Gadgetory

you should start recording start with already we should include this beginning part again alrighty then well it's not that chefs to get on the podcast at some point we should we should definitely do that if she asking about its first smartphone would yeah well we'll ask people if they've ever if they if they knew that Stephen they are aware that Stephen never had a smartphone until a week ago is think EF fooled everyone yeah we'll ask them if that if that affects his authority in their minds yeah it's um what's the word it's the scandal of the century Stephen doesn't that it is okay in a smartphone world it's big news well if we're leaving this part on the podcast everyone's going to hear so I guess the truth is out what how we can always cut it out now let's leave it all right hey everyone welcome to the 10th episode of the pocket now pocket cast podcast i am brandon minimun editor-in-chief of pocketnow.com also on the line is evan blast managing editor of pocket now holler back Evan how are ya good job uh and also on the line is Anton Dean Agee senior editor of pocket now holler back Tony well I'm gonna holler back to but first I'm gonna please ask you to excuse me if you hear some strange sounds in the background it's my neighbors tearing down walls so I'm sorry for that is that a metaphor they're tearing down walls or they know they're redecorating tearing down walls breaking down barriers that's what we do yeah very good so a lot of smartphone news to talk about today um got a big list here and then we're gonna take your Twitter questions I was supposed to inform the others of what the Twitter questions might be but it's just gonna be a surprise because it's just more fun that way so first thing we want to talk about on april third and someone's blinking me here april april third we were talking about the google artwork on front page which had ice cream and ice cream sundae which is very strange usually they use that as an opportunity to commemorate something they were commend commemorating I don't even know that's the right where they are celebrating the hundred and 19th anniversary of the first documented ice cream sundae it just seemed very strange that they would they would advertiser or stop sending me im's seems very strange that they would advertise something like that unless there was a reason and we're thinking about the next version of android um do you guys thinks that think that this is the first hint no one's really talking about this I do you do I agree yeah um so I was looking up some release dates and it looks like ice cream should be talked about probably starting next month I mean so it was november october ish when we first heard about gingerbread it was actually november and Google operates on about a six to seven maybe eight mother's release cycle with Android so that puts us at about May or June which which kind of makes sense they probably want to have the new version of Android out in time for the holiday shopping season what do you guys think will be the headline feature of ginger ice cream well before we get to that I just want to emphasize a little bit on this sunday thing because I don't know how many guys have you out there know that actually ice cream sundae is a combination of several other ice creams and recently we just heard that I mean we knew it that honeycomb features will come to Gingerbread and that will be ice cream so in my mind I think it's really clear that there's gonna be a mix between honeycomb and gingerbread just like in Sunday several flavor mixes and this should be a pretty strong indication it's a really good really good analysis I didn't really think about that I wasn't the ice cream business after all you were yes I was previous job huh wow that's interesting so yeah I think that that's a strong indication and so what do you think is gonna be the headline fee in ice cream well it's hard to say I think there will be more touch friendly features taken from honeycomb band from tablet and ported along to smaller devices we can have a very nice email application the new media player a improved internet browser so I think it will be around these you know what you think Adam um this is just totally you know speculation and more Hope than than anything else I I think would be nice if they really I'm optimized for multi-core processors you know and Android can handle it right now but I think with this newest generations of this newest generation of phones Android really has to you know take it to the next level absolutely so I agree with that one multi core supports huge a better way to fast app switcher multitask no more tap and hold so maybe we'll see the permanent multi test button come over from honeycomb on tablets which would be great and yeah an improved web browser with possibly a better speed and better tab management the stock browser of Android has really cruddy tab management you have to go into another menu and it's kind of a slow in her face mmm so there's a lot there's a lot to do with Android for phones and it's probably going to be a pretty exciting update unlike gingerbread which really was was a very incremental upgrade that really only appeased people making games and people wanting to do near field communication a man I was just gonna say that could be the sleeper hit of the of that version is NFC capabilities you know do you guys think NFC is the is the future of payment yeah but the question is you know when's it gonna happen um I was talking to an analyst at ctia and he doesn't think it's gonna it's gonna be a regular thing for for many years because there's um there's no incentive for for retailers to to to implement the hardware because it's you know it's another person taking a bite out of the pie it's just like I mean it's just like a credit card right but um you know the way he was explaining it made a lot of sense there's there there's no one that that really is pushing for it at this point and it doesn't make financial sense for anyone and it's not even a convenience for the consumer I mean it's not like it would encourage more sales when you go to the local whatever you're gonna bring your wallet because that as your ID in it and presumably you you've driven there and you need your ID I mean you have your wallet on you anyway you've got your phone in the other pocket but it's the same amount of effort to take out your credit card or cash than it is to you know take out your phone I think it will be just an additional option I mean yeah it definitely will be a feature for the future but I don't think it will be for the near future maybe mid term or long term future it will be just another option to purchase some things this way I feel like it'll be used mostly for micro payments you know like say you're you know you just want to buy like one subway ride right now it's sort of a pain because you have to go to the Machine buy a ticket overlap you know if you could just do with your phone you can swipe it right at the turnstile yeah that's a good point situations where you have to go to a kiosk to pay like a parking garage or transit system that could be an interesting use bearnaise on a side note i'm sorry who did I interrupt okay on a side note talking about features we've seen that recently Android got some business oriented features do you think that ice cream sundae or sandwich or whatever its name will be we'll have some business oriented features in the future or at lunch because currently Android is a little bit lacking on the business part i guess i guess rim still has sort of the the market therefore for business users and obviously that's a very very very profitable industry in fact one of the reasons microsoft took the took the release path that they did windows mobile was to capture the business market back windows mobile 5.0 David trying they were trying to be blackberry and then they realized how big the consumer market is and it's as big if not bigger than them business so yeah you know hopefully as a consumer and not really business user hopefully Google's focusing on consumer friendly features and not trying to make it more secure and you know remote management which would be nice anyway but yeah I could see some some business friendly features being thrown into ice cream well you know what we're saying we're starting to see now is I'm a push towards making phones on dual purpose dual use meaning that they have on you know two distinct profiles 14 I'm personal and one for business and you know you can sort of sandbox those two different usage cases and you know so it allows people that to have one phone instead of carrying their blackberry and their Android or iPhone or whatever else it is so I think that's something I could get an embedded into the OS eventually yeah back in 2008-2009 as if that was such a long time ago it was very common for me to see at least out out and about somebody with a blackberry and then they take out their iphone and they're been carrying two phones and then iphone has improved in the corporate security department although not to the extent of blackberry yet and yeah I think there's a desire for people to carry one device and I think Google knows this and they're gonna try to make that one device an android phone absolutely right we'll all right let's move on let's talk about these windows phone 7 updates uh if you look at the the window the Windows Phone website where's my update and you click on international you'll see that the vast majority of phones have gotten their march copy and paste nodo update now but then if you flip over to the United States it's like has been unchanged for a week I mean the hd7 and the venue pro and the menu pro no one has that now the hd7 is really the only phone in the US have gotten odo the surround the quantum the focus are still in testing so this is like molasses although it is interesting that in the United States the updates are a lot slower which really says something about probably the carriers that are taking their time now they arrived on that ship with no dough right right and I would assume that the hd7 s will do the same yeah and the trophy whenever that comes out on verizon verizon trophy i was thinking about this the other day guys we've got to see a new wave of Windows Phone 7 hardware um you know for for the holiday shopping season I mean the launch devices are just their lingering and you know we're gonna see the that the trophy on verizon is that right there is the Mozart yours yeah the troll you know we also saw those renders of the ignite and the Prime hmm oh yeah that's right so some new HD phones then the ignite and the prime which might actually be announced tomorrow and we're going to talk about the HTC event tomorrow although if you're listening this podcast after you already know what has been released but the way I look at it is these launch devices are just being milked I mean we're going to see another version of the hd7 whoop-dee-doo so when do you guys think we're going to see a fresh wave of Windows Phone 7 devices and what kind of innovation or changes do you think that they will print well I think we won't see any fresh windows phone seven until at least the third quarter because we first need to hear from Microsoft on the second chassis specifications and the new minimal requirements and we have so far not heard of those and I think it's normal that Microsoft sets out the new requirements and then OEMs and manufacturers come out with new devices and announcements I think we might or might not i no see or hear something at this year's mix which will start I think this week but I don't think we will see any fresh windows phone 7 s until August September or october ya got some time there and the next wave let's call it generation 2 of Windows Phone 7 devices do you think we're gonna see dual-core I mean is that even necessary the windows phone 7 it's already very fast and very fluid sure you know your you always want hardware to you know encourage software developers to push the envelope even more do you guys think we're gonna see windows phone seven support higher screen resolutions and generation to higher no lower yes lower really yeah because what we heard about Cathy to hvga that's that's kind of congruent with the you know the garner an hour analyst report that said one of the one of the ways that Windows Phone 7 is going to take market share if they're right is by reducing the price point of these smartphones and really you can only do that by using lower end components like hvga screens that would just be kind of depressing though to see you know that the nice looking windows phone 7 interface on a you know resolution screen that's half basically what you get on on the phones down I mean imagine I I wonder if that means that the Live Tiles you only get to see for you know instead of eight I think everything will be scaled down and the experience will be just the same it's an interesting thought very good well why don't we talk about yeah the the event tomorrow HTC is holding an event in the UK we're pretty sure it's going to be the HTC pyramid called the sensation what other what other surprises do you think we're going to see well think there'll be any surprises I think we'll we'll see the evo 3d gsm version probably so the evo 3d gsm the sensation and do you think the that won't be the pyramid is a separate device right so do you think tomorrow they're going to talk about the pyramid or just the evo 3d I think we'll see both tomorrow because we we started to see the the evo pop up there retailers so you know I think there's some information out there that it's it's coming how about the the prime in the ignite that I don't know I mean anytime you see you see renders of a device like that you know there's there's a good chance that it's coming up pretty soon and those came out at the same time as the the pyramid render so I would expect to see those you know if not if not tomorrow then then within the next month probably they took the pictures down of the prime of the ignite for those that are unfamiliar they are windows phone 7 devices one is kind of like a desire z and the other one was the other one it's just a slate just asleep and a lower end that one I have a lower end slate kind of reminds me of the mozart and the trophy but maybe I like the Mozart he was a good composer i'll be on a more pessimistic note and i'll say we will if we are lucky only see the evo 3d gsm version and the pyramid AKA sensation but we might also see a new version of sense because the evo 3d obviously has a new version of sense and we might see that on the sensation too yeah that's that's probably very likely i mean the new version of sense is probably only tuned for the qhd display which of course the sensation and the evo 3d have good point daughter thank you very good let's move on to some apple news so a new patent was was awarded to Apple to extend the functionality of their 30-pin connector to support the Thunderbolt not to be confused with the verizon phone by the way I'll run there any trademark symbol with the Thunderbolt device and thunder board the connector Evan do you know about any trademarks uh there there maybe you know it and as far as i know it's that's still a code name or means that has that been finalized as the retail name or the retail branding of this technology i think this is the standard name and it's the final name of the technology yeah it is if you go to the apple website they've you know it is called yeah they could absolutely run into trouble and you know it's in the same general uh you know classification of you know communication devices i think it does a disservice to the Apple technology because when I think a Thunderbolt Thunderbolt the HTC Thunderbolt i think was talked about a good bit before Apple's Thunderbolt technology so it's gotta there's kind of a perception problem i think brewing a little bit as a verizon continues to aggressively promote and advertise the HTC Thunderbolt so this 30-pin connector would allow you to do faster data speeds with USB 3 and Thunderbolt but I'm just wondering when they're going to get rid of this 30 pin connector we've probably talked about this before and not and just go with micro USB the 30 pin connector is is big and if you look on the new ipad 2 you can almost see how they're they're reaching the the threshold of thickness to be able to actually use the 30 pin connector it's sort of rounded off on the side and it doesn't it doesn't snap in as nicely as it did on the EV iPad 1 yeah that's true but I think the problem is that there's such a huge ecosystem of third-party products that use that connector that there's just no way that they could get rid of it anytime soon I think more likely we would see a micro USB port added you know so that you could you could be charging while you have something connected to the 30-pin that's and I I concur here and I'm not sure if you guys heard but in Europe the European Union and the European community came up with a standard that all smartphones will be using micro USB as a standard connector so in case apple doesn't want to get into issues banning them or that won't that won't allow them to sell the iphone 5 Europe I think they might as well add a micro USB port you I can I couldn't see them banning the iPhone because it doesn't have the micro USB I mean Apple does whatever they want well i'm not sure if it will be compulsory or if there is a date to which up to which everybody should switch towards micro USB but for sure the standard agreed is micro USB in europe and that it's not clear though if that's voluntary or it you know there was a law passed right right so um and just another another thought I'm sorry I'm this Thunderbolt thing with the higher speeds now I'm always into new technology and improving but USB 3 and 10 gigabytes per second would you really take use of that speed I mean take a normal day to day scenario when you copy pictures or you sync music from your PC to your iPhone will you see any difference between Thunderbolts the connection and your standard USB 2 connection I mean there's certainly indefinitely a limit of reads and writes on the flash memory of smartphones which is embedded they have a limit and once I don't think it will reach 10 gigabytes per second which is the standard for Thunderbolt well it wouldn't it the bottleneck the the standard sounds that way and and the thing about these higher data speeds is that the use case scenarios are so limited I mean I just bought a new computer which has USB 3 and I didn't even hook it up because I I don't see I mean USB 2 is very fast unless you're moving like 30 gigabytes of data um you know those speeds are just almost unnecessary and Thunderbolt does 10 gigabits per second and and as you imply um I don't think that a flash memory can even take advantage of that although presumably they they tune it up make it a little bit faster so it can work with that yes but how much data do you move from your iPhone to your bc and vice versa on a day to day basis no I'm few gigabytes and it's almost a step back because we want wireless sync we want sink we want we don't want to plug in any more I mean it's kind of like a step backwards um maybe transferring movies but then you're just gonna download it straight to your phone you know yep we need us p for that also all our problems uh-huh which will be Wireless yeah oh yeah remember wireless USB whatever happened to that hmm still kicking around they found that it might cause cancer all those wireless I think the coolest things gonna be when we have wireless power not just inductive charging but real wireless power yeah and then we'll have our routers and their bluetooth devices and our wireless keyboards and mice and everything will be Wireless around then and our heads will explode yeah you gotta wonder about that um anyway sort of a tangent here do you guys remember before micro SD there was mini SD yeah I have a bunch of those me too that that was around for literally one or two generation of phones and then it was killed very quickly so hopefully no one bought any what sounds like Evan did any mini SD cards oh yes it's just it on the same note that i don't think that SD cards regular big as the cards will disappear in the near future because they are definitely the standard and digital image capturing in cameras and camcorders I think the mini SD was a step towards the micro it was a midst that the question is will we see a man OST which will be even smaller than the micro SD I think they can get any smaller I mean these are already like you can they're difficult to manipulate they are you could swallow on and be all right in fact I tried and memory extension yeah I thought now I have 32 gigabytes of memory inside of me so everything everything you guys say to me just stored away in my micro SD chip don't forget to defragment oh well actually we flash memory you shouldn't defragment right um hmm very interesting I what do things start making phones with compact flash slots wouldn't that make them bigger yeah I know it's a job although the I packs of the of the past headaches those expansion sleeves that allows you to you know use compact flash memory what happened to that lineup oh well it got replaced by more modern equipment anyhow very good so let's move on talking a little bit of webos a little bit of everything today so we knew that there was a keyboard list HP webos device coming i mean it's it's been in the making and everyone once one because if palm thinks or HP thinks that everyone wants a hardware keyboard they're kind of wrong and so there's this there's a there's a leaked image of potentially the HP stingray from precentral and it basically looks like it's got the lines of a webos device a little bit blurry it has an iphone like look it kind of actually looks like a touch HD where did you say so Tony Nexus S a good point Nexus S cuz of the camera on the front but it also has a you know generic look to it um why do you think that it's taken HP or palm so long to I mean the palm pre was launched two years ago or so why do you think it's now that they're finally starting to extend the form factor to something I think tradition I mean from what I know when I don't know that many palm or HP devices because they're not so common here in this region of the world and living in but from what i know it's tradition every bomb recent bomb device had a hardware keyboard I mean it was a signature and yeah I'm sorry no go on because I would like to know I'm the whole trio line I mean well you know first of all Thomas has always been sort of reticent to to to change faster than the industry or to keep up with trends I mean you know you you they really started resting on their laurels after the the treo 600 and 650 and and you know up through the the trio 800 treo pro there wasn't really much of a change in the form factor or in the features you know bumped up camera resolution a little bit screen resolution here but you know it really weren't that many features added or that many risks taken and and that's you know that was the ethnos of the ethos of the company for for many years and it led to you know them needing to get bought by another company it's so funny because that that used to be okay you know taking their time to perfect a keyboard and having release cycles there were a year and and that's sort of the what palm continued when they came out with the the web OS operating system and the and the pre line of devices and pixie but now it just can't be that way it's almost to the detriment of the customer because these companies can't really perfect and take their time you've got to innovate as fast as possible well on this or hand i'm not sure that palm was big enough to be able to I you know put out you know a device every six months right I just wanted to ask one thing on the same no do you guys remember how long it's a blackberry to ditch hardware keyboard and come out with a touch only smartphone and it's sucked it was horrible so I think it's it's mainly tradition I think when the um it's the name that black right when I'm blanking storm of course when the storm came out I think a lot of people were under the impression that they came out with this dynamic screen that would actually mold here almost feel like a keyboard and we've been talking about a futuristic technology where the the screen can actually become porous or something like that and they came out with this thing that was basically a clicky mouse pad and it was insulting and it was horrible to use and then they you know for the storm to they added four sensors which made it a little bit better but most people I talked through that have a storm just don't really like it or they send it back at our now using an iphone or something yeah have you guys have are used a storm yeah have one I I rescued it remember that story where my friend got a new phone and offered him ten dollars you know just to be able to play around with the storm you wouldn't take it because he wanted to he wanted to destroy it and I had to offer him twenty dollars in order to to get the phone hmm so it's a first gen yeah yeah so it's actually sort of worthless to me I didn't realize this at the time it doesn't have Wi-Fi and since you know I don't have cell service on it there the only way to get an internet connection is to tether it to a computer it's not worth the effort obviously have you ever used a storm Tony and no actually the only BlackBerry device I've used is the bold which I'm currently using first generation 9000 I think speak speaking of the boat how about that uh that bold touch another thing it took a long time for forum to do was to couple the they're awesome keyboard with a touchscreen you know the boat for many generations now and the curve and the many other key boarded blackberry phones don't have touchscreens um you got the torch now but you know that was sort of hand yeah that's a little bit a little bit different um but to take this traditional blackberry device and add a touch screen I think it's going to be pretty cool and I want potentially rejuven eyes the line a little bit very good well alright let's move on speaking of webos it looks like the the pre three is is headed heading to verizon this summer there were some pictures again from precentral showing a pre three with verizon a sort of branding in the in the cellular status area which i guess would make sense although i'm a little bit surprised and maybe we still have to wait until to see this but i would think that sprint would be the first with the pre three because they were first with the with the palm pre but then again verizon was first with the pre plus and of course then verizon gun so maybe their relationship HP palms relationship is best with verizon at this point in time what do you guys think about the the pre three mmm not too much I mean I you know I use a pre plus for a little while I wasn't too too impressed with it I think it had some potential and you know so with them with webos three-point Oh perhaps you know it'll it'll live up to that potential but ah I just I didn't like the the direction that that palm went in with these these devices and i think that the pre three is just sort of a bigger pre plus or pre to which is you know itself basically a pre and a pre plus they're all the same yeah i mean that's that's the problem i have with with webos at this point they're all the same and i think that webos has evolved to slowly and everyone acclaimed it's multitasking prowess and how smooth it wasn't fast it was yeah that is true but that doesn't mean that the operating system can still look the same almost exactly the same two or three years after its release you know after coming from an Android phone it would be hard for me to use a pre three um even though there are changes to webos three-point oh because you got this home screen that you can't do anything with you can add 50 or 4i counts to the bottom you can multitask like a champ but that's it when you get back to your home screen you get a wallpaper in a you know a search field at the top it's not very versatile for for my needs on this coming from from a guy like me who has never used never a webos device i cannot really judge on the operating system i can only judge on the aspect on the authoress aspect of the smartphones and the bri free looks just like the breach you and the pre 2 plus and debris so it's it's a line which i think it's getting old yeah and what's interesting is when analysts look at market share of the smartphone operating systems they don't even include palm it's kind of kind of strange but I think pretty telling and pretty accurate it's webos devices are sort of niche devices now they have a they have their following they've they've got their crowd of enthusiasts but you just don't have that mass-market appeal for some reason but hopefully that'll change with the palm pre for four distinct ray or the Stingray yeah exactly gotta have that sexiness stingray might happen hey those tablets do maybe that will be their future the tablet the the touchpad takes that idea of a useless home screen to an incredible level because you have all this screen space to work with right what is it 1280 x 800 pixels or 1024 x 768 and all you can do is click on a row of icons on the bottom it's worse than the iPads lack of versatility and if we're late a lot yeah that is saying a lot I mean it's it's it's almost an extreme opposite of a say honey comb or you can have widgets on the home screen or shortcuts or whatever you want but that said the the touchpad does have a really cool level of fit and finish once you get into the applications that is probably a little bit cleaner and more modern looking than the iPad anyhow so let's move on speaking of ipad iOS is the iphone 5 getting a capacitive home button 52 Mac posted a picture that could very very easily have been faked um do you guys think it makes sense for the iphone 5 to have a capacitive home button in a word no because um users of the iphone were always so reticent to capacitive buttons they were always so proud of the clicking button which makes you feel that you're actually clicking a button and this is also my experience I I kind of hate capacitive buttons because you yes you had that vibrate feedback but you don't actually get a sense of the button if it was up to me all the smartphones would have Hardware clicking buttons but hopefully it's not up to me yeah I think it depends on you know from from whose % from whose perspective you're talking about it making sense from the users i agree with Tony I don't like capacitive buttons you know especially ones that that don't light up until you touch them so you basically have to hit the wrong button in order to find the right button it's just ridiculous but from from hackles perspective it does make sense because the clicky buttons are one more thing to break you know so so less clicking buttons equals less returns equals you know greater profits and and not to mention having a lack of a button would not only save cost but it would also be more versatile so maybe they could have a capacitive button on both sides near and this doesn't even make sense but it could be maybe a dynamic capacitive area so all you have to do is tap in a general vicinity so that when you rotate the phone to landscape and then rotate to landscape on the other side you're not constantly having to say okay the one buttons on the right now it's on the left you could say okay it's always on the right it doesn't matter where I press can always get back home it's funny that we're talking about a capacitive home button because I thought recently we were talking about no home button at all with gestures um that would be probably even more extreme than going capacitive well didn't apple just patent that that smart bezel for the for for a device which which would actually be similar to what you're talking about you know using gestures on the side of the screen to perform you know whatever tasks they decide yeah and and that smart bezel would pave the way for you know and ipad 3 that hopefully doesn't have a home button because that's it's even worse in that case because you're constantly flipping it over to landscape and the button changes location with honeycomb of course your home button is always in the bottom left corner and I think they did a really good job with that so perhaps iOS devices are going in that direction uh-huh is like I roll my are you sound like he starts out to sound like me nice so let's move on talking about the droid x squared and Evan do you like I said square not too yeah that's that's what we're thinking now is that it's gonna be called squared but you know that's that's a speculation on our part at this point yeah um so it's funny the droid x squared how it's gone through us these periods of time where we thought it was going to be just a faster droid x with the same body and then and and now after seeing some some benchmarks it looks like it's got some pretty big upgrades in terms of the specifications qhd screen Tegra 2 and presumably that means a lot more ram than get on the droid x right now do you guys think that this is going to come out to be a significant upgrade of the droid x in the in the two respects that you said yes it's going to be no faster and have a better screen but otherwise I mean the camera is gonna be the same it's going to have the exact same body style you know they were probably shipped with the gingerbread I have a couple more sensors but it it'll be a you know a pretty pretty significant I would say I'm mid-cycle upgrade that that makes sense it does make sense but that's very confusing because why would they do a significant upgrade and not change the body style I can't think back to any other device where they they up the number of the device to the two or the three and they kept the body style exactly the same the accessories I think of one thing you know there's there's a lot of accessories out there for for the droid x they want people to pick up an X to you know possibly um you know pay more for it earlier in their contracts you know to renew the contract I don't know also keeping the same form factor and the same outer aspect could dramatically reduce the production costs and destroyed x2 or squared as you call it them might be a cheaper high-end device that's a good point they've already got all these droid x pacings you know they've got the the manufacturing setup for them so why not just change the internals and save maybe make it a fifty-dollar hundred-dollar high-end smartphone I mean that would get a tremendous amount of attention could be but then how does this how does this sort of line up with the droid bionic the droid bionic has a how big is the screen on that it's four inches right for or 4.3 and that also has tech or two that also is qhd so I guess this makes sense they need a they need a high-end you know big 4.3 inch display the droid bionic isn't that phone the droid bionic is sort of a smaller more petite pocketable is LTE maybe the difference is does the x squared have an LTE modem I was hearing no but that would seem kind of ridiculous but that could be a to just the so the droid bionic has ltd right yeah that was one of the the launch devices they've got to be doing all their phones their higher end phones with LTE now so which oh yeah the kyocera echo is one of those rare instances where it's a high end big deal phone but they're not putting the highest speed potential in there with the 4g very good so droid x squared could be cool device especially for those wanting wanting that bigger form factor and just in a more powerful package let us move on so t-mobile announced and it's very interesting how companies are using Twitter and Facebook to announce things guess that makes sense announced that the g2x and the sidekick 4G will be available on april 20 which is in nine days from now i can there no take pre-orders on the on the fifteenth of april the g2x we know about it's an optimus 2x we've seen it before it's going to be it's going to have the 4g hspa+ connectivity no surprises there I'm kind of somewhat infatuated by the sidekick 4G because the sidekick brand of course used to be very strong especially with teens and those teens have since probably gone into their 20s and now they're all using android phones and now they're coming out with the sidekick 4G which of course runs Android has that same crazy form factor and I just gotta wonder if the timing is a little bit off here well I sort of look at a different way I think instead of going after the ex you know the former sidekick users market this is sort of an entry-level Android device to get people you know to get younger kids teenagers sort of acclimated to the the whole new android operating system and then you know move them into a galaxy s or you know God forbid for samsung motorola or HTC device marketers are our kind of crazy in the way that they think they try to segment the buying population into different groups and they and Microsoft did this with the Kin right and it it's not right they said that there's a group of people who have these very active lifestyles and they want to be cool and they're young and they want to post to their wall constantly and the truth is that these people want a high-end awesome phone just like a 25 year old just like a 40 year old does so these sort of very targeted devices like the sidekick 4G I don't think are going to be successful because they don't they're not going in there you know I mean yeah but I tend to disagree a little bit I've been a bit big bit because I think the sidekick 4G will be a huge hit first of all because it's got a tradition and tradition often means a lot and second it's got that cool way of sliding out the screen to remove the keyboard and and it's what I think teenagers and the young people will dig it's your typical texting social networking smartphone which happens to run the world's most popular operating system the it's it's on tmobile so I think it will be huge it runs windows 7 ha it looks like a toy though and this keyboard can be that usable well we will review one and we'll try to have an open mind of course and I thought it looked pretty good in my hands on to be honest with you yeah how did it feel the quality it felt good that's why I'm saying it it was um it you know samsung I've put together I you know a nice product it does is they usually do yeah it does make me feel a little bit better than it's a Samsung product and nada sharp not a sharp sorry sharp oh uh yeah okay so we wanted to end up here answering some Twitter questions we asked for questions and we got some we got many so let's pull up here Twitter dude you have to listen to my annoying humming um oh here's from one from nijiya no Jack no he's asking so no app for Windows Phone 7 yes no maybe um we are looking into apps for all the platforms unfortunately or fortunately depending on your perspective it's hard for us to commit to one operating system say we're just going to do an Android app we have to do at least three so we're thinking about it there might be a surprise this year with a pocket now app we've been talking about it a lot so let's go with maybe next I mean do people want apps for every single one of the websites that they go to well let me let me put it this way the mobile version of pocket now MDOT pocket now calm gets a lot of traffic well yeah that's because people browsers are redirected towards it yeah but they could they could bookmark the desktop version which is linked to by the by the bottom of the page I think people in general prefer mobile formatted stuff on their mobile phone and this has been a debate for years I mean the truth is when you're out and about you don't have time to let a full page load with flash advertisements and full images you just want to see information and see it fast so I think there is a place for uh but have it like on the iPad say you know what would a pocket now application on the iPad offer that that the the regular site couldn't well I be hesitant to think about an iPad app because we don't cover tablets but in that example without giving way to form a too much information about what we're thinking we could customize the interface we can make it make drop down so people can see our most recent review we could have advanced sorting options things that the website could do but have that touch interface everything's customized around the way we want it is kind of compelling and it's always cool to have a dedicated application yeah it is cool so here's a question from b16b que OS tas i can't read that oh i don't know the answer to this do we know how many languages will be added on windows phone 7 for mango and if there will be Greek how many languages does windows phone seven support right now those either you know I think it's seven it's a English German it's Elian Spanish French I think it's five okay so so that makes sense so he wants one released in Greek do you know if there's going to be additional languages added there will be yeah but I've heard that there will be some Asian languages a Japanese Chinese and I don't it will be and it would make huge sense to add some European languages too but it all depends on what the marketing strategy is I mean just take a look at China it's the world's biggest smartphone and phone consumer in the world so getting a priority on a chinese input and language support will be i think higher priority than greek no offense to anybody so i think it depends and yes there will be language is added just that we don't know how many and which ones work with android does that support more languages out of the box I think yes I think because I have a friend who is living in Israel and he's obsessed about about Hebrew localization and he so found that Android has that ah very good the next question is from hyacinth 718 this probably good question for evan is there anything you can come up with to explain the delays for verizon's windows phone 7 device um testing I guess and you know probably when they were originally testing it they you know it was the the pre note you know the original on shipping version of Windows Phone 7 and then you know they they had to test it with no dough and that I mean I don't think there is a great reason you know sprint was was able to push it out obviously and of course you know the gsm carriers were able to get it done on time so I I don't know verizon you know all it never ceases to amaze me I mean look at look at all the phones that that we've seen you know leaked for months and months and they just never come out like the merge and the the Samsung jam I mean yeah we we saw those phones last year and you know now we're four months into this year and they still haven't been released I think a lot of it as you implies to do with testing um you know I spent I spent time in verizon's testing facility they there's a reason why they have the most reliable network and I I really feel that they do they test every phone so tremendously much that it starts to sort of impact their release cycle a little bit but I guess that's the that's the compromise that they have to make in order to give you but I think that testing a smartphone for three or four months is just ridiculously too much we've been hearing about the verizon trophy since when December I think when it was the first offer for Microsoft employees and the here we are it's almost middle of April and it's still we're still hearing that it will be delayed too may so come on it's five months into 2011 it's how many months november december and it's seven month into windows phone 7 since lunch not only verizon will lose ground but microsoft will be hugely impacted by this we were thinking of course that they are holding it back because of no dough because that the rollout schedule is not finished but we get we got the sprint arrived it's out there with no though I know though is rolling out two devices what's holding them back good good point so maybe they can't decide on whether to call it the trophy or the 7 trophy haha maybe it's something HTC related who knows I mean we're pointing fingers at verizon and Microsoft but maybe it's something on HTC side d alright let's move on to the next Twitter question I think I'll take this one it's from Surya Sen del send deal asking which phone is better the desire s the incredible s the Nexus S those are the three choices all the s devices well let's for a minute basket together the desire s and the incredible s because they're very similar the desire s is a little bit smaller more pocket friendly than the incredible s so so we're looking at sort of the desire s incredible s and the nexus s my vote is for the nexus s and i say that because i really like the the screen the super amoled i like the curved display although it's kind of a novelty it looks really good on a tabletop it's got this kind of very dark stealthy design when the phones off you can't see any buttons it's very fast probably as fast as the the desire s in the incredible s um and yeah I'd say the Nexus S it's a really good really good phone it just move on um duty to do that's too general okay how about this one no not that one okay yeah well okay going okay so from pocket pro 115 uh it's always always good to ask this question every every few weeks if you could have any phone what would it be and why so Tony why don't we start with you any phone in the world what would you have out or not yet out uh let's say phones we know about so it can be a phone that's not out yet hmm well of course getting past my dell venue pro fetish which is behind me now i'd say i go for either a LG optimus 3d or an EVO 3d not because of the 3d gimmick but because they seem to be the hottest smart phones out there at the moment very good what do you think Evan yeah I would also have to say the evo 3d um I I spent a little time with it and you know it just looked like a really tight device you know everything we've been waiting for from HTC for for you know over a year now finally there I'm gonna go the route of the sensation because I think without the 3d screen you're going to get a thinner form factor the Thunderbolt the evo 4g they are thick phones I can't get over it you know the desire HD is probably going to hat is probably going to be around the same thickness compared to the the sensation so my my focus for the sensation but I think we could all settle for the iphone 5 prototype which is out there somewhere yeah that would probably be cool too well only if there is new software on there of course iOS 5 iOS 5 yeah well I have no other questions in my queue that data we we're gonna answer here so i think that old coot conclude the 10th episode of the pocket now pocket casts podcast thanks again for listening we really really really appreciate you listening in your support and we will talk to you next time but i right