Gadgetory

I think it is recording have you um have you ever seen Ernest remember that that movie there was a few of them I think I saw one or two maybe yeah there was a whole series um I heat that guy actually died anyways I'm Varney Jim Barney ya know how old is he I don't know wikipedia knows though yeah ernest p war l fictional character played by a guy named jim Varney oh well he didn't die sorry Laura assuming that he did he just became irrelevant kind of like pee-wee Herman but few Herman was actually like volume going on alright so let's get started hey everyone welcome to the 14th pocketnow podcast I will be your host Brandon minimun editor-in-chief of pocket now also on the line is Evan glass managing editor of our fun site say hi Evan hey guys hey Brandon yes and we cover smartphones as you know but if you're listening to this podcast you probably like smartphones to and we're going to talk about smartphones for about 55 minutes which should be pretty exciting if you care as much about these things as we do so a lot to talk about how do you want to sit have a whole show just on the galaxy s2 couldn't read yeah we should i'm a whole show on the galaxy s2 that's a great idea in fact i could probably just skip out this week and let you talk about that and then work out just fine i don't think i could talk about the galaxy s2 for 55 minutes but we put our review up and for i think the third time in our 11-year history we've given a phone 5 out of 5 stars the reason that we did that is because the galaxy s2 is such a well-rounded device in terms of hardware and software and battery life and performance it's just it's pretty ridiculous how good of a package Samsung put forth here and everyone that holds this phone in their hand says wow that phone is thin because it seems that the trend has sort of been going in the other direction we got the thunderbolt and the even evenly inspire 4G which seemed to be thin to me is actually thick in comparison to the galaxy s2 yeah it's sort of interesting and it made me wonder you know today we ordered I'm sorry yesterday we learned that that the variants that are coming to the US are probably going to be nearly identical to the international version at least in terms of their form factor right it don't made me wonder do we really need to review um you know the American versions at least three and possibly for you know phones that that are you know just going to be the the galaxy s2 with you know a little bit of software tweaks well I think what's going to happen is exactly what happened with the galaxy s which is you'll have the very very similar devices but the casing will be different the weight will be different thicknesses differently the software is a little bit changed but generally speaking they're all going to be very similar but you owe the whole thing that that I think we learned yesterday though that I mean it the case if these form-fitting cases are made for for three devices I mean there there can be almost no difference in what the physical shape of the phones like don't you think that would be almost unprecedented right to have a phone have the exact same form factor to where even a case which is very sensitive to even small variations in size just lost my am lost my sentence there no I see what you're saying well how about the the touch pro two about that was I mean it had that had different key layout on on each of the carriers as I recall but in general you know I think you know physically they were they were basically the same phone I think that they were very very similar but they were slightly off to where you couldn't used cases interchangeably between the verizon touch pro2 sprint touch pro2 a TD so too and the t-mobile what are the khan see mobile I think it was just the the touch pro two the only one were where it wasn't was the tilt two yeah yeah so but these names that that may or may not be the names for the the galaxy s2 in America they're very they're the names they're kind of boring someone used to get fired at the marketing department so that the AT&T attained the verizon function and the sprint within well first of all I don't think it's going to be like that i think it's going to be the sprint galaxy s2 within so the main part of the branding is going to be is going to be galaxy s2 and and it's just sort of different to differentiate them I could be wrong about that but I feel like that's how they're going to do it and I feel like like Samsung had a lot more bargaining power here then then the first time around when they were just trying to get you know the galaxy s and all the carriers so you know I think that the carrier probably could have said you know we want we want ours to have a flash we want this one to have better build material you know make it look a little bit different but I think this time around them you know Samsung was really in the driver's seat because this is a hot device that people want and so you know like like an iPhone this is something that the carriers are going to want to carry em probably are going to make concessions to Samsung in order to be able to carry it yeah i mean the the galaxy branding was secondary to the first wave of devices and now it's Samsung as more more farming powers you say so yeah and the listing for the successor e says galaxy s to attain so if we're taking that literally to mean that the galaxy s branding will be in every will be will preface every name that will be assigned to the carriers what do you think's going to happen for tmobile since that's missing from the list I read somewhere that well who knows I forget where I read it if it was just a comment or if it was an article that someone said that the t-mobile would be getting a version that was definitely different hardware wise so that you know enough so that that like the epic 4g it it was sort of an outlier but who knows if that's true I suspect that that t-mobile is is just not going to get one especially because I'm you know Samsung sees their their subscribers bleeding now that everyone knows they're they're going to be consumed by 18 teen they don't want a phone that's going to be obsolete even though it's not really going to be obsolete so right I suspect that that Samsung didn't want to put it to resources into into tmobile right now and I think well probably going to start seeing that more and more don't quote me on this well maybe if it happens you can quote me but I think I think maybe the double shot might be the last high-end phone will see from HTC on t-mobile well here's what I think I i think the merger of these two companies is a little bit too far off to speculate that already OEMs are making decisions but how about this have you ever seen a slide-out keyboard device that had a 4.3 inch screen though that was able to know I haven't made one yet if they took a galaxy s2 which is remarkably ridiculously thin kept the 4.3 inch screen like they did with the epic and the Galaxy S line of devices you can see where I'm going with this they could make the most ridiculous light out keyboard device if they could keep the device thin keep the 4.3 inch display and have an awesome keyboard that would be a creamy device for de mobile mmm yeah think of even better if they could make the the keyboard detachable you know so you could have a slate when you want it and you could have you have the pro-style when you want it you know both the best of both worlds that would be awesome I think that that that would be a lot of moving parts that that would be probably the ultimate right to be able to have the extremely thin form factor of just the galaxy s and if you're going on a business trip or whatever you bring along the keyboard for really fast emailing that would be probably one of the coolest of of all time I mean they didn't they try to do that with the UM was it the advantage which was sort of like gone yeah the intermediate sized device that was actually one of the first uh you know one of the first attempts at a little tablet you know like how big was that five inches maybe maybe a little bit more yeah also known as the Athena so HTC advantage that had a very big screen I don't think many people bought it but it was definitely a really powerful device and it likes 16 gigabytes of memory and this was just a yeah 5-inch screen vga resolution so the pixel density wasn't great but it was like the streak of its day though kind of it was the streak of its day that's a funny name streak um um very good very good let's move on well another piece of galaxy s2 news is custom roms have begun which is very important for this device because it's so ridiculously powerful and it's got a lot of software on it that most power users aren't going to like that much it's got a heavy email app that doesn't allow you to multi-select easily the browser has customizations it's got TouchWiz and naturally you cannot uninstall or i should say put a certain party launcher on top of that but you still at the end of the day have to deal with a lot of the built in stuff that weighs it down a little bit so very big news for the galaxy s2 Oh news I mean it's always good news when you can you can fully take advantage of the hardware capabilities and like you said you know whenever you have cents or TouchWiz on there or blurts it's always going to be at the expense of some performance absolutely another big surprise with the galaxy s2 is that it supports not only AT&T 3g but AT&T hspa+ up to i believe it's 21 megabits per second and actually some good news to report because if you listen to the podcast you know almost every week I bitch and complain about the lack of hspa+ for AT&T i was in washington DC not last weekend but the weekend before I ran a speedtest while over HSPA according to the settings and I got like six down and I ran it again and I got like five down so Washington DC has ATT hspa+ so you saying that that that's a place where our really hardcore readers should move if they want that most bang for their buck yeah they should although I mean six megabits per second I shouldn't be complaining that's sort of on the bottom end oh yeah what are you what were you getting with the with a thunderbolt the Thunderbolt will clock in at around ten between eight and twelve i should say and i'm sure it's only a matter of time before that goes to 15 or so it's funny though if you benchmark the Thunderbolt over LTE you'll get between eight and 12 but then if you use the hotspot feature and benchmark on a laptop you'll get like 15 20 plus huh well I guess you know you at that point you have a faster processor in your laptop so so do you know maybe you can move bits quicker that way I don't know what I think it is yeah that that's probably exactly it i mean it's it's almost a little surprising that the first 4g LTE devices are single core but we should see some pretty interesting performance up tix once we get to duel poor LTE devices yeah there is a truck outside my window and so hopefully you don't hear that sound I can't hear it good moving on so the next version of android will become ice cream sandwich so that's three words um and it will officially by the way google i/o happened that's why we're talking about ice cream sandwich where they talked about that they also talked about honeycomb 3.1 so I ice cream sandwich the the headline here is that it will be a singular version of Android as to try to reduce this issue of fragmentation and Android so the same version of Android will run on phones and tablets and TVs and refrigerators or whatever now do we know what um what number it's going to be yet in terms of is it what do you think it's you know 2.53 point what they didn't they didn't talk about that but what do you think maybe four yeah i'm thinking the the whispers I've heard would would be that it would before and it would make sense you know to have such a to have such a big upgrade that's you know combining these these two different what do you want to call them you know these two different build families I guess 21 it would seem appropriate to uh to have a completely new you know number as opposed to you know putting in the in the two family would be weird because then you're you're lower than then honeycomb and putting it in the three family would also be a little weird because then it sort of just makes it like you know a honey honey comb aw shoot yeah so I feel like what makes the most sense is that is four point X you know probably 40 at oh definitely and don't forget version numbers are also a marketing component so they want to they want to show that they are jumping in of what honeycomb was jumping way ahead of what you know gingerbread froyo Eclair were and going straight into the future there they're saying that it will bring a state of the state of the art you I but at Google i/o they really didn't talk much specifically about the UI except that developers can build basically an application that is sort of hybrid so if it's it senses the higher resolution screen for the tablet it will display like a new panel of information if it's detects a phone it will keep it in a singular column there will be more stuff with the action bar so less I mean they've been talked about this for a while less less commands buried beneath menu systems that make it difficult to find I think this is there I think this is their opportunity to really do some amazing things with very robust multi-core support higher resolution displays really take Android into 2012 and beyond any any thoughts on what what will be the defining characteristic of the UI for ice cream sandwich I have no idea um I'm so bad when it comes to to you is and you know being forward thinking I'm always because I'm always amazed by by what these companies are doing and it always surprises me so I really I have no idea what what to expect hmm I like that for an answer no I mean it makes sense it's hard to and let's just sit around thinking about this stuff all day thinking about okay what would a user wanna experience what would make what color taskbar would make the you I feel light and fast it's yeah I mean so many of the changes are are you know it's something that you wouldn't even think about it it seems like it's so minor but you know these people they did you know who the people are designing it they they just you know that's their whole the total day it's a little job and you know so so obviously they're going to come up with just and they should be coming up with things that are just more amazing than than we can even you know conjure up ourselves exactly and an interesting hint from andy rubin he announced that there will or most likely will be a new nexus phone to run Ice Cream Sandwich just as there was for Froyo with the nexus one and the nexus s for Gingerbread and what he said was this google is definitely looking at introducing another phone that should blow the socks off of everyone and that should be able to handle ice cream sandwich with ease notice anything interesting about what he said um should be able to blow the socks off everyone well that sounds like a challenge yeah yeah that that too but also that it's he says that it should be able to handle ice cream sandwich with ease making it sound like ice-cream sandwich will require some significant hardware oh yeah yeah no doubt which would be a little bit uh I mean if it's that big of a jump it'll be a little depressing if we can't upgrade our current phones to ice cream sandwich maybe that's a hint that well I think I think one of the main holdups on on the current generation of phones might be the graphics hardware I'm not sure if the GPUs are going to be enough some of the stuff that we've seen Android doing where it's sort of um where they use the camera and then the the perspective of the of what you're seeing is shifted based on on how the device moves augmented backing I'm not sure that that current gen devices I mean I know that a lot of them couldn't do it you know especially your mid-range devices and your entry-level devices yeah yeah I think you're describing augmented reality a little bit sure um speaking of updates this is very interesting but it seems like a last-minute thing google announces timely commitments to Android updates and they've got basically every company that matters I don't see one that doesn't on board with this verizon sony ericsson all the carriers in the US Plus Vodafone in overseas then we've got HTC sony ericsson LG AT&T oh that's a carrier XO that motorola and samsung not really sure about exactly the details of this on the idea here is to give people a better understanding of whether their device will see an Android upgrade yeah I think what they're doing is they're they're committing to to to to a pretty tight schedule for for 18 months out from from any given device release so they're saying you know for for 18 months you know here's here's almost exactly what you can expect in terms of upgrades 18 months so that only seems to lie mean the average person has a phone for two years and after year one I mean I think 12 months would be awesome but obviously there's a lot of work goes into these updates and they can't just you know yeah I think one of the problems we've seen is they just they know that they can't push the updates out fast enough for me if you look at what went on with the galaxy s you know I don't think it's that you know they weren't pulling it back just to be jerks you know they they were they were having really real world problems with with pushing them out so so yeah like you said you know they know that there's there's going to be problems and they're giving themselves an 18-month window because there's only 12 months I i think there's there's some devices they probably you know couldn't get even one upgrade out for you let alone two yeah yeah so hopefully we get more precise information about that you know maybe when you go to a verizon store you'll see a little next to a little placard there will be like a star that says this device is eligible for the ice cream update and it will happen in 18 months or something like that I don't know what a weird game by the way you think it shows a little bit of arrogance on Google's part to name something like that because they know that that that word is going to be used endlessly I mean you know how many times do we have to write honeycomb or gingerbread or read about it and now you know you got to write Ice Cream Sandwich powered that's that's a very good point I was thinking that too huh it is a little bit arrogant think you call it whatever they want and you know it's going to be huge and so they're forcing people to we're gonna have to put it on like quick copy paste maybe there's a browser extensions when I'm the type of so many times yeah or you know we could just start calling it ice cream it's not as delicious though because ice cream sandwiches are very good but ice cream alone isn't as interesting how about ice cream sundae ooh I wish they would have went with that I mean that was the t's wasn't it when that and they celebrated like the the hundred and 19th anniversary of the founding of the sunday so obviously that wasn't a hint which we were talking about several podcasts ago well I mean in general you know that it was it could have been pretending the the arrival of ice cream something perhaps I mean I doubt that they could have found an Ice Cream Sandwich event that was worthy enough of you know doing the what do they call him google doodles yeah I don't want to sound gross but uh when I was a kid I would eat ice cream sandwiches in a very particular way I let it melt a little bit and then i would lick the sides and then i let it melt some more um that's not gross is that is that how you eat an ice cream sandwich no I just eat it but I don't think there's anything moment you know it to each his own so you just you just bite it like it's a sandwich yeah I mean I might give it a lick here or there but but in general I I go sandwich style that's what you use it don't gotta do it all right oh my god you're gonna have to edit that out of the podcast there's kids that listen to this actually there's a clause where everyone listening has to the 18 or older see if you hadn't see that anywhere anyway moving on google also announced google music and google movies and these are cloud-based services the the movies is very self-explanatory they've hooked up with some studios the selections not that great right now it's only for tablet and for computer but they are rolling it out two phones very very soon so that you know you can go on market.android.com rent a movie for two to four bucks start watching it on your your computer watch it on your laptop not well yeah your laptop watch it on your tablet watch it on here your phone sort of like the the iTunes model a little bit all right so it there is a degree of you can move it between devices in other words like you know the old model was you buy something on your phone and then you have tits days on your phone and you have to watch it on your phone so and who wants to watch a movie on their phone yeah I mean it basically since it's all stream do you go on your phone it knows that you purchased this and you have it available for 24 hours just picks up where it left off okay that makes that makes a lot more sense i mean you know I've rented I've rented movies on the computer where you have to you have to download the whole movie you know just just to watch it once and it just seems you know it's a it's a big hassle and you can't move it from device to device it that I think that's why that model hasn't taken off yet yeah you're right i mean it's it's pretty amazing that that we've come to this point where you can watch content on multiple devices and pay for it one time and not have to worry about transferring things yeah that's also interestingly they've launched google music which is very similar to the Amazon music cloud offering quite simply you upload all your music then you access the music and stream it through a browser through your tablet or through the smartphone app right now you have to sign up for the beta they're not giving access to everyone it's free for now 20 gigabytes just crazy to think about you get free 20 gigabytes it's very possible that they'll charge for this probably like 20 bucks a year but this brings up a very interesting question about how we listen to music and how we consume music because for some people this doesn't matter that much for example I use zune I I love using zune it's fifteen dollars a month for unlimited music streaming its end unlimited music downloading you know are they paying you to say that Brandon a lot uh they don't you don't you don't get to own the music except that you get 10 free downloads per month but I don't care about that I wouldn't mind paying fifteen dollars every month for the rest of my life if it means that I got quality or access to high quality endless supply of music which is what zune affords but with this music service from google and from amazon this doesn't matter because there's no app for iOS or for android for zune or there's no way to even use this on a windows phone 7 device zoom music has to be synced manually and it's a crappy model and it kind of bothers me but I can't get out of the ecosystem because it's so it's so appealing well yeah and you have all your playlists made now you know if you if you moved over to another ecosystem even one that that gave you you know all you can eat monthly you know you still have to build everything up again yeah exactly i mean even if itunes came out with a subscription service which could be great I've got you know 5,000 tracks already downloaded from zune that I don't want to have to recreate what do you do for a for music Evan I mostly listening a group shot but and then you know I have some songs here there but I'm starting to get old Brandon I mean I just don't I just don't discover is that what the kids called music discovery you know I just I don't pick up as new as much new music as I used to you know I listen to a lot of the same stuff that i was listening to you know five ten years ago along with stuff that you know pick up you know this is a serious sometimes or Pandora or whatever but but it's mainly just you know the same 188 or so songs well grooveshark probably isn't the best tool for music discovery but itunes and zune they let you see the new releases every day they'll let you get music recommendations they do like a smart mix where they put similar artists together but yet so you use grooveshark I know a few people that use that so then there's an android app for grooveshark where you can stream you're basically streaming it's full songs right from right but then you have to pay that's that's the grooveshark models if you want to get any of these you want to get any of these mobile clients you have to pay a monthly subscription I see and how is the quality on grooveshark I think it's great certainly you know but you know I think I think 128 kilobit mp3s are great so that's so funny that we've been sort of programmed to like 128 kilobits I remember back in the days of Napster I always tried to download 320 Killa Killa Killa bit music kilobit per seconds I guess the term and then of course out there they have flac lossless audio and then they've got the audio files that was into vinyl and say CD suck digital is ten times worse than CDs and all of you are crazy but itunes and zune and all these guys are streaming us 128 k sometimes a little bit higher most of the time lower and we don't really fuss about it yeah yeah I mean I think I think people are starting to become more cognizant of that though and an advertising now is these companies are marketing a little bit more about you know that there was a big deal when when itunes went went to a non drm model or work you know where you could you can pay a little bit more for for the non drm song and it will also be a higher bitrate so you know i think that um i don't think that there's many there's many places that are doing less than 128 at this point unless it's it's free music from somewhere yeah I mean you get some shoutcast streaming radio it can be like you know 90 something kilobits but what's what's frustrating is that unless consumers are writing about the lower quality lower quality is cheaper for these music purveyors because it's less bandwidth the stream so they're very happy to keep it at 128 k I remember listening the shoutcast on a tree out like that you know like back in like 2003 or something wow how was that oh it was like so low quality and you know you can only listen out of the little speaker is it you know if you didn't have the proper headphone adapter but it was great listening to to music from a phone oh man at the time I'd bloom online i would just put it there on my desk even though i had better speakers you know and i could be listening to music through that i would listen to the phone just cuz i could yeah fun stuff fun stuff let's uh let's bounce on to the next array which is a droid x squared okay so very full specs have been revealed also a release date is is out there 26 i believe is the day right mate 26 this a date it's interesting because when we first started talking about the droid x squared we saw this device that looked identical to the droid x and the rumor was that is going to be very much the same except for one or two things which i think we're the screen was going to be qhd and was the other the processor the you know the dual core processor now yeah well I think right originally we thought originally as I you know and this is not to knock on engadget because at the time they had good information but you know they published something where were the the droid x2 was only going to be it wasn't even going to be an upgrade it was that all they were going to do was swap out the 16 gig micro SD card for a two gig and it turns out that that was just another skew for costco i believe instead of obviously the the droid x squared that we're going to come to know and love over the next year so as it turns out it's not going to be just that it's going to have a Tegra 2 processor gigahertz in each core qhd display 512 megabytes of ram 8 gigabytes of rom what what is clear here and we were going to sort of ask why Verizon's keeping the same design except on the back it says droid x squared and it's very clear because obviously this is a very winning design that a lot of people like and this device obviously has a lot of momentum right now and they want to extend the momentum of this device as their big screen phone for as long as possible well i think i mean if you're asking why they didn't change the design I sort of think there's two reasons one of them is just more practical in that they can keep the prices the cost down because you know they have the machinery to fabricate these all set up and also you know obviously accessories are going to work with these so case manufacturers don't have to reach while they're um they're there know their machinery either but i think the other reason is you know if they made this two different and two too much you know too much like a 2011 device it might eat into sales of the droid bionic that's true you know they're they're very similar devices except for the delta LTE on the Bionic which you know it has obviously been delayed but I think that's you know that style is sort of there it is what we're going to see device is looking like from from Motorola in the next year and you know if they if they change the body style of the X to the x squared too much then they would have had very similar devices both on verizon do you also think that maybe because the droid bionic was delayed this maybe this is was a way to sort of bridge the gap possibly I mean I I think that they have these they have these um in production for quite a while before we even hear about them or you know for instance there was you know a joy to x squared being imagined you know during during CES when when the droid bionic is being introduced right I suspect yeah so I'm just not sure um the Bionic you know gets introduced earlier and is going to come out later well another thing that happened relating to the droid line is that it's not a big deal that's kind of entertaining you motorola verizon has updated its verizon has updated the droid does calm website check it out if you've got a few minutes of boredom it's kind of interesting I don't check it out did you did you like it yeah I do it well I I do like it for sure it's funny because they've got this robotic voice explaining all the high-tech features of all the droids then you click down the droid pro and I'm thinking like how is this robotic voice gonna make the droid pro sound awesome and then it was like this phone has a massive 3.1 inch display with 300 or you know hvga itch vga resolution in them right face pie I actually needed it so I didn't even know that there was there was robotic voices yeah she had to check it out it's pretty funny I didn't like the last joy does I thought it was very confusing about you know how you got from how to navigate around the site because there was all these lines and and then the lines would would would would you know break out into more and it just didn't make any sense to me this one it a little bit more yeah yeah um very good let us move on talking about the HTC holiday a device that give me a hot phone what ya might be pretty darn hot so we've got some specs on it now that comes from 9-11 I / coupled with a picture that we acquired kind of helps to put the story together a little bit so 4.5 inch display looks like the infuse 4g isn't going to be the only one in town to have the larger display a 1.2 gigahertz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon basically the same chip that's coming in the sensation and the evo 3d a gig of ram dual eat megapixel cameras so do you think that this is going to have a 3d display since it can take 3d pictures and such ah wait where did where did we hear that i could take 3d pictures oh I'm am I am miss reading the post so there's a 8 megapixel camera on the back and a 1.3 megapixel camera on the front I thought that to mean there were two 8 megapixel cameras yeah as far as I know that there are no phones yet that have dual 8 megapixels the the ones that are doing 3d are all dual 5 megapixels yeah yeah so so those things plus it on a qHD display um basically what the holiday is going to be is 18 T's version of the sensation 4g but with a bigger screen isaiah exactly that that's how i would classify from the specs at least so far yeah that is going to be an amazing phone I hope the battery life isn't horrible um Wow I mean it looks like it looks like sort of a big device all around so you know maybe they they were able to stuff a you know a 1700 milliamp battery in there or whatever maybe maybe do you think it'll ship with that with ice cream sandwich no but I do think that I think because of the front facing camera I suspect that it's going to be an LTE device you think it's going to be an AT&T LTE device really yeah you think it could be the first eighteen t LTE device I suspect and what I need to talk to to Gabe about this and see what he thinks but um yeah this is inside scoop here folks so I'm hopefully this that the podcast doesn't get published before we can we can put out a post on this but but I think this might be one of the one of the LTE devices that they're gonna launch with that guy I'd bet money on it oh yeah how much know what do you got when you got your wall I'm just kidding uh let's see okay if you win I let's say you f if I know if you win I have to get you one of these phones shuffle that that's a good diver this feels like a like it's going to be a very notable device and and I saw someone in our comments put out some supposed specs from the the wrong that say it has LTE but you know until I see it for myself or someone I know and trust chose me I'm you know I'm not willing to say for sure yet but but I'm sort of confident on it so that's why i said you know i do want to put down some money fair enough fair enough i'll write that on the wall then so that's very interesting let us move on beyond the holiday which should launch near the holiday appropriately so the HTC Sensation 4G on t-mobile is almost here actually according to a leaked launch date from TmoNews june eighth is the magic day we also saw at target for a hundred ninety nine dollars which is kind of cool because right now that the the highest cost smartphone out there that i can think of as the droid charge at three hundred dollars and the fact that the super high-end t-mobile see some sensation 4300 are cheaper is really good sign yeah and it all you know it'll have it will be a 4g phone just like it's like the droid charge so you know what what are you paying for what's that extra hundred dollars getting you totally and you know it's going to be thinner than the droid charge it's going to have a higher res screen it's going to have dual I mean it in almost every way except for the LTE modem it's it's superior and it doesn't have the the boot up by the red eye ah oh well I'm sure with some hackery you could open a red eye um very good just move on so we are going to New York we meaning me and adam or adam and i and a steven wright is gonna be there I don't know if Stevens going but maybe well we are going to to New York for the 24 may event for windows phone 7 where there presumably going to be talking more specifically about mango in fact it's very likely that they'll talk about a release date and who knows maybe it'll show some hardware running mango some new devices probably not that but that's what I was going to say what do you think I think there might be you know a device or two there Microsoft knows that that the bones out right now are getting really really stale and that it needs some new hardware get to keep people excited and can't wait for the holiday season you know that's that's like a over a year after the first phones came out true and and now with you know mango having a much faster browser and having fast app switching the phones could really benefit from multiple cores more RAM and no windows phone 7 device has multiple cores and over what 512 megabytes of RAM so there's that yeah there's a good opportunity here for them to drop some hardware but I mean at least in terms of the the cpu there's there's not a chassis spec out there yet that that that allows for for dual-core processors right well maybe they'll announce that too I don't know what's going on there but yeah I mean even if if these devices don't necessarily need the door core four for marketing purposes i think you know that's that's sort of becoming the new the new high-end if you know if you want to have a hot hot phone you got to have a dual core processor or at least you know in the next three months you will it's so funny this dual core thing the galaxy s2 is the first dual core phone and i've reviewed and have been using and i can't find many situations where there's a tremendous difference in speed except for some reason what will not for some reason but web browsing obvious they're definitely a huge improvement web browsing into installing applications from the marketplace is like fifty percent plus faster than the fastest single core android phone abused huh but i mean they're browsing alone to me that's enough you know that's fair point your web browsing is one of my main activities on the phone non calling activities that's a fair point fair point um i like to say that word fair point torrents so yeah mango some some recent changes talking about the lockscreen having some dynamic displays with with you know visuals of the music you're playing and office 365 integration a lot of microsoft products this most recent a little bit of information about mango isn't terribly exciting it's just sort of extending microsoft assets and brands to Windows Phone further I think consumers are most excited about the stuff like fast app switching ie9 faster browsing better performance across the board twitter twitter integration and i'm sure of though i have tight skype integration soon yeah yeah that would be interesting to uh that would be great to be able to know in the dialer screen choose to make a call over skype oh no doubt that's coming i mean you can i mean you know they'd be silly not to to leverage this as much as possible to get there you know 8.7 billion dollars worth or whatever it was anyways yeah you know they that they need to really push this hard and to make to make skype really like the de facto prompted to make skype you know the the facetime of the windows world yeah yeah and that you know it's easy to our it's easy to see how skype as a standard in video chat with Trump face time because facetime is still very closed and you know everyone is skype but not everyone has you know the the right tools to use facetime so it right I mean I suspect that that facetime will will eventually be universal meaning you know you'll be able to get a facetime app for your your android phone or for your your windows phone 7 but i think that the bigger point is that skype as a company you know that's all they do and that's all they've been doing well while FaceTime you know is just a division within Apple on Apple's a big company but I don't think that they have the resources to devote to to facetime the same way skype has de and now Microsoft backing skype has the resources to to devote to this hmm this is all assuming that Microsoft doesn't you know mess it up and you know do do the opposite of what it's intending that is encourage innovation they don't want to stifle innovation with their extremely large company bureaucracy and with with rumor today of Microsoft possibly buying Nokia aura I mean crazy it's crazy and it's it's almost like I don't know we're not here to analyze companies but it's very interesting it how how Microsoft is just deploying its cash and stock to just buy these companies you want to talk about that first step because I don't think it would be a bad move i mean it basically gives Microsoft the same vertical integration that Apple has which which Apple really leverages to its advantage hmm you know what I mean because Microsoft would have the the Nokia hardware then which is which is very good hardware and you know that's they can have a real compelling package there to other people I think them people have been calling on Microsoft to make a microsoft phone for a very very long time and they don't do it because it's going to piss off the OEMs their partners I mean that would be like Google literally making a google phone and that kind of is is a bad vibe to send a motorola HTC all the phones that are making Android hardware they're thinking wow am I going to compete against the parent company now this is ridiculous I don't want that model anymore I mean there you really have two models out there you know you have the Apple model which is you know we'll make our all our own hardware which is you know one phone and it's just such a great device and you know we're really going to work the vertical integration to to our benefit selling all these side services along with it but but also making the experience really tight and then you have on the other end of the spectrum the the Android model which is you know we're we just have a platform and you know you can do with it what you want to put it on to any phones but you know that that actually came from the original microsoft model with windows so what I think that I think that Microsoft is finding that that model for four phones isn't working out as well for them as as it did on the desktop and certainly now you know when it when it's coming from a weaker position and you know windows phone is certainly doing okay but but android is the blockbuster and you know I phone too so you know if it's not if it's not working you know maybe maybe it's time for a change maybe it's time to let to let Samsung and LG and really it's only a handful of own hands that are making windows phones and and they seem to be much happier and concentrating much more on their android on their android devices anyway you know maybe maybe you have to change that model cut the cut the OEMs off you know let them move to to android only devices and and you you make just your own hardware with your nokia team that i think that would be too risky but i think to think i do a hybrid model where they they make like one specific microsoft nokia phone and then they still allow their partners I mean date Microsoft is kind of spoiled in that day baby now they've been having this licensing model since they're the beginning of their existence and it's it's it glorious if you're you know extremely forward thinking into appeasing the shareholders and you know if I well it's it's great if you're if what your licensing is is the de facto standard like Windows is but but when it's you know a more of a luxury item that that where people have a lot more choices in a given market then that then I don't think it's it's working out that well for you and you might be better off you know uh you know offering a better experience I mean that's that's something that the iphone really offers that that android doesn't and i think that android is trying to catch up in is you know being able to to offer a more integrated experience and you know it's difficult because you have you have this big ecosystem of manufacturers and now we'll put what's going on the google end of things and then the carriers of course so i think i think it gets a little bit too difficult to manage and that's one of the reasons that that apple is is so deep it Apple has a much easier time in pushing out updates then then we're finding the anything based on android does absolutely vertically integrated is definitely and again microsoft with the problems with no dough no dough um i don't know why i jist of it they'll all right let's move on to our final story so it's possible that the iphone 5 might not be called the iphone 5 at least for now and that we are going to see an iphone 4s kind of like we saw a 3gs and if you think back to sort of the timeline we have the original iphone than the iphone 3g which was very any different than the original iphone in terms of appearance and of course i have the 3g radio the 3gs was basically the same as the 3g and yet it's sold very very well and then the four was dramatically different in every respect and now with the 4s and analyst from Jefferies & Co Co Jefferies & Co is probably some financial institution is saying that the next iPhone will be the 4s it will have the a5 dual-core CPU it will have hspa+ support on tmobile nothing noted here about screen size which would be disappointing which which is interesting because there's been so much clamour about a four-inch screen and now we're talking about a keeping the screen size the same but bumping specs yeah I mean I think the only thing that we could stay with pretty much certainty is that they're going to use that same a 5 chip that's in the ipad when you say yeah absolutely so I think that's almost a definite other than that you mean it it makes total sense for them to to expand the size of the screen you know that's at this point you know 4.3 now now we've got a couple 4.5 inch bones it looks like so and what's the iphone screen 3.5 inch yeah i mean they've got it they've got a pump up and I mean that would be a very very compelling next-generation iphone offended a four-inch screen a5 chip hspa+ support call it a day there i mean that's that's going to be very compelling to people hey what else what else were we hoping for for the next knowledge it's on the home screen maybe uh yeah i mean we we also are are praying that there's going to be a new operating system released with the new iphone because a desperate need of a change well how about you know Apple ties up with with like American Express like it did with Nike and you know incorporate some hardware and therefore NFC that'd be cool although I I mean the consumers care about NFC is that a selling point at this point I think the early adopters care a lot about it and it's going to start filtering down once people see some of the the conveniences like you know when you're at the store writing a check and then and the guy in front of you just like swipes his phone and his transactions done you know that that might be a compelling use case scenario for you have you ever been in a situation not yet but well at the gas station you know they they were pretty forward thinking of all the gas stations where you know you could get these contactless payments at the right at the prompt and even inside so yeah I yeah I use that the PayPass you know the contactless payment but what frustrates me about that is that first of all it's deployed in all the convenience stores gas stations it's very widely available what's annoying is that they don't show you where the con RFID or whatever is on the card so sometimes I'm like swiping the upper left corner tapping the upper right corner is about you know it's so confusing yeah yeah it needs to be and the needs to be explained better to consumers date they basically need to make it like dead easy be like you know tap here and so you tap there exactly and another big inconvenience although I think this is a safety measure is that with the contactless payment you can't just pull out your wallet and tap because it's not strong enough you have to actually take out the card which kind of defeats the purpose of contact lyssa slightly there yeah although you know you have to balance between security of thing they could easily make the the radios more powerful on these things but then you know you have someone a couple feet away that could could read your information and potentially decrypt it that would suck yeah and you just recently have have an issue with some some unauthorized so you know exactly what it's like to have your identity stolen or to have to deal with that sort of thing yeah yeah I can be frustrating securities definitely a a big issue and I think a lot of people are are worried about it especially when it comes to identity theft and people using your credit card when you don't ya see the key is you keep all your cash under the mattress and you I you just you run your credit down so bad that even if someone does steal your identity they're not going to be able to get a card or anything is that yours is that your tactic I'm not saying necessarily that's what I do I'm just saying you know that that that's that's really your your best defense against that sort of crime hmm so for any young listeners out there take your money out of the bank put it under your mattress now get one credit card and really just run it up and then never pay it off that's a great way to don't you'll never get identity theft in well that's probably not best practice I don't listen that but uh yeah right isn't this a smartphone show people don't want to hear my yeah I know personal finance awesome alright well that will do it for the podcast number 14 we will see you all number 15 thanks for listening