Gadgetory

it's always a big week in mobile technology the news cycle that never sleeps but this week's been bigger than most with Android and Windows Phone vying for attention as each cap spouts rumors galore those rumors plus a lot of hard actual news have flooded the feeds for the past six days and we've called in a four-man team to talk it over on today's episode of the pocket now weekly the once a week audio podcasts where we discuss mart phones tablets and the state of mobile technology in 2013 I'm your host Michael Fisher editorial director at pocket now welcome and joining me for the fun listed in order of proximity to me our chief news editor Stephen shank ahoy-hoy to you what it is jive brother senior editor Taylor Martin top of the moonshine to you haha and I'm multimedia manager Jaime Rivera down in Honduras buenas tardes sir when I start with Carlos who I didn't say it right at all I shouldn't have high me on the show he makes me sound bad is all sound like that makes it all sound like what yeah what we think about I don't know where I was gonna go with that I hadn't thought that far ahead like the whitest the whitest kids you know but then no that's a wonderful band actually but and yeah you know what I mean hi I'm a how are things down in Honduras I have somebody starting a car beside me and it's really noisy oh oh yeah they're having trouble with their fan belt down there seriously you're getting here at can't chin ah hate it I feel like we very often start the show with with an admonition to to our listeners to be understanding to us because we have a lot to get through but for some reason like this week just seems really overwhelming i'm looking at the rundown and i can't remember one being this long in like a really long time and ironically like we have a way of you on the air you're the iOS guy and there's like one piece of i quit this week it's annex not in it yeah it's not news it's like hey Jaime did this video you should go watch it but we'll get to that when we get to that I guess Before we jump in I'm going to we're going to have a couple announcements here today I would very much like to talk about them in order and I think we're gonna let jaime do the last one but let's kick off the announcements with a request to our listeners we are it is improper to say we're up for an award we are mainly seeking a nomination for an award the 2013 stitcher awards are here stitcher is an app listeners if some of you are listening to us through stitcher right now it's an app on several platforms that allows you to stream podcasts and it's pretty cool app I actually like it they're not paying us to say that nobody pays us we don't have any sponsors on our little podcast but it's an app i've been using in know exactly if anyone would like to sponsor us including gunnar optiks nominate us for a stitcher award is my point i've been using stitcher since 2009 on webos and i use it on android now it's a cool app it's free and for the second year in a row they are having a series of awards you can nominate us there's a description in there's a link in the description it's the second week in a row of done that and you can nominate us in the field of Technology if you want layer or best new podcast or the best overall podcast if you're if you're very kind but it sounds a lot over there doesn't that sound a lot better or best everything ever yeah I mean I don't know if that would exist but I I nominate that category you can write in categories like yeah best everything ever best refrigerator repairman podcast so anyway we really appreciate it if you guys would do that you can the way it works is you can vote everyday so if all the details are in the link but you can vote once a day up til december 24th I think and then the nominations are announced on December 31st so please vote once a day I think you have to click a facebook like but like button to do it but I it's not entirely clear whether you actually need a Facebook account I think that's basically their their capture system I don't know Steven have you tried voting Steven to you of a Facebook account I have not primarily because of that reason you should vote you should vote Stephen for our show you should not vote for us yeah I am a fan I guess you could call it yeah I don't dislike it not wrong to vote from us so no it's it's right you have to do it it's like I presidential candidate right you bonus but if you want to vote for yourself yeah you can vote everyday for like a month long although I think that's a pretty it's a pretty loud to move for like if you're in Iran and you vote for the other guy I think that's a pretty classy move then you lose by one vote does that ever happen I don't think that ever happens cuz politicians aren't classy no they're not no so anyway that's that's the deal there that's enough of us appealing to your sense of charity but really know if you like the show please vote for us also happening this week pocketnow VIP double O 4 is happening the fourth in our interview series and this week we're meeting mark from soldierknowsbest do you guys have you think he's got like six hundred thousand subscribers have you guys watched his videos at all yeah big fan I was gonna say like he's an iOS dude so I'm his gotta speak up here it yes I got a called out for copying him I didn't even know he existed back when I started my xbox live account and my my gamertag is Casper knows best I had no idea soldierknowsbest existed back then and people like why are you copying soldier I'm like yeah daddy knows best wasn't that an old or father knows best no TV show you know know what I don't know what that reference has don't think we wanna cheat meal and by the ID so did I I think we got our first question for the VIP where'd you where'd you use her name come from brother you stole it from my gamertag misleading yeah father knows best 1954 I'm also going to conduct the entire VIP using the Hulk Hogan voice from the 80s if that is the tale right here old early right now check out these plans brother give me 20 yeah okay so Ric Flair yeah yeah because you're gonna peek us so don't do it right now I don't want any was on the air right now we're into this one uh watch although i did thank you so which is a stay tuned for that that's going up on friday and also i did in the last in a series of announcements you should watch the pocket now daily you're listening to the pocket now weekly but if you don't start your day with the pocket now daily i'm pretty sure you're doing it wrong hi mate isn't that right or your night or your night yeah the daily goes up at obscene hours of the morning and don't remind me don't behind me i actually using the pocket daily question hymen yeah when do you sleep that's a good question it is always awake like I send you an email like my four a.m. and you're like yeah man and like I wake up and i'll send you an e-mail when i wake up and it's i guess what like 6am there and you're like a man like a what like we didn't sleep I have the oddest sleeping habits ever like for example it at five at 4am that you wake up if you write me at 4am that's 3 a.m. my time I sometimes wake up to run at that time I know I think we have a prestige situation going on here we have a pair of twins filling the place of one man and that's a great movie I saw a man that's you just creeped me out Stephen that movie is definitely really loose but a great movie i agree so why does the talking out daily I generally do it to prepare for this podcast so that I know what's been going on the news sadly it doesn't help very often I still don't know what's going on in the news because we've been in review mode for basically ever but hiss what has it been like three months I don't even like remember what day or month it is right now I'm just kind of like coasting that's every 40 minutes I have to stop and go away what day is it cuz I have an idea so I've got any ask well I have you guys get your you know it sounds like complaining I'm it right it sounds like we're bellyaching about no I i still love being buried under a flood of devices and this was about to say stop complaining you've got my shipping address let me help speaking of which I might have you yet received the Nubia five it should arrive today but I'm still waiting for them to call me up soon all right Jaime rivers take a look at the ZTE nubia 5 which is not a gone down so if you just jumped right to Android or Windows Phone you fanboys you missed that bit of fun news I've seen a number of readers asking us do we have a 25-20 review coming anywhere in the pipeline so let's talk about that I think I think we may have entered at this but yeah they keep asking for my review of the G pad 8.3 as well yeah so we guys the review process does not always go smoothly and sometimes that is not in that is not directly our fault we had trouble with our demo unit on the g five times misery sometimes it is so one of them was not our fault the G pad 8.3 was not our fault that was a faulty demo unit and we by the time we would have gotten a replacement the review would no longer have been timely enough for us to basically get the enough views to make it worth it i know that sounds really horribly like guess you know view count whore worthy and stuff but ultimately we do have to make some business decisions from time to time so it's a shame are buried yeah and it's a shame because Jaime as I recall you really liked that I really did I really did it was a really really good tablet you know even with the software and everything I feel that LG did a really good job with it would it just had a little bit of a bootloop problem well right every time the thing would discharge it would start a boot loop and until it was fully charged that would work again it was crazy Anna in in the finest example of demo God like pettiness when we sent it back to LG our contact at LG was like yeah I I've been like putting that unit through its paces and I can't get her to I can't get her to do anything wrong I'm like man demo gods really damn you but anyway so that's the story with that and then the 2520 was my fault we sent it via our shipping career to Taylor because Taylor was going to do the review because I was buried and the shipping company lost it oh that sounds like it would be their fault but in fact it was my fault for not insisting that a signature was required so we've learned our lesson very expensive lesson we are trying to get another 25 20 but fortune open call to anyone who has our 2520 i would like to film a review please send it to yeah she's that Mario if you would all right please film the review we can meet ya you know we can take that be somebody in my complex or the the UPS guy or FedEx guy or whatever but uh yeah it has to be somebody who lives near me I mean in fairness it was like the shadiest situation ever when I dropped us because i was in new york city for the pep com event I think that Adam Lane and Brandon I covered and like it was after that event it was like the middle of the night and like I have to get this out right away so I was at this FedEx Office location in the middle the night and nothing was shady about the location itself nothing seemed off but if definitely I don't know I don't know what happened something happened that's like that's like the first time ever I mean thanks for so long but oh yeah and I just we ship it's going to happen sooner or later mmhmm yeah it's true we're shipping multiple boxes back and forth to each other all the time anyway that's starting to talk about review logistics which gets real boring so we're not gonna talk about anymore we'll get a 25-20 replacement at some point folks so thanks for your patience I may just message me and he said he took three naps during the discussion so that's how he's nice oh and I'm it yeah I just got home his message from nine minutes ago sorry I don't pay attention to the chat when we're understand so here we go guys would say is everybody ready should we jump into Android and start getting this news taken care of no actually I'd like to talk about a rain of savage and cut off his mic damn I miss this I really miss this oh it's so good to have you back Thunder in paradise here's here we go with the Android news and it's nice because this the first show we're doing where we have little sound clips for all of the category leaders instead of just listener mail by the way no listener mail this week sorry team sad face uh new google play devices holy crap did anyone see this coming who wants to take us through this news because I sure didn't know that this was going to happen Steven you want to tell us what happened yeah sure um so this also started out with when we first got Inklings of a new version of the or what seems like a new version the G pad 8.3 people thought it might be a new Nexus tablet there was a leak it was very very little info just had that LG name it was a tablet and it said something about google in this tiny little database entry just like a blip on the radar I got just really curious about it then like a day later someone found out LG has files on this device on its server legitimate official everything pull them up it's clearly spelled out as a google play edition g pad 8.3 which is the first google play edition tablet you know see ya and then just out of nowhere less than it's just hours after it less than 12 hours after this was found google just it's like they did with the since five this year in excess for last year that goes plops up on the website no big deal about it exempt we get not only the g pad 8.3 we get a google play edition xperia z ultra but the new flavor nexus 7 it's a trifecta now the white Nexus 7 I have a feeling Taylor's can tell by because he'd like ordered one for some reason but let's talk about the exciting devices first what who would have guessed that a Z ultra would be the next Google Play Today okay wait a second you set exciting devices listen at 8.3 please yeah Wow literate let's yeah let's vote I mean hi man Taylor are obviously a jeep at Camp Stephen you're the tiebreaker she pad oh you got your old church sorry its channels no because you have if the g pad had the xperia they're not the xperia but the z ultra's specs then yeah if we could talk about i'd be super excited but the g pad the snapdragon 600 cannot man so that's what's in the g pad that snap snap 600 ship come on yeah it is it good really solid ship wait what tell her you get selling into like spec you know spec traps I don't it so great so it performs well and the battery life on that tablet is better than any Snapdragon 600 phone out there alright so you know the only reason why you would want to Snapdragon 800 on a tablet is not really necessary for that salad uh gaming it's just gonna say yeah that's what I'm that's why I had prefer the Snapdragon 800 is the kid played really well man I again my prom was really having a die not being able to wake it up again but less so this is my question guys like I am I I don't play the most feature and excuse me resource intensive games but I play like asphalt 8 and I play a rise of glory air superiority or whatever and loser you know fairly taxing and they run great on a 600 they even run great on the weirdo computing system in the Moto X so why do I need an 800 can some1 make the case for this for me besides the quick charging thing and the visible and yeah but it was i don't i don't feel like i'd lose any visuals playing those games on Audrina 320 versus 330 exactly right now I understand that's a big jump but it doesn't eat I need light reflections and winds players and I need all that man I need it so you're saying that side by side you're making the case that because I think you're talking at asphalt 8 right uh just just in general like a kind of have experience in general with a snapdragon 800 how can you live with that nexus 7 them I mean well there's a the reason that i bought the nexus 7 uh I don't know we if we want to get into that but we don't okay cool basically I'm basically replacing my car audio system with a tablet and the Nexus 7 is the tablet oh it's perfectly this isn't the slot I'm sorry we do want to ask about this so that's this is a project for mod right yes I'm a pimp it for a second Taylor if you don't know Taylor has a nice side project yeah well I was told not to but if you're doing Brandon of course does that be but yeah okay so you can mention it's a podcast you can mention it it's not okay it's it's my youtube channel that I started with my roommate we haven't really done a whole lot with it because I've been so buried under devices but um basically it's a do-it-yourself youtube channel and what I'll be doing is mounting the nexus 7 in my carbs dash so be taking out the double din stereo that came in it and putting a nexus 7 a wireless charger a bluetooth module and some custom fiberglass housing and its place is rocking that's that's awesome i'm looking forward to seeing that note you guys when so that you could use the white one and then you're going to put the black one in inter car you soon well the black one is actually pocket nails so i don't think that ugh welcome to prevent all right so wait you're putting a white one in your car yeah so i don't understand why you picked the white one I mean isn't all the white going to be obscured by whatever casing you install around it well it's gonna be removable the way I'm gonna do the mod stickers I can see it with me but I gonna be like but just because it it was cool and because when they announced it they also did the little $35 Google Play promotion so I got another chromecast nice all right all like I was going to buy another nexus 7 anyway and then it just kind of happened I'm like I need it now so alright well that's the least that's the least interesting of all three with the exception of your mod projects a good luck with that follow taylor on its Twitter account if you want to see that develop over time but guys let's talk a little bit then about the what's missing from the GPE edition of the g pad because it's all the LG skin right it's google play edition so it's just stock android for dot what yeah or i want to say so for don't worry yeah so it's missing all of the stuff that that afflicts LG built in it's not missing anything all right let's go sick burn I actually do today I said google play edition LG G flex google make it happen oh my god this was a good talk man I've had this phone like I really wasn't excited about the g flex like i don't know if you guys i'm not a huge fan of LG and it's not their fault it's just their products haven't really moved me and generally i've been in the same boat i understand yeah and i think most of us have but this phone it's just there's something about it i can't put a finger on it I put it I took it out of the box on I'm like man this thing is it's nice like I really like it right I don't know what but uh okay like I really like that g 20 can i can i clarify though i like it if you turn the volume off and leave it off oh my god and no it's not the speaker no down stand the speaker is amazing but the sound effect so LG got the Vienna Boys Choir to do a bunch of life's good Oh God and when you when you wake up I've done this in the pockets before but you set an alarm Taylor and you wake up to that phone waking up with the default ringtone it's the creepiest thing ever it's it is you know soprano and alto boys singing good morning to you and it's just horrible you're gonna have a bad day areas oh good it's not just it's not just them that sounds like the ringtones and everything literally everything you do on the phone makes a noise looks like a galaxy s4 in that respective Boop yeah all Samsung's bad about it and I always said that Samsung was the worst about all the noises but I think LG was like you know what we're gonna top it sounds like the depiction of all technology from the future in movies everything is back to it oh yeah everything beeps all the time yeah now so what we're going to talk a little bit about the g flex I'm glad that you got a Taylor has one and I have one now and they both have to go away at some point but if you missed it watch our full review and stuff we talked about that last week this is actually the first pocket net weekly in a long time that hasn't had chief flex in the title so I think we're you know the new cycle moves on its alright we're coming I'm not gonna ask you any questions about it anyway so let's go great yeah exactly yeah nobody cares anyway nobody just read the review and nobody in the pocket i'll live ask me anything about it last week you know my problem with that g flex is that price tag if it weren't so pricey be like oh why not i love the g two i honestly did she did try that something i love that LG does this like they do this thing where they release a bunch of things that I'm not into which they did right before the optimus G and I'm like and then the optimus G came out I'm like fine I'll guess I'll review this and it was really good it was like sweeter and then the g2 came out and I was like I'm not really sold on this and then jaime of course you were but I was like whatever okay LG likes and I'm like oh my god is the best thing ever and then they'll have like five min Rangers and a new view and will be like it's so weird roller coaster but uh that you know who put it best and I wish this had been my quote but it's not Digital Trends had a review which LG tweeted and by the way LJ if you wanted to tweet my review I'd really love that that'd be great but Digital Trends had a wonderful review where there's a quote that was like going back to a flat phone somehow feels wrong after using the g flex that's not an exact quote but it's it's so true i mean after you've used it for a little bit you pick up any other phone it like oh how did we go about using these flat things for a very long time anyway that's the g flex conversation we promised we wouldn't have yeah if you want to go from one extreme to the other you go rama from the g flex to the z ultra i was just going to make thank you thank you you've redeemed yourself yes that's exactly the opposite end of the Z ultra which is now GP edition available does is anyone if you had to choose which one would you pick everyone answer the stock Z ultra or the GPE addition the gpe sorry hidden when people do that I'm sorry was none an option no it's not you saw you hate Iran if you had to get what if what you're getting one under under the Christmas tree or at the Hanukkah bush or I'm in your stocking wherever google play all day google play edition what about you Stephen google play and I'm it I'd be standing at bestbuy to return it how do you not allotted this one see I don't understand I don't I don't know what I would do I I actually kind of like Saudis skin am I the only one in the world yep yep yep I don't hate their skin but it's just when you compare their skin to Google play's the google play edition um it's it's a different beast man this segues into something that I wanted to ask you gentlemen about before I wrote an editorial about it how long do you think it'll be until we see a native Android version that can take advantage of larger screen sizes because right now you'd really can't you need a third party skin to do for example multi window yeah uh oh god I would love to have multi window in in stock Android that would be I would be in heaven when that be amazing Oh happen here why was I having see I mean the devices are growing you know yeah I bounds when Samsung does it the company can get away with making it only work with their specific subset of apps they wanted to if google released us as a baked in feature it would have to be compatible with pretty much everything and that's gonna be so much more work that i can't see and how is that true I don't let me go go just say like you need to listen you can turn this on a raw food that no well okay look at Samsung they limit them by default so they limit what apps work by default there was a simple simple simple hack that a developer put together and you can actually get it if you're rooted you can get it from google play and it's like multi-window management or yeah that's we saw back last year when they came literally yay all you had to do was it was just a simple like tweak very simple and every app worked perfectly with it really there's no compatibility issues with a full screen everything full screen no games are in the world games position yeah you would want to limit aims but yeah like what are you gonna do like play asphalt while you're like watching a YouTube video that's not the worst thing Millie yeah but but pretty much every app works because if you develop your Android apps correctly they should be able to work the same on any screen size and that that includes something with you know a one to one aspect ratio or four three or something to that effect so they're they're meant to scale and with multi window all you're doing is basically putting to use quote views side by side so not view is not V you know not use because then you have a kyocera echo so thank you for the clarification on that we're going to think more about that in the future as we as we write our editorial editorial stiff but ok so I'm the only one who would get the Z ultra but i would pay a big premium if i were shopping the google play edition store for that phone right now 650 bucks yeah par for the course you see it what did it make what the changeover price because think about it like the g flex its you know gpe g pad 8.3 which is a mouthful is 350 yes but you cannot i think i don't think it says attractive a device as the sony product and also you can't take it like in the shower which sounds like I'm making a stupid joke but I really really value water resistance in my product I don't find I like listen this from coming from a guy that you that sweats like a pig and runs with his phones I would love a waterproof phone but it is just the most uncomfortable and cumbersome size and form factor that I've ever seen have you no no have you if you actually like used one for a bit yeah yeah I kind of its I kind of did but I how can I explains the one of my friends brought it with him so I I didn't really use it for a week or tested for a week I just held it tight around with it and I was like oh my god how can you put up with the thing this big it's like you know if it were rounded somewhat you know it could probably be a little more comfortable to use but I I don't know I hey listen I love then in light though to you know it yes but it's like one max or of 15 it's like putting a clipboard in your pocket man both it's not pocket-friendly I Oh doesn't it have that little loop on the bottom so you can look like I could get up to it because my ankle after like a wallet from your wristband oh yes you can be Flavor Flav with a Z ultra that so a neck lanyard yeah so in this phone this phone reminds me of the optimist view that's what it reminds me of you know it's just one of those awkward things that they can do and they did but that doesn't have a market yeah I don't think don't get me wrong i don't think the market it has is very big at all but don't say that i said that in the review and i got reamed know but you know that this is why i was happy to do that review rebuttal because i was like you know what if i were in the market for a device of this class and by that i mean a 6 plus inch screen size or near six inch screens has like the the one max the 1520 the mega 6.3 and this thing does the ultra if i were in the market for a device that big that i wanted to use as a tablet replacement i would get the z ultra because it's the thinnest and i don't know if it's the lightest but it's definitely the thinnest of the bunch and you know as a result that's the least cumbersome for me and is Rin in addition you get beautiful build quality and and waterproof no I'm with you there but I just think that for a lot of people the size is a non-starter any other dimensions no that's listen it is that's that Koreans had to get that other way right up front like you have to be shopping for this type of the right by how I disagree it's gonna be the most popular thing ever because everybody loves putting clipboards in their pockets whatever Riggins exactly exactly listen I mean the galaxy note 3 has killed phablets everywhere and it's just gonna be that way for that price tag why not just get a note 3 and get something that you can actually still fit in your pocket that's got the best processor the best battery life the best everything and just you know deal with TouchWiz which is the only sad part about that phone this is gone I guess with the Z ultra or any other phablet this is not in the rundown but speaking of the galaxy note and how it compares I just posted a comparison between the G the G flex and the galaxy note 3 so if you're interested in how those devices compared go watch that because that was a fun comparison because Jaime you spoke directly to your point it's like anytime we bring a phone up against the note 3 the other phone basically losses right yeah it doesn't have as solid a phablet experience the g flex it probably has come the closest and it's not because I'm an idiot fanboy it's it's because it really does get quite close to offering everything the note 3 does with the exception of the s-pen so and it focuses more on user experience and and form factor yeah then than just hey this is giant exactly and that's something that I had to test like a giant foam for the sake of being giant also nobody wants to watch your comparison Michael because it could it includes the g flex and just just just saying yeah speaking of the g flex brandon was just bugging me to sell my chief leg i just got it like just now we got an email he's like hey weren't you supposed to sell that thing and like oh god so you know hey check check swap afore for a slightly tear-stained g flex soon you didn't want to you're stayin yeah I'm all comprised gonna cry all over it well you didn't want to prod NCP give it to you for Christmas that's what I want to do but I don't have I don't have the courage maybe maybe our listeners can write and can start a letter-writing campaign good deer vs home addresses michael fisher wants this so anyways let's be honest they're gonna spell his name mmm-mmm-mmm brandon min min min min min amendment oh sad news brandon 10 CES this year sorry so yeah Frau now does that mean that ticket available banjos hoping we still really like a four-man team but we don't I don't think we're doing that so yeah anti until that was gonna have you knew that was gonna happen hired new though I knew that was gonna happen that was too good to be true it was you know it would have been an all-star team now it's a now it's a 75-percent our team that's a three-wheeled wagon I what are we gonna do I wish you were gonna be there my man my dream oh yeah I'm just gonna have I'm gonna have to swap that for bus along I'm sorry about that right hey so listen let's talk about another phone can we move on let's talk about the Moto G Taylor just posted his review I just got mine in the mail I actually woke up the first thing I woke up to today was my door buzzer I'm telling me the FedEx man was here and I got a moto G so we both have moto g's let's let's let's let's hear better to either sleep way too later you have an awesome FedEx guy no man now they show up at like 730 like a man we got stuff and got stuff for you and speaking about that fits speak about that fax just called me the ziti knew we had just arrived I have to go pick it up soon chocolate Oh awesome good stuff good stead so this this moto G I gave it a seven point seven out of ten I don't want to spoil the review but I that's that's a score i gave it and I feel like it's a pretty fair score because it is a very cheap device and its specifications and everything else that you know motor all I had to cut corners to make this phone they only spent 125 dollars or something to make it is that what it was yeah what they said yeah that that's just for the hardware component so that's not including you know cost of manufacturing labor marketing and all this other stuff that's just the actual price of the hardware and if i'm not mistaken after you if you add everything up and the 500 million that google spent on marketing you know motorola or google as a whole is taking a loss on this phone no no there's a way don't we have that moto x 10 bucks is what the st yeah sorry the the 500 mil was a further for the Moto X sorry that was actually in the beginning of my review I'm like crossing wires here but uh yeah so ten dollars the after everything I still think they're probably you know taking a hit at some point some way you know ten dollars is not a lot of margin but uh for for them to turn out a phone that at least I feel deserves a 7.7 I think that's a good thing but in the comments I'm getting you know blasted again because we were like it deserves a 10 out of 10 or more than a seven there's always going to be those jerks a matter squirt well I want to let us trace not talk about the score but go ahead said it say your piece and then let's move I really don't want to spend any time on scoring bullsh no one yet I got a damn it uh all right yeah I now go ahead go ahead do it yeah yeah I mean okay so here's the thing we don't include price and how we make our scores I think what you tell me if I'm wrong but I think what you mean to say is that scoring is is a much much more imprecisely taking a blend of this court for me with the three principal scored scoring card yeah sure but just because the phone is 200 bucks and it's not terrible doesn't mean it's an automatic 10 out of 10 or 9 out of 10 or any of that it's a lot more complicated than that and I feel completely just with seven point seven out of 10 for this to I agree with your score what did we give the HTC first if anyone remembers cuz that's I'm the same level of this I reviewed it actually and I don't remember HTC first review pocket not better or worse than the Moto G would you say it yeah what would you say Taylor and then I'll tell you what you said I don't know i'm gonna look it up the HTC first scored an 8 out of 10 oh yeah and that didn't have the benefit of price I'm not nearly so much not as much listen I think that in the case of the of this moto g I think it's a disruptive phone but you can't we can't review a phone and tell people it's an awesome device when it you know it really isn't i mean if it's if a price tag is a factor that's important and it is for a lot of people than great this is one of the best phones depict if the budget is a thing but it's you can't give it a 10 out of 10 and compared to a galaxy note 3 for example you just can't this entire this entire scoring just gets like this this tiny talk we have had and i'm putting it in past tense for a reason is indicative of how messed up scores are in general they do not age gracefully they change over time we don't change them over time because it would be a massive amount of work this is why when you come to a review and you read the score and then you skip the entire review go to the comments and start arguing about the score you do yourself a disservice because you're not actually getting the messaging we're supposed to be putting out there but we cannot do it at this time what the hell is that sorry buddy are you are you is there did you move next to like a damn what was that I'm a side business is a cement mixer manufacturing plant no the truck sorry about that alright so this is it let's not talk if you're riding in the bed of this truck yeah okay okay Taylor so the question is for example I want to for example I want to buy my father and my mother a Christmas gift I really want to buy them a moto G I mean you think it's a it's a from your review and from everything after putting it together I mean I'm really excited i think this is like a really compelling gift you know not for me because it's too little for me but it's really something that i would love to give somebody at that price tag it's crazy not to yeah i'm sad to have to send it back I mean I probably wouldn't use it but it it's a great phone like honestly it'd be something that I would say you should use when you're working out because hey if it gets water damage while you're working out because you're sweating too much oh well it was a 200 other phone it's not like you're missing you know losing a 600 other phone you know that's a question that can I jump in with a question real quick Taylor I didn't catch this in your review but are the boards coated with motorola's nano coating and this font and this one you know um I heard somewhere it was but I didn't know it before the review okay I'll take on that and sorry keep making your point yeah I'm just saying like it's one of those phones that you kind of feel like you know you think it's are damaged or destroyed you know whatever move on because it was 200 bucks no contract um it's one of those good like if you break your phone you know this is something you can fall back on its a good you know budget phone that you can toss around and not worry about like if I go climbing I like to go climbing if I go climbing this is something I'd pop my sim in and take with me because every time I've gone climbing I've scratched and damaged one of my other phones yeah I think I think this phone is more disruptive than a lot of people are thinking that it is I mean right now you can go buy a galaxy ace or galaxy duos for like three hundred and something dollars and these are H da displays with terrible processors terrible performance and now you've got the Moto G for two hundred dollars and it's got very little to envy from most if not all mid-tier phones actually even some high-end phones from early this year so editorial about as much as this the only way that it's going to avoid disrupting the market is if somehow other manufacturers prevent it from being available as widely as we would like it to be yeah yeah great and so to answer my own question yes it does have the nano coating and someone some brave soul made a six-minute youtube video dropping it in a sink full of water and then like drying it out it works fine it's a wait a second so he didn't do the shower rubber ducky video that somebody did it I feel it works her pocket now yeah we have a copyright on that on that particular yeah yeah yeah so I over little area cement I read all of motorola's promotional stuff and everything and I apparently overlooked that but uh well maybe there's somebody pointed out how damn it is there yeah so that's that's great that's just another example of like wow this is what you get for 179 bucks and that's pretty red I've used them about you all day I'm about to write a review on it right after the pod crews me not a review an editorial on it right after the podcast because it has floored me not necessarily that like okay Taylor you made some great points the camera stinks the speaker is not that great there are compromises that this budget phone has made but none of the compromises in my experience have prevented me from doing literally anything that I would do with one of my daily drivers like the Moto X and I'm talking about the deal like not the accessories not like active display and stuff but the pylons that make up my daily smartphone experience I've been using it all day and I'm like wow I could actually carry this I wouldn't because I value other things but if i needed to i could buy this in a pinch and it would do me fine did you guys any blocks like the mighty tasking yeah and and that's well i'm sorry steven are you asking about multitasking second yeah i got the impression from calendar experience with it that the one thing it really didn't do well was multitasking Oh limited Ram yeah the only reason is because every after you you know flip between two apps every other app is going to have to completely reload it's very aggressive and how it manages your RAM because it only has one gig and we can't have I guess been spoiled with two or three gigabytes of RAM so when you switch apps yeah and they're closing a lot more quickly than yours too early so that I'm used to yeah I had like an Amazon Kindle card that was maybe five or six cards old and I just went back to it had to reload the book and my place in it so yeah I see what you're talking about there yeah but throughout my entire review I'd probably a third of it or maybe you know half of it as Steven will probably tell you is referencing the Moto X and I didn't want to do that when i started writing the review i didn't want to make you know every i didn't want to make it a moto x comparison because that's not what it was but in a sense it is because motorola managed to capture most of what makes the Moto X so great without you know this giant price tag so you know it's a great phone and it's almost as great as the Moto X but it's you know a third of the price it's interesting we were talking a little earlier about the cost to manufacture this and I was thinking well what would it actually take to bring the Moto G up to moto X level specs you know pay a little more for the more powerful SOC add that extra gig of ram and by pulled up some estimates here apparently the Moto X really does cost quite a bit more to make the Bill of material is estimated at two hundred and nine dollars compared to to the hundred twenty something we were talking about and remember the Moto G is not manufactured in the US well the Moto X's creators just assembled well well that's that 2009 figure is not including manufacturing costs yeah uh well see i think motorola would do themselves a favor if they sold the moto x at 350 to begin with yeah yeah yeah so this one thing we were talking about was you know they're not going to make a lot of profit off this moto g but that's not the point they're gonna fill the emerging markets with a high end it not high-end a mid-range android foam that you know blows everything else away and they're gonna do it without you know making a lot of money but they're gonna get that that market share and kind of reestablish the brand that's kind of been lost now that's not my question my question in that vein is how will it do against the similarly cheap Lumia 520 because I was having a conversation with Brandon and Anton earlier where I was like listen we need to do a comparison about this like right now and I'm very interested in how this pans out because the Lumia 520 right now do you guys can someone tell me how much it is at the microsoft store right now I know it was it was fifty dollars it was fifty dollars during the day sale and now do you know how much it's gone up since black friday go ahead it's only it's it's gone up by 20 bucks it's fifty nine dollars for a Lumia 520 right now and so we usually work in my head over what I've been able to do with the Moto G all day I can't think of something that I did on the Moto G that I'm not gonna be able to do on the 520 so the problem with the Lumia 520 is that because of the RAM limitation remember that Windows Phone actually there are certain things and specifically in nokia applications that are very limited on that phone I you know I thought that things were supposed to be great but then when I was putting together Adams review i started learning that yet there are a lot of limitations to the phone so it's not like in the case of the Moto G where you can get the full android experience without compromise on the Moto G you won't get that same experience on the 520 seen this with the 525 is supposed to address well that's what the five guys one of the five of the ramp I've exactly that's what the 525 addresses but in the case of the 520 it is not the same thing so yeah I mean it's it's it's a bowl it's a I mean it's a fifty-dollar phone I mean it's like yeah why would I spend i spent fifty dollars last night and beer I mean you party animal yes the dollar phone that is like crazy i could use that I don't know for I can give it to my dog I mean come on use that give your dollars to my dog every Thursday just to show him I love him here all right so listen we gotta move on guys we're we're behind on time even more than usual because I run down is so long so let's is you Taylor do you have any final thoughts on the Moto G other than just directing people to your review no not not aside from the fact that i would recommend this to a lot of people a lot of people who are looking for a phone you know someone who's a first time buyer people looking for a first-time phone for their you know their teenager grandparents it's just that that foam that kind of fits the bill for a lot of different people people who don't have a lot of needs with their smartphone but even those who do this still works it's just not going to you know really appeal to us the power users so there's that no there is that I love it what's next on the rundown guys I'm having a discussion on the side here they oh yeah Stephen just read this headline verbatim please LG g2 mini could be the largest quote-unquote mini phone yet I love singing HTC was the manufacturer we made fun of last for building a mini phone that really wasn't all that many and now it looks like that this one if it's real might be an even bigger offender yeah well if we look at many just as screen size LG did some great things with the g2 with the bezel so even if this so what we're talking about is I think a 4.7 inch er which is not mini by any phone would seem released to date but it could be physically smaller than devices like the HTC One just by you know optimizing the the face of the screen so its most or face of the phone so it's mostly the screen sure because motorola did the same thing with the Moto X I know we just got done talking about moto but you know that does still doesn't feel like a 4.7 inch screen no it's about the same size as the iphone right yeah which is crazy so and it's jaime makes a good point in that apparently we skipped something what are you talking about I don't know we we didn't but let's go ahead go ahead continue oh I see what you're saying yeah yeah yeah yeah sorry so anyway the the g2 mini I feel like first of all you can make a phone much smaller than the HTC One with little or no effort because you don't have to bundle in the boomsound speakers right because the one is one of the bigger 4.7 inch slices there but it is there a not many miles do ya still not many my point in bringing this into the rundown was to ask the question has any manufacturer really seen a lot of success selling mini versions of its phones I can't imagine they have no no way and so yeah they do it because the the capability is there they can manufacture them and it will service a small niche of people who would otherwise go elsewhere because if that you know if we don't do it somebody else is going to do a mini phone so I was just in the sprint store the other day I saw a galaxy s4 mini for the first time maybe not for the first time if the first time I was paying attention did you point and laugh no I actually lil I liked it and it I understood why Samsung did it because if I were the type of person which I was at one point to go into storm be like listen big phones are freaking lame man I don't want to carry a shoe in my pocket like just give me something with a manageable palm size mm um the s4 you know if I was like a normal person the s4 would have caught my eye for a little bit actually so yeah but ever every time that I see a friend of mine with an s3 mini for example I feel sorry for them you know cuz for example here the price difference between the s3 mini and the s3 back then wasn't really significant and you know you don't get any software updates you don't get anything it's like that what I hate about the whole mini mentality is that they are really giving very minimal support to that phone yeah yeah yeah sorry the moped just I don't know why that was funny of it that was funny everyone's getting distracted by vehicles today yeah no it's a good point though I think what you were saying about the store is probably you're right on point here I don't think anyone actually goes out looking for one of these mini versions of flagships but you stumble across them when you're looking for something else and it can seem like you know maybe a like a good idea they're gonna settle but you know you want something smaller and it's the best thing available and the trick that is built into the branding works it's like here's the flagship name to catch your eye here a mini right after it oh so it's probably the same thing in a smaller footprint of course we've had the discussion why that's not the case but my question is does the LG g2 have enough credit this point to where they can expect to sell a lot of versions of the mini because they haven't sold many g2 no but did we hear about that figure like two and a half million maybe three what was it was something like that I think we talked about it last week so that's you know concerning and meanwhile the other half of the company are not other half but another division within the company another portion of the same division within the company is making a product like the g flex which is kind of I don't have blown me away maybe that's maybe I'm alone in that but it just strikes me as odd that they would dedicate any resources to making a mini version of a phone that um is a fine fighter there wasn't really yeah is really selling it they called it anything else we wouldn't be having its discussion it was just the LG G something the LG G small yeah like 7h phone with these specs I think it'd be we wouldn't worry about what it was called it's a yeah the point to have in their lineup right so maybe that's a good points even maybe the discussion went like listen we're gonna build a phone in the mid-range line anyway if we call it what do they call their mid wrench is the better mid-range the wealthy capable ones are the absolute asked series yeah so if we call it an F Series not a lot of people are gonna get excited if we're gonna build this anyway why don't we just call it a g2 mini and see if that see what that does to sales I I understand I respect that I mean we behind me we play with YouTube titles all the time to see what gets more attention yeah I don't want to do a review on this thing 40 million reviews have already come out all right two videos one list of hates one list of loves done you know what I do well I get sidetracked when people talk about mini phones that's what I do I think we I think we all might be guilty of that actually just read a hilarious headline you've all heard about the interpreter from nelson mandela's memorial yeah they just said yeah it's get siffredi a coma yeah first he claimed that he had asked is schizophrenic episode then he claimed that he was actually signing but he was using a different dialect in sign language and then are now interpreter at mandela memorial says he saw angels headlines all right have you watched the video of it no known areas we're if we if we were ahead of schedule like we usually are we could talk or that up over now let's move on Jaime makes a good point about the next one we're not going to talk about the next story because it's no longer a story that was the nexus 8 discussion and michael is just too stupid to know that yeah same you hurt my feelings just then something is telling headline it caught your eye see thank you galaxy s4 active one of my favorite phones from Samsung ever for real is joining the Snapdragon 800 club isn't it right Steven yeah yeah it's the latest samsung phone to get the LTE advanced upgrade so we're going to be seeing a new warm not way but people in South Korea will be seeing a new version of Aegeus were active 30cm lovely really really awesome i hope that that upgrade comes to the states even if it's not with a lot of bombast if they just kind of replace the existing stock with it this is a good opportunity to mention i was earlier this week we saw that sprint announced a new version of its own galaxy s4 to take advantage of its own network upgrade for the sprint spark LTE arctic it's not lte-advanced and i was curious if this actually was going to be a new version with an 800 because that's been the modus operandi for samsung gear comes out with a new galaxy model to work with better LTE against the 800 I can confirm that's not happening sadly the new sprint gs4 will keep on running the old 600 well that's okay because as we said earlier in the show the 600 is still pretty good yeah we like the six but it would have been nice to see the analyst at your point I wonder though that it wasn't in his point but my point is your point your points are substantially inferior on a usual oasis yeah I guess want to see your key is for active with an AMOLED in it I was just going to say that I that is what I would love to see the LCD does well but an AMOLED in a gs4 active would be great however they don't leave us totally out in the cold because they're also swapping out the camera module alright that last year's 8 megapixel unit we're getting 13 megapixel sensor in the galaxy s4 active and when I say we I'm a good point we don't and we we mean the South Koreans congratulate yes if we're good maybe every time I save if wee-bey what what happen every time I see that I'm like Oliver China only for Taiwan only felt like ah whatever you know it's funny like we it's I haven't heard that very often recently like I think we've been spoiled for a long time and now some phones are coming out for Regions not including our I was really upset today there was a Sony contest where if they have a really nice NFC commercial showing off all their NFC accessories and they made a Christmas tree that's NFC controlled like this is awesome you can enter to win it comes with a bunch of NFC tags a NFC bluetooth speaker it's only for the UK 00 i feel that pain well you enjoy that UK folks serious great uh and NFC Christmas tree just what I wanted that's everybody's what I won't need it really speaking of the UK we're gonna do a little on the fly switcheroo in the rundown and just touch very briefly on HTC's well good news for HTC today HTC has been in a legal battle well as many people are with with Nokia for a very long time and this has resulted in some component changes within the HTC one between the early and late flights which we talked about in listener mail last week yada yada yada the point is the case is continuing and HTC has managed to find itself a bit of luck as stephen shank says and the court has issued a stay on the one mini injunction because what had happened was that there was an injunction issued and one minis could no longer be sold in the UK so this is just a temporary thing HTC is not totally off the hook but for the moment the sales of its hardware can continue so if you if all you want for Christmas or the holidays is an HTC one mini in you live in the UK then you no longer have to worry problem solved yeah good for you sorry it does stuff like five times what well that's good Taylor you woke up just in time to tell us all about how Google is or is not killing off the gallery this is like huge news to me I think this was the first thing I I read when I woke up the other day I don't I don't know what to make of this I just started using google's new photo editor today Taylor maybe you're the not the best person that tell us about this do you know anything about it or should I ask Stephen the news chief to tell us well he can explain it I can give my take because I think that's the best I would like Lana back that's a wonderful compromise and while you guys do it I'm going to continue being ignorant about this piece of news as I grab a glass of water I'll be right back Stephen begin Oh Ethel calendar was going first ok no no exactly sure what's happening though so we saw these the new the google play editions of the the g pad and the tablet z from sony and tablet Z Xperia Z whatever it is and when we actually got to see the softer on these it turned out that unlike the nexus 5 which came with the old gallery app though familiar with on stock Android to look at all your pictures nexus 5 came with both that and this new photo app which is google plus baked in very similar but different in some notable ways and unlike the nexus 5 these two new models have just the photo app no more old gallery so you're they forced your hand into you don't have to use google+ to use the app but it's a part of it it's always there and it's i think it's going to be the way that we see you know future nexus devices coming out yeah i agree there and there's been a lot of people who are upset over this mainly because it does force you to use Google+ but I frankly love it it doesn't force you to you can get away without it you can get away google has shamelessly looked for ways to make you use Google+ so much that they can't figure it out anymore i Taylor how can you live in Google+ seriously I love it and there are a lot of people who do so people who say that Google+ is barren wasteland of tumbleweeds and anywhere fans are kind of out of loop there are a lot of people who use it and there it's it's one of the largest social platforms I have no much they all for Google+ itself it's just not having an option to ignore it while wanting to still be a committed Android user is becoming a larger and larger thing but it's kind of the whole experience I mean you don't have to use google plus um you have to sign up for it but you know there are a lot of friends I have that signed up for it and have never posted anything you don't have that sign up where I had google account that still has not had Google+ activated on it yeah but it throws it in your face every time something like when you activate a phone and ask you like six nights to donut don't remind me about that i mean my pocket now account is yeah I never wanted to open that Google+ and it opened it and and now everybody's following me to that account and I never use it dude I'm in the same but I thought it was the only one everyone follows me at the wrong account because I can't shut down in the wrong account and use the right one I hate you know it's not just Google Plus who you can't have not managed multiple like it provides the worst experience people have multiple Google accounts it's horrible yes yeah but you can't shut down the old account because I had to but that aside the new photos out there are a lot of people who say they don't like it because the photo editing is worse or yeah it's less functional but I think this is just a step along the way they're taking a step back to kind of regroup and they're probably and I don't know for sure but I think they're somehow going to integrate snapseed with this because that's what they did with with Google+ itself and with the old gallery so it's it's really a non-issue if you're complaining about what it can do from within the Photos app versus what it could do with in gallery because I'm a person who probably takes as many pictures as anybody else I mean probably more yeah I'll take picture and I want to get actors Taylor your pictures are good and I good that was a dive dinner jacket I'm sorry we have to let home I go right now so he can go get that phone so sorry it's hard to disrupt your flow boys but hi my thank you for joining us go get that new ba5 brother seriously seriously um so yeah anyways i sorry I have to go I sadly things here close at 5pm I hate this country and that's but and they don't leave at 5pm they always leave at four forty-five Mosley no seriously you may be the first person anywhere to rush off to get a ZTE phone so congratulations oh thank you well the problem is if I leave it there overnight it probably won't wake up there so that's really the reason I you know every we've recently demonstrated that's yeah the 20 that's we're not immune to that problem here in the States apparently so go get it I may we will hear from you on the on that device soon and enjoy it it's that Houston Rockets branded one so you have a sort of a really special device there so have fun what are the Houston Rockets apparently there's a kind of bowling team yeah by now alright guys take care I don't see you later i may say listeners if you want to know where to reach high may you should listen to the end of the show guys can we wrap up talking about pictures real quick you make your last player Taylor yeah all I was going to say is that if I need to edit a picture that I've taken mmm 10 times out of ten I'm either going to use photoshop or Snapseed I never use the built-in one because it's just a functional period like the bill t I use it all the time yeah I never did hmm Snapseed though is a great app and people it's not as good as fo tour which is like the best app ever but you got to be on Windows fun to use that I think I don't like that one Oh photo are so great it's terrible no i did a video on Windows Phone editors and it's awful you're you're wrong you're wrong tell her when you said use Photoshop do me on your phone or on the pc photoshop touch yes okay nice mmm rad the last story in android sorry guys were going to move on was spotify related and i was going to have high might talk about it unfortunately he is no longer around to talk about that or his iOS video so sad face on that so I'm actually just going to dump the iOS category completely you should watch Jaime's video ipad air what we love and hate and users in the United States who use Spotify should you know notice the fact that Spotify is rethought its business model and has confirmed that its new mobile experience is free so you can listen to playlists search for artists and listen to all the music you would like without having to pay for spotify premium and the experience on a tablet is largely unencumbered stephen shank reports but what's the catch Steven well the tablet there's not so much of a catch you can search artist you can find the song can listen to what you want to more or less the catches for the smartphone where yeah you can search for songs you can search for artists and pull up the playlist to spot by Spotify gives you but you can't exactly choose where you want to listen to within net flavor so with the only way to play music is in a permanent state of shovel so you know the song you're looking for is in that playlist but you're going to have to keep hidden skip to get to it I think new limited to like six an hour or something like that so Oh God ideal but but get me table yeah i mean it's it's a great option where no option existed before so that's awesome did it though cuz i was confused about this i always had spotify on my phone and we just listened to the pre-built radio stations for artists and that was always free oh I'd actually didn't know that yeah least this now you can I guess search for individual songs is the benefit which is a huge benefit and it's like the principal benefit of Spotify so uh Wow well if you live in a market where Spotify supported check that out if you don't sorry that's so that's unfortunate so shall we gentlemen move on to windows what do you think no mmm they had his chance oh man I would say I wish hi mate was still here but he would just make it worse all right I'll be the lone contender for ya tell us about the other 15 20 yes so jumping into Windows the Nokia Lumia 1520 review is up and it's it was a bit late but it's up now other videos been up for weeks but now it's linked and embedded and everything looks good um if you like shaft jokes you should read the review but as we talked earlier in the show as we discussed earlier round triche after ya know like I think samuel l jackson shaft cuz like yeah you know right yeah it's like okay i can go watch that but i wouldn't really want to be my first choice that's how i feel about the 1520 personally just because as we discussed earlier in the show the size when you build a device this big you have to make it as comfortable as possible and while the 1520 is not uncomfortable it is kind of unapologetically massive in the same that the one max is but in a net saree in a very different way than the one max is but they are equally uncomfortable in certain situations like I've been using the 1520 to read in bed the past few nights and it's just like oh my god balancing it unless you are exactly like properly vertical is impossible so if you're lying on your side trying to read in bed it's like this thing is just huge and big go that's it vertical I pictured you hanging on the wall in a sleeping bag like astronauts Lee yeah yeah that's better for your back really right yeah if I'm dangling upside down with my wings folded over my chest then it works nicely but it's it's just a big heavy device um which is wonderful i think i summed it up in the bottom I was like the screen is beautiful the the experience when you're watching movies when you're reading a book when you're doing stuff that that is taking up all of your attention is great and I kind of called it a monster but a friendly lovable one it's it's Windows Phone needed to get into the phablet game nokia needed to get into the phablet game and they did it fairly well here i like how the home screen uses the space efficiently up front i can kind of glance and see everything i need to see but unfortunately there's no like advanced multitasking options unless you go for a third-party solution which was linked to me by a generous commenter and i was like oh let me go check this out a third-party up let's let's multi-window happen on windows phones and I kind of looked at the screenshots and was like oh oh no no I can't I can't Brook this good at home screen just makes my head hurt it's just too many I too much going on yeah I like it see I like it too i I've it's it's so refreshing to me not to have to scroll down to see any more like it's all right there I'd for the I've said this before but for the first time since 2010 Microsoft's like promised to deliver a glanceable UI has been fulfilled it's like it's all right here yeah well glanceable or something you have to scan with your eyes I don't know cuz I like you may have to because you haven't used it but I've used it for about two weeks and I know mean you ever use the foam you haven't used my configuration right you know where to look exactly right my eyeball knows where to go when I want to know what I go right to the middle you know when I went news is right below that calendar is right to the left like I know you know I know where stuff is I think this interface could be made better by the allowance to color code your own tiles because I don't know about you guys but my brain instantly seeks out color first and when I'm trying to find something in a hurry and to be able to like make the phone tile green for example would be a big help to me that's interesting i was just reading through some design documents for us doing an editorial on the notification bar that some of you may have seen an android and google says specifically don't use anything in your notifications that uses color to identify your app we don't want you doing that interesting well you know that's I see why they would do that because for a while Android was kind of like a no-holds-barred like no rules land cowboy landscape and like there were all kinds of colors everywhere and none of it made any sense so they really had to clamp down on that yes I think they've gone a little far with the latest version of Android though because like the complete removal of all those blue highlights from the status bar has just made it look really boring to me like when my Moto X got the updated i miss the blue for for data kind that's another design decision they made any icons went up there have to be white for the transparent bar yeah like you know I'm not digging on that too much but well let's just say that you can go read the 15 20 review if you want to go read it it's linked right there it's awesome i'd love it if you read it i spent a long time on it and there are great things about the device i painted a really crappy picture of it just now but there it does a lot of things really well let's talk about these Windows Phone rumors i'm going to change it up again because we started talking you I Stephen what is going on with this rumor is it at all feasible that any of this is true or total different rumors here in the rundown which are you talking about the UI one this this this crazy rumor that hog and in 2014 windows phone is somehow gonna lose the Metro aesthetic yeah what we could tell us what the hell this is okay I don't believe a word of it yeah so eldar Mertes een who some of you may be familiar with has been a really prolific a tipster guy he has his sources he makes all these predictions and he's kind of hitting this a while back he was known for generally beating on point but let me make the point here before you know it to that I'm not I don't mean to throw him under the bus as a tipster I'm actually not really familiar with him so I can't say one way or the other way I just mean this rumor sounds so outlandish we don't know whether he's trying to mislead at now here's he heard this he's passing it on and so the couple components to it basically he's talking about next big iteration of Windows Phone Windows Phone 9 or whatever it's called coming out sometime in the second half of next year which is way sooner than we've been hearing about we were still looking forward to 8.1 just launching in the spring sometime and you know more than just coming out then he says it's going to integrate RT which we also thought was a lot farther out and it could completely ditch the you know the Metro UI no more live tiles and that's just it's crazy DOM Microsoft just spent years putting hands on everything I can see how this is going around now because there's been a lot of talk about on the desktop them going back to the start menu and am returning to the traditional desktop look because users have really been rejecting the Metro look there I think it's working on the smartphone side I can't see them a switching course so drastically yeah I mean it is i think a windows phone is easily the most readily identifiable divide mobile device out there in terms of the platform like when you look at a blackberry screen is kind of like okay well there's big tiles i kind of don't know what that is web a lesson well no I know oh yeah yeah exactly well like you're looking at an iOS 7 device and you look at an Android device and yes we can all tell the differences but I don't know that a lot of consumers would instantly be able to remove the benefit of hardware if you can pass one off as a heavily skinned version of the other vice for exactly right whereas actually have athenaeum actually have a theme on my Nexus 5 that I applied in for a video i just posted where my Nexus 5 actually looks just like iOS 7 so yeah but whereas windows phone looks nothing like that and when you try to make Windows Phone look like another OS like it fails visibly yeah uh well that there's that's a double-edged sword and I think we've talked about this before where a lot of people have had terrible terrible experiences on windows 8 and that's kind of trickling down into the mobile systems where they're not really wanting to try windows phone because their home pc is something that just makes them angry when they turn it on which is which is funny because we did talk about this like over a year ago on this podcast I was the one saying like hey listen guys we got windows 8 coming soon if it's a hit it is going to naturally inject some life into windows phone sales and I'm not willing to say it's not a hit I in terms of sales numbers and stuff i really don't know I but it certainly offers its way down what's that historically if you compare adoption based on when windows 8 release compared to when windows 7 was released and look at over time windows 7 has been selling at like twice the rate as Windows 8 really yeah yeah I think there's definitely been some stigma attached to two windows 8 in a variety of areas but I don't really want to get into that because I'm frankly not informed enough to do it I know that I feel much less passionate about Windows 8 then I do windows phone 8 and I don't think that's really news to anybody out there do you guys feel the same or no ah i can't i have trouble getting excited over anything windows phone 8 and that's not because i dislike windows only it's just not exciting for me it's just something it's a valid option it's decent at what it does but for me it just doesn't it doesn't really think really diverse windows 8 though I mean like which I haven't really spent a lot of time with windows 8 I yeah see I I try to I go back and Stephen you answer the question then i'll talk about that i have larger philosophical issues with windows 8 than I do with Windows Phone 8 and specifically if there's one thing I like about Windows Phone 8 it's that Metro will look to it that completely nailed it for me me too I agree and every time i go back to try and use windows 8 for a specific purpose or because there's been an update and i want to try it out I'm like ah it's almost as the as if for the way I use things windows 8 brings all of the things I don't like about Windows Phone 8 and makes them bigger and it eliminates all the good things I like about Windows Phone 8 I don't know but in any case uh I probably isn't going to happen I think this particular is total crap yeah I I don't see them ditching the tile-based you I and I don't see Artie I'm on the fence about whether RT is going to disappear or is going to get rebranded as I believe it something yeah it's going to merge into something else but I've gotta trust in Mary Jo Foley is you know incredibly reliable and she was talking about that's transition coming after the rumor threshold series of upgrades which itself wouldn't be until sometime in 2015 so I really gotta believe that she knows what she's talking about here and this is very very far off all right I want to make the point for some reason when we were talking Windows 8 I felt like I was betraying an inner part of myself as like why am I trash-talking this why do I have this fond memory of using it and now I remember the only truly fond memory I have of using Windows 8 it was actually Windows 8 Windows 8/rt for Windows 8.1 RT on the Lumia 2520 when we had it because it was a really fun experience i use done the entire train ride down to New York City and I was like this is really enjoyable and obviously I think a large part of that came came down to the hardware because I liked using that device better than I liked using the surface or the envy x2 the other two devices I run windows 8 on mmm show yeah anyway let's move on we will talk more about this rumor when it is debunked or when the world turns upside down and it comes true uh do you want to talk about Nokia's big PR win here Steven yeah Nokia's been nailing it with these these PR events where it finds some other company it's kind of dropping the ball making themselves look like a bit of a jerk and it gives like hey check us we're cool they swung in when a couple months back there was an incident where Apple stole a video from the sky and he was complaining about it and Nokia had no interest in this initially they were not involved but they kind of swooped in like hey you like videos check out this 10 20 here it is for pretty and they got them a lot of you know good food karma there and it pretty much the same thing here where a guy had an issue with Samsung it was he was charging his phone for one reason or another the phone did not like being charged and caught a little bit on fire just a little bit yeah and Samsung wanted him to sign all these agreements saying he wasn't going to talk anymore about the incident for them to replace the phone for him and they weren't in replace it they're gonna replace it with a comparable model no then they always say that next to me they might be refurbished right no but when you're when you're doing that though when you're like yeah not just drafting a piece of boilerplate you're actually like writing a new letter like you look at it you don't say like a comparable device you say will give you the same phone yes Sam's like did not handle it as well as they could but the issue isn't Samsung's failing so much as Nokia then reaching out to this guy and they're hooking him up with I don't know it's gonna get 10 20 but a new Lumia model and it no he keeps this up i think it could you know do a lot to restore the public image they're not just another arm of the faceless giant evil Microsoft Nokia's are the fun guys they help people out yeah I'd like to know if if Casey nice dad is still using his lumia 1020 okay we got to yeah I would really like to know that as well ah well I will say uh what what else is going on this well we wrap up nokia here can we talk about that last rumor about their health i point to it yeah that's supposedly 5.2 inch Lumia rumored to be in the works what's the story here well this awesome indian import/export database which is rapidly becoming a source for our information on upcoming phones reveals that nokia i don't think it says nokia a company in finland shift a phone with a serial number that looks a lot like how nokia does their serial numbers sent it to india it's a five-point to make sure we don't know much about it resolution or anything we can make some assumptions the stated price makes it seem like it's going to be relatively high end I think listen the five hundred dollar range so 65 okay so this could be something coming up early next year new phablet for nokia and a snapdragon 800 and probably a 1080p display and we've seen some rain boots yeah we've seen some renders or photos actually of devices that are smaller than the 15 20 but running the new mega three row like Start screen right oh yeah well first we thought that that might be an option for that can upgrade for lower res displays but you don't know what's going on there but we're kind of half expecting that to be on the 929 right the extra row of tiles I don't even know at this point we've seen pictures of it we have and and it makes sense with a 1080p to screen yet smaller on the 929 but anyway I wouldn't be at all surprised to see to see that home screen configuration or start showing a configuration on the 929 and on this new mystery device this RM 964 smartly renewed key is going to have a device every single size possible I know and speaking of size though I wonder when I see 5.2 my mind immediately goes to the LG g2 and I wonder if this will be yet another Lumia with a oh my god no mind is mike and guys what is the G to have its slcd three or no time to review ah that would have been such a keen sentence wouldn't it it has a display it's probably color yeah oulad doesn't get a hit also so slcd doesn't get a hit well tell me what I with the display is review oh it's an IPS LCD yes it would be interesting to see because the 1520 has an LCD as well so be interesting to see neither Lumia with an Okie the g2 the LG g2 yes correct has an IP IP s plus true HD IPS plus thank you buddy appreciate you as good as a week like stuff it just falls out of our heads right immediately so yeah thanks for stew swooping back in for that and I'm actually talking to Brandon right now he's he's busting my balls over something what's he would you're not doing enough work what's going on oh no I didn't talk about something enough in the last video I made Oh Roger um you know what I'm talking about I uh oh oh god really yeah no no that's too bad okay anyway let's not get any further into the woods on that let's continue to wrap up windows we're not too many pieces of worthwhile news left but i love this headline and i know we're out of sequence so i will just kind of it to you guys will Microsoft pay for samsung to pay attention to them that's not how you phrased it Steven but I think that's basically the core of it right yeah people think that Microsoft is getting kind of desperate to help flush out the windows phone selection in terms of other OEMs besides Nokia and actually this works into another ight and we had on the run down here with licensing fees but it seems like it's doing anything it can to keep these companies who might have been making windows phone handsets in the past keep them on board once nokia fully gets absorbed into Reds devices and services fully gets absorbed at the microsoft so one of these rumors has been that Microsoft end up and I'm directly paying or just you there's not much of a brain fart specifically we're talking about rumors suggesting Microsoft could be trying to lure Samsung with 1 billion dollars yeah inside it could be advertising compensation in some other way but spending a billion dollars in one way or another to keep Samsung making windows phone handsets now to cover ourselves completely this is from the CSS tipster so you know who knows but i find the question interesting to ask because we're all sitting here wondering what is i would love to be in these meeting rooms when they when microsoft is having conversations with these makers in especially samsung who created the achieve s which we found to be a great windows phone then the tv's neo which kind of is the same thing just again and is not very good on sprint at least and like nothing else really except the achieve odyssey and wow it we just assumed that they were going to slowly you know like fade away and as far as windows phone goes and I think I've it seems to be it seems to me that that's what Samsung would have done if it weren't for Microsoft having to come out but can you imagine their position like Microsoft's coming over like hey listen we know that we just bought a nokia but you know we'd like you to ignore still would be you have a lot of hardware to compete directly with you I've heard arguments that Samsung likes to diversify itself and so maybe in that sense it would make sense for the company Vaughn doing windows film at the same time Samsung is a control freak I mean the whole ring hope reasoning I did to the whole Tizen thing was to have more control over the platform this could be the exact opposite case that it goes with windows win unless Microsoft ends up giving it some you know special nokia level of Ingo that's exactly what I was just going to say like if we can just put our speculation hats on for a second wouldn't that be amazing because we know Samsung can do some cool things with Windows Phone they were never given permission to do the amazing innovative stuff that nokia has been able to do but Samsung's folders I know it's a simple stupid thing to talk about but Samsung lets you group apps into folders in Windows Phone that is something no other hardware manufacturer has ever done to my knowledge unless Huawei did something I personally feel if Samsung can get is given that freedom huh it's gonna hurt I guess probably the platform overall at least in terms of how its reputation for fluidity because Samsung is we all know how great Samsung is at just bogging everything down with hundreds of features that nobody's ever going to use absolutely then and that's a real point to be made on Windows Phone if they are able to take liberties with it because I mean what would stop them then from you know plastering their crap all over everything Microsoft but it depends yeah they won Samsung stick around right as I'm saying if they're given the free reign to do you know what they do then it could be a bad thing for Windows home I guess wonder if there are smartphone shoppers out there who get it into their head I want a samsung phone they may not know about Android or care about it that much or windows home for that matter they just go into the store they say I want a samsung smart phone and most of the time there's not going to be that Windows Phone option available for them maybe that's a Microsoft is is counting like it's playing off samsung's you massive popularity that could well be it's I mean I think that particular breed of shopper is probably pretty rare although Samsung and they don't say very big they don't say I want a samsung phone they say I want a samsung or yeah we're specifically like I want a galaxy yeah often and that that carries with it the android thing but i don't know i would be interested in hearing how many times in history a retail mobile phone clerk has heard i want one of those at eve's you got never from an ATM he had eight oh god but i can we focus on one small point that should be made here yeah everyone says that windows phone is kind of struggling and everything in the microsoft is is in somehow some desperate state to make it stick if if Microsoft is willing to pay another company not just for the first time another company a billion dollars that should tell you that Microsoft is really not in any sort of trouble here and that they have plenty of money to keep fueling Windows Phone it for as long as it wants yeah it's in this for the long haul yeah it's making Microsoft is making money from Android manufacturers for still making Android so it's not like it has anything to worry about as long as the androids popular windows phone is going to be around I just really hope that we see an update soon because when was a Windows Windows Phone 8 launch is hear the sounds like that aight it was the first one wasn't it the ax t it was the first one unannounced ever gonna pronounce agree right it was later what did they say creative like Edith isn't what they were talking about that press couple yeah but that's not how you don't tell me how to think why did they do that I never understood that the like creative and I like I really like it what it is so initially released was October 29 2012 it's 13 months ago and we that's what you saw sitting minor feeling like yeah we saw a minor update but it brought pretty much nothing force closes in the multitasking rib and then a couple other things and and like rotation lock like accessories but and I'm sure people will make the argument that the OS doesn't need a refresh but it really does in some areas i feel like when i use windows phone now and i do because i still do a wheel the Moto X in the 1020 ah I find shut up i find i find myself sometimes inside Windows Phone I find myself feeling like i'm using abandonware particularly in the people and the meat hub and if you've read my stuff in the past month you you're tired of hearing this and I'm sorry to repeat myself but I'm tired your face Lou like those things haven't those things came out in 2010 and they were revolutionary it's like my ourselves like you don't have to use a separate app we just built an operating system that plugs right into your Twitter in your facebook and takes care of that for you and it was great and then Twitter and Facebook evolved and Windows Phone really didn't so that the functionality of the people in me hub for for me is basically crippled yeah I can post a status update from it yeah I can vaguely see what other people are doing sort of but so much functionality has been broken or just was never present as these social networks developed and as Windows Phone failed to keep up with it that I just don't use them anymore I used the siloed apps and as a result using Windows Phone is far less distinctive for me and if I were selling it I would have one less reason to tell people to buy it so I I never would have used those teachers to begin with ever well you didn't really come from webos I mean that was kind of a oh it's like kind of dude Microsoft in one to make you didn't mean it and I use with webos for you don't a long time you ain't nothing you ain't never hard yeah I don't hear it in your voice yeah I bought webos on day one I bought the original pre or die I wasn't on the pre plus the pre to the love the ring a you measuring contest about how were bigger say in fanboys go ahead dad up stay boy but I am I gonna do know my second to be a fan but I can be a fanboy out about a dead platform for ya Microsoft I really wanted to make Windows Phone 8 seem fresh in light of these you know building up problems are just not addressing things they really could have I think I managed to do that if the rumored gdr3 three-column 720p support happened he just would have looked different enough to get users nicking 0 microsoft's you know keeping up with this they're keeping things fresh even though it's a very shallow change right but sadly that did not happen oh I made did you get distracted by the high just came back into the chat like I just wait wait let's see if we can bring him back in here so he's gotta be back by day is godly shipping office having gotten the phone very quickly Taylor what uh Brandon said so my god uh tell everyone I said hi so there's Brandon's message thanks for that thanks for that all right the the Windows Phone listeners will be will be pretty irritated by giving up some of their time to hear hi might talk about a phone they don't care about but like when playing the three of them I'm just oh you guys made the same joke and it wasn't any fun blowfly isn't funny huh i'm going to make shop certain that we're gonna let me have 5 20 by the way we're gonna get uh probably like 800 comments now about from the very very vocal Windows Phone fans you know it's funny they they've been less I've been somewhat critical of Windows Phones development as I just was 45 minutes and some I written pieces and they've like calms down recently like I feel like they only bump down really inflammatory fan group at a time and right now it's like that's trading between LG and sony for me yeah sony people those fans hate me but i want to say that that that whole community is very much more tame towards you when i write about windows want to make a video about Windows Phone people are like who is this fanboy ok so the Instagram video that i made about Instagram beta for windows phone I said nothing negative about the platform nothing at all I really didn't talk about Windows Phone I just said that having an official app was good for the platform and like 30 comments were like who's this fan boy where's Michael Fisher wide this guy get this video like ya know the real problem is problem the reason why we're seeing this decline in the amount of fanboyism going on a windows phone is because Steve Ballmer has been operating about a million sock puppet accounts and as he gets ready to step down from CEO he's a lot busier now who's here miss attention to this so let's let's wrap it up on Windows Phone what happened to me I made couldn't join us he he must have sent us a text to have skype from his phone ah a text Skype I sound like my roommate the other day right I'm like working in my room I was like hey can you gchat from an ipad I'm like what yes you know that nobody calls a jeep at anymore Jeju always felt God actually so did so did I until they saw but then everyone on Twitter made fun of me so I stopped uh-uh I make funny you still Taylor guess what let's go to a horrible monster with Taylor like Hillary used to be this nice mild-mannered dude and that was just a giant bully I never was incised at hawes trouble could Microsoft eliminate licensing fees Stephen shank not Taylor Martin who doesn't know anything it's the same thing you say they had to all right so what's the story we didn't tell us tell us why we're speculating about this quickly rumor got out that Microsoft might stop charging manufacturers to use both Windows Phone and Windows RT but not full blown windows 8 on tablets in the products they released because currently charges a per unit fee for for the license on each device just like when you buy a PC and has windows 8 loaded on it Roger um and this sort of came up earlier we were talking about a couple months ago the idea that Microsoft again someone puts out this notion that it's desperate to get more companies involved and that it would offer Windows Phone free if they make dual boot devices its back now we have forgotten about the dual boot idea but maybe instead of giving Samsung a billion dollars they can't I sit by just saying you can make Windows Phones won't cost you nothing you can get more profit on each phone be interested hmm hmm how accurate do we think this rumor is was gonna say I'm here it was it so the source of the verge so it's probably pretty pretty solid they know their stuff um what's a V word I was looking for veracity what is the veracity of this room that's what I meant to ask I couldn't think of any miss a minute ago we're having much luck oh yeah no or having some horrible brain problems here yeah so yeah yeah Microsoft kind of devices is ready yeah Tom war Tom Warren is always crazy plugged into Windows Phone perhaps a lot i would i would trust this yeah i would say that they need to and it this goes back to the whole acquiring nokia part it's kind of the same thing that we talked about when google bought motorola it's going to upset the partners are they still going to want to make android devices obviously they were because android is very successful but windows phone is still kind of blossoming yeah and and this is stepping on toes you know it's not just you know oh the creator of an open-source platform is buying a hardware partner so they can build hardware they're keeping it a separate company they made that clear but Microsoft did not make that clear and this is not an open source operating system it is a licensed paid premium operating system and that that's a whole different ballgame so I think for them to for this whole situation to be a little more smooth and less rocky and abrasive I think they need to drop the licensing fees I think Microsoft doesn't need Windows Phone money it needs a greater Windows Phone share and it might do whatever it can take to do that you know well we'll see I'm going to contribute a little bit to Windows Phones bottom line is I just got the confirmation that i am going to go buy a 520 so I got to go to the Microsoft Store and do that and as a result we got to wrap up a bit of this podcast I'm sure we're gonna have a lot of dialogue in the in the comments on this one yeah I gotta go to fedex and send the Moto G back vitriol has another gig at second good one yeah yeah I would always get a vapid and vacuous mixed up back in the day but I solved that problem for myself I wanted to sleep in late yeah I know I can rest a little easier I'm gonna bathe always get cool and coolio mixed up but that's just cuz my vernacular is not that great very big problem well I still get ice cube and iced tea mixed up but that's that's my problem so another 1i boot preferred not to watch either one of them on screen really but I I get 50 cent the rapper ends a change mixed up as well you have a problem that yeah yeah it's tricky life is very silly and I have 50 cent and I you know whip out my lanta decent album and like all whatever like what I don't need this carrying the HTC One just so we can listen to this g-unit I think they're saying gun it and I just drive yesterday all right well I think that's just lovely everyone please forgive us for skipping listener mail this week please continue to tune in for all of our content and pleased if you enjoy the podcast please vote for us using the stitcher link don't fear us even if you don't enjoy it that if you don't enjoy the part yet we'll never make you listen to it again if you've you know what were us every word if you like me making fun of Michael don't do it don't don't do that actually I would rather end this podcast actually I'd rather end it right now mr. Taylor has a slight over a cliff we never missed a week I like that let's talk about getting out of here thanks everyone for listening I think gents that's going to do it for this episode of the weekly be sure to find us on Twitter I promised to tell you where hi mate can be reached and he's at home a underscore Rivera on Twitter Taylor is at casper texier sper Tek if you want to talk to him for whatever reason and Stephen never goes on Twitter but he's at Stephen shank as teph en schd nck or about 50 million Google+ accounts apparently you can also follow pocket now officially a pocket now on Twitter Instagram Facebook and Google+ it's all pocket now and you can share opinions with other listeners online at forums pocketnow.com please leave us a review on iTunes or Xbox music when you're done voting for us in the stitcher competition and if you have a topic question or suggestion for the show or you just want to say hello please email us at podcast at pocketnow.com thank you so much for listening and we will see you next week well I want to let that sit streets not talk about the score but go ahead said it say your piece and then let's move on yeah I really want to spend any time in scoring bullsh no one yet I got a damn it uh all right yeah I no go ahead go ahead do it