Gadgetory

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recorded April 27th at noon pacific this weekly podcast is where we dissect and discuss those gadgets that make our lives mobile smartphones tablets and wearables it's all the stuff you wished existed when you were a kid i'm juan carlos bag now contributing editor at pocketnow.com joined as always by plucky podcast producer mister mister jules wong on the east coast how's it going buddy boy good well how about you husband nor week so far while weeks been rad i was i would just like to say I'm very excited that I'll I've read through sponsor copy through the top of the show and I didn't fumble until I got to your name yeah yeah just important parts you have to satisfy the sponsor and then screw up your co-hosts name I love it totally it's exactly it's a good idea you should keep on doing it yeah just bring that forward as a concept keep that going on I love it I love it but no we should jump right into the show because we've got some really hot news stories again I mean we're sort of in that in-betweener phase on on individual device announcements you know getting through a couple different phone reviews right now then we're gonna be hitting another sort of harvest season in a couple weeks when a few more devices are coming out it's never good I don't like this I don't like having to divide my attention in a certain week to like five different devices that are watching at the same time and it's just it's crazy and then there's like the starving period that you have to deal with between we think it would be a little bit more like movie releases where a manufacturer would be like hey when's LG releasing their phone well we've got another little phone we should launch it the same day idea or Aza you know like hey when's Apple gonna be taking the wraps off the new iPhone let's release three days before them no like you had this whole month leading up where you could have had the spotlight all to yourself but instead it's like well we need the summer blockbuster the tent pole phone announcement and that's not how any of this works no this is not Nissan's 10:10 sales event thing going on oh I've done so many castings for every single I don't feel manufactured the summer sales event the big tent event here I go this is terrible if you want to get into your own consumer sales tent events you want to get into a parallel with us actually you can do so on Twitter via the hashtag P and weekly I'm also monitoring the YouTube chat although I won't be paying as much attention to that as much as parking that Weekly P and weekly under the Twitter's because I can actually read the comments and they're and they're here and they stay there until I scroll so that's that's actually cool sorry about that YouTube chat but if you want to head into your email client and ask a few questions like that or have a few opinions they want to share just as the more friends here have sent in you can do so just send it to a P podcast I have to remember the thing podcast at pocketnow.com and we'll be able to answer those at the end of every month so you can do that and have your say and we get to respond to your say and then and then it continues on the conversation continues well and I know it's like we always struggle to remember our own email address but I promise you we do read it and the proof that we do is at the end of this month or at the end of every month we try and do a mailbag episode we've got a couple of really cool emails to talk about here some really techie geeky and the weed stuff that I like to talk about so we'll have we'll have a fun wrap up discussion after all the major news but as speaking of like that's kind of what I was getting back to is we had a couple really interesting news stories pop up this week that are gonna be fun to chew up a little bit and so I think we should jump in top news stories from pocketnow.com this week Jules you want to help us run through this this list of articles in periodicals and topics periodicals there are you talking about like the the mag like the periodicals in the newspaper again like I don't even remember what the reading newspaper was like anyways for the week of April 23 2018 this is all the news that is fit to podcast we start off with haul-away as with ZTE getting some brush back from the government far away is now another Chinese telecoms company that is under investigation by the Department of Justice for sanction breaching with doing business in Iran and details about this have yet to be fully emerged as of right now but we'll be keeping track of that and we'll be talking about some of the reactions still as this whole regime of you know building tensions with China in economy and as well as cybersecurity goes on so we'll be talking about that in just a few minutes motorola in the meantime has announced that it's Moto G Series has amassed seventy million sales over the past five years of the series and it hopes to reach nine digits with the help of the Moto G 6 and the g6 play g6 plus over the next year hoping to target 30 million more Moto G sales we'll see how many of the new models make up that total in the meantime more from the iPhone se 2 now hearing that it's coming up to launch probably next month and we're seeing a 17 second video released on to Chinese video sharing site and Yao PI as it shows off a headphone jack some glass as it has been rumored that this thing will get wireless charging of some sort but again these details are pretty sketchy at the moment and it's a pretty blurry video so what's to take especially with that Salt's that you have over there sprints and t-mobile again going into merger territory here word to Reuters now is that they are close to a deal Softbank and Deutsche Telekom the parent companies of Sprint and t-mobile are just hashing out how much voting control each company will get and we could have a deal announced it by next week at the earliest in the meantime Xiaomi has announced that it will move to limit profit margin goals with a top limit of 5% after tax and if it ever achieves net profit margins above 5 percent it will quote distributes the excess to its customers in a reasonable fashion now keep in mind that Xiaomi is going through an IPO process it wants to be able to expand its reaches globally but being able to do so with its low margin tactic might prove difficult so it has a tight wire to balance on at the moment right now Apple is being accused of some antitrust concerns that coming from the European Commission it is looking into the company's acquisition of Shazam music identifying service and the potentials there that upon acquisition of Shazam that Apple could use the data existing data from referrals to other music streaming services as a competitive advantage against players like google play music or Spotify they have about 90 working days to reach a conclusion and in conclusion and are expected to do so on it before September 4 the US government has yet to approve the FCC's a repeal of net neutrality now that's not to say that the FCC has not passed the bill the restoring Internet freedom Act and that some of those provisions have already come into place on April 23rd but some of the measures that have been listed on the act need budgetary approval from the Office of Management and Budget under the Trump White House and that has yet to happen and we do know that there has been plenty of vacancies in the federal government and that has slowed down some of the work that's being done by it's just everyday work we also know that it's a midterm election year and that could have possible effects as to how an industry law might take place if a new rules were to be drafted and sent through Congress there might be a change in how the republican-controlled legislatures might be able to handle that especially if they do turn blue in September and finally Windows 10 mobile still alive after haven't been called dead again reports have said that Microsoft the Microsoft Store online has run out of Windows 10 mobile phones to sell the last two models being the HP elite x3 and the Alcatel Idol 4s with Windows of course that stock outage was temporary and now they're back up and on the store for what it matters HP has said that it would continue selling the Elite X 3 through 2019 so even though Windows 10 mobile has been at a development developmental dead-end for quite a few months now I don't know is it still nice to see something still kicking around no not really alright now I it's it's the frustration of having had this really elegant user interface some really great ideas from Microsoft and being ahead of the curve I mean like Microsoft is consistently ahead of the curve on a lot of this stuff hololens connect a voice assistant and then they let that fruit wither on the vine fall behind their competition and then they have to play catch-up while we're still consistently seeing rumors of a potential surface phone of new implementation of Windows 10 for arm chipsets and LTE always-on connected devices and this is this is getting a little tiresome of the of the evacuate your bowels or get off the pot mentality there be a part of mobile or don't but stop stringing people along with these kinds of products like I would be very upset to be a part of the Microsoft ecosystem with this little consistency for for consumer solutions yeah I mean especially as the odium czar just being left out to dry here and Windows is basically saying we're moving forward I do want to catch a tangential piece to this song and that is the iTunes app finally appearing on Windows 10 a year nearly here after Windows 10 is launched with its app only ecosystem and and it launched with the surface laptop and I'm not sure if this is a if people are still on Windows 10s or if they've just decided to I'm the first taken if they first taken it had just gone on to Windows 10 but uh what do you think too little too late no I don't think so I tent Windows 10s shifting from being a primary operating system platform to being a setting now so any any Windows 10 device you can flip it into sort of a 10s mode it's shifting but the full implementation won't happen until like next year well know that that's what I mean is is is I look at Windows 10s what what Windows 10s was going to be was an app only interface with the windows ecosystem that was going to be sold that way but I think there is some merit for a 10s mode on every single Windows 10 device like I could look at an ultra-light touchscreen modular style PC and maybe that could become a really good grandparent computer where it doesn't matter what the hardware is I can go into the settings and say hey now you're in 10s mode I don't want you letting my grandparents install programs that they click on in ads in their web browser I just only want you to use apps and and limit what they can have access to having an app ecosystem or a Windows 10 store I think makes sense for that and then pushing forward if Microsoft ever can deliver a strategy for mobility focused products mobility first focused products aren't chipset devices and you don't have to recompile stuff then I think that that's an ecosystem worth supporting again it keeps coming back to a conversation about Microsoft and potential and they've got a ton of potential I could see four or five like significant paths that they could take to get back into mobile too they could get into better modular setups into better multimode and mixed mode usage scenarios but really it's will they pick one will they actually iterate on it will they improve it and that's where I always feel Microsoft fumbles the ball is the consistency of the approach of the approach and then also learning from their mistakes iterating and improving upon their mistakes and moving forward in a way that consumers can well it's always the danger of the third parties - I mean we're talking about Apple in the specific case with the iTunes app and this was announced at the launch of the surface laptop at the launch of Windows 10 s last May we got word that it was delayed they were that development had been suspended indefinitely in December and now it's finally taking so long to just get a basic window win32 bridge over to this little app that we have right now I mean yeah that's that's that's kind of one of the things I'm pointing to that we would all agree that's disappointing progress but the fact of the matter is is that they are still getting something out so what do we see we see a Microsoft that's sort of dipping their toe into a platform or a consumer product release strategy that the company doesn't seem to have a lot of faith in I for all of the goodwill that the surface team has managed to by Microsoft in terms of consumer hardware we don't see strategies that they can build off of in a meaningful fashion timely execution consistent iteration and we keep coming back to these kinds of discussions you announce something a year and a half ago now we have it and that's I mean that is kind of cool we're seeing cross-platform compatibility on one of L Apple's primary services in a way that might help move the needle on making Windows 10 more of an app focused in ecosystem but we need to see that across the board we need to see that consistency with a ton of other developers we need to see Microsoft delivering hardware that takes advantage of this not just uses it as a compromise or uses it as sort of a default mode like they tried to position the the surface laptop as being something of a lesser device in terms of backwards compatibility there are advantages to working mobile first and I don't see where Microsoft has really embraced that and especially well I mean they've kind of backed themselves into that third position out of Android in iOS and just realized okay well we're going to announce these bridging initiatives they completely dropped the ball on the entering front and ILS right well it's like okay ish but that's that really doesn't you know that's beyond the point now in 2018 so yeah ends with all those that the numbers from this week 32 percent increase in surface sales over a year ago like that that a lot of that that may have to deal with the surface laptop or something so they are achieving for a software company they are achieving a lot in hardware but well it's the management of both yeah but this is also what becomes so frustrating is we saw them go through their Windows Phone days Windows Phone 7 to Windows Phone 8 to Windows Phone 10 or Windows 10 for mobile whatever they wanted to call it and we saw them learn and stick it out in the market for surface there really wasn't anything that I feel could have prevented Microsoft from emulating some of their success in surface for smartphone for their smartphone platforms and at the same time we yet again keep pointing to Microsoft as being this safe consistent company shareholders feel very comfortable with Microsoft they tend not to do too many radical things to their main moneymakers but we've got Microsoft has I feel the best potential for executing a one operating system cloud focused services focused strategy especially with the server guy at the helm with Nadella at the helm of Microsoft he's been ruthlessly focused on making services available across all screens and your Microsoft account follows you really well regardless of what hardware platform you end up on the fact that they haven't seen that that the disparate teams at Microsoft haven't fully realized the hardware success strategy of the surface team and applied it to other areas is what's so critically disappointing about the way that they're engaging with consumers right except for a 0 for some reason their servers are just exploding out of the out of the water it's it's great for them hooray for for yes sir but whatever I mean sure I mean but again I mean what we're talking about here is a more consumer facing product which again the their acumen their experience in the corporate and their server infrastructure market would do really well for for moving the needle on consumer services and consumer solutions we've got a comment here from Andrew sis lack hashtag P and weekly Windows Mobile whatever we're gonna call it because it'll probably be something like that again Windows Mobile will make sense when they make Windows free again Windows as a service is a viable platform is a viable strategy in the way that we've been positioning a lot of these other pieces of software app development and consumer services moving it that way where window suddenly competes on the same pricing tier as Android but will likely have a tighter rein over things like software updates could be really compelling that could be a significant consumer benefit but again III don't think Microsoft has earned any trust there right now they would likely have to lose bad in the market with any kind of cellphone strategy for at least three generations of product before anyone would start to take them seriously and that's exactly when Microsoft in the past has decided to pull the plug on a lot of these products and initiatives just as they start getting into like you know high single digit low double-digit market penetration is exactly when they go up not good enough and here we were showing growth with Nokia you were like 10 to 12 percent throughout most of Europe you were starting to get into four to five percent in the United States I was seeing Lumia phones in the wild from non techie individuals and that's when you decided to throw a bucket of cold water on it makes the the the cliff of expenses just might have kicked in at two and a half years I don't know their their timeframes are kind of ridiculous in any case that's my opinion out of left here left field here no life to 6:19 when the chat I am still using the original surface RT well I'm sorry about that dad so I need to fire it up I just found it sits in my bedroom right now I've run out and go grab it I didn't know we'd be digging this deep I just found my Lumia 2520 which is still a gorgeously bill tablet and then on my bookshelf I don't think I can move no I can't but I have my surface to RT well I'm sorry for that yeah I've been I've been curious to see you know like if I can if I can get it charged because I think actually on my surface I think the battery's dead I haven't checked I like proper dead like the things just completely just booth yeah if I can I'm curious to see if any of those Windows RT devices have gotten any kind of significant upgrade with more app support Windows 10 ecosystem or environment like I do if they were completely abandoned because that's a shame you know the 2520 actually has hardware in it right now that would do fairly well with some of the strategy that they're discussing it's LTE enabled it's a lower powered chipset so you wouldn't you don't have that Windows on arm running on a Qualcomm 835 but it should do fine for a nap first ecosystem product if if it even has an upgrade potential for Windows 10 which I doubt I know I think we're still where we're running away from the just tablet only like just as a form factor as a slab we're convertibles and you know just something with a keyboard or a stylus it's all it's more important these days so there you go in terms of Huawei nothing in particular really is showing up here for a moment that we can discuss other than just adding on to the bone pile of this whole fight between the US government in the Chinese over trade over cybersecurity over just a whole bunch of things here yet so where I've been somewhat skeptical about the government's response you always consumer division ideas especially with the law enforcement advisory which came out a couple months ago this to me is a bigger deal from a company-wide perspective and it's the same same feeling I had was ete I felt that some of the allegations of consumer facing device security were a little bit specious given that we had no evidence that there was any actual wrongdoing on the part of ZTE or kwame and protecting consumer data at the same time we've seen numerous other Chinese manufacturers violate sort of the sanctity of the manufacturer consumer relationship by improperly protecting consumer data this is a little bit bigger deal and in the same reason why it's a major bummer when it hits a company I like like ZTE or Huawei but if this is an organization which has been violating trade sanctions or has been breaking embargoes or has ties to governments that our Justice Department is going to deem unfriendly then we need a more critical in-depth examination of the corporate business practices whether or not I feel like this is gonna affect individual consumer security I still don't see a smoking gun there but if if Huawei went down this path in the same way that ZTE ZTE did several years ago and then broke the terms of their settlement on going down this route then yeah unfortunately I do feel a larger hammer has to drop on the company it just sounds like we're at the beginnings of that investigation whereas etu had already been found to be violating trade sanctions and then lying about their their role in future violations of trade sanctions you know lying of the role of the how they carried out the punch where they were supposed to punish several senior executives and they were found to have not right exactly yeah yeah and like it sucks as a consumer to be talking about things that should be over our heads that shouldn't have to you know affect us I mean you know Iran you know what's the deal with that like I don't really care just give me my damn phone by in terms of just having to deal with the government and the whole thing with dumping of steel imports and whatnot like that's it's yeah Oh totally now the nice thing is and and because you know this is one of those things where I feel like those of us who are enthusiasts in this kind of tech space the nice thing is I don't feel that the consumers who have already gone out there and purchased products from these companies are likely going to be overtly negatively affected by the upper governmental responses to things like trade sanctions so that's a really long-winded way of me saying let's say Huawei is found guilty of doing some really underhanded or dirty business things with companies or with countries that have embargoes or trade sanctions against them and they befall a similar punishment that ZTE did where it's going to be a seven year moratorium on United States backed technologies let's say you bought a p20 Pro your p20 Pro should still be fine like I I don't I don't foresee where the fallout from this type of trade sanction or this type of breach is going to impact someone who's already bought into a particular ecosystem it's just unfortunate and it means that your your next upgrade will likely have to come from a different manufacturer but this is kind of still the best possible scenario for someone who is an early adopter from one of these companies not being completely cut out I don't foresee a near-term embargo placed on carriers blocking these products from being on their networks like I don't think tomorrow t-mobile is going to suddenly blacklist off huawei products from operating on their LTE towers like that to me doesn't seem a likely outcome in the near-term it won't just hit a quick note about that moto G I just in the overtones of five gears of MotoGP which is in itself an accomplishment for at mid-range series and it I mean great news for them I feel like the mission overall mission is still there but I feel kind of bummed that the realities of the components marketer and by the expected feature set of a mid Ranger I thought that that price has gone up a little bit and I mean it could I don't believe the we're going up to like near $300 days as a as opposed to 180 so that's just my little complaint there oh no and I totally appreciate that too I mean that comes into a longer and and probably not appropriate for our podcast discussion about like you know economic policy and inflation yeah and and I'm I am NOT you already have enough of that going on elsewhere I I am perfectly willing to jump into that conversation while also absolutely acknowledging that I'm probably not educated enough to meaningfully discuss a lot of that stuff byah um I gotta say what makes me excited is the Moto G series helped introduce a conversation in Android that Windows Phone was really good at the sub $300 product that wasn't an absolute misery to use and it's evolved and iterated phenomenally well there are several family members my sister is a perfect example she just finished grad school I told this story a bunch of times moto G for she's happy she has a phone that does everything she needs it to do if it gets completely smashed she's not out a significant amount of money in fact replacing the entire phone is probably less costly than replacing the back glass on a newer Samsung so she's happy my wife destroyed her current flagship phone and out of all the devices that I handed to her blind cuz I didn't tell her you know this is an entry-level phone this is a mid-range ur this is a flagship her phone is a g5 s that was the phone that after kind of poking around on the user interface for a little while using each device for a little while she ended up on a 250 dollar mode the Moto g5s was her pick free of any other influence from me telling her this is a good phone this is a bad phone and so if we could see a moto g6 that kind of follows in that footsteps I am very positive on this and this tier of the market alongside phones like the honor 7x so long as honor can continue to sell devices to North America those products helping to shift a part of the conversation away from the desire of spending eight hundred nine hundred thousand dollars on a smart phone like what you would pay more towards the desire of an HTC Desire our IP I you know what I I think now would be the right play for HTC to start pushing entry-level and mid-range or hardware in the United States and build back up some of their consumer good well you release a phone that's really good at two to three hundred dollars and you've got an argument a solid argument for folks like what are you doing with your thousand dollar phone really look at your behavior because you might be doing just as well on a product which costs a third as much as a top-end high-end flagship device and and I think it's got so gonna be kind of on us geeks so once again kind of help spread the word on some of that to family members where that conversation is appropriate the g6 at least it will hopefully be a product worth bringing up in the context of that conversation like the honor 7x wise yeah I mean again the focus on the premium has always been about and well for for security Hawks it's always been about software updates and making sure that those patches happen and as we've talked about a couple of weeks ago that omissions that the omissions of patches in certain updates has been a little bit worrisome for the low rent so rotaries are roundabouts it is it is definitely a conversation of pros and cons and and where you can accept risk but also I think a major component of that has to come down to consumer behavior yeah and if you've got a limited use outlook on what you do with a smartphone then you're probably already protecting your device better just through the lack of you on certain services in certain in certain platforms so but again that's why that's why those of us who are enthusiasts those of us who are geeks need to approach this not just from this is a cheap phone this is an expensive phone this is a nice phone this is a crappy phone but more what is the likely behavior of the person you're talking to and finding the best possible fit for them and given the pros and cons on something like you said like security I still feel there are plenty of people in my circles of family and friends who are low risk individuals in terms of how they share information online and would benefit from saving five $600 on a phone given those compromises I'm with not so here on the YouTube chat I do wish phone crisis if Roth would start dropping in I mean it's just a it's a bummer but you know I wouldn't be too upset about some of these some of these moves like Motorola pushing the G a little bit more upscale is still only Rho it's still great yeah still relatively it's still relative to them having the Moto e and there are still benefits why someone might pick a moto e over a moto G not not the least of which is an even lower powered chipset often with an even bigger battery you know so like if if you've got someone in your target you know and your and your help me buy a phone conversation and they're saying like I do very little but I need to have a reliable device that's gonna last all day maybe even two days I'm not the type of person who takes care of these things very well I'm not that tech-savvy I'm not gonna sit here and babysit a high-end phone something there is a a good faith argument to be made for why a Moto e would be an even better fit for someone like that and now we're talking about 200 and below so we are at that you know a c-note in change gets you an entry-level phone experience which isn't miserable it's not nice it's not a flagship phone but it's not miserable to use that if you just need to plug through the basics and comes with the benefit of having ridiculously long battery life especially considering you're not gonna do a lot on that phone I feel like we've come into one of those exclusion triangles where you can pick two but not the other one we completely have it's hilarious a couple of from the peon weekly hashtag on Twitter appeared hatin in response to Andrew sis likes earlier comment about making windows free was the cost ever really the problem though some of their best friends were super low cost I genuinely genuinely thank the app gap and lack of continuity between updates really killed Windows Mobile and they need this they need to fix and Andrew Wallace soda is a parallel to that I honestly don't see much of a future for Windows on mobile until the industry moves past app focus to functionality actually that's you Andrew yeah yeah cuz I don't cuz we're showing it right now so into you know the you know just focusing on specific programs specific apps I don't right now I don't see the the the the forest from the from the trees but there are tantalizing little hints you know cuz I agree with you Jules like in this present time and I would say through 2020 I don't see anything significantly moving the needle on this really tired metaphor that we're currently using of touch squared get serviced and it and it really was I mean like Apple wasn't wrong Steve Jobs wasn't wrong on the original iPhone that if we had better data connectivity having a more robust web browser would have been a bigger benefit than all of these little mini installable programs that function like light versions of the webpage services you already interact with but when we see these tantalizing little clues these little hints as to what could be coming up next things like progressive web apps start to make a pretty significant impact on the way that Android manages mobile services and how you interact between web browser or or standalone app downloading tiny pieces of executable program executable code just to fill in the gaps on what a mobile web browser can actually utilize that could be what we need to move windows into more of a chrome style mobile space again that's a huge amount of potential that I don't believe Microsoft can feel but I mean to andrew's point we're already heading in that direction I don't want a ton of little apps I'm perfectly happy with a web browser first solution as long as I don't lose functionality and progressive Web Apps get me to that without having to permanently install a bunch of things I need to hunt through it's just a different metaphor for organizing my services and then probably interacts better with things like voice controls so if I could have a smarter assistant that could launch you know a web browser and take me to a bookmark in my browser and that's a service that I really use that to me is more beneficial than going to an app drawer and loading up an app and running the service that way I see Android instant apps as it transit that just apps like in general as a good transition of all that but in terms of just getting beyond that that's kind of we're kind of in the Wild West of things and there's gonna be I think that's gonna be a big fight the metaphor for how we interact with a service is gonna be the major showdown between Google Microsoft and Apple because I think in the first generations as we shift away from Android into whatever fuchsia style OS system they use when we go from Windows to Andromeda and when Apple finally gets over themselves and merges iOS with Mac OS every company every one of those three is gonna have a different metaphor for how a consumer interacts with their data and that'll be I think the major determining factor on who wins and there's every opportunity that we might see some kind of outside disrupter yeah like a Linux might pop back up into the consumer mind share in a meaningful way through a manufacturing partner a Tizen could walk into the space if Samsung decides to allocate those kinds of resources to really shake up how consumers think about using their products and using their services on the go but again these are all really big gifts and I seriously doubt we'll see anything significant significant on this until at least post-2020 some contrarian part of me wishes that dense distance was still factor in the digital well you have to actually go out to the store or to a diner and get food and get life and get whatever the heck like that's just but that's just me you don't you can't just keep scrolling here and there and what wouldn't it's just it's it's it's not practical it's not like it just got to make a bigger play on a are you know like hey you could you could GrubHub this or you can also get your AR points to go to your favorite diner and like you see the video about like that it was like an art project where it's just the bar bit of ads and like the surreal like you have all genitive points and then the woman gets hacked out of her identity and then has to restart out all over again or something III well the one I remember is someone who there were two jokes when Google glass first came out and they had that fake at a day in glass or whatever it was called and Google was nowhere near close to giving us that as a real AR platform which was a major bummer they completely oversold the imagination of what glass could be they're gonna talk about that last week and also there was a Tom Scott who had a pretty pretty good video to parody videos on that one was like the actual Google ad Adsense version of glass where you put pop-ups and ads throughout the entire video and my favorite one was the windows a day in Microsoft class where it was like things with lag or you would see like they dragged a cursor out of the way and it would have like the after image of all of the different you know windows were Jing and a blue screens of death at the end of the video it was pretty funny but what I really like again that it's funny because those kinds of parodies aren't completely wrong when when iOS and Mac OS merge in a more significant fashion it's probably gonna piss off both iOS and Mac OS fans you know you it's really difficult it's it's exceedingly difficult to manage a transition like that well so it's every opportunity for the entire market to be flipped upside down while we wait to see what actually resonates with consumers consumers don't like change they like to feel that something's newer and flashier and sexier they kind of want things to work exactly the way that they've always used them in the past and anytime that you shift you change the location of a button you remove a home button you change a button to a gesture people react viscerally negatively so this is dicey territory for all three all right so we've been skirting around this for a little bit now i phone se - I think I'm going to give you 60 seconds for you to just vent out whatever you need to vent out because this the we're not talking about release yet we're not talking about any specific dates and you know what to look forward to it's just a 17 second video that I I should probably just give you 17 seconds but I'm very being very generous here so 60 seconds and they start now if we maintain the same overall form factor in shell I'm gonna be very excited I still think iOS has not managed the transition to larger screen sizes very well and it's at home best in a one thumb style environment this could be an epic little Mighty Mouse device and I would be sad to see you go to glass back I don't feel that there's a particularly there's any strong benefit there even with wireless charging over the loss of durability but this is a product segment that I think still does well for consumers who want a portable one-handed device and are looking at a more reasonable price point with iOS running on more modern hardware so I hope that this is what the the phone is actually going to resemble and are you an up and down or or down on the headphone jack still being there well that's that's the biggie if they if they keep the same form factor I really hope that that they they maintained one not only the headphone jack but to the flush camera sensor I really don't think Apple design has has improved since the iPhone 5 I think it's been downhill I think the iPhone 5 represents the peak this is peak iPhone this is the best of what Apple has ever delivered from a design perspective and it's little touches like that it's the little accents I don't like camera bumps and bulges on these you know increasingly large phones minimizing the barest minimum battery that they can get away with in a mobile device the iPhone 5 in the iPhone se had all of this better years ago delivered all of this correctly long before we got to this possible refresh on an iPhone se - I definitely agree 2013 was peak iPhone year for Apple except for the 5c I'm not sure about that I mean it's definitely a big misstep cuz I would like in like I'm viewing this with retrospect but yeah I think it was a good faith a good faith attempt back in time at the time the iPhone 5c made me crazy angry because it broke this cycle of iPhone trust I you you could always trust on Apple refreshing with the S and then selling the the last year number model at a lower price and then you would have a continuity of accessories the second I saw a plastic iPhone and it was detailed that it wouldn't be compatible with iPhone 5 cases with iPhone 5 covers with a handful of iPhone 5 mounts that to me was an instant it was an instant violation of that of that iPhone continuity you you you suddenly had a you you made a less desirable iPhone for the purposes of making a less desirable iPhone and you were showing off with the manufacturing and construction of that phone this was a consumer who is lesser this is a consumer who spent less on their product and it doesn't blend in with what we're doing now whereas if you you hold up an iPhone se you know people just think you have an old iPhone but it was still a nice iPhone you know that was a good I phone it wasn't one of these plastic e gaudy iPhones that that looked tacky so for me it's always been you you keep that through line you keep that continuity and you don't punish your consumers for buying a less expensive product you just make sure that you're building a product that you can still you know let's to my class is full effect here but it's like you still there wasn't there wasn't anything preventing Apple from building in a profit margin and maintaining the iPhone 5 you know it's they tried to make a cheap iPhone and they ultimately arrived at making sort of a consumer punishing cheap iPhone no one wants now I shouldn't say no one but fewer people wanted that and then we saw sales of the iPhone 5 continued through a lot of markets in the world and then the iPhone se comes out and again it's not gonna be a top seller it's not gonna have a huge impact on their overall iOS ailes but it's been a fairly consistent performer for people who want smaller form factor device better one thumb or just a cheaper a less expensive iPhone and it doesn't broadcast this is the cheap iPhone and like that kind of psychology matters when Apple builds so much of their product rep on that emotional response to their products well I don't maybe but I think it's more it's hey can i it's more green bubble it's it's it's it's more anti green bubble than anti-plastic cheap case of whatever that i think all things go together but we see cheap older iPhones still being sold we don't see any off tangential lines of plastic iPhones being sold I think the market spoke whatever the actual reasons per consumer as a whole as a market plastic iPhones don't sell so old iPhones sell fell fairly well that that I think is at least the last rule that we can hold to but those were my feelings at launch and they're still my feelings today and every time because I have an iPhone 5c and every time I pick up my iPhone S II it's a wonderful little Mighty Mouse of a phone I love the build I love how snappy it is I love how well it performs it's a little Mighty Mouse of a gadget while I had the iPhone 5c it felt like a tacky cheap phone so for the winter not not the holiday quarter but the winter after they had debuted got about thirty of all iPhone sales the iPhone 5c did so I mean it was a failure in that sense but I mean it's still decently well and I say what the with the sales on that the word though because iPhone 12.8 of 551 million so I'd be curious to see how that goes year after year because I remember the year before Apple launched the iPhone se their year-over-year on the iPhone 5 was somewhere around 20 something million sales on older iPhones and I don't know if the 5c was a part of that smaller form factor sales estimate or if it was just based on the iPhone 5 in the iPhone 5s so I'd have to look up those numbers but I want to say that when the se was announced they made the claim that 30 million of their iPhone sales that year previous had been generated by smaller form factor iPhones it was again the this is with context that Apple was so much more bigger of a beast in terms of just emphasizing iPhone at that point but yeah I'm just I'm kind of looking at this from like sepia-toned glasses here so no I was take of me what you will Sprint t-mobile again this is happening there could be a possibility that the Department of Justice may have a little bit more scrutiny against anything happening in the US cellular industry at the moment because it is looking into AT&T or Verizon and the GSMA for colluding on carrier walking rules for the East's and standard but again this is this is about money this is about being able to it's about quality of competition versus just having a quantity of competition what do you think I I think that there's a pretty good chance this will go through because we're talking about the third and fourth-place carriers a significant amount of resources are being tied up by the AT&T and Verizon collusion accusations and that I I don't know that they'll they'll they'll deliver the same kind of regulatory scrutiny with this administration on these two companies I think if there's any any potential for a lot gasp before the midterm elections regulatory policy actually pushing through some kind of merger or acquisition this one actually looks like it's got the legs to make it we've been hearing about this on-again off-again maybe they will maybe they won't Sam and Diane kind of the meaning of these two companies for so long that I think consumers are sort of over it anyone who would be overly concerned about Sprint and t-mobile joining forces likely just doesn't care that much as it you know especially compared to agency and dish or eighteen or just eight teams here in the case of Donald Trump because of course they go right arm orders yeah yeah so so this one I think actually has a higher degree I there's there's a higher likelihood of this one just sneaking through because people will act like the stakes are much lower even though we're still talking about humongous multi-billion dollar corporations joining forces where we should be delivering exactly the same kind of scrutiny even know Sprint's like a distant fourth place and t-mobile has been a pretty scrappy third place I you know III think this one this one could slide yeah in terms of impact to services I mean well especially with the regulatory picture being as it is I'm not sure what kind of discounts left to make in terms of spectrum in terms of whatever that they have to do in order to be compliant but it's just is does this make I mean ideally we would have a third place some sort of a state where it could be more in the lines of a hundred million subscribers or they'd be able to carry their own way and just really you know you know get yeah elephant stomping with the trembling yeah I I don't know about elephant stomping no I I think in the in the short term let's say Sprint and t-mobile married got married tomorrow moving you're gonna have to explain the cheers reference to by the way no it's just a generic joke at every single sitcom where there's sexual tension between two characters the will do that that was based off of cheers I don't take any anyone I don't know that that was as much for me as it might have been for anyone my age or older no the the the biggie is sorry my wife just got out of Avengers infinity war and I just got free text her saying I hated this film I'm not joking this film made me so angry well she got a one plus six out of it right I'm sorry I just that just completely floored me there I wasn't expecting such a visceral reaction for my wife but I think she's hit her superhero movie burnout limit uh already well no but I mean dealing with this since like blade Cana and superhero films that's what I mean is like the overall superhero movie burnout but sorry so let's say t-mobile and Sprint got married tomorrow as long as they had the right hardware on their phones I could see an almost immediate benefit for former Sprint customers getting to piggyback on t-mobile's network the project fry without the freaking well there it is so let's say you know like if phones if phones on Sprint were properly built for international travel international access it should only take some software to open up the ability for that phone to juggle GSM and CDMA networks here in the United States so that could be a significant purpose rent consumers right away and a tassa would bring I think a subtle benefit to t-mobile you know they're they're probably some areas where they're you might be closer to a sprint tower than a t-mobile Tower and you would get to benefit from that signal hopping too and then it would it would radically simplify the number of devices that they would have to manage and sell moving forward so you follow the t-mobile strategy of their devices largely being unlocked versions with a couple preloaded apps maybe and then from there I think you would you would see an easier consumer platform for selling these devices you wouldn't have to skim go the deutsche telekom err and just like like freely choose which apps you want to preload like that would be great oh yeah that would be cool too but what I mean is like if you look at the catalog of phones being sold by t-mobile and by Sprint one carrier I feel does a little bit better in sourcing potential solutions for consumers and is a lot more flexible and is a lot easier for unlocked devices on their network and I think that would be a boon to sprint subscribers totally totally I totally you know understand that I guess well Teemo has always been a beneficiary of unlocked because they're they're not the leading carrier in the nation as opposed to 1884 Eisen they don't have any stake against 13 you know but unlock the phones and whatnot and also the Sprint's phones modern phones are to an extent GSM compatible but those are only world bans and I don't think there's enough cross Venn diagram cross compatibility going on there because they have the sprint fronts out to be working with a GSM international carriers so yeah that's uh that's something to be mindful Rob from the wife Avengers infinity war nothing about this movie was redeeming you want to bring her on you know what to do just call her up right now we could do like a call in I'd love to have a good plug in for like days to patch directly into I'm sorry the the recap the play-by-play on this is hilarious so I'm definitely have to ask my right we should probably move on move on to something sort of gadget or to software yeah let's talk about Apple and Shazam a couple of concerns here from the European Commission and that's this is why they're doing their antitrust investigation one is the data issue that it can take all the data the referral data for customers just trying to identify a track and okay which service would you like to access Spotify Google Play or Apple music they could use that data for kind of advantage there is also the minor concern that Suzanne that well it mine our concern in the words of the European Commission that shazam could be limited to just referring to Apple music although I don't see much sense in a doom that's for Apple in any case but yeah what's up here well I mean that just is we'll have to see where they eventually land on whether or not they consider this some sort of any trust move I just think that the stakes are going to be really low I you know we have a variety of music scanning data collecting services you you know your Google assistant has this type of functionality built into it now there was like sound hound and other services just isn't that big a deal anymore gleaning consumer behavior from them manually scanning music to try and find out what a song is or interacting with the service like that so to me this is something that I think is like I don't think it's it's not worth examining corporate behavior over consumer identifiable information and behavior but let's say they slam this down and they did they determine it that it is a major any trust issue it won't really affect any current products or services as far as I'm aware of you know Apple music isn't going to take a significant hit because they don't have a good platform for utilizing Shazam's algorithmic music search so III just like again I'm gonna go back to that earlier phrase I just think the stakes are really low here and the worst-case scenario for Apple is still like kind of a shrug it's you know I just don't think it's gonna be a big deal I mean it's you know potentially because Apple you know since the high part they've branded themselves as being the place for music and that's what they've been showing off with beats doing that brand up and you know adding these radio services to it and then also just yeah Apple music in to the detriment of iTunes and to downloads and the shifting landscape of how we listen to music they still want to be a place for that kind of media and you know be the center and again carpool karaoke like they were able to grab onto that like it's just it's but you know that's a bit sonic brand they have a sonic brand and things like this might be a worse look for Apple in this one case because we're talking about Apple buying a company which uses a consumers device to scan behavior and scan the audio around them to to listen oh but we're going to keep it private we're gonna it's gonna be safe this is this is a worse look for Apple than what we normally talk about for Apple services is because Apple would be leveraging that acquisition of consumer behavior to try and better market other services that people can buy but why a so feel like the stakes are super low here is that it's still in Apple's bucket of an ecosystem it would be augmenting Apple music which again people would either already be subscribed to or you just deal with Apple saying like you should buy Apple music you say no and then you get on with your life and that this is way less intrusive in my opinion way less intrusive than the way that Amazon and Google collect information on you to sell similar products and services so again even if this ends up being you know falling into some kind of worst-case scenario for Apple music and Shazam I still don't think it's gonna be there's gonna be much ado you know I I think this is going to be one to pretty easily shrug off and just get on with their lives and incorporate similar mechanics into Siri and then have that be the leveraged utilization of consumer behavior we did they ever get back to incorporating features into Syria well but I mean that would be a motivator wouldn't it you know like oh we can't use Shazam darn well here's almost exactly the same thing built on internal Apple developers utilization of consumer behavior to sell you they've been hiring but I I just I don't know we'll have to see some of the aspect but I want to see I want to see what the Commission has to say about this but if the Commission comes cracking down hard on Apple here where where are they gonna fall on Google you know they've already screwed Google's so much I mean the right to forget and also just other default search engine choices I mean they don't have any more bones to pick unless Google grows them with seeds and soil yeah but but I this is again like if I'm gonna try and put on my fairness cap if they come crashing down on Apple in Shazam and like Amazon music just sort of skirts without the same kind of scrutiny then I feel like consumers have a good have a good a good faith argument to be made for some type of regulatory overreach or oversight into how other corporations are also utilizing consumer behavior and finally the impending doom not but it's still impending again some of these changes that the FCC has voted on published in its rules for the repeal of net neutrality require budgetary changes and that requires signing off from the director of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney and there hasn't been any movement on this well and it's already been four days since other rules were taken into effect so there's there's a whole bunch of reasons that this could be happening but um I don't know Harold Feld of the wet machine blog network as a few takes on this that suggests hey maybe the industry that's the internet industry is what is working on a bill that would ensure internet Bill of Rights or whatever the heck but would have some backdoors for them to be able to take advantage of that you know they're crafting legislation and they want to pass it through Congress maybe the government is winning on that but we're in a midterm year so it's kind of a we're kind of in a in a in a rut we're in the same regulatory uncertainty that FCC Chairman Ajit PI has been talking about for three years in terms of these freakin rules being in effect for title two and whatnot and now these just leave there's just this big hole in terms of all right it's art Internet freedom restored yet I don't feel like any of that was well there there are a lot of things that are moving parts here one eye the frustration of what a Jeep I sold conservatives in saying we were going to restore Internet freedom was always specious because this is this is an extremely complicated machine if you're out there ranting and railing I don't want the government in my internets the government is not one thing the government is an insane collection of tiny pieces in parts all with varying levels of power to execute policy so a GP grossly oversimplified the process of deleting title to after it was enacted if you just thought he was capable of going in and saying we're gonna hold a vote the vote is is affirmed and now we're gonna remove net neutrality and you believed him on that then he essentially misrepresented what he was capable of doing and he lied to you you know he he he oversold his ability to get this done at the same time we're also seeing numerous lawsuits over the repeal of title 2 regulations we're seeing numerous states involved in state policy to enact even stricter net neutrality policy than what the FCC was going to be in charge of and we are also dealing and that despite the fact that the Act says that this this law supersedes any state law and which is an immediate which is an immediate Circuit Court Supreme Court issue because we then that we if if you're a conservative now we need to have that conversation on state versus federal rights the state of California says we want even stricter net neutrality guidelines than what the FCC repealed where do you fall are you internally consistent in your conservative ideology and protecting states rights above the federal government and allowing California to do business in the way that California citizens see fit or are you going to fight us on federal overreach of restricting states rights well it's a liberal state and at the end that argument doesn't apply but it's it's like these are always you know a means to another means to a certain point of the day poor servants like always no no that that's that's where that's where I'm frustrated with politicians both liberal and conservative politicians the discourse even the discourse has been I'm having a good-faith conversation with a conservative or libertarian individual outside of the realm of government I remain internally consistent on my liberal ideology and if liberals in California decide through a popular vote that the preferred method that they wish to do business on the Internet is through some sort of net neutrality protecting legislation that is a state's right and that should supersede what the federal government can enact through a diminished regulatory agency like the FCC so again those those kinds of conversations are all coming to a head at the same time that both a Jeep I and several FCC appointees appointed by the FCC chairman at JP are also under investigation for potential collusion with the very agencies at the very corporations this agency is tasked with regulating so this but by removing a lot of the power and authority of the FCC the timing on this is actually really bad for the FCC being able to change policy so their resources are already stretched thin because conservatives love to gut regulatory agencies like the FCC and that means their ability to enact policy is for reduced even when the policy they're trying to enact is a rollback that conservatives are in favor of so again they've completely oversold what they were capable of doing they've been working to diminish what they're capable of doing and that's also affecting the time line of what they promised they would be able to do all of this shouldn't stop ISPs from already just cranking down the hammer on what they want to do because FCC's enforcement Bureau even though it has but I would be good stuff recently and the FT and the FTC which is already a small enough Bureau as it is but eul's we've been seeing the lobster pot on that happen already on a bunch of those stories too you know like Verizon already holding tests on their network on how to throttle competing services like Netflix we've been watching in numerous areas of the country start lighting up even more restrictive data caps in areas that are already underserved competition we're also seeing you know of it's very slow at the state level rolling back regulations on things like community-funded broadband or initiatives that would improve competition in areas that are only served by one major totally agree I'm just waiting for the floodgates and you know there aren't any floodgates then maybe the carriers have a long service brothers have a long game in mind that they want to be able to be completionist on no no no this is also why I think we're seeing the pause that we are what we'll see a very quiet announcement that the FCC is stepping aside probably before or during some other major announcement you know I wouldn't be surprised of like a three-day weekend they deliver the news like 5:00 p.m. on a Friday to say oh yeah and that neutrality is dead goodbye and then like you know kind of walk out but at the same time ISPs aren't going to rush to suddenly eliminate a ton of protections because what they want is the first wave they want that first week at the end of the first week of net neutrality you're gonna have a whole bunch of consumer conservative news outlets saying see look nothing changed the internet still works everything's fine and from there is Peas and carriers get to lobster pot up whatever dastardly revenue-generating policy that they wish by eliminating that neutrality that's that's always going to be the game because that's why we've been seeing so many little pushes and little little policy changes from major companies Verizon relocking smartphones you know they're trying to see what they can get away with and how how far they can push the public in individual steps and they can push the public pretty far on tech stuff they don't the American populace does not pay attention to tech like they should so it won't be soon after the official repeal that I think we'll see these corporations start the process of changing a policy but at the same time you're not wrong we're leading into a midterm election with a very unpopular current administration they would be foolish to push too far right before a potential change of control or change of power in the House of Representatives because then they would be changing policy at exactly the time that they would be under the most scrutiny from Congress so again I think it's gonna be to their to their benefit not that I have any faith that they'll do this well but it'll be to their benefit to slow play this to make the American population feel secure that nothing bad is going to happen before they start driving up prices start throttling services and start restricting access at the same time they also have to spend a lot of money lobbying and placating politicians which is why we need to be ever more vigilant as consumers and enthusiasts of technology I mean there are concerns here I mean how long are they going to do this for because we have elections every major elections every two years they can't just say oh we're gonna do this on month 17 in between healthcare again and infrastructure and and what what not like there's just a whole again you said it moving parts it's crazy yeah and this is also another thing too is you know from the corporation standpoint it's infuriating watching pendulum swing politics happen every two and four years like if you try and incorporate structure and you try and get ship moving in one direction then two years later a new administration or a new crop of senators and congressmen come into play and start start really dismantling the things that you were going to be basing your corporate policy on then it becomes extremely difficult to have long term forecasts and long term long term goals that make any kind of sense that's why these companies would prefer bait like case law or legislative law and they as opposed to just proclamations from some good dance yeah no that's so really what I was driving towards I totally agree with you there so with that's with the news over and done with let's hit up some meal why don't we got two really great really great emails here so I'm going to take a stab at both of these yeah indeed so let's start off with Wasim sookay talking about Mac Book math books and what not hate duels in want I like the discussion about a possible $7.99 math book and I believe Apple should bring out such a math book for no other reason then who else can possibly compete with Microsoft Windows Intel and AMD and laptop race Linux has it's very specific fans I'm a partial fan of Linux but would like to see a macbook be more price competitive with Windows laptops and I think there's still some things you can't do on a cut-down version of windows and chrome unless if Apple does do a cheaper in that book they'll do it right well I think um I think Lewis Lewis rossmann that Apple repair tech would likely disagree that Apple can do it right I just saw one of his more recent videos detailing like the last 15 years of MacBook construction and how like every single Mac has had these amazing problems but don't you see Johnston's like the the the celebrity of point recently just from being you know that that's stupid a butterfly switch article for the outline right but he was even talking about things like the original MacBook that claimed to have a unibody design actually didn't glue point that the fans would melt the glue and then cause your screen to snap you're like holy crap I remember that you know these people talking about their unibody MacBook slike having these snapping hinges but I digress the thing that I really wish Apple would do is come back to the iBook you have branding there you have an iMac and you have a Mac Pro you have a macbook why not have an iMac and then you would instantly train the consumer to understand that that was gonna be a medium to your product it was gonna probably be made out of like poly carbs and plastics and lower weight um you know you didn't need to have bleeding-edge processor and storage storage designs you could glue that thing shut just like every other laptop manufacturers now sealing preventing consumers from getting into the guts of their machine I think Apple could do really well reviving the iBook and also having sort of a nostalgia campaign about Oh remember how funky-fresh these plastic laptops used to be in clam shells and fun fun funky colors and people dancing have to acknowledge what a computer was because apparently post-millennial children have no idea what computers are eff that already passed that in their own marketing timeline into their own universe like they kid it has to fit the head Canon Man the Apple reality distortion alternate universe um no but I think III I would be very surprised if Apple ever undercut the the luxury idea of a MacBook that if you if you put MacBook on a product it should be a high-end premium device so I don't think they should water down that branding because again one of the major things Apple has going for it is the emotional relationship with brands brands like iPhone brands like macbook brands like iMac but I think you could make a huge argument to have a new super-clean lower-cost I book in your Apple store sitting right next to an iMac and I think running an hour based processor or something like that yeah consumers would instantly recognize the value there and you could probably like to your point and again you're you beat me by by just a couple of sentences there giuls to that point you could also use the iBook as your leverage to start moving laptop consumers more towards an iOS style ecosystem imagine an iBook which is essentially an I an iPad with a clamshell keyboard touchscreen modular design arm powered mostly app focused you beefed up some of the stuff would totally be a watered down experience and my name is Tim Cook but I think you could make a big plan I think consumers would join you I I would be excited about something like that being a lower cost maybe you know again in that five to seven hundred dollar territory but make it an iPad laptop and people will trip over themselves to say how revolutionary how forward-thinking yes this is this is a good fit in every single way that most tech pundants pooped all over windows 10s Windows 10 s was too early Microsoft doesn't have the apps no one wants this but Apple can do this right will be the commentary and I think you could make a huge play by reviving the iBook name I'm just being too much of a cynic for the 7-segment let's move on to a meal Matthew Eskander who writes greetings I happen to have come across a verge article claiming that high megapixel count on selfie cameras doesn't really matter having been already mentioned on many reputable sources of office release of its F 7 selfie master phone so because of course it has to be the selfie master I was kind of wondering what's your say to this direction on evolving selfie megapixel count pocket now subscribers since 2015 and still rocking it cheers and more power to all of you so thank you a meal from that well and yeah you read the The Verge article I I caught it just it was just a quick no it was a quick rundown of oh it less lights more megapixels and because well they don't say in the article itself but just because sensor size is you know as small as it is for a selfie sensory typically it's not really gonna be effective in low light and that's where a lot of selfies are taken so fair points there's only going to be so much that like a screen flash would do yeah so we pretty aggressive about putting in things like front-facing flashes yeah and they're there they're getting into the whole AI thing and you're just making sure that people know that their cameras are smarter it can output brighter stuff without but less noise and whatnot so I don't know there's a gives them gives and takes yeah I read this article this is from Jacob Katherine Castro nacos I've probably mispronounced his last name and I apologize there's one major part of this article that to your point there giuls that I feel is completely lacking and that's when all other technologies are equal an increase in resolution will deliver poorer low-light performance there their article just sort of takes it for granted that let's say we had camera sensors with backside illumination Hardware image stabilization different sensor sizes a bigger sensor can soak up more light than a smaller sensor that a twenty five megapixel selfie shooter would be undesirable because of low light performance so unfortunately even though they've got this article they could have spared one extra sentence to say all other technologies being equal higher resolution or more pixel dense sensors perform poorer in low-light environments but I think they've also missed some other aspects here or or I feel like we could be having a chicken in the egg debate they make the verge makes a point out of calling out certain types of consumer behaviors like you take your selfie picture and you don't want to see the pores in your face or you don't want to do a lot of cropping and that's what resolution sensors are for and I I think I would be inclined to agree we don't see a lot of people doing a ton of cropping or a ton of really close-up editing on selfie photos but is that because they don't want to do that or is it because selfie cameras don't deliver images that are worth editing or cropping you know you know so they go on to mention you know a Samsung selfie camera might only have an 8 megapixel sensor well if Samsung delivered a 20 megapixel front facing shooter do you think we'd maybe see a few more people editing or cropping and I think I think we could I think we might you know I think that could be something that some people might be interested in but there's always so much field of view to crop from but practically speaking be it has yeah you'd be taking a chance on a better quality selfie and I also can see you yeah go ahead go and finish your point you know just one thing about you know more face facial recognition features as as people just keep bond shove them in like you like it means nothing to them but you know just having more pixels and being you know if you're able to ensure at least a certain amount of accuracy just by having more pixels and being able to selectively choose which ones would be your data points for the facial map then yeah I mean I see it as a good potential yeah so the other thing that I would point to in this article is is also taking certain behaviors for granted in a context of the the the forward reach of computational photography and computational editing you know looking at looking at different players so so you were saying field of view if I pull out a Sony Xperia like I've spent some time with the xz1 the XE one actually has a really wide lens and computationally does a great job of changing the sort of fisheye look of your photos from the actual lens into something that's a more normal field of view so if I had that on a twenty five megapixel sensor I could shoot a lot wider and then have much better resources to crop in on an image that I thought looked good for me and the person that I was with or trying to capture some element in the background and again that software you know you don't need three different camera sensors to achieve that like the experiment the early experiment with the LG v10 I'm having multiple front-facing camera shooters just so you could have different focal length lenses but the last thing kind of comes down into where we're seeing trends go with phones like the pixel if you have a twenty five megapixel camera sensor you can do things like pixel bin much more effectively so you can capture a higher quality lower resolution image by combining the pixel data of a higher resolution camera and arriving at a lower resolution final output depending on what articles you reaks I did a little homework on this you can expect something akin to a four to one signal-to-noise ratio which helps significantly when it comes to capturing selfie or capturing any kind of photo in indoor lighting or in low-light conditions I don't worry that over that's gonna give us that but that's another potential like what we see on Sony rear cameras where the normal rear camera delivers an 8 megapixel image but it's got a 23 megapixel sensor and that's because they're taking all of that raw data cramming it down into a more social media friendly file size and then also getting the benefit of increasing the amount of information per pixel decreasing the noise per pixel and arriving at a higher quality image for that image reduction again I don't think Oppo is gonna do that but there would be the potential to do something like that if you're investing in a more pixel dense front-facing camera how would you compare pixel bidding to just having a larger pixel say oh well they'll let you drink your your water for a little break and then I'll ask you about that yeah no kidding so this this is all determined again but it's it's tough to have a good answer to that because we have so many different technologies to princes and sensor sizes I you know like is it a backside illuminated camera sensor is it an optically image stabilized camera sensor is it a rapid burst camera sensor something that can clear information radically quickly so that you can so that you can smash together for raw files into one final image and and maximize light and minimize noise that way there are so many different data points that we would look at but ultimately yeah so many of these great technologies that can be used in some in some ideal cases all at once especially with dedicated ISPs that are supposed to be AI enhanced again these days well but but but again if we could hypothetically come up with the situation where somehow we had exactly the same sensor size exactly the same sensor technologies and exactly the same support technologies like oh is and the only difference was individual photo site size then we would I think we would arrive at something where the differences would be negligible you know so let's say you had let's say again you'd want to keep it somewhat consistent so you you would you would have a camera that had like 8 megapixels on a certain surface area and one that had 32 megapixels on the same surface area then when you pixel bin we should expect that the differences in photo site should be nearly the same you know a four to one image reduction so that should be pretty close and again we're talking about scientific differences to the human eye which the human I probably couldn't detect and then you would also have the benefit of being able to shoot in good light at 32 megapixel and Mecca pickles haha that one I didn't do on purpose on 32 megapixels whereas the other camera would still be stuck at an 8 megapixel image so you start playing with some of these differences like I'm wrapping up my time with the honor of you 10 and even just doing simple simple crops you know like I've got a little bit more room to manipulate an image than I do on a samsung because there's a resolution advantage on this phone that costs dollars less you know so again it's it's never a one-to-one this is good this is bad and this is why I feel the verge article is looking at one specific data point and as blinders on to the realities of all of the other mechanics at play when what makes a good camera and especially how important software is to this whole equation now the the the post-processing and the software manipulation of our images is kind of the biggest deal going right now for manufacturers as to what makes a good camera on what makes a poor camera just focusing on the resolution isn't necessarily it isn't in my opinion very constructive well-well put a resolution on this podcast from basically the verge is wrong so that is the resolution of this podcast the verge is wrong gene caress the neck is some some name I'm sorry sir but you are wrong and that is the stance of the pocket at weekly well but but you know again it's is I I have one piece in my upcoming view ten camera review it doesn't really matter I mean however good you make the highest end bestest selfie camera it still pales in comparison to even a lot of entry-level phones rear-facing camera like why if you really like taking pictures of yourself get good at using the rear camera and you will take substantially better pictures of yourself I can't stress this enough get a little practice in shooting blind and your your photo quality improves tremendously for the final output these these facing cameras are really only good at keeping you looking at someone in a video call that's that's that's my my main opinion on it I totally agree Quan I mean the thing is you're joking but you've wind up a pretty good shot Jules and I know you've got another web cam to help you do that but now that you see where the camera is in relation to your face it only takes remember to remember hilarious so anyway yeah that's that's my feeling on it selfie cameras shouldn't be given any of the we shouldn't be focusing overall on phone design to the degree that we have and if you delivered a phone tomorrow that didn't even have a selfie camera it would affect me very very little in the overall use of my phone the biggest bummer would be no video calls and I'm pretty sure I could get over it I don't I don't think it would be a complete deal-breaker for me I'm definitely a minority there but you know these these cameras are virtually kind of terrible so yeah Oppo the selfie master they they're they are the masters of you so can be you can be the master of the the worst feature on a phone you are the best of the worst good job yeah before you incriminate yourself a little bit more cuz of every single manufacturer who might want to send a phone to pocket now folks there you have it another episode of the pocket now weekly has come and gone want to throw a huge shout out because again this was a listener mailbag week and we got some great emails to talk about definitely keep those coming our way join the conversation in the live chat during the broadcast using the pn weekly hashtag or if you're listening to this after the fact hit that email podcast at pocketnow.com this show is over but the conversation continues on twitter where you can find jules as at point jewels and i'm humbly at some gadget guy pocket now is around the web on twitter instagram facebook google+ youtube and our home site pocketnow.com it shows like this cannot exist without your support sharing the weekly with your friends who love mobile technology and dropping reviews anywhere you can review a podcast so we can help get more eyes and ears on the show once again we want to thank this week's sponsor intercom again intercom dot-com slash growth to help you qualify leads and schedule demos and really get some of this manual work done for you and you business I you know they're helping us keep the lights on but ultimately there wouldn't be a show if it weren't for our listeners and subscribers who have kept us on the air since 2012 the PocketNow weekly we'll be back next week with all kinds of delicious technology goodness - make sure you tune back in man I'm just reading about Sprint and t-mobile going into a twenty six billion dollar deal perhaps on Sunday so yeah more requests by