptop it will be the same thing don't forget your game console because we are getting some traditional desktop II window app capability to the xbox one as well so we will have some fusion with the the set top / game console that eventually will I don't know yeah I mean this is something we have been talking about for quite a while too because you know this was the kind of thing that I was using to prop up the notion of Windows Phone as a successful platform over a year ago on this very podcast is we were talking I think the surface was due to come out we were waiting on windows 8 to come out at that point we hadn't seen it and a lot of people were saying like well what you know how is this tile thing going to land and I was like well you know I am hopeful for it because I think there is value in saying to someone hey if you like this interface you can have it on your phone on your tablet on your desktop on your console you can have it everywhere if you want it that way I think that's been a really bumpy road so far and I don't think a lot of people are really asking for it but it is still a valuable thing that you can offer and now we're seeing what yourself doing that with their ad push they're saying I don't know what exactly the slogan is but it's essentially like same experience on every platform yeah I think that's pretty cool I mean that part that part is cool yeah so you got three things together you've got name recognition which they came out of the box with for everything but xbox Xbox is still xbox right it's not windows box w fine thankfully because if it had been I don't think it would have sold as well yeah I know but you've got all these other platforms that all have windows in their name and really from my peers standpoint shouldn't because they are not all windows they are are those windowed absol windows phone no windows I want to go there now and thankfully because I don't like where the windows on my smartphone so it's the future dude but stop derailing me so so you have the name that's that's contiguous across three of the floor platforms you then have the tiles that are contiguous across three out of the four actually all of four out of the floor lab yeah yeah and next and this is really where this whole strategy will pay off is when you have appt synchronicity between those four platforms you buy one app and it runs in all four places and it looks essentially the same across all four it's not a separate code base it's just a separate optimized display for that we're not close to their weight but I tell me if I'm making this up because people were complaining about this earlier we've talked about this before I think that I went to buy asphalt 8 for the Lumia 2520 the other day the tablet and it told me I had already bought it the only place i've bought asphalt 8 is on the windows phone store as a Windows Phone app and yet on a Windows RT device I could download it for free because it told me I had already purchased it yes but is it the same app or is it just a different version of the for the different version of the same title for a different platform I see what you're saying so you're talking about the same oh I ok ok yeah Michael make sure didn't even know that that worked that way well yeah that that you have to do to get you to that next step right now I should I want to make it clear that i may have been high and drunk i mean like this did happen but i also may have bought asphalt 8 on like the surface forever ago I really don't think I did though it actually did happen so any app developers out there that want to sell somebody something sell it to Michael he'll buy it and not even I will definitely buy things twice but I can't remember anything oh my god well cool how many Smurf berries and I by last night but no you get to a point where I I have adopted this this ecosystem and I just want my app to work across everything it can do that today on Android whether that's a smartphone a phablet a tablet a tablet with a keyboard I'm just missing that desktop computer laptop computer type thing step ya but the same app runs across all of them one purchase one app it's the same thing if I do that on Windows say I want to run SimCity which runs on my Windows computer on my tablet which is just a screen and not a keyboard and big box attached to it I can't do it because it doesn't exist that code base is specific to desktop windows and nowhere else wait that's I thought the whole deal with all right you're talking about desktop to tablet I am not as well versed in that area but at least there is that synchronicity between Windows Phone and Windows because that was a whole point of releasing windows phone 8 was that so they could share a code base right yeah so at least there's there's that they're getting there you know I just realized that we have the old pocket now we cleaver logo on our shows list Steven what were you gonna say I don't know I was like oh I'm sorry that you were going out just make little explanations to liven things up me too I do that too well I look forward to seeing what's going to come of this I think that somebody posted a really interesting thing on Twitter the other day if you play drinking game to the pocket now weekly you probably take a drink every time I say someone's we did something I can't remember who but that is true there's another one of those somebody said like everyone who thinks that RT is going to die in favor of Windows Phone is making a mistake it's the other way around so that's an interesting contention I don't agree with that I would agree with you I they're gonna they're gonna mess up through yeah right they're gonna eat each other and then they're gonna form something fascinating and huge is cool max yeah gross oh wow that was that was nice it slipped in right and underneath the radar there it'll break right out of their chest and scream and run away and grow so wait are we not talking about aliens no but we could build ya later talk about John heard all of this oh dude John Hurt all of this is not related relate to the Lumia 1520 but I want to let everybody know if you're waiting for our review on that you'll be waiting a little while longer everything kind of got turned on its head this week and it really shows no sign of getting back together properly so don't worry we'll have that review out it's just going to take us a bit I know we were late already on it so we apologize for that but circumstances beyond our control and so on and so forth what is the nokia normandy stephen chang that's a very good question uh it looks like it's going to be an Asha device which is unfortunate because this name first came to our attention a couple weeks back when good old f leaks released a bunch of code names normandy among them and then a couple days later followed up with a very cryptic tweet calling normandy the missing link and so we read while the speculation on what that could possibly mean between what what my heart was on it being like we were just talking about some co2 crossover windows RT windows phone 8 device but then a render showed up this week and it is very clearly an Asha device it's got that Asha less than sign looking back button on there I thought that was part of efflux watermark for some reason no no that's that's on there oh and it matches up what we've seen from actual devices in the past I me it looks decent and that it's going to have a widescreen display a lot of the recent ones from novia have been four by three so that's good and it's sort of it's going to be where Microsoft is leading us into we don't know what's going to do with that actually I acquired it as part of this nokia deal and we remains to be seen if it's going to be like an introduction to Windows Phone if they're going to try to make it look and feel a little more like it to sort of get people into the platform what doesn't make that much sense for me because we already have these entry-level devices like the the 520 or the 545 now it's unclear how it's going to fit into Microsoft's line up the important thing is it looks a lot like Lumia devices they already started that I think with the 501 they got those bright colors like noumea things but now you know the screen layout and everything it's a cohesive design language I think you you were on to something Steven when you talked about the relationship between ash and Windows Phones Microsoft was kind of quoted as as calling Asha and on-ramp to Windows Phone yeah after the acquisition so that's interesting I keep forgetting that they got the IQ I I don't know why but and yeah i was i was convinced that this was something that nokia was gonna retain hold on yeah sure yeah oh it's just feature phones right right every think it's because we're so used to treating Asha like yeah I think you're right but you were about to say something I the 525 that's official and we're excited about that why because it's upgrade from the 520 the most popular Windows Phone of all time apparently it's a little more sand it has I think double the ramp the 512 so you're gonna have a yeah that's not just a little yes that's quite a bit it's not 12 I have 512 megabytes of RAM in a little worker yeah that's the thing I think that that's a very significant boost because the 512 megs of ram was a big choke point for some apps to run like some apps would not load right they were restricted from loading on phones with less than a gig of ram so I think that's a really good move but in exchange like the the price looks to be it's a hundred ninety-nine bucks I mean it's 100 others more than the 520 isn't it yeah but this I mean that was the a translation from singapore dollars we don't know if that's what to be everywhere okay it could be able to lower your right it's a lot more to ask and that really knocks it out of this SuperDuper crazy affordable realm and we're now competing with devices and it might struggle with yeah so be in the android guy we're going from an inexpensive 512 ram based system to one that's probably going to have a gig of ram and Google is doing kind of the opposite with their latest version of Android optimizing it so that it will run on as little as 512 megabyte exactly it's the app is right right when it's fun never needed the help really down it at that those low ram counts it's the other apps i don't think we have that dewy on android what like an appt appt minimum hardware requirements i'm sure you can't asphalt feed on yeah exactly like I wouldn't want to take a galaxy ace and try and load like modern combat on it you can run three frames per minute on that bed alright exactly like I've ever even run 3d mark on like what on some some really low end I think I tried to run it on one of the 01 of the mid-range androids that I can't remember anyway and it would just stutter through its show and I'm like oh this is rough so yeah I don't know if you uh how you say have a leg to stand on Charlie I just think it's interesting that we see a migration from a low-end Windows Phone up to one gig and we see Google going the opposite direction so I'm wondering if that well I was going to say if that's going to eat into the the windows phone user base but don't make don't make the easy joke joke I just don't go there I meant it without being humorous I think that price though has to be wrong because it's got a 512 megabytes arandis as a component so we does not cost Mia what's that cost about like like 14 bucks yeah it's like a ten-dollar chip versus a five dollars or whatever right yeah then again I made apple has no it doesn't have any blushes about marking stuff up when they when they double storage so maybe the 520 will remain as the super cheap option this would guess p for people who have the disposable incumbent another hundred bucks doesn't really matter like us learning around your money or moto g's yeah yeah last piece in the puzzle there is a is a tablet peace and I understand it's not good news I have actually read this with my maybe if you can be distinct maybe if you would cool off a little bit okay so i actually have read this one so the issue that we have here is there are reports that the surface to and some surface pro 2 are overheating and are exhibiting a very interesting side effect of that and in fact an unnecessary and potentially unintended side effect once the processor reaches a certain thermal threshold the display will dim because okay because why should reduce radiated to reduce like radiated thermal stuff from yet does the display create heat when it's on right the quote in the article says surface devices may dim the screen as thermal temperatures rise from extended nice temperatures as opposed to non thermal temperature is high cpu intensive activities like gaming in some scenarios that this does not appear necessary we're working on a tuning update that will remove this unnecessary dimming event I want that this is necessary this is the most like flight attendant he amazing ever remember saying unnecessary words in their closest exits may be behind you right you can expect this update in an upcoming windows update package in the meantime allow the surface to cool down for a minute or so in order to return the screen to previous brightness levels sure well this is really weird it is a weird scent very odd phrasing it's like it was translated or something yeah it's kind of bizarre and I somebody trying to hit a minimum word counters I don't know no against slipping back into my weapon to my software developed I was Stephen Stephen was trying to say something from its not acknowledging at all that this overheating is problem it's just that when the display gets dim that's the issue it sounds like they're ignoring the root cause here well no it's not that there's an overheating issue per se it's just hating okay it's it's a sorry making sure that happens when there's a temperature related thermal event so so exactly the dev would do like a quick and dirty hack and let him know when the hardware 22 hot that was left in the code base by accident this is not seem like a very user focused so this could be something that's a leftover from some other version of Windows or some other version of a graphics driver or who knows what I'm speaking from my previous life as a system integrator Intel did something interesting with their processors that AMD did not do with theirs back in the what pentium 4 and earlier days when your system was running very very hot of course the fan would ramp up speed and it would get all kinds of crazy noisy but to help from a burning the processor out and physically melting down Intel's would throttle the processor they would run the thing slower so it wouldn't put off as much heat AMD on the other hand said screw it you want me to run this fast I'm just gonna burn myself a hole in the ground if that's what you want me to do so AMD's were faster than Intel's back then because they did not thermally throttle so when you run into a thermal case like this a thermal issue there are some things you can do you can run the processor slower you can run the RAM slower you can turn off the lights in the display because they do put out heat especially the old fashioned lights the fluorescent lights instead of the other LED answer these are LEDs right yeah so it could be just a leftover format but another thing that happens when systems run really hot especially battery powered ones they suck down power the hotter it gets the more power it takes more the more resistance there is yeah exactly so they could be doing that to say hey we don't want to suck down and make the whole heating problem more problematic so let's scale back everything we can make 17 for brightness Beijing resistance decrease with heat no no cuz superconducting magnets yeah yeah yeahs bridge arena it's all about the ball bearings nowadays you know that's right it's always been the case that is educational I hope it gets fixed soon I do not have a surface to so personally I can only hope in absentia yeah and Jaime sums it up really well he says if you currently own either of these tablets just make sure to keep an eye for this problem and hopefully Microsoft won't be so Microsoft when it comes to the speed at which they deliver this update you know I was wondering who wrote this piece and then when i read that line i was like oh oh it's a time apo that's that's hiding I've ever bear oh by the way if you're wondering where he is on the podcast we've been trying to get him on he's in the middle of some very complicated stuff so he will be on as soon as we can get him on the show but he's been having some internet issues as a result of an office move so office relocation office relocation will put you out of business unless you're Taylor Martin in which case you go in a day and then you film a video on the same day and you know it shen you go on vacation because you've earned us yeah i thought his office was the coffee shop across the street well that's one of his officers yeah it's becoming one of my office's I'm starting to work from the dunkin donuts near my place cuz i'm fancy guys Nancy SH man's I think we've talked enough we've hit the hour mark I think it's time that we heard from our readers wouldn't you agree absolutely yeah well good well at that straw poll having come out three in favor 0 against it's time for listener mail bong bong bong bong bong yeah so Joe you have some some letters that you've picked out why don't you tell us what they are yes well first of all thank you so much for these letters I picked two and I could have picked easily 10 times that so many people asked Joe questions and listening now I feel so bad because you're never on so my question would be great for Joe well and it they weren't just addressed to me it was just really really good question so we've got like some of the best audience out there in the hole world so sure do you guys are awesome and you're very patient with our listener mail habits in particular because if we heard it all before we don't always have time for it but thank you for sending them and we read every piece guys we just can't get to all them and we're sorry about that so without further ado Joe who's the lucky first person to be read today so the first one that I'm gonna read comes to us from jonathan michael he asks i would like to ask your thoughts if the current smartphone resolutions of 1080p is enough no it's not enough is never enough that's me right there it just annoys me when OMS try to push higher screen resolutions without improving batteries yes it annoys us too I think the current full HD 1080p is enough and anything beyond that is just pointless some OMS are in talks of a 4k display inside a phone while that's nice I can guarantee it will drain the battery in the current 1500 to 3000 milliamp hour lithium-ion batteries furthermore how much I'm going to rephrase this how much is a phone going to cost that uses a 4k screen for case samsung tvs cost i think there's a comma in there forty thousand dollars and it's only for rich people and saudi arabian princes mmm does it mean a phone would cost 20 grand sign Jonathan Michael so all right there's so much in here and I've just to say I had this conversation just last night and end today and I keep having this conversation like I gave remember that phone we have been talking about a little bit it's called the g flex and yeah i mentioned once or twice I gave it to my friend on the couch today Chris my good friend Chris and I was like hey man check this out and he's like I love it blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and I was like turn on that display he's like oh that's a beautiful panel I'm like what do you what do you think the resolution is on that it's like it is it a 1080 and like what he was it look like he's like well it looks like a 1080 like nah man that's the 720p panel and he's like not a layman like he's it really into particularly Android devices he owns a droid DNA so he knows what a 1080p panel looks like I think that if you went up to people i said this last week if you want to reveal on the sidewalk it wouldn't be able to tell the difference by and large between a 1080p and 720p panel not saying there is no difference but I think most people couldn't tell the difference I do not see the need for a fork a panel on a phone gentlemen agree or disagree with you thanks that's all you got done gone you got more than that no he's right porque I can't tell the difference between 1080p on the Nexus 5 and the 720p nexus 4 I maybe I'm not running the right apps to you know make this difference clearer but it's the same thing I could not care less or more I could not care about pushing resolution higher than it currently is yeah me that I'm in the same boat what about you Joe do you disagree I will be the contrarian good we we ask this question about 720p when we were thinking that when we were just barely getting 720p in the really really high end phones and the question was brought up what about 1080p do we need 1080p in a smartphone will we ever get it will it drain our batteries will it be hideous and terrible will it make small children cry and the answers to all of those were yes we actually got 1080p in smartphones yes there's a difference and it's beautiful especially when we're talking about phablet resolutions compared to just regular smaller sized smartphone resolutions does it eat up battery more yeah it does they're just more pixels to push and when we're talking about 4k compared to 1080p that's like a whole heck of a lot more pixels to push the last point is to price is it going to cost more initially yes it's going to cost more but the bottom line is this all comes down to not necessarily how many peas but how many DP is and there comes a point where you can't tell the difference in the dots on the screen I can see a difference between my nexus 4 and my Nexus 5 the nexus 5 screen looks cleaner it looks sharper it looks better am I going to see that on a 4k screen probably not but my eyes are significantly less detail oriented dense a Brendan men's eyes are and yeah different people see things differently it's it's a physical thing so some people are going to like it and some people are not where I think the big question is chipsets like the 805 the Snapdragon 805 supporting 4k that's going to happen especially as we get more and more connectivity to two big screens because once you're talking about a large screen not just one that fits in your hand but something that's mounted to a wall are sitting on a desk that's where 4k is really important and we're going to have the ability to drive content from our devices onto those screens and I think that's where it's all going to go back to my defense of 720p for a moment yeah for me and this is will vary based on who you are and where you get the media you can soon from nearly everything that I'm watching on my phone is in 720p and I'm just not that much content available 1080p that I'm seeing out there and I'm really particular about my video quality and unless there's a very good reason not to I want to display video in the exact pixel by pixel size that the source was I don't like it scaled at all so even though the 1080p is a higher resolution screen I'm uncomfortable about the fact that it's 720p stuff being scaled up to 1080p and this is just going to be compounding we have 4k screens and everything scaled up even more I'd much rather have unless there is a overwhelming availability of content in that resolution I don't want it on my phone when you're talking video content when you're talking textual just reading tasks and quality that definitely needs a solution so that's that's what I'm really looking forward to well how can you say like I look at a 1080p panel now I've read books all the time on my Kindle on tap on a 1080p panel more often than not I i mean i will bring my eyeball within millimeters of the screen to see if i can see the pixels in the seraphs of an F and I will never be able to see if my eyes are only going to get worse from here on out and my eyes are excellent can't see any freaking pixels it takes is have to get the macro lens out of the box slap it on to the camera and then focus yeah you know I mean like I just don't understand what this is going to do for us I did say that Joe you're right about one thing I did say the same thing between 720 and 1080 P and then when I got the droid DNA I was like wow I can't exactly put it into words but there's something there is something there that would all right now I I just don't know if that will happen with with for with the jump to 4k I think that manufacturers will be very shrewd and they will include out-of-the-box wallpapers that will take advantage of the added resolution to make you say oh my god truly this is beautiful but I think if you were to load two devices up side by side with the same graphics package same resolution the same icon iconography same layout and one in 720p in the others 1080p I would almost put money on it that regular people wouldn't be able to tell the difference Jen's people are going to be buying these things based on specs and perpetuating this notion that mine is bigger because I have better specs on my phone and that's just stupid I got more peas exactly that's lame I think it's dumb so let's take this back from today and 4k and 1080p and put it into realistic terms and that is the 1080p and 720p if you have a smartphone that is 720p do not discount it as being bad or not act high enough it's still gorgeous especially rain sub 5 inch displays yes alright and even on a six inch display if you curve it FYI there you go there you go I'm such a shy old today you get a bigger talent a 10 inch tablet may be 4k has a place but i wanna for four and a half inch smartphone no very good point we neglected to take display size into account or not a tablet this could make all the difference i completely agree because then we are back to what really matters and that is dots per inch bingo so Steven did you select thank you for the question by the way Jonathan Michael thank you very much for writing in and thank you Joe for leading the dancer round on that whoo Steven did you happen to pick a mail yet no and I've been trying to read through somebody's as we're talking here my rain has awful reading and listening at the same time of the castle right I can multitask either but that being the case why didn't Steven why don't you redouble your efforts I will attempt to find my own piece of listener mail to listen to listeners normally as you know normally we pick these out ahead of time but as you also know it's been a busy week Joe bring us to the second piece will you please yes this one is from multi yes like the island my question regards the new host card emulation feature in KitKat 4.4 if I understand it correctly developers can now emulate whatever smart card etc they want because the scare part of the NFC chip which is still only available to Google Wallet not entirely true but we'll get to that is not needed anymore do any of you guys know what that means for security matters my search brought up some advices for developers to use the Android sandbox but I have two major concerns first I never came to completely trust androids way of restraining apps contrary to iOS a sandbox system and second that would really speak against routing one's device right thanks for your input and keep up the fantastic work greetings from germany so do you guys want to take a stab at that or do you want me to get right into use multi i have nothing to say about that so i will abstain Steven sounds like he wants to say something though I dabbled in some of the Google developer pages when they announced the speech you're looking at you know the system calls used to access it doesn't emulate every smart card it only it's specifically tailored to these wireless payment things is not going to plug it into your directv box and anyway the card on there um cool it would be cool but I don't know about I think it was getting to us how does this store the card information because it used to be the secure element on the kid was a sequestered bit of hardware that apps on your phone couldn't readily access it can read information from it and so as a result your payment information felt very secure if this is being done in software though that can't easily be the case I don't know about the specifics of how it's being stored I'm hoping that it's nothing it's just like an encrypted version on your and even having that it's going to be useless without the keys on the payment server somewhere else Joe do you know with any more specificity what's going on from a high level yes and a lot of this question focuses on low level so let's keep it high and then we can dig into it and go from there originally when Google release NFC on their stuff one of the main things they wanted to do was include an NFC payment solution and Google Wallet is that solution it has met with varying level of success and the one of the biggest things was what would eventually become known as Isis where those group of carriers that back Isis which is a competing digital wallet they did not want to give Google Wallet or Google itself access to the secure element which I like the way you put that it's a sequestered piece of hardware on the device that stored very very secure keys for encryption and all that fun stuff essentially think of it as your credit card numbers stored on your phone and it's stored in a special place that's not what it is but that'll give you kind of an idea they didn't want to give up control of Isis and said no you can't put Google Wallet on here because there was only one thing you could store in that that secure element it was what it was and only one solution could use it which meant if you install Google Wallet you can't use Isis and then the carriers aren't going to be the middleman that are getting a bit of every single payment that goes through that and of course this is all about being getting money it's sad but that's the way business works sometimes so fast forward a little bit Google Wallet did its own thing Isis kind of came around they're still struggling and then we saw the 2013 Nexus 7 which oh my crimey it has an NFC chip but not a secure element and the sky is falling and why did they do that and is Google Wallet doomed and now we see Android 4.4 with KitKat and this smart card emulation host card emulation essentially what it does is it takes out of this sequestered component on the phone everything that needs to happen to do the same thing that that sequestered element on the phone did so now you can have multiple wallets multiple cards multiple whatever right there that pulls from a very tightly encrypted piece of software rather than encrypted piece of hardware which i think is actually a little bit more secure but that's my opinion so now you can do all of this and have multiple cards multiple different things on there you can have google wallet and Isis running side by side if Isis use this which eventually they probably will and tada everything's beautiful and now you can use your 2013 Nexus 7 as a Google Wallet even though it doesn't have that secure element that's that's a terribly convenient thing to do no no it's not I don't know why anyone would but that goes back to what we had and it's no longer a worry or a concern the one major thing this email doesn't touch on that this lets you do is it lets that new element if you will the soft element in there the the host card emulation be on the other end of the payment rather than just here I'm a card take my information charge me this much money now it can be the cash register I'll say hi oh I'm now the checkout terminal and you can tap your card on the back of me oh it's like somewhere without a hardware component without I'm gonna swipe at home without a very white wall and being significantly more secure so at some point in the future we could end up with small business solutions such that you can have a Google powered and you know an Android device a smartphone as your cash register if you're like a roadside flower cart or something like that and people to have their phone to yours even the sandwich stop that I go to they check out on an iPad and yes they have a card swiper on the side of they got a card swiper yeah I know I mean I those all the time without without your just change their their rates for things I think they race them above little and I'm sure people are turning this type of thing set now that would be fascinating that is a really comprehensive answer Joe thank you this is why I'm on the show last thing there is to to answer the question about rooting ones device because this is now a software feature unless you're talking about decompiling the the keys of what not inside Google Wallet which theoretically one could do I think this is going to be even more secure than just somehow obtaining access to a physical component on the device because now you've got to be able to get into the software I've always put more trust in in software security than hardware security and again that's my opinion but I don't think that this will sway anyone from routing their device nor should it and if we look at the old way of doing things where there was that physical secure element in the device if you went through and rooted you might brick your secure element which i did on a Galaxy Nexus and never be able to use it again because you lost a liar yeah it's a bad thing so this fixes that I hope with dimension Isis is doing things differently Isis is having fuse Isis you have to get a new sim for your phone that has the secure thing on that oh that's stupid okay so that's still hardware yeah and my wife just got one of those for her nexus 4 we have not set it up yet but we do have an Isis compatible sim for it they did that essentially because no one else was including these that secure element in the hardware of the device and it gives them more control when it's inside the sim I'm curious have you guys ordered your google wallet cards yet I got mine today didn't I haven't gotten mine yet no I know no I don't need one I have zero balance in my google play a game I like hard to my wallet I don't I mean I yeah I get that I like that Stephen I did that that's basically the only reason I'd rotor one like Taylor posted an image of his on Instagram the other day and I was like no I mean like the whole thing I understand why it exists i'm not obtuse but I'm also a little stubborn in that nerdy kind of way were you know we've all just spent the last 15 minutes talking about a mobile payment system that allows you to pay for something using your smartphone that's what interests me that's cool like tapping my phone to something and having magical invisible money taken out of my phone and put into another person's account so that I can walk home with some gummy bears I mean that's rad that was still one of my favorite videos I made for pocket now is that Google Wallet video its CBS I love that yeah i mean that's fun to me I have no interest in carrying around yet another stupid plastic card to put in my dumb leather wallet no no that's that's just it you're missing the point I am I am you you are so you can i'm seriously ignoring the point and running away but any water any card that you want that supported big asterisk there in to your google wallet now and utilize that as your source of lending right so if you have a card it's just but you know got a plastic card i don't care about but if you have four of those in your wallet right now then I do now can replace them with that one no no our only draws funds from your google balance it doesn't take money out of your credit cards that yeah did what yeah i'll come back to that because it's getting kind of weird the way they're doing it they declined to me twice today because i didn't have any money in my account but it's tied to my bank account which it's always automatically debited before so I don't know yeah that's a complicated with some complicated ish but regardless if it works that way if it doesn't work that way I don't want another stupid plastic card hanging around I want to pay for things with my phone because phones are way cooler than plastic cards yes my thoughts the Digital side of that once you can look at all the transactions on your phone and have tracking and budgeting and categorization all that stuff and you can pay for stuff someplace that doesn't have that smart reader that you know they don't have the NFC terminal there and you can get those same features with a physical card that they can swipe that's the bridge right now it's a temporary bridge but that's the right place I just want to walk into places and just be like just charge it to my account just know me you'll use ibeacon and Google Wallet will become irrelevant and we'll just walk in and they'll give us our stuff and we'll leave and what will already be charged for you let's just throw it the whole money thing we're gonna go to a surplus based economy you didn't look too much next-gen I have indeed we're gonna get food replicators is going to be great nobody's going to pay for anything even in ten-forward I have a question that is suited for well suited for Joe a multi thank you again for your question how you guys says Joseph Fallon from Kildare Ireland a long time listener from Ireland loved the show you guys Rock thanks Joe appreciate it here's my question folks how come android is so mysterious about system versus internal disk my note 2 0 keeps complaining about lack of system disk disk space yet there's gigabytes free on my internal SD is there some sort of magical secret system partition on the internal SD how does one clear that sucker specifically many thanks in advance yours sincerely Joe from kill there I can't think of a more perfect question for Joe Levi it's that's a big question alright wait I want to ask you Joe and ask you a favor we don't have much time left I know you can condense it a little bit i'm gonna keep you to five minutes on this one if you're i will do my absolute best what's even what device visits again this is a galaxy note 2 up to okay complaining about a lack of system disk space yeah there's gigabytes free and the internal st joe go so there are several different things at play here and let's try and whack them out as quickly as possible because i like using a weed whacker quick as you read why is what goodness soon as i said that i knew you were going there yeah you have physical SD cards that that is analogous to an external storage right all right some devices support them you can put them into your phone you can use them most of them you cannot install applications to for various reasons we saw the big differentiation there if you way back in the gingerbread days if you installed an app to your SD card you could not utilize any widgets that it had because they had to be on the inter against when yeah I remember that so they kind of took away the ability for you to do that at all and now unless you've got an oem who's enabled that stock Android will not let you install an app to your SD card you're just out of luck just so ridiculous yes then to confuse things anymore there are SD cards that are not SD cards they are not removable they are integrated into the system essentially soldered onto the board a lot of the same limitations exist there you know not being able to install apps to them and whatnot but because they are more stable meaning they're not going to be randomly removed at some point in time there by having to put in a whole bunch of code to watch for that and handle those exceptions when they happen a lot of OEMs will let you install there and then you have internal storage so there's the three types of storage right there and we are essentially talking about the the most recent to that i mentioned internal storage and internal SD okay now we got to talk about linux and file partitions Jesus I know you didn't know you were getting into this one you asked this so I'm running out of my final visit you are you are you have these bins are responsible demons thank you have 50 seconds to talk about Linux great ok so these partitions you have different segments of the disk that disk in Linux doesn't have to be the same physical media so you can set a partition being here on your physical memory and here on your internal SD card and map them accordingly and everything is fine that's what most OEM s have done so your SD card is sitting over there and it's just a pointer to that place and you can install stuff to it and store stuff to it and all kinds of cool stuff the system partition that's generally what you think about when you've got a ROM or a system update it's pushing the system the operating system into that partition and that's where a whole bunch of the stuff goes and it's protected and it's got layers of security around it so that you don't get hacked and all kinds of stuff and it's very special and you don't mess with it except OEMs put a whole bunch of crap in there that's where the blow where it goes and the carrier stuff everything yeah most of the time they're putting it in there and then when you get an over-the-air update say from the Play Store a lot of times it's not overriding the stuff that's in the system partition it's just putting a new point in there so you're wasting space after updates it's a pain and I don't like it and really the only way around that is by routing and stripping out what you don't want custom roms are your salvation in that case and there's really no pretty way to put it but that's that's my master's thesis in five minutes wow so basically the end point is that in order to overcome this inherent deficiency in modern Android devices you need to install a custom rom or at the very least route so that you can go in and start modifying the contents of that system partition it's not an inherent deficiency it's an efficient it's a problem that was designed into the system it's a feature of Linux that Android gets and it's a very important feature but one that a lot of OEM s don't fully understand because they're driven by marketing rather than driven by us geeks that's a excellent way to put it up yeah Wow all right well I will take your word for it I just now for everyone who's gonna comment on this or anyone's gonna write in cuz I know I'm gonna get a whole bunch yes i know i have five minutes okay you had only five s that's a bit it's not Joe's fault you must blame me is you must blame me its much my fault Joe thank you for confining it after they're done Joseph Fallon thank you very much for writing in thank you for the awesome question I must confess I understood only about 75% of Joe's answer but I'll that means you're improving shut up wow wow Friday night burns Joe Levi on PocketNow nights just thank you again Steven you will be closing out the show with your piece of listener mail I hope you picked a good one I pick one it seems like a good one this is like okay we have on keye TV you're writing in saying hey guys really enjoy your show it can't help but agree with Taylor Taylor's thoughts on Windows Phone 8 well yeah there's a small guy so that's there you go what he's wearing on the Hat yes keep up the good work so thanks for that i nee rights Samsung is such a huge phone manufacturer I mean it won't be wrong to say that Android got its first major Bush due to this very company also only Samsung has the audacity to go up against apple head on then my question is why can't they correct their software update process I mean iphone 4 from 2011 gets iOS 7 in galaxy s3 from 2012 is stuck on 4.1 point to Samsung needs to correct its act and these afraid the same might happen with us for when the s5 comes out let's know what we think about all this I'm Keith I think you're being a little harsh on samsung here I mean it's not getting updates out as quickly as another Motorola maybe but it's working on them we're seeing 4.3 going out for the galaxy s3 right now I also have to realize Samsung makes a crapload of different bones and I'm not not just talking about you know separate models like the galaxy s3 vs. the note 2 or something galaxy s3 alone you're looking at like a dozen different hardware variants there it takes a while to put this software together and that's not even considering the efforts you have to go through with delivering these updates to carriers having them yeah I'll takes time so I he should be cutting them a little bit of a break so i can i can speak to that when it when i first when I found out that this is the one you picked Steven I was initially disappointed cuz it seems like we talked about this issue all the time but I have some added insight to add i think so i'm glad i know'd and when he did I was a good thing Michaels on the podcast isn't it oh man haven't missed one of these ones I do I was speaking with a manufacturer recently who gave some insight into the process and this is basically what happens when google announces or releases a new version of Android so when they Annette when google announces it with very few exceptions that's actually when the OEM gets the software so it's it's not often that the OEM gets early access to the software when it's announced that's when they get it except in the cases of google play edition devices and even then they can't use that software as a base for their skins so it's not you know they don't have as much had lead time as you think the OEM then needs time to work with the specific hardware make the software work with specific hardware then on top of that you've got the carrier testing and the technical honing and stuff and the carriers will also charge the OEMs for testing fees so anytime the the OEM wants to be like okay the software is ready will you test this they actually have to pay the carrier to do that and so this operates to make fewer updates overall a smarter move financially and then there's just this ridiculous number of skews to keep up with to update all the different carrier and region variants and internal employees don't even start with their kind of internal alpha and internal beta testing until the four or six week mark so you know this is a really big problem obviously is a big sticking point for consumers and I think consumers have been conditioned to get skeptical because sometimes the update will be delayed so long that if it lands it's no longer up to date and sometimes it just never lands and that's when it's a real big problem that's when I think these OEMs are truly in the wrong but how long those updates take to roll out also depend on how intense the changes are within the various Android versions so there's so many variables at work here I don't think you can really it's popular to beat up on one manufacturer or another in the comments but truth be told they've all been excellent at one point they've all been awful at one point and I don't see that changing anytime soon so well that's it's a good run down right now one thing to include in there is the way Apple does it Apple has been able to through exclusivity they've been able to negotiate with the carrier's to essentially avoid a big chunk of that by doing so they say if you want to carry our device on your network then this is the way you're going to play games or that's okay we'll just take our insanely popular product somewhere else and you won't have it and well then we can renegotiate when you decide that you made a bad choice and essentially that's the way it's done a lot of people might think that's heavy handed I agree but what the carriers are doing by saying you want us to test this and certify it for our network you have to pay us that's extortion you have to pay to get a security update their it it it just creates an environment where it dis incentivizes the manufacturer from ever releasing any updates for those devices ever is it pronounced a disincentive I was floored when I heard that almost fell out of my chair I was like really yeah so it literally is extortion I mean they should be remembering all over that yeah I don't know about that but I just know that the disincentive is remarkable it's like wow okay if you ever needed a reason for why some updates just never get pushed out it's like wow well we could save X number of thousands of dollars on testing fees if we just why not do it and I'm sure that's you know maybe this isn't as big a deal as we're talking I mean that's that's peanuts even to a struggling Oh am i but I don't know what they charge and I thought that's there's got to be a better way to be doing things the way we are now I mean I doesn't always look better than that even I know we always look to or I always look to comparisons to the pc world but a new version of Linux comes out it's not tested on every possible hardware configuration Under the Sun before its release it just it comes out and you put it on your machine and it works we need to be looking to a smartphone update process that's very similar it's right divorce the radio code from the rest of this take the carrier's out of the process altogether so I will get right back to that but the one thing the one point I want to make before we go over there is apple and the way they're doing it a lot of people myself just a moment ago included said Apple is doing it the right way but and there is that big but I cannot lie so you've you've got there you go that took me as second yeah I was thinking you say look joke this this is very very old iphone just got iOS 7 no it didn't you may think that that's iOS 7 and you may think this is what iOS 7 is but it is a very different version of iOS 7 4 that old iphone that it is for the brand new one yeah there's a lot of features in iOS 7 as far as the consumer is concerned there are a lot of features that aren't there there are a lot of features that don't work the same way there's a lot of stuff that just isn't the same so even though they're calling it iOS 7 even though it looks like iOS 7 it is very very different it's not the one utopian update that everyone thinks it is that that the you know that the Apple fans are saying well my olden can run iOS 7 but yours isn't running the latest version no it's not it's running a slimmed-down handicapped version of the software but they don't want to tell you that because that's the inconvenient truth well I think they don't want to talk about it because it's not really relevant to the end user it looks like it looks the same it basically functions the same except it's really really slow compared on newborns you say it just look the same it looks very similar well iOS 7 of 4s versus iOS 7 or 50 I theme in iOS 7 verses 6 like you know yeah no no no no I mean yeah so just keep that in mind it's it's not apples to apples pun very much intended there's some difference there all right what's the final point there my final point is going to what Stephen said in battle it's seven points that's exactly what Google is doing they are decoupling everything that they can from the operating system that has to be pushed through and over the air update Play services and stuff in pulling it into services pulling it into apps pulling it into we're gonna see that Google Experience launcher that'll hit the market you guys watch and see it's it's nice enough and easy enough to install just from an APK and that's going to go in the market and when that kind of stuff starts happening more and more the updates are going to happen through the Play Store distribution channel rather than through that whole carrier approval testing yada yada it's going to become less and less important about what version of Android you're running and what everything else looks like the totality of the apps the core apps that you're running so it's not the Linux thing that Steven's talking about and I agree with that but getting linux on your computer even going from windows 7 windows 8 on your computer doesn't have to go through the certification because it's not coupled to that network that wireless cellular network that they are so freaked out about anybody realizing how fragile it is or how robust it is if it's fragile we're all going to freak out and if it's really robust then we're going to demand that it be cheaper better faster so they're in a no-win scenario with that they've got to protect that through obscurity that's why they have the control with the the certifications for all the devices Steven I was going to say I like drive around with a Jacob's Ladder in the back of my car just a mess with reception so does you know then you'll like this way off topic and I am finally finally buying the parts that I need to modify my old linksys wrt54g so that i can use it with my ham radio license and send that Wi-Fi signal 10 20 30 miles hey you are a crazy person is that even legal under part 15 of the FCC codes no however seven which I can use with my ham radio license absolutely I know you're gonna be my Wi-Fi signal and then you're gonna drive 40 miles just to see if you can use it I'll see that's the thing it don't you read it setups on the other end to receive oh so true right because your phone can't be the you need an active partner in the communication because your phone can broadcast 40 miles exactly so you get this really cool parabolic dish and you can throw the signal way out now that's the downside to that I can't stream anything over it like music or movies or anything but I man I can moderate I that one has a max capacity of 54 megabit per second I believe and they're seeing realistic throughputs in the 30s at 10 to 20 miles that should be a weather report and like from in the future we should get Wi-Fi I'm baud rate forecasts and Chicago we're seeing fruit put in the 20s and low 30s exact it Rob morning legacies however reaching an all-time high we have definitely reached that point heavenly eyes beautiful well that's what makes pocket now what it is we cover such a white rat wide swath and as I was as you were speaking Joe just now I was falling asleep yes I no no I was wide awake but I was hefting my HP TouchPad but surely sits in the corner of my booth providing some nice background elimination for my videos and I was just remarking at how far we've come in a very short time because that thing as a piece and it's a tank and I saw that my black friday deal roundup amazon still sorta creative them somewhere but oh wow idea yeah you shouldn't buy one and it is anyway yeah so it's just wonderful how far we've come I'm quite thankful for the fact that not only that we continue to come very far very quickly and no mobile tech but that we three and the other six dudes on the team get to report on it for a job because that's a lot of fun so I'm very thankful for y'all and from Madeira I forgot the most important person on the team hood who the pocket now reader / listener oh you're right I'm very thankful for our excellent listener base who sent us some wonderful mail as they always do thank you everyone who wrote in and once again thank you for everyone who wrote in but we didn't get to and if you like right against you keep writing in what we will get to everyone's mail it's the monkeys riding on million typewriters it was a special edition reader mail dude it's we're overdue for one and I keep saying it and I really want to do it but next week is not the time i'll be travelling and maybe the week after and then one thing that I don't want to take I was gonna say good I'm good man oh my hip my old man a hip is starting to hurt me Jay look around in the stretch well when we go through night no no whoa i'm off to edit a video for two hours after the show goal so but I don't want people to go away thinking that we pick out like four emails and that's all we do I spent quite a bit of time looking at all the emails and the ones that I picked there were about six or eight different people that asked variations of those yeah we just oh emmalin de yeah so yeah we're if your question has already been asked by somebody else but we're going to cover one that's all in together so just because yours wasn't the one we read we on the air we still read it and we still factored that into our responses and so I'm right back in a larger font make it blink email yeah yeah definitely and and do to keep them brief we always say it but but please do keep them brief because it takes a lot of air time for us to read them not as much air time as it takes to keep talking exactly no yeah no I've had a great time this week guys thank you very much and I think it's time we all signed off and headed off to our friday nights what do you think f oh wait how does that song go I don't know yeah that sounds lovely that's all right there you go seriously that's all I needed Stephen thank you Joe f Stevens hey that's gonna do it or what goes next you don't know and excitement comes after Saturday's it Rebecca Black on the show right now Rebecca's gonna do it so this episode of the weekly be sure to find us on Twitter Joe is on Twitter Joe Levi's the twitter handle steven is on Twitter but only and it is a letter yeah Steven shank ste pH en si Jin ck he's going to sign on one day to a lot of mentions you can also follow pocket now officially at pocket now on Twitter pocket now an instagram facebook and google+ and you can share opinions with other listeners online we still have a forum even though i haven't been there in a while forums pocketnow.com if you enjoy the podcast please leave us a review on iTunes or xbox music we've been stuck at a hundred reviews we love having 100 but we'd like to have more please leave a sort of you like the show if you don't like the show please don't leave us a review if you have a topic question or suggestion for the show you just wanna say hi email us brief message at pocketnow.com thank you sincerely for listening and we'll see you as always next week have a happy weekend ok here we go gents you ready war ready can I get you can I get you both to mute for a second no oh god yes Steven stick you owe me call you Brandon
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.