Gadgetory

from pocketnow.com this is PocketNow weekly hello and welcome to episode 02 two of the pocket now weekly the once-a-week podcasts from pocketnow.com where we discuss what's hot and what's cool in the world of mobile technology from windows found android to iphone and everything in between I'm your host Michael Fisher senior editor at pocket now and I'm joined today by our editor-in-chief Brandon minimun good morning to you hello there and according to the Mayan calendar we will only have 23 podcasts ever that's right this is the penultimate episode of the pocket now weekly before doom strikes us all but and closer to to the original stomping grounds of the Mayans is joining us today multimedia editor hi may Rivera welcome back to the show Jaime good morning to you good morning to everybody and yes the Mayans are actually two hours away from me in a drive really why Brandon why don't we ever take field trips down to Jaime's offices I I need to go see this I don't think there's ever been a phone announcement there well the end of the world announcement will happen there in a couple of days so you can actually choose the topic you know we could probably do a whole smartphone thing there it's gonna say exactly we could record on site i mean you know this is this is newsworthy stuff we could do this right yeah yeah definitely we have a.m. we have just a couple brief announcements listeners before we jump into the news feed which we want to do quickly because we got a little bit of a late start today I just burned my tongue on coffee if anybody's interested so the rest of the show is gonna be very interesting at least I'm not alone I'm waste them nada lo you did it to just happen like five minutes ago outstanding well that's i get i get so angry when I burned my tongue on coffee or something warm because like for the next you know it's two days your shot yeah yeah and yeah it's it's just not to mean you can't taste anything it's ya know it's it's very annoying so but I'm gonna try and put it behind me and we're gonna boost everyone's spirits with a reminder that our apparently very complicated galaxy note 2 giveaway isn't is in full swing and if you are listening to this podcast for the first time welcome you may be listening for the first time because just like our last giveaway one of our giveaway hints is located inside the show so at some point in the show you will hear the familiar or maybe not bong bong of the palm webos annunciator followed by a trivia question that people answer I know I know I know I know let me let me look for my pre 34 that bar man you're gonna have the pre three in the air while I'm here I'll bring your Galaxy Nexus over here and we can it'll be fun we can switch no problem okay but yeah listen for that trivia question listeners it will show up as an embedded component and if you are not familiar with our giveaway you should have a look at pocketnow.com we are announced it on monday we're giving away an AT&T Galaxy Note 2 which is unlockable even though it's AT&T branded it is unlockable so make sure and check that out it's not too complicated but make sure to read all the instructions so that you are fully prepared to enter and we're pretty excited about it we're giving that away next Monday so plenty of time plenty of time and how about an another announcement actually up this morning yeah pocketnow is hiring and so we're looking for people that can write well that can have a really good on-screen video presence so if you're interested in reviewing phones and writing about phones doing videos about phones and tablets send your bio and some text samples and a video sample you know put it up on your personal YouTube channel send us the link two jobs at pocketnow.com that was crazy to see this morning so I looked at it about 20 minutes ago and I was like oh I didn't know we were hiring again that's fun let's see this very exciting I won't be that maybe won't be the new guy again like I mean person out loud right all right well let's uh let's jump into we've got the announcements out of the way let's jump into our thought thread to kick off the the show here kind of a cool period like right before the holidays but after the big holiday rush of announcements so we're kind of in this little trough and as people who are bored or people who have access to information that i find dubious sometimes have already started speculating about products that I I that are so far in the future I don't even know what to think of them but I think Brandon does so friend if you want to tell us something about the galaxy s4 maybe well yeah so I don't know anything particular but I want to have a little discussion about it it's it's funny because in just about three months Samsung will announce a phone that will be talking about in a year from now when it's out on carriers just like it's been happening every year now uh and the galaxy s4 is going to be as significant if not more significant than a galaxy s3 was and Samsung pretty much owned this year in the Android space with the galaxy s3 and it's a it's really just a combination of factors that made it amazing so I kind of want to have a discussion about what Samsung could do to hold on to that that that dominance in Android in 2013 with the galaxy s4 in terms of hardware and software and really where they can go from here I guess I'll start off with one obvious place that they can go and that's higher in screen resolution HTC has proved that more pixels can be better even if it's beyond that 300 PPI threshold so you know I think 1080p 5-inch screen on the galaxy s4 is a sure thing and what's interesting is that if you take out your galaxy s3 and you measure a 5-inch screen you can actually fit a 5-inch screen in the same form factor as the galaxy s3 which is important because if if Samsung makes that the bezels wider and the whole device taller and wider him and they got rid of the home button and they got rid of the home a-men get rid of them but yeah so you think they're gonna get rid of the home button they have to get rid of the home button I mean try to try to launch Google now right now with that galaxy s3 it just pisses me off big thing in the galaxy nexus a simple swipe the top with this thing you have to hold the button and then wait for the menu and then press the damn google now button it just pisses me off yes yeah but yes and no i think i think yes they should remove the home button because like for example to get the 5-inch screen they're gonna have to probably take it off you had sacrificed that chin down below you're talking about right yeah you're gonna have to go into that chin significantly but then again the home button on the Galaxy S series of devices has been there since the beginning and it's it's almost like a I can iconic design element like an iPhone man it's like a night that's what you said it when you unbox the galaxy s2 this looks too much like an iphone right and that's just the way it is I mean they go ahead we've now written two editorials on the site spaced about five months apart by different editors saying the home button needs to go in general and you know whether you agree with that or not for for the iphone i think it is eventually going to go away on the iphone and i think it's definitely going to go away on the Galaxy series I just wonder which one of them is going to blink first and I think it has a solid chance of being samsung because that screen size is going to have to be they're going to go with a larger display for their 1080p panel and brandon i agree with you i think they're going to cut into that below the screen area to do that and I you know and there's something really amazing about seeing a phone that is you know in standby state or shut off whose face is just a continuous sheet of glass there was yet it's very sexy he's one of the cool things about the nexus for the Galaxy Nexus etc yeah yeah that's why I wanted about your your razr m that you love so much that's very true but do you like that thing a lot better than I thought it would you know that's that that bezel less but it's bezel less word actually I mean it is no no no best around the screen yeah it's become but yeah if Motorola wanted to pull that off they couldn't do it so you know I would follow and brandon's idea i mean if they were able to pull a screen without a bezel no buttons at all it's just the gigantic screen within the same size as the galaxy s3 I'm buying yeah and well I mean we've we've seen the droid DNA and Brennan and I've both you know handled that and that's a it's amazing how much display can be fit into a into a chassis that actually still feels like a smartphone it is still you know petite enough and I it would be great to see Samsung do something similar it's it's lovely the 1080p thing um what do you guys think will Samsung wilbert will bring to the table for the galaxy s4 I'm just gonna crack up if they bring a 4k screen or something like that I just it's just right now it's it's we actually have a notorious 20p 720p I mean 720p barely came out by the end of last year we've got 1080p now so next year is gonna be the 1080p thing i'm just wondering what's it gonna be like in 2014 are we gonna get 4k or something it's just going crazier and crazier I really anti I really mean what I'm about to say I don't think for the foreseeable future five years we're gonna go beyond 1080p I don't think we're gonna go to 4k for a very long time until four case TV sets are affordable and there's lots of content for it there's just there's there's literally no knee I can't I'm really trying to think it's amazing to hear that from you too so like this is why I'm this is why I think you're right i mean when it's coming from when Brandon renamon says there is no need for any higher resolution displays you're like the most qualified person to say that because you're the biggest resolution you know how and there is so I agree with you I think there will be a you know I don't think there's any need for anything above 1080p but you know every time my mouth makes the move to say something like that I get a little worried because you know they're people what is that that famous thing that Bill Gates never said you know you I don't see why anyone would ever need more than 512k of RAM you know which is apocryphal but it's a hilarious quote wait yeah it is hilarious yeah I mean you know there's gonna I but I i agree i think resolution we're gonna plateau at resolution we're gonna go into the next thing and maybe maybe somebody will find a way to do 3d in an interesting way that's their IQ cite you know I just which always smart phone no II I just wish these smartphone OEMs would forget you know we've already reached 720p okay let's leave it at 1080p that's great 1080p is great how about if the next technology they work on is bringing a frickin solar panel on the phone or or work on battery technology I mean make something up that's in order to make phones I'm not saying make phones thinner i just wish they would last a week yeah well night in turin that that's an interesting place that that we have yet to see evolution and I feel like if any company is gonna come out and say oh by the way this phone gets a week worth of battery life or even like three days it's going to be Apple especially because the iphone 5 you know as as it is still pretty power-hungry I mean it's tough to get through a day with the iphone 5 in a lot of cases and that'sthat's interesting because in my particular case the last company I would ever think of whatever it would be able to pull that off as Apple and the reason why is because ever since the first generation iphone no iphone has had good battery life no I yeah that's true but like I mean I mean and we can have this conversation later the iphone 6 there i bring that term up um well you know it it's it's not going to have a larger screen it's probably not going to be very much thinner what we're talking about the 5s which we'll talk about later so it's like where else can it get better besides the software of course which is the obvious place i mean bad I you know I think got to be working on battery life it's such a problem yeah you know I mean to kind of to kind of get us back toward the to the galaxy s4 here behaving like I think there are other areas that that we can you know Excel besides battery life and I wrote a piece on Betterlife this past week or whatever it was and I was like oh that's a whole different ball of wax it's a whole different birds nest in there but like with the galaxy s4 seems to the rumors seem to be attaching to it very readily as they did before the 3 launch and you know it's will the with a galaxy s3 have across the room wireless charging and all this kind of random crazy stuff you know but the galaxy s4 has been rumored to have a what is it an unbreakable display is that what it is like a that would bring about flexible display what is the deal I manage that that would be awesome that would be awesome and you know the biggest problem with samsung and and by the way that Galaxy Nexus that you have is a product of another galaxy nexus that used to be Brandon's that I broke and the problem stammering and you don't have this issue with HTC and you don't have this issue uh it's funny but you don't have this issue with the iphone is that you know Samson is the only company that dares to take the display the glass of the display up to the mere border of the plastic and therefore you know with the galaxy either the galaxy s3 or the Galaxy Nexus it really depends on how you drop the phone to smash it yeah that's that's the biggest deal if the phone falls on its corner you're good smash the display there is just no way around it is actually backed up by the plane HTC device it's funny you mention HTC because the with the DNA they take the glass all the way to the edge and I'm just very similar to the galaxy s3 but better and my friend of mine who just bought the droid DNA and was so excited showed me last night that he had dropped it on its side just as you say and it had shattered from narrow side in ya know oh man well so that's the thing you know I was the funny thing is when when I smash it this way you know I immediately told Brandon I just broke your phone man I'm so sorry um you know I was I started quoting what it would cost me to replace the display because you know this is one of the things that pisses me off and I'm gonna sound like a fanboy right now but it just is the case you know I smash an iphone and all I have to do is go to an apple store I pay for a replacement I get a new phone but if I smash a samsung phone what do I do with it you know that that's the biggest question what do i do with a smash display you know recently I had a problem with my HTC One X and the only thing i could do is ship it back to the HTC hope that they want to replace my phone and then send it back so if samson can figure out a way to make their parts you know more durable than yes i would love the device because for you know for the record changing the galaxy nexus display on the i9250 cost 250 bucks and a brand new phone started costing 350 so it's like what do you do you know yeah it's pretty it's pretty Craig um but what what person what percentage of uh phone owners who have their phone for two years would you say crack or shatter their screen men or women ah that's a dangerous dangerous question right but let's put them in the same group let's let's let's not do that okay out of 10 friends that I know I could tell you that uh between three and four of them have smash a display in the past year that's interesting that's a good way of looking at it have ten friends I know maybe to have and you are one of them actually yeah are we counting ourselves cuz I definitely smash my galaxy nexus shoot you Galaxy Nexus Brandon's match his iphone and his iPad so all right come on all right so I guess with more devices you did you run the risk of more smashing we'd go ahead Rendon yes okay so so let's say there's there's three out of ten so I'm a 30-percent high knees at 45 what are you what do you get my home i'm at about i'm at about twenty percent I've got some some careful friends I guess so in if if our sampling is accurate which it probably isn't because we've more tech-savvy friends approximately thirty percent of people will crack her smash your phone so yes that it did at first when you said Jaime Jaime you said unbreakable screen I thought that that was not really going to be headlined future but now talking about talking about it sounds like it it would actually be pretty good yeah yeah you know it's just so complicated you know in the particular with the case of the Samsung devices and even with Apple devices you know the the glass is fused to the LCD know and and you know word of warning listeners if you ever smash a display do not make the mistake of buying the glass on ebay and getting a heat gun to replace this the display yourselves you will never get it right and you'll trace man I do that so let me tell you how about all you have exactly do we do it no it said are you talking just for the iphone I mean because you can do it for other devices but be good listeners I know that Samsung's HTC devices and the iphones are fused together yeah well yeah the i-35 is in sell the iphone 5 is in cell so it's different yeah if it's an old-school display though I mean one of the one of the first dates I went on with a girl once where she was she had busted her droid razr x and she was like yeah hang on we just got to like hang out in here for a second so ever hang out in my living room and I wat over the course of 25 minutes i watch her disassemble her droid razr x replace the LCD and put it back together a job it was the sexiest thing I've ever seen you didn't get and you didn't get married right there come on we got open on it I'm sure that what that was the queue that was but that was the cute right there was a sign from heaven right exactly well at any rate uh yeah i agree i mean i think these are this is a really compelling feature that would be really cool I don't know what unbreakable display means maybe it means it's so flexible not display mounted in a incredibly futuristic manner that deploys with incredibly complex hardware that will then break and then we'll be the hardware that breaks not the display then it will respawn and regrow on your screen exactly and you can just like you can make new phones all you want it has stem cells in it it is a built-in replicator that's all it does this side atrix already man i doesn't it but let me tell you what what i would want to be this will be my last my last thing on the galaxy s4 and I know imprenta you probably have a wrap up on it but what I would love to see is we talked about this kind of uninterruptedly a sauna phone right we talked about it on the Galaxy Nexus in the nexus 4 but it's not really uninterruptedly earpiece hole up there and you've got you know penetrations for the front-facing camera whatever and you can kind of see it and it's it's close to its close to perfect but it's not what if what if manufacturers implemented both bone conduction and offset mics so that there's not even an earpiece hole what if the entire front of the phone is a shear plane of glass I would be amazing he would that be incredible because I nokia's hair has been working really hard on bone conduction they're about to have released their first one or whatever they're gonna and they're gonna call it the echo too yeah another episode of worst gadgets ever exactly oh well you know but but I I would love that I I think that that would be interesting and that's kind of in line with what Samsung wants to be doing now we're right where they want to kind of get away from the aping the iphone thing and they've successfully done that with the galaxy s3 where they were like here's this riverstone teardrop thing agree and they're gonna do something as compelling with date with the four I think agreed you know for the record and Brandon knows this I hated the galaxy s I hated the galaxy s2 but when the galaxy s3 came out you know I was the first person when we saw the event and everything that I was like what the you know at first I was disappointed but then you know the more I looked at the phone I was like man this is awesome this is the you know this is the most daring thing that Samsung has ever done this thing looks nothing like an iPhone um and it is so cool and I just feel that Sammy just got you know they've got their cool with this phone they've got their confidence and whatever they can do to evolve the market away from everything else that's Apple man I mean it really pisses me off how many companies try to copy something that other people criticize so much I Sammy's doing an awesome thing at being unique and that's I think that's the way it should go and they you know bone conduction be it be an unbreakable screens whatever ways they can innovate and still give us a replaceable battery with external storage and Sammy is gonna win the gold agreed yeah I don't know is i think that's well said yeah I think that's a good way to button it up speaking of you put me in mind ha me when you said the iphone the people copying the iphone and it's doing so well i was out last night after a staged reading we did I was out with a bunch of my friends and I had a product that is not necessarily doing well well it's doing relatively well but it's not doing any where near as well as the iphone i had my lumia 920 on me and I was sitting across from friend of mine who asked to see it because i was taking it some panoramic photos of the group which works very well on Windows Phone 8 by the way and my friend was absolutely stunned I have never seen and she's not a technophile I've never seen such an authentic and impressed reaction from somebody to a mobile phone user interface first I mean obviously the Alumni twenties hardware Cotter I but then she's just playing with the home screen on Windows Phone 8 and she's like this is beautiful and I'm like well what do you have I'm expecting her to say that she's got a dumb phone or something like that she's like no I have the iphone I'm like really and then furthermore she's like yeah but my my upgrade is coming up and I don't I mean this is amazing then she asked me for like 25 minutes about the platform and I'm like wow I've never seen Windows Phone do that like firsthand in my experience I've never seen it like I've never seen somebody take the phone from my hand and just you know if use about it which iphone did she have uh the the 4s I think are interesting so she she's asleep it's interesting that she's already do for it that could be the four actually probably better if she's already do from but yeah sorry that was stupid yeah yeah yeah that makes sense i mean that the four at this point in time fee is slow just over time and she probably is the small screen blues compared to you know all the big big screen phones out there that's interesting you a reaction she had that's pretty it wasn't no it was cool and I wish I'd had the 820 out so that I could have um you know so that I could have had a more a more relevant experience but of course the review was already up step we've read oh good i'm sure i'm trying to think about an analogy that quebec could describe Windows Phone adequately because you know recently I have this friend that I actually you know I I pulled out the HTC Titan and you know my friend would just completely blown away by you know I don't have a windows phone 8 device yet I admit they're not sold here yet so sadly I had a rough trying time trying to get the Lumia 920 for the record I went to like three or four best buys a couple of weeks ago and I was not able to get a phone and I had to come back to my country um but but the problem is um here's the thing windows phone I love it when these guys just stand on stage and talk look how beautiful these live tiles are and look how beautiful the UI is and how beautiful and how delightful and you know what I agree with them when they talk about how beautiful the UI is because in my opinion it is I'm just trying to find an analogy for something that's beautiful but not really useful yet you know it's got a lot of potential but its its potential has it's been three years well no here's the thing no it is useful like like unless you unless you use the OS not only you guys like you can't pick it up for a day and then and then because you remember how I felt two three or four episodes ago when you guys were asking me about like how do you like the Windows Phone platform and oh my god I'd it's weird and I don't know if I still like it like you can't just use it for a day or two you actually have to use it for your daily driver for a couple weeks to to to acclimate and to find out and to download enough third party apps that support the live tiles and see how well you know they work for you there was an app release just last night I think called weather flow or something like that that that brings live tiles to an entirely new dimension and it uses windows phone 8 to like you know you can blow up the live tile to the full width of the screen and then you've got all this information right there without even entering the app and it's you know it is useful it's just not used it's not used to its full potential i may i agree with you but all the the kind of beautiful talk that Windows that Microsoft people do when they're unveiling a new windows phone 8 feature when it it reminds me of apples to be on this way it's like an announcements like okay years ago it's gorge okay been magical okay just yes here's the big difference between an apple presentation and a Microsoft presentation yeah you know yes Phil Schiller would stand on stage and tell you how beautiful a computer is or how beautiful a phone is but the cool thing is their presentations are mostly focused and just compare this how many developers have you seen on a Microsoft presentation show off an application working on their phones 200 why do you think that is because you want to keep their presentation shorter no okay they're actually longer so here's the deal you know Apple presentations are full of showing you what you can do with the phone and on the by contrast Microsoft presentations are full of how beautiful the phone is and it's just funny I mean you can look at your child and say how beautiful your child is but every new born mott none of my newborn's were pretty when they were born it's just that's just the way it it's a very good analogy it's a good analogy but you know I mean I feel it's interesting you bring up children because I feel like children were a huge focus of the the windows phone 8 announcement because of the you know the kids corner in addition to like data sense and rooms and I seem to remember a lot of functionality being announced at the windows phone 8 announcement okay so what I would out that what I was gonna try to point out it you've seen you've seen all these videos on YouTube lately and I'm actually gonna move a little bit into windows 8 right now but it's just funny have you seen these videos on YouTube of chris pirillo and all these guys putting their fathers but I'm trying to use Windows 8 no but I bet it's a disaster you have to look at this because they cannot figure out how to you know these are old men not old men but you know people in their 50s 60s um that that are you know they're sitting in front of a computer and you know Chris Pirillo is like okay show me how to go into the Start screen and you know intuitively the person does not figure it out right and okay and you know the problem with my friend when I you know when I showed him you know windows phone 7.5 which by the way I used for for around five months before I dropped it um no not dropped it meaning i just stopped using it right yeah but yeah but the thing is you know the person could not find an intuitive way to move around the UI you know it it was like okay so okay this is the people sub but these are things that I had to explain to the person um and so that that was the big that was the biggest issue you know he was like it looks very pretty it looks very nice but ironically i find that they have a very large learning curve which is ironic because then I then I show the person the Galaxy Nexus and the the president's impression was very different it this looks a little more like something that I'm used to this person was using a blackberry for the past year so I I think that the problem with windows phone is that it's just so different that people either feel daunted by it or they just don't feel comfortable enough to give it a try windows English with windows they could probably bridge that gap but it's not happening and it's not happening yet because Windows 8 is even more complicated than Windows Phone 8 like when I you use my surface it's like when I love the gestures I love pulling in from the bezels and you know context-sensitive bezels whether I'm top bottom left or right but you don't pick it up right away and I don't think that's a that's a dig against the platform but it the onus is on Microsoft to really really really drive home the fact that you do need to spend two minutes with this device to get to know it when you first pick it up and the that's something palm you know failed to do with with webos because I remember people like not knowing how the card interface works on my gavel once you complicating about so many gestures you remember exactly and I was like no but and then once you I watched it I did this like several times I taught people how to use it I watched them learn and after you know three or four minutes ever like oh I get this now and then they loved it but if you don't overcome that if you you know a lot of people just want to stick in that kind of what you see is what you get oh I can poke this and it opens you know whatever I think if you appeal to the lowest common denominator you're going to get a lot of sales sure and it's interesting I thought you're going to draw a comparison to anti phone Jaime but you drew a comparison to Android you said your friend is was able to pick up Android much more intuitively which is curious well that's the thing everybody that I've known and and this is just the funniest thing you know I find iOS boring and I you know I say it everywhere and it's just true I find it boring the only thing about the iphone is that since its its compact its compartmentalised do you say that word compartmentalized okay um you know everything is in a specific place so you know that you know intuitively you don't know that you could see people your friends photos on the People Hub or on the photos hub on Windows Phone but then on the iphone you know that if you go to Facebook everything that's related to Facebook will be inside the facebook app sure and and if you go to contacts everything that's related to contacts would be in the contacts app and if you go to phone everything that's related to phone and so on and so forth the thing about Windows Phone is that you know it strives to add value into these different hubs which is actually awesome because it adds functionality the problem is when you add I think there they probably just try to add too much to the operating system when they should actually just focus on bringing more apps that come that compartmentalize the experience and they are doing that but you know it goes against the grain of the experience this is a philosophical difference between I think between Windows Phone and the rest of the thing and when Microsoft has said with Windows Phone and with Windows 8 we're not doing that we're not doing this thing where we hop into a nap and we hop out of an apple we hop into a different app to go to that app and it like they're they want to bring it into their paradigm they want to impose their their design philosophy on it you know everything they can and I you know I understand that that's obviously it's been a tough road for them and but you know what they're not changing it that they had of course we have facebook and twitter apps on on Windows Phone but they're not they're primarily they want you primarily to use the hubs and I've got to say using the hubs it's a leaner experience it's it's annoying at times because it doesn't have all the functionality of the apps but it's much more beautiful cohesive yeah exactly it's that's a much better word it's a much more cohesive experience to do that now you know they're going to continue having these problems but I found something very interesting my roommate who is a the last person ever to want any to want anything to do with technology get her getting the iphone was like a I think we threw a party but she has the iphone and i was explaining how i was showing her just the other day had heard like home rearranging live tiles and stuff on like so this is how this works because she was you know because i had her and for some reason I was subjecting her to tech talk and she was like oh well that's pretty cool and I'm like what and she's just watching we moved the tiles around on the home screen I'm like what you that that's cool like a you did and she's like yeah how do I and she has her iphone icons arranged and you know a particular way she's like oh so when I try and move this down here and the iphone wouldn't let her move like an icon you know how it does like you have to fill up a whole page yeah and she was and I just kind of watched her reaction for and there's just this kind of half second twinge of annoyance on her face where you know whether this thing happened where it's like yes okay Microsoft does impose a lot on you when you get a windows phone but Apple of course is the king of that Apple is the king of saying you're going to do it our way and you know it's whatever it's boring fine but if you don't like it get another phone because you can't you have to do it the Apple way okay but here's the deal that here's my problem okay with window I'm okay with windows phone saying that frankly hi mate because to me it's not boring okay carefully I have to do something a better damn well be exciting but there's this is the thing okay Brandon you tell me which is the best email experience that you get on the phone ah snap that the most efficient or the most beautiful both which goes buddy know which company they'll was it best HTC does the best with beautiful and stock Android is the most efficient you didn't like the iPhone before that's what you said you know I like the iPhone until an iOS 6 they made it much more difficult to multi-select you have to go to edit check check Marco there's like a million steps if you want to do arbitrage like unread on doing red states okay but but the thing is no company has figured out HTML email like the app like the iphone has oh yeah that's it that's a given yeah so here so here's the deal I don't mind being imposed if a company figures it out since version 1 you know that's that's just my point you know email on the iphone has been the same since version 1 and why are they gonna fix something that's not broken so in the case of Windows Phone if I wonder what if i want to read an email and well not on Windows Phone that much on Android it really pisses me off that I to be panning or found an HTML email and you know gmail has now brought this with Android 4.2 so now you don't now you have a much better experience on gmail but if I wanted that on the native email app for Android I can't do that and so you know again I know that there is a lot of imposition on applets it's like a friend of mine was asking me yesterday you know what alternatives do I have to the iPhone because you know I have a ton of music that I didn't buy on the iTunes Store and I just want to sync it and and I'm like okay yes the iphone is really not your thing because you're gonna need to go through itunes that's just the way it is you don't need to do that on another platform so yeah there are a lot of in positions that are that are definitely annoying but you know I feel that you know itunes aside there are a lot of things that they did get right from day one they got so right that everybody else followed so I you know I I do understand that Microsoft wants to impose a paradigm but the problem of the paradigm is that it's not natural everything is texty and everything is retro and therefore people don't feel related to it and that's why they're having a hard time adopting it I have to tell you the text the text heavy nature of Windows Phone has has been something that's gotten under my skin yeah you go into the settings menu and instead of like you know color cues or instead of iconography you're confronted with this scrolling 25 element list each one is a text thing so it really slows everything down when I'm looking for brightness and I actually have to search for the word brightness I have to read every entry essentially exact and exaggerated a little bit so ya know i am now saying the platform is perfect certainly it's not but it's just it is it is undervalued because i think microsoft has not done a very good job of conveying the message right up front that this is not something you just pick up and use this is something you pick up you learn how to use it for three minutes and then you get used to using it for two days like it's like what is it what is it like I mean is there like a is there like a parallel like is there I don't know you know is it like a like a food that's poisonous until you eat enough of it like a man because it's kind of it's kind of what it is I mean that's a crappy analogy because I'm the king of those but you know it's that way um and but it's like it's beautiful go ahead it's like it's like that guy that you you know you grew up with and in the beginning you hated him you are in grade school then you start to get to know him and he became your best friend yes yes that's exactly it and the qualities that made you hate him were actually the qualities that you liked about him the most and made you you have good good friendship feel like we're out of a feel-good hallmark movie that's exactly correct you know I'm gonna here's the thing you're everybody remembers windows mobile right um okay I didn't that's not my impression of Windows well that is dumb that's right see I didn't like okay but but here's the thing this uh no I did like a ton of q yo years ago when you looked at years ago when I looked at the first palm device um that you know back then and a pocket pc and i had to choose between one or the other you know choosing the compaq ipaq was simple it was like dead simple it was three times more expensive but it had a color display and the whole UI it was just so familiar because it's it looked like windows 95 only inverted come here and I and I was just so used to the interface I'm like okay this looks like a computer so this is cool oh so this is yeah this is really a pocket pc and you know the word pocket pc was just so smart the name was so smart because that's really what it was um it was if it was really easy for me to relate to windows mobile because of that because it looked like the windows pc that i was using and they were very easy to sell as a result yes good exactly so here's the thing um you know windows 95 was a hit it was it was it was a huge hit you know they figured out the perfect UI for a computer you know even even if they didn't invent it who cares they made it mainstream and that's that's just the way it is and what they did was grab a mobile platform and you know the only reason why windows mobile didn't take office because you know it was based on a mobile kernel and so many other things and then you know they just continued you know rehashing it instead of evolving it and I think that the problem with Windows Phone 8 and this is just my particular opinion is that they've based live tiles and the whole UI out of nothing that's been successful before and it's great for you to try to do something new you just can't tell people that it's beautiful and expect them to believe you what is what what is you know okay time is problem five tiles I've just I'm not understanding I this is me off to hear Joe Belfiore all the time be like look at these beautiful five thousand I'm sure well you have a presentation problem I mean you know you have you've got you've got to use it you you absolutely have to use no here's the deal here's the deal okay why did I stop using and I'm sorry Brandon here this is my last thing why did I stop using Windows Phone 7.5 okay first of all out of the two windows phones that I have none of them were able to take one good photograph so there was a software issue and it was not the the dell problem or an HTC prom it was a software windows phone jus okay okay that's the first thing the second thing is I would just get really annoyed with multitasking because sure they were trying to do multitasking but they'd never got it right you know that the interface was just don't know for me it's texty if there's just a point where I'm like man this looks like freaking d OS 4.2 no oh that's that's not fair okay okay so this is why you dropped 7.5 right but so you mean you're gonna pick up you're gonna pick up windows phone 8 and it's gonna be a lot like 7.5 and like I carried 7.52 and stuff like that I mean it you know it's it but it sounds like it's you're not gonna have much more luck with with eight with the exception of taking better photos because the hardware is better especially in the Lumia phones because it's not anathema to the way you operate you know mobile right but you have no idea how important that is you know that's the only reason why I'm like okay what phone am I gonna get I'm gonna go for a Lumia I want to see if Nokia you know I want no key to put their money where their mouth is and you know that's the only reason why I do want to get a windows phone 8 if the camera is good and the app experience improve I am willing to sacrifice the live tile expiry I do when I'm willing I'm willing to put up with I want to revisit this because I do want I cannot wait until you have a windows phone because I loved this conversation i love this discussion about about Windows Phone as a whole and Brenda we both steamrolled you there did you have something that was that was wanted to jump in with ya what's what's interesting is that the UI of Windows Phone is is unfamiliar because it doesn't match the the paradigm of a mainstream product meaning if windows 8 had come out two years ago and it was wildly popular and successful when people really liked Metro thing in a hundred million people like understood this live tile thing in the Metro design I think windows phone 8 would have a different rate of adoption agrees it's it's it's it happened in reverse and it happened that way because you know Microsoft stumbled upon a hidden success that this Metro UI is is is well received but it's it's kind of unfortunate the timing of all this because then you have people like I'm a that are like this live tile thing just doesn't work for me because I don't I don't I can't relate to it it doesn't make sense to me yeah and you know we'll we'll have to see going forward how the how the relationship between windows 8 and windows phone 8 either drives each platform forward or drives them each into you know the doldrums but you know I think I think there's a lot to be explored there I think Windows 8 is an entirely different question because it just bring in so many more gestures and it'll be interesting to see what Microsoft ports from windows 8 into Windows Phone 8 because that that non-existent home screen to the left of the current home screen is just begging to be used and it's going to be really interesting to see what they do with that a great agree yeah commenters must really love me right now I was just gonna say like when this this podcast goes live how many you're gonna we're gonna be all be over time in the comment i love you guys too i love you guys yeah go ahead read it let me just uh never mind I was just gonna save you the the the the yeah what's it called I wanted to soften the blow by just calling you a jerk I'm am getting it out you are a jerk you are a fan of wave I teach you go back to cupertino go back there well anyways let me let's kind of move on here is where i just want to mention that the but we now have both almost the entire Lumia 800 series or the 2012 edition Lumia 800 series reviewed the 810 for t-mobile USA the 822 for Verizon Wireless and the 824 AT&T all of those reviews are posted on the site listeners if you haven't seen them yet you should and I did all of them which is crazy and really thankful I got to see the whole spectrum personally of them of this mid-range line and just very briefly we've talked about the mid-range smartphone before as a concept and how it's changing this here and how wrote a piece about how like mid-range phones are more impressive even in some metrics than high-end phones and the the Lumia 820 and its derivatives really reinforces that because it's been really really cool to to see these devices that are like okay well these are setting my expectations sort of low at the outset because their mid range but oh wow they're surprising me with with how how competently they execute all of the tasks i asked them to that said it is really really interesting when you are when you surprise yourself when like i've never been a resolution guy i've always been the guy on the podcast in editorials who's the counterpoint to Brandon right like Brendan's like I need really high-resolution awesome stuff and I love I love high pixel density and I'm over here like I want color saturation and deep blacks and I don't care about resolution but using three or using three Lumia 820 series devices over the course of a month has taught me exactly what it's like to be using last year's display for an extended period and it's not interesting not very fun yeah I mean you know you can I'm starting to be able to see taps key to say I'm starting to be able to see the fuzzy edges on texts and stuff and yeah and as as we move forward as this 1080p explosion continues that's only going to get more pronounced so that's the sad thing to me about the DA 20s and a lot of the mid-range devices that are launched today sure they're fine today but even regular users are going to be able to you know in a year and a half when they sold the same phone and they're still locked into that contract and they are not eligible for an upgrade for another six months that screen is gonna look positively antique but what if you don't have anything to compare it against what if you're using a wvga screen for two years you're not looking at your friends phones you're not looking at other phones in the store is it okay do you get used to it it's okay or is it still crappy yes yes of course but nobody lives in that kind of a bubble like when you go out to the bar like what do you do when there's a lull in the conversation or sometimes it causes laws on the conversation because people are looking at each other films like what is that is that a new phone and then everyone gets into that same conversation even and this isn't because I'm people know I'm a tech writer like half the people i hang out with Jonah but they'll just do it themselves they launch into the sink oh yeah it used to be plans it used to be carriers he used to be like oh I got this planet for 400 minutes and whatever and now its devices like huh you got the iphone the new galaxy oh what's up and then it's a like 25 minute conversation you got the new galaxy that's just the funniest phrase of the year isn't it yeah we talked about that in length but you know anyway it's so that's that's disappointing um the only other thing i want to touch on in the in that kind of same vein is i tried to take a self-portrait with the Lumia 820 s front facing camera and this I think spawned that editorial I just wrote about full res front-facing cameras and also I included an impression of this in the review the do you guys remember vga resolution cameras oh yeah made me look a lot more pretty yeah great well Matt I had kind of forgotten about vga resolution cameras but the Lumia 820 incorporates one as a front facing camera it's weird because the carrier very the 822 for verizon the a-10 for t-mobile each has like a 1.3 megapixel front-facing shooter like you know is standard but the 820 has a 0.3 megapixel shooter i think it's like 640 x 480 or whatever the hell that is so i take this picture and i look at it I'm like wow there must be something wrong the three of us have been turned into kind of amorphous blobs well I thought you had an ipad 3 anyways it takes the same photos from facing anyways does it well yeah it's it's a VGA camera I am forgetting that front facing cameras there and imagine that blowing up on the retina display that looks on you T&S yeah well it's just that we never use the front-facing camera on an iPad uh well here's the deal whichever company figures out how to put a full resolution camera front-facing that would be the perfect facebook phone you know the perfect bone for your bathroom pics yes room for your best face mirror pics yes exactly pucker your lips and you know yeah tucking your your your your son stomach and and just do little pout puff up your chest and get a high angle going there how I found stuff under here and don't forget to move the toilet away from the photo that's right there's nothing worse than a toilet in a photo um laughs let's let's wrap up the windows section here I we kind of already talked about the windows phone 7 7 8 into Windows Phone 8 but I just want to say I think this is one of my favorite headlines of of the month from Adam Lane who's what if windows phone 7 8 was named Windows Phone 8 instead I think I think there would have been a smart move you know it's fascinating and I think commenters I think it would've been a smart move to and a commenter provided the counterpoint ray said you know I think if it weren't for the colonel change that's exactly what they would have done but I mean what do you call iOS 6 on an iphone 4 iOS 6 exactly listen Willy you know even though you don't get um what what don't you get on the iphone you don't get maps you don't get there I think they should have just called Windows Phone 8 and if your phone doesn't have NFC it's not what it's not microsoft's fault it's you know do we ever do I think Microsoft is is kind of bearing a lot of a lot of heat for this where that they don't necessarily deserve because they were more honest than then other companies generally are with their release I was one of the first pieces i wrote for pocket i was talking about the phone ification of the tablet and i was like getting so annoyed with my Apple products because I'm like yeah well I have iOS 5 on this older device but it runs like hell so why do I you know why is it called iOS 5 it's not the same experience and I think my yourself probably had the same attitude and as a result of their honesty their just being you know dragged through the mud up there they're being direct to the mud not because of the name it's because of the deployment Oh where's the software nobody has seen it yet nobody is tested yet nobody has a phone that has the upgrade yet so if they would have launched windows phone 7.8 at the same time that they launch Windows Phone 8 then things would be nice but you know I there are a lot of unhappy customers that are wishing they had you know the new tiles that they see everywhere but they have a bite they have to buy a new phone and they just can't afford it so it just pisses people off they won't buy a phone in the future that's just the way it is right okay it will I don't you know I would I would like a windows phone 7 device still kicking around so i could try windows phone 7.8 but i'm sure we're gonna have comparisons and you guys have them and you know yeah yeah we just to close out when this phone surface is coming to new retailers this is something that I don't think is a surprise to anyone but it was announced tell me something Michael what do you think I mean I read your thing and everything but what do you think you know right now what do you think about that surface I will tell you that and this is why I kind of wanted to bring this up before before brandon has to go I will tell you that I still stand behind everything I wrote and I still really like the idea of the surface but I have had a very busy week and this isn't a cop-out this is actually a point I've had such a busy week that I have had to rely only on the most efficient and practical devices with which to get things done as a result the surface has served primarily as a scenic component in my video reviews to prop phones up at the right angle the surface the surface is a device Eileen phones against so there's no glare on the phone screen that's that's what i've been using the surface for so I'm that's just the reality of the surface I mean out of you know last time I was traveling I I flew through three airports run away and i saw one surface yeah and uh thousand ipads of course but you know I mean and that's gonna be the case right now of course I mean the surface is such a new product that even if it was a even if it was a runaway success you'd still be seeing that because it's not you know embedded yet and by the way since I met since hymas already thrown himself under the comment or bus I'm not gonna I'm not doing that I'm I have to say this is as I need to come back to the surface and have a look at it but I will tell you that that that this experience taught me more about where the surface is in its development then spending like 48 or 72 on interrupted as I did because when I have to rely on something that I need to get something done right now then I'm going to use the macbook air or I'm going to use my nexus 7 or I'm going to use my iPad you know what I mean I don't turn to the surface I turn to the surface when I want when I have I'm done for the day and on some novelty exactly exactly I want some futuristic novelty and that's what the surface is to me right now um I was going to propose the question what does the surface RT do one thing what does it do better than any other product and I'm not saying like you know it prop itself up on a table I'm saying in terms of getting a task done or just consuming some piece of content and you don't think that there's a there's an answer for that there isn't yet I don't off the top of my head I also don't think there is one um hey you know it there's a I don't have a name for it yet but there's a name for that phase of a device where it's it's it's like the honeymoon phase where it's still really new and you're carrying it around and you're using it not because you want to get things done but you're using it to use it because it's new and it's in it's fresh so for example I don't need to I don't need to make a to-do list right now but I'm gonna go ahead and I get to do list right now because I want to use the device because it's fresh and I want to kind of explore it that's that's where the surface still lives in my brain you know it when I take out the surface I'm doing it very specifically to use the surface not to get something done so that's yeah but the problem is there's there's nothing beyond that it's you know Rogers gonna keep it in that stage and you're not gonna get get to the next step which is integrating into your life because there's it has no place on well unfortunately i don't i don't know about you Michael but in my particular case when I get a new phone um my honeymoon phase would last you know sometimes I don't even sleep just playing with the thing yeah by the way my honeymoon face with my galaxy s3 has not ended over more than a month now that's crumb I just love that thing and that's just me and it's just funny because I would tell Brandon that I would not want that phone and I just learned that I was wrong and I wouldn't I would love to be proven wrong by the Microsoft service whenever I get one for the first time you know but so far if you have not been interested enough to actually use it during the first day at least then I think that's just gonna be the story from here on no and I was I mean no I remember it for the first she's like three days I had it I did I used it like non-stop and I loved it in the yada yada but it's just when it when things became really fast-paced and I had to get things done that's when it fell by the wayside but I have to say this because if you guys had asked me three weeks ago four weeks ago if we'd had the same conversation about Windows Phone I probably would have been saying the same thing because it took me so long to acclimate to it now if I shut down my macbook if I put aside a you know three quarters of the rest of my devices and I kind of force myself to use the service all the time my efficiency would improve I would probably find an answer to your question Brandon I'm sure there's something it does better than than anything else I just don't know what it is yet and my I go ahead I was gonna say I tried that um you should I you know I i had i got the surface RT during Hurricane sandy and I i worked from home for a couple of days because it was pretty crappy outside and I was like all right I'm gonna write the surface RT review on the surface RT and and and of course I pre uploaded the picture is just to make it a little bit easier but I just was going to using a wordpress on the surface RT and I started off the review i am writing this review on the surface RT and i had this whole paragraph after the end of the paragraph i deleted the paragraph i saved it I saved the the review as a draft and I I went to my macbook air and i just realized i could I couldn't I couldn't use it as a WoW too many things about it and and and you know it was weird because when I was writing the surface RT review on the surface RT I tried using both browsers because I thought maybe I'll use the touch friendly browser in the Metro environment because no maybe that's more natural more precise but was very imprecisely and there are some other problems with it and then I went into the the desktop environment and I used the other browser the second browser of surface RT and I was so frustrated by using the touchpad and wanting to like move my hands up to scroll and then move my hands back down to type and to use the touchpad is just just use dirty is gross you know and I think you're making a solid point see in you know what's the success of the ipad and we talked about this like three or four two episodes to go the what's successful about it is that it's not trying to be a computer it's not trying to be a computer it's trying to be its own thing where it's made for consuming content and here's Microsoft trying to do a very smart idea because it is a very smart approach for you to try to make the tablet become a productive device a very portable unit that you can actually make productive with a couple of accessories it's it's it's an awesome idea they did it years ago with the ipaq where you have the sleeves where you can actually add functionality to the pocket pc by adding more sleeves it's a smart idea but the problem is that you know it it was it's a cumbersome experience and that's where it really fails I mean not even Skype on the surface we we tried skype with Brandon for his review and even Skype on the surface was terrible and so here's the point I just have to instead exactly that's the that's the irony not even their own things are done right so here's the thing i think that the Microsoft Surface RT would have been successful if they would have focused on bringing a tablet only operating system and not trying to sell a productive computer because what whoever person is coming from a netbook and wants to move into a surface RT will most probably return the device after a week of knowing that it's not really a computer so here I mean yeah let me this is not i'm not asking this because of the reason it sounds like i'm asking this what a great sentence i just made pets hey isn't it beautiful I'm gonna write that down excusing I'm gonna ask you a question now you have not actually used a surface right no okay every single observation you are making in this podcast is I cannot disagree with it is absolutely correct and that is my principal objection if I were somebody just listening to this that you've never held one or even ever used one but you are you are absolutely correct because it's it doesn't in Brandon by implication you're correct as well but it's just fascinating that someone who's never handled it can can draw the same conclusions that I completely agree with having handled it so I I don't disagree I think guys we have we actually have fifteen minutes before brandon has to has to bail and I i do want to touch on a couple other things so can I ask you to just kind of can we wrap it up on the on the windows front is there anything he's asking us to shut up so please please let's not just gone better to shut up no no no I um I want to jump in and I kind of want to stagger this just a little bit and we're gonna fragment the run down a bit and then jaime you and i will do some listener may laughter Brandon goes how does that sound awesome good the we had a couple after the buzz episodes and the reason that I'm really happy that high man Brandon around the show together is that they can each kind of give some brief thoughts on to encapsulate there after the buzz experiences Brandon did it after the buzz episode for the ipad 4 or the late 2012 ipad if you prefer and hi mate did one of course for the iphone 5 we've been really loading up on after the buzz episodes recently we hope your listeners have enjoyed them if you haven't seen the new ones please go to pocket now and and find them there is an after the buzz tag there who under our new do we have Brandon who we've launched the new series page yet yes there's the new series page in the top it says features features yes go there it's awesome anyway um who uh who would like to go first because we've been talking about these iOS devices we've been I think we just finished talking about tablets I think it would be logical maybe if Brandon you you encapsulated your thoughts on the late 2012 iPad after the buzz well actually I was gonna ask jaime to start and I an America and I'm but I wanted to start him off with a thought Jaime with you would you agree that the iPhone 5 is like a beautiful woman that you are dating that is pretty smart and capable but you find out after dating her for a while that she's boring as hell didn't know that the beautiful part that's like the funniest that allergy ever but it's like the most accurate one yes I emphasis on the beautiful part like you know she you know she's got soft skin like everything everything about her you know visually aesthetically in terms of tactile it's just it's great but then you start you know date you know and then you know the dinner table conversation is just like she's trying to do she's trying to do that how to lose the guy at 10 dates in 10 days thing listen yeah you know it's funny um I remember that after i got the iphone 4s earlier this year pretty much her last year i remember that i dropped it at the at a bar and i was with a couple of cousins and a friend and it just scratched all over the screen and you know great that i was able to go swap the phone for free um but I remember that my aunt was there and she was like why does your phone this why does your phone not have a case and I'm like well would you ever buy a BMW and actually cover all the leather seats with it with a cloth like drive down the road with her with a car cover on it well the car cover art or just or just cover all the leather seats with a currencies I think that's yeah I'm like you wouldn't do that right so I'm like what the problem is that you know obviously if you don't take care of the leather than what do you expect you're gonna end up cracking it and you know the thing about the iphone is i feel it that way you know yesterday I was taking car I was drinking coffee with a good friend and it took him forever to be able to get an iphone 5 and once he got the phone he ended up scratching and he has the white iphone 5 and he ended up scratching it with his wedding band and I'm like well you know it's just you know I showed him my phone and my phone is completely pristine no scratches whatsoever um and he's like how are you able to do that and I'm like well I I handle my phone with my right hand so my wedding bands not there um I always put it on top of a cloth I'm always carrying it with a pouch I always carry every phone with a pouch and I just don't drop them so you know if you ask if you ask Tony Tony never drops his phones it's the same deal so it's like okay if you know that you're gonna be the type of customer that's gonna be dropping your phone not even the galaxy s3 would put up with certain users that's just the way it is you know the problem is not the phone it's the user and so I feel that you know for me my experience with the iPhone 5 is if you know you're not gonna drop your phone don't buy a case and if you know that you're gonna be a you know I have to user then get an outer box or something like that but you know my experience with the iPhone 5 is so far after the buzz it's one of the fastest phones I've ever used one um it's a beautiful device there's just no way around that it is a beautiful device it looks like jewelry and the third thing is you know and I i I've made this point in a lot of my editorials you know power users have have really evolved um in the past the power user was a person that could hack their phones root their phones change the operating systems and everything but you know power users now are people that actually rely on their phones to get work done you know and they need specific apps they need specific services and so you know the iphone is king for the most type of power users but it's not really a king for those people that are out to route bones and stuff like that so you know my experiences I feel that it's still a great phone I just wish that Johnny I would trash the hell out of iOS you know at least aesthetically you know I'm not really after widgets I just wish that at least the icons would anime you know something something that would be different to what we know for the past five years that's just my point with after the bus yeah that the Johnny I've thing I know that was news a while ago and I don't know if that was a rumor at the time or actually confirmed but it became more real for me when I was reading the Tim Cook interview in Business Week magazine where he you know said it again you know Johnny I've is going to be doing a lot with iOS and I my heart became a flutter with what the possibilities that that might be there and try i was kind of imagining what Johnny would say when he you know sat down at a table and was you know planning with some of the marketing guys on how they're gonna change iOS I me how do you what do you think Johnny would say okay you're gonna laugh at this but I'm actually worried um you know you have a macbook air don't you both of you have a Mac yeah none of you have ever used the macbook pro the the the first generation macbook pro the the previous one I actually have the retina display one right now but you know the problem with the previous one is that the USB ports were so close together that you cannot use to USB things at the same time in all you had was two ports so my problem with Johnny I've is that he is really great at doing things that are beautiful but not necessarily useful that's interesting you're worried about Johnny I've bringing a bringing a windows phone like that exactly exactly I am I have you know I am you know my you know cause Scott Forstall was too much into school morphs I do I actually do like school Murph's more than digiti digitally authentic things you know I just think that Johnny could definitely bring a new where and probably what we need is a new era but I just wish that new air brought more usability and not necessarily more beauty let's yeah yeah okey morphs make me an offer me too at this point now yeah well you'd be marshes of every user interface ever since you know windows 95 everything's been like that no no no no no no no I mean come on windows 95 like hold on second that's that's a whole different we can't get into that we have we have six minutes left to talk about the to talk about the iphone 4 before before Brannigan I want to hear about it because i have not handled the iphone 4 right and I Amy do you have one there's a ipad 4 not the iphone 4 oh the iPad for no no I think yeah I think this is the perfect segue for Brandon I mean yeah just just to end it I think that Jony ive there are other things that he's done great like the unibody design in the end the the thinness and design and the minimalism of every Apple product is really great you know I just feel that there are certain things that require usability and not necessarily minimalism and I just hope that he figures that one out right right so I mean how does this in a world where none of this has happened yet in a world where we are still dealing with the same version of iOS we're familiar with on essentially the same hardware we're familiar with just with some some different chips inside and I think an identical chassis what's how is uh Brandon tell me how you feel about the the ipad and how it's going to hold up uh you know I kind of look at the after the bus series as a way to inform people on on on buying decisions I mean after after we've gotten a chance to fold it fully integrate it into our lives whether they should go out and buy it or not yeah and you know you know how I'm stock analysts though the place a buy sell or hold rating on a stock based on you know you know what they think the the best interest of the investor is right yeah i would say i would put a don't to buy on the ipad for for the following reason if you haven't there's really two groups that you can fall into either you have an ipad 3 or you don't have an ipad 3 if you have an ipad 3 the ipad 4 is marginally better it's faster but not by much launching an app is faster but not by much browsing the web is faster by not by much playing the most intense game is faster but not by much the only real amazing thing and it's not that amazing about the ipad 4 is that it charges significantly faster which is which is great because when you when you have a device like the ipad you use it a lot and you wanted to charge as fast as possible so it's interesting that the 12 volt charger which is twenty percent higher voltage than the 10 volt that the ipad 3 came with charges the ipod for in eighty percent the dime is that right wow that's a lot of numbers there i'm just gonna say you're right so what we're dealing with is a seven-hour charge time on the ipad 3 and a 5 hour charge time on the ipad 4 so if you fall into that second group of people that don't have an ipad and are thinking about getting an ipad yeah that four is a great device but you should know that we are on the verge of a redesign of the ipad 4 and i don't i don't know this for it to be a fact but you know in in my best estimation because the ipad has been unchanged for now three years and because the ipad is to a fault too heavy and too thick i I have confidence that I'm pretty darn certain than 2013 we're gonna get an ipad 5 that is finally thin and light and just look at the ipad mini what they did with that absolutely yeah yeah and and you know the ipad minis a different story because it needs a battery that's what a third the size or half the size oh it's much it's much smaller it's actually a one-fourth of the size and I wonder about the screen component because it is now maybe tell me if I'm wrong on this guy's but a screen that is so much less dense like pixel wise do you think that there's an actual like tangible physical difference in in weight between those two displays oh there is you I mean you know of course putting aside the fact that the larger iPad screen is larger so of course it's going to be a little bit heavier but I just mean density wise I've never thought about this before what was it pixel way I think no I think it's insignificant I think there's a few things with the screen one is that the ipad 5 in-cell touch for better or for worse which has lower touch responsiveness so that's gonna make that's gonna save about one to two millimeters right off the bat and that's significant yeah and then apples seems to have figured out a new way to create a battery that's so ridiculously flat um with the ipad mini they that yes yeah yeah it's real flat so maybe if you take that okay so you take that flat battery from the ipad mini you make it the size of the larger 9.7 inch screen so you increase the size probably by double and then you stack two on top of one another and then you know you obviously fuse them together somehow and i think the ipod fives gonna have that battery so maybe that's good for another two or three millimeters we're not gonna get a device as thin as the ipad mini for the ipad 5 but i think you know three or four millimeters is a good bet and in terms of weight um I don't think they're gonna do much with the weight because of you know the battery's gonna have all that all the heft but it'll be significant so so after the buzz the ipad 4 is still a great tablet it's my favorite tablet by far because of the high quality app selection but i don't think it's a good time to buy an ipad 4 agree I couldn't agree with you more yeah I couldn't agree with you more I I that's the reason why what with the ipad mini you know I and it's just it's really tough for me by the way guys well yeah we are gonna have it after the buzz of the ipad mini very soon but I have a Retina Display MacBook Pro and I have a Retina Display iphone and I have a 720p galaxy s3 and for me to go to the ipad mini it's tough but the thing is just so freaking light that it just I'm willing to put up with it yeah that is almost toilet it's it's it's on it's it's it's a realistic Star Trek sci-fi like um those things were heavy on Star Trek but go ahead it's speaking of the ipad mini i have sent my ipad mini away to a company called a no style which does this ammo how do you pronounce an anodized anodized finish on the I they do this on the iphone 5 and on the ipad mini I should be getting a back soon so look out for a video I have gotten my ipad mini died a bronze color which is a nice kind of like reddish copper ish so is really pretty I think is gonna be pretty badass and what do at a no Stiles they they're able to maintain the deed what's that edge the shiny edge the chamfered things sham verdict they're able to maintain that but it's it's now a little bit more scratch proof because of their their process this is it this is not what I actually think but I just had the craziest image of some like you know backwater chop shop with dudes like just putting masking tape on ipad mini's and spraying in with krylon i know i know it's not like that I've just just just left in my brain so go ahead that would bring a tear to my eye um tell me how I should be receiving that back soon they turn it a bet they turn it around in about a week but um actually need to jump off Stephen Schenk is here and I want to hang out with him for a bit so uh it was nice talking gents it's always nice talking with brand before you go real quick galaxy camera from Samsung for verizon has been announced are you excited or now you've handled it you you talked a lot about it we've handled it together what are your thoughts very quickly the best camera is the one in your pocket and the one in my pockets attached to my phone and I don't want to have another pocket with something that's four times as thick even if it takes slightly better pictures in the galaxy camera apparently doesn't take you know incredible photos but so I i I'm not that interested I've curious about it but not that interested galaxy note 2 giveaway trivia question what is the name of the manufacturer that makes the Galaxy Note tues digitizer the element of the screen that makes the s-pen function boom I don't see how you can ask for a better rapper than that thank you very much sir alright guys talk to you later take care of dr. Lederman I ok so is this the segment where we get to make fun of the galaxy camera well you know we didn't we didn't burn that segue for nothing let's uh it's help your thoughts sir you know I love Samsung yeah I love Samsung you haven't handled one yet right I know oh no you know I for the record I love samsung um I had I didn't have high regards for them a year ago um but I love the fact that these guys are bold enough to try everything he took the galaxy note to the galaxy camera they're willing to try everything and that's a bold company I mom and look ahead look how it served them on the galaxy note i mean the galaxy note 2 is just blowing it up right now agreed you know i think that if you know whenever Sampson figures out how to do the kindle deal with the galaxy camera it'll be successful because nobody in their right mind you know amazon figured out something i don't know how they came up with their whispersync thing where you know the 3g I a kindle Tsar able to connect to 3g and down the book download ebooks for free you don't pay for anything right is so you know the problem of the galaxy camera is not really the galaxy camera is the fact that you have to pay for a data plan exactly i know and which person in the right mind would pay for a data plan over a camera that they are rarely gonna take out of the house exactly right we because the camera does have integrated Wi-Fi as well so why are you gonna do that it it sort of reminds me of all that when when the tablet explosion first happened the android tablet explosion and all these android tablets started shipping with embedded 3g radios for the carriers and I'm like who's gonna who's gonna do this who's gonna open up a separate data plan for a free you know for a tablet for an Android tablet that who at the time was running honeycomb that isn't really gonna have much staying power ya Yin tablets in tablets it does make a little more so now it does but it back then it did not I mean you know this shakes next year maybe we'll be saying like job man it's a good thing I took out that HSPA plan for my goats a camera yeah I don't know but here's the thing like I've handled the the camera we in at you know a diva and at a New York City kind of event and you know it has some really cool ideas behind it I have not read any of the the early reviews of the early hands-on so whatever we are going to be getting one by the way yeah and it's going to be really interesting to to see just how how it fares in real world situations but uh Tony's big thing Anton said ed in Berlin he was like why didn't they just take a phone on this I would buy this if it had a phone on this that is the same thing that I thought I would hit up with a thick phone me if it had that quality of the camera exactly would and when we led in with our hands on video at Eva we led in with it with his PureView 808 actually he was yet a really cool idea for a 10 second lead and I was like yeah was something like it I was like last year nokia built a camera with a phone attached today is samsung released a camera with no phone attached house like most hilarious thing that but you know i think i think that the camera has potential i think that the idea is great and i think that if that camera would cost the same thing as a point-and-shoot to be a start-up you know there's just no point in paying 450 bucks for a camera you know you can buy a know how do you call the no lens you know those new cameras that are i actually have one sony nex-5 ends yeah I don't know those are mirrorless camera mirrorless yes okay so i just paid 500 bucks for a mirrorless sony NEX that i could buy an eye-fi card to be able to transfer my photos to my phone so why would i want to pay the same amount of money for a point-and-shoot camera that is not a phone and that i would have to buy an extra day to parent for I just I feel that that's really the problem with the camera the camera itself is not a problem it's the concept it's the business model that's the problem yeah and I think you know I think Samsung is treating it as an interesting little side side project that like you said at the very beginning of this segment you know it's it's something that they're being bold enough to try and I think in America when they did the first Galaxy Note it was only on one carrier was on AT&T and they just put it out there and let's just see and then it turned out to sell like gangbusters and this time the galaxy camera is on on two carriers in the United States and it's it's a first it's a unique product I mean in the very definition of the the sense it's like i've never seen anything like it let's put it out there and we're going to price it weirdly and if it sells then maybe we'll we'll keep going in this direction but i agree it's not priced to sell okay my thoughts are you know with the microsoft surface that whenever with everything else I'm like okay we'll see with the galaxy camera we're not gonna see that's my thought you think it's just not gonna go anywhere it's gonna flop it's gonna flop but again not because of the product because of the business model yeah i agree i mean it it reminds me of and you know this is a whole bag of worms and i don't want to get into or whatever the hell that expression is it's like the Kin which which was named ace right product was not as bad as the as the business model there is the the data plan that it was true that Verizon was putting on you know a friend of mine was you know he's like men my daughter my fifteen-year-old daughter once at iphone 5 and he's like do you think it's worth it for me to buy one and I'm like what phone do you use and he's like oh I've got a blackberry bold 9700 I'm like not even you have an iPhone and you're gonna give your daughter an iphone 5 hahaha you know that's like are you crazy it's ballsy oh I am I wanted we're gonna we're gonna have like a whole bunch more on that on the camera and I'm excited exactly was that that's the thing with the kin and with the galaxy camera you know with what the Ken it was that problem you know if you're not gonna if you're hardly gonna pay for a full data plan for you you're not gonna do it for your kids right so you know the business model would that Ken killed it the business model with the galaxy camera killed it again I would bite of it were cheaper um or you know to replace a point-and-shoot 250 bucks i would pay for it definitely um you know it would probably be like the point and shoot on steroids or something but i would definitely not ask for an extra day to playing just for camera that's just it i just don't want to carry around a separate device I think that's what I don't want to do and that sounds strange because I like Captain two phones right I kind of em always carrying a separate device but I die if the galaxy camera were a little thinner I've had phone built-in I would have bought it i would have pre-ordered it okay in my case i would definitely be willing to use it as a separate device if it were cheaper interesting i would do I would we're gonna have this is as far as we can go speculation wise in time wise because we don't have it yet we're gonna have it very soon I can't wait to talk about it when I when we finally have it um let's let's let's do this again and we actually let's let's kind of close out Android here do you have you had any exposure to the DHT CVX I mean um you were able to handle it I haven't really I haven't really it's um I love the minimalistic design of the phone at least on pictures I'm I'm just not sure what was your experience with it it was very cool the HTC VX listeners if you're not familiar with it is a mid-range device that has been that is finally making its 80 debut after having been delayed several times I think I think we handled at first um New York City brent when Brennan and I went for that AT&T unwrapped event yeah excuse me I'm clicking on the link right now here just it yeah that's right so yeah you should really look it up if you haven't looked it up listeners like it's cool it's kind of like a 1x that that got the that maybe it didn't get like beaten with the ugly stick but it got a little rap on the head you know it's I think it's actually quite beautiful in in person the renders don't look at the press shots actually don't make it look very good but it's got that you know the poly the polycarbonate back and you know it it feels really really excellent and it's one of this cadre of devices that I talked about earlier in the show and that we've talked about several times of this kind of mid-range resurgence you know I think that you know with the one VX and this is just the thing i have a 1x um and probably I've said this so many times my biggest disappointment the 1x is it's just the cumbersome lee big heavy device you know it just makes my fingers go crazy and i have big hands you know i feel that samsung did a great thing with the galaxy s3 and figure it out figuring out a way to make a big phone light they did a great job and you know but I remember that my impression when I held the 1x for the first time was that I actually like the one that's more because it was it was just light enough and big enough to be perfect for me in my particular usage need so I feel that the one VX is right there it's right in the middle it's not too big not too small and I love the design i feel that HTC has great designers they really understand hardware very well and they're really bold with their designs even though they look a lot a lot alike i feel that they're very ergonomic and in their own way so I I do like that phone it would i buy it i would i would yeah and i would definitely consider it because in person especially the VX catches the light it has this kind of enhanced silver bezel that that really catches the light nicely and it looks a lot more high-end than then i guess it is it looks very elegant so green and it is yeah but you know i'm glad to see it's finally out i'm sorry it's late and it's not gonna make much of a it's not gonna do much for HTC yeah what's a beautiful design with a bad parent company and this is not me throwing a rock that's right it's not they're a great company but they are really strong right now they are bearing now and they're not you know what they're they're starting to because that the droid DNA which we talked about endlessly on a previous episode in which we've talked about for weeks in which we've covered extensively on the site is such a beautiful thing and when we heard about the butterfly launch which we kind of interpret it as a global launch we were all talking about it like on Iran email we were talking about it i am we were all just a buzz with them speculation and it turned out to be that the HTC butterfly which is the droid DNA and the butterfly j it's all the same thing with different radios is it was only announced for china that day i remember i know and i know you're like rocking out daily that day yeah and i was like oh my god the global DNA it's like oh here it is oh shoot amazon when are you gonna get this thing i want this phone now I was crazy yeah then I start I started looking at the specs and I'm like wait a second what are these 3g bands i'm like 850 well i got 850 in one of my carriers here but i actually want to use this on another carrier that i use um and I'm like what the wait wait a second and in recent years 1904 you knighted States yeah exactly and I'm like okay highly Russian subs got to be something wrong one of the emails he's like wait look at the bands guys and we're all looking at the bands like wait this is crazy this isn't a global variant we're just going on and but meanwhile you're writing a script for the pocket out daily I'm halfway through an editorial on the global butterfly son of it gotta go back and rewrite all this so anyway it turned out to be the Chinese one and I I reached out to HTC and they're very quick tour to reply the one thing I wanted to confirm with them was that the device had a micro SD card slot mm-hmm and I cuz because that was the that is the primary thing that I've complained that everyone who's complained about with the droid DNA is that it only has 16 gigs of storage and there's no expandability and that's just absurd okay what if a flagship device and HTC to their credit responded very quickly as quickly as as they could our contact was in Beijing for the launch so he responded as quickly as he could he said that is confirmed the microSD slot is present on the butterfly it was not present on the droid DNA because the they needed the room for the LTE radio no no I don't know if you know I'm far be it for me to question that I just you know let me try to understand this there are admit okay you have a mid-range nokia lumia 820 with you with a micro SD card slot a removable vac a removable battery and an LTE radio and how is it that HTC can't figure out how to add a a slot and i'm not gonna use the word yeah n FN f slot on a 5-inch spa in especially and this is HTC which we've already established makes some of the best hardware in the business agrees so is it that i mean is are they are just willing to sacrifice all that in the name of aesthetics because maybe I really isn't possible I think HTC is the next blackberry you remember the days where the blackberry pearl was like you can buy it with Wi-Fi but not with GPS or we were to yes but not with Wi-Fi yeah the genius and that was the only reason why the blackberry bold was such a hit because it was the first BlackBerry that had everything yeah I did I don't know you know I I hesitate to say that HTC is the next blackberry I really because I think that they I think that they were in danger of becoming that in 2011 but then they learned their lesson and have been you know they have been doing better financially but they've been doing better from a product perspective this year so I think that they're on the right track maybe they're not going anywhere down that road but at least they're standing on the right Road ok the problem when you when you focus on specific products is either your products have to be and these are these are the things where I'm like why are you guys following Apple these are the stupid things that I feel that OEM should not follow non removable batteries is a mistake non removable storage is a mistake and you know it's just funny when you have an HTC a you know and I'm standing and I'm staying I'm sitting here watching Peter Chou at mwc in Barcelona what you're gonna be there next year yeah and and I'm like okay he's I and this is the most like carnac beautiful design and when I go grab the phone and I'm like okay where's the SD slot and it's wait a second it's sealed and I was carrying an HTC sensation in my pocket there and like wait a second this phone has everything and then the new one x doesn't and I'm like what is this what's going on and I'm like why are you guys doing what you're not supposed to be doing you know these are the things you shouldn't copy from Apple non-removable battery is non-removable storage yeah that's that's just a mistake and you know and and and I'm like okay fine they were trying to make a slim design and it's beautiful poly carbon and so fine I'm gonna put up with it and then you get Sam's on three months down the road well the galaxy s3 that has everything right yeah you can you have to know what you can get away with right right you know and I don't know units we're we're gonna have to see what what goes on i'm looking forward to the butterfly global launch because I mean I'm it's it's guaranteed basically in my view and tell me if I'm crazy on this it's guaranteed to have a microSD slot and probably just an HSPA radio right persons probably and I am with you on that it we know butterfly you know day one I will buy it I will yes yeah your your review was enough for me to be like I am drooling over this thing to DNA it's just too bad it doesn't work here you know where I am but yes i would i would be willing to cough up whatever money and this is just the thing HTC I wish and and I really hope you're listening I want you to be bold enough to actually make the phone a little more expensive if you have to but put in everything please please you know and we'll have to see how it goes i we do we have heard from from HTC directly some of the guys on the on the floor at the droid DNA launch we're talking about pocket now and it's I think at least one of them did mention the weekly so I do hope I do hope that because I feel like we give HTC such fanservice on the podcast and it sounds like it sounds like some kind of like if you were a conspiracy-minded you would think we were sponsored or something like that because we're always like more bad news out of HTC but aren't they awesome you know you know it's just the funny it's like you know we've got great relationships with each of the companies um HTC I would say is we have a great relationship with them but you know it's it's always you know HTC is just different and it's just funny because in my case I've got and I'm not gonna lie to you I have seven HTC devices in my drawer whoa and I'm from you know from I was ever since they built the first I pack I just became a fan of their design and it's just funny because none of those seven devices in my drawer I got for free I actually paid for yeah well that's and sorry I just had a massive coughing fit it's it's fascinating how much sentimentality can play into which devices you keep around and we know this as geeks and listeners you know this because we're all kind of geeks in the same way where it's like I love HTC because they were the first android phone I ever had was the HTC evo on sprint nice and it was like the phone of 2010 like it was the thing everyone talked about and you know so i really really i remembered HTC from the times when i was selling them and i was like my god it's finally great to have one of these yeah the record listeners every one of you that calls me an Apple fanboy could you please ask me how many iPhones do I have in my drawer please right um you know I would declare myself an HTC fanboy fine I'll take it it gets to that point where you're like where you know you're you're a real lover of a brand when I was reading a blog entry about how the design of the HTC evo came about it was a blog entry from a guy who worked at the at the engineering firm that HTC hired to design the the physical it you know the physical embodiment of the device because the chassis was not an HTC design they brought in you know they collaborated with another company on it yea which was just fascinating reading about like this the confluence of the pillowy design with the hard edges and all this kind of stuff I'm like my god i'm sitting here I've been sitting here for 25 minutes reading an article about how it how a mobile device is designed one I i knew i was really geeky but i didn't know i got to this extreme to apparently i'm really in love with HTC and then 2011 landed and i was like what are you guys doing great agreed anyway we raid we've got to jump into two pieces of listener mail and then we gotta go because we're at we're at time basically and yeah i hope that you will i hope that we're able to get through this first one in in a very short amount of time because i feel like we talked about this for about a half hour at the start of the show so maybe listener whose name I don't know how to pronounce as usual kire or kirei it is que ir e hear hear ok either way one we've got somewhere in there we got one of them right this is a good question do you think this is a windows phone question do you think over time the Metro UI design or the modern UI design will devastate all devices and applications as it's heavily integrated within the Metro tile design fashion does change quickly in so do you is what will Microsoft do when users are bored I've been using the samsung omnia 7 for two and a half years now and I'm sick of tiles and now it's on my desktop fascinating so this is a viewpoint we don't hear very often from not only from somebody who doesn't like tiles I mean we hear that all the time but you know a user who's lived with them for a very long time and is now sick of them hmm typical me let me go ahead let me answer first I completely sympathize with being bored with something even after six months I think with my samsung focus back in the day I was like yeah I'm kind of this is I've grown tired of this let me go to something that's a little bit more visual for visually fulfilling but that happens to me on every platform almost every platform I get bored and I want to jump to the next to the next thing so I think this is a personality a question more than it is a platform question because we've seen the opposite extreme with with iphone users right we've seen people who have been bought the iphone back in 2007 and still have an iphone 5 and they've bought everyone and you know for millions of people they don't care that they have a static grid of icons I don't find it boring they're like others familiar this is home and I think that's true for Windows Phone users or so I think this is a personality thing I think this is like if you're a platform jumper then you're just gonna be a platform jumper it's you know it's not the platform's ok i will i'll put this into this perspective I you know I studied business and one of the things that I and I'm gonna move a little bit into Samson but I'll make a point out of this ok you know what Apple's done with the ipod and the iphone is figure out a way to put it in style yeah they've they've made it a style fashion statement what what Samsung did with the galaxy s3 is the same thing they figured out a way to make it a fashion statement um you know and i think that microsoft's marketing is terrible just like HTC Marketing is terrible and that's the reason why these products haven't really taken off there's a lot of genius behind the Metro UI and there's a lot of genius behind a lot of the things I you know I feel that once Microsoft gets rid of their marketing firm and and hires anybody that does a better job at making the the Metro UI a style thing then I feel that it has a future but as of yet it you know I feel that it'll take more time in the problem with more time is when you have an aggressive Apple that will not let you win hmm when you have an aggressive Samson that will not let you win and when you have a Samson that doesn't really want to push the achieve s you know if Samsung would push the achieve s the same way that they push the galaxy s3 then the you know the platform would have a future well what I mean how does that tie into I mean you know like from it from a UI perspective like from a well know the thing is he's asking if you know do we really think that it's gonna become more of a mainstream in the future you know though at the time that applications grow and evolve into it and become more on tyler's and stuff you know I I feel that the problem is Microsoft is being too slow and marketing it inadequately so yeah the apps could be there and once it's there than you could say that it's a mathematical certainty because of how many windows users are there in the world that yes eventually it will grow um but you know will that help you from the boredom I agree with you Michael it won't you know i'm bored of the iphone but still every time that I walk down the road and I see another iphone that's not mine on the counter i want to buy it that's just me I'm just dupid like that it's true it happens to be all the time and I look at a galaxy s3 on the counter and it's not mine and I wanted but I have one in my pouch so it's it's just that they figured out a way to make it such a fashion statement that people want to buy it and that's really what Microsoft has to push they have to make Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 a fashion statement in order for people to adopt it and therefore even if you get bored with it everybody will have one and therefore you won't want to get rid of yours either right yeah that's that's a very that's something I I have a difficult time disagreeing with um okay you know I but i think i think we are is we continue to be mired in this space where we don't have enough data for how Windows Phone 8 windows 8 are going to play together and how they're going to affect the market together and which direction they're going to to drive users and I it's kind of like this herding cats thing it's like I don't know what what this is going to do so we will have to see it's a good question it is and it's uh but it sounds like for you particularly how do how did you say it before I mean kiri could hire here here god I can't say things sorry buddy yeah oh it's going to get worse I've every piece of reader mail is from a name that I can't pronounce because I'm just inadequate I think for you okay you are going to be you are stuck in in the same kind of dubious spot that the rest of us are where you you you've held out for two and a half years with the same UI which is awesome it's more than I've ever done in my life but it sounds like you're ready for a change and you shouldn't feel guilty about that agree um just to close us out we have a interesting email from froude Thorson boar Seth that's as close as I can get perhaps for a day by the way listeners he never pronounced is my name so don't worry I know I can't roll that are I can't do anything that up great way to put a K in there and a TD but this gentleman is is is from Norway where many phones are not available all the motorolas most notably and it mentions that he listens to our podcast while doing laundry which makes the task a lot more entertaining well thank you I thought I was alone in that that's great no yeah me too I when I'm folding laundry I quality was good quality control the podcast is great the questions I'm looking for an android device with a physical keyboard without too many compromises hardware wise is there even such a thing I mean are there any such models coming out in the near future that you know of and finally finally our physical keyboards a thing of the past only to be found on mid-range devices for a smaller market never again in the high-end well will you do the honors or you like me to start haha uh why don't you go ahead okay we share a view on this I didn't catch your name but here's the thing from fro their load through this app yeah there's this application called swiftkey please it's like five bucks at times sometimes it costs three bucks that application single-handedly is responsible for making me like android you know my first android device was the nexus one and i hate it i love the phone it was beautiful in everything but i hated the keyboard i came from blackberries from the slide out keyboards of the touch pro 2 which was the best keyboard in the business and i was of the mentality that this that the keyboard was a necessity up to the point to my first windows phone being a dell venue pro just because of the slide out keyboard actually waited for it so my point is you don't really know how much a keyboard actually deters the experience until you actually find the good software keyboard so my advice to you is forget about the keyboard by swiftkey it'll be worth every penny it gives you a 30 day trial and it'll make you love android and by the way since you're from norway and you were able to send us this email in english and you catch this so you're multilingual I you know I speak two languages I know people that speak three languages and I believe that swiftkey was designed by people in Germany and these guys actually speak three languages themselves and that's the cool thing about swiftkey is I don't know how these guys were able to figure that out but you can actually have three languages set up in the keyboard and it is able to predict what language you're typing without having to switch the keyboard so I wish that apple would allow a third-party keyboard and I wish that swiftkey would come to the iphone and just about everything this planet has to offer see I was gonna do a piece on swiftkey at one point I never got around to it so I actually haven't used the app all that much and I I've had really good luck with stock touch touch keyboards but I was in a similar place with this physical keyboard question several years ago with the you know with the webos line which always you know the thing was like we're always going to build keyboards into this because that's where our roots are that's what we did on the trio that's what you know blah blah blah and I appreciated that and I liked you know something keyboards were good some are bad on those devices but it was always great to have them and I I never said like I'm never gonna use a touch keyboard like I could use a touch keyboard and it was fine i had an iphone for a while and it was like now I can really fly on this this is great but I appreciated the physical feedback of touch keyboards and we have it's mentioned in this in the in the listener mail here it's a I I bet you've discussed this and exhausted all the angles that there are to this topic we have we've talked about it a lot and I've written I've written an editorial it was a brutally honest question corner some other folks on the side of written editorials and I still have friends though who will not give up their blackberry not because of bez or not because of enterprise stuff not because of the UI certainly but because they don't want to give up their physical keyboard I mean this is still a thing but it's great and I think it's it what I find is that it is typically the people who have never even tried a touchscreen keyboard and some of them would be like well I tried it for a little bit in that I then I had to go back and it's like you didn't use the right one and here's the thing you know people don't really remember this guy remember when the iphone was launched the first generation iphone you know is Steve Ballmer came on record and said it doesn't have a keyboard it's not a good email machine right you know you remember that yeah it's a good bowler voice yeah and and the funny thing is I remember that Apple actually threw out like three or four tutorials on the keyboard specifically because people were having a hard time understanding that the keyboard was predicting what they were typing and so people would actually look at the keyboard and type and you know that's the biggest issue you know a friend of mine you know the same blackberry friend that I told you that's giving his daughter an iphone 5 he's like I don't want to get an iphone he's like I want to keep her and I'm like I showed him my finger in his eye and he's like oh my god because my finger covers like half 3ds on it yeah right half the keyboard and he's like Oh God and it's just funny cuz this guy's like twice my size if he's got small hands and so I'm like okay this is the reason why I moved away from software keyboards see you don't you no longer have to worry and this is the paradigm shift that a lot of people have not from hardware keyboard you mean yeah I think they think that software keyboards are cumbersome because they have to type accurately and they can't because they have to look at the keys and that's the biggest paradigm shift that people have not made that's that's always my point it's like yeah but I got to be really precise with it whatever it's like no you don't you have to find a keyboard that you can trust now it for different people that's going to mean different things if you're on the iphone you better damn what like you say I'm a better damn well like the iOS stock keyboard because that's all you got if you're on Android you can do swiftkey if you're on it you can do the stock keyboard you can do this keyboard from the hardware manufacturer they always put a crappy keyboard on but if you like it you like it if you're on Windows Phone you better like the windows phone keyboard for me between the windows phone keyboard and the stock jellybean keyboard I can just fly and not because I'm accurate but because the autocorrect works with me and it Noah great what you know and it substitutes the right words so that's so that's the thing and just to kind of to kind of wrap wrap that up to answer that final question our physical keyboards the thing of the past yes they are they are I mean they're they're already being sidelined and put on two mid-range devices there hyatt these two high-end devices these big ol side sliding things like the Photon Q which I actually liked quite a bit you know those are those are those are yesterday's news I mean physical keyboards add weight they add thickness they add complexity they and they add more parts that could actually get ruined over dream exactly where that ok so you know just to answer my answer to the question is ok which is the best software keyboard in the business funny people are gonna laugh right now Windows Phone it is it is yeah second law second best software keyboard in the business is iOS they figured it out from day one um they actually figured it out first but you know windows phone was actually better and for me the third one would be and this is the coolest thing about Android you can buy any android phone and just add swiftkey to it so just think about it the phone will cost you in Norway like I don't know five hundred arrows just add 10 arrows extra to that price or five arrows extra I think it is right there for what is for the app by swiftkey yeah and that's that's whatever android phone you get just add that and you'll be golden it'll be fine here's the point I think we need to try and rate stuff like this is that that's my point is that you have to find out what's going to work for you like for me the stock jellybean keyboard beats beats every everything else he on Android for me like that's what I want to use and that's you know so you have to find out what it is especially if you're making such a big leap and I don't know if there are not many bigger leaps in the mobile space right now than the one that a user using a physical keyboard when he moves to a touchscreen keyboard like I mean that's huge that's a big you I shift and it dates and it's painful for a lot of people but you don't you've got to do unless you want to be stuck in mid-range phones for the rest of your existence yeah you know what the coolest thing about software keyboards is you know to our listener it's the fact that there comes a point where since you know that the phone will predict what you're typing you can actually type without looking at the splits really cool when you learn how to do it's really cool you remember the moment you remember the moment just as well as you remember the moment when you could learn how to type on a real keyboard I'm without looking exactly wow I can do this and you're like doing it in your pocket you're like oh this is great yeah but yeah anyway we've we've got it we've got to wrap it up thank you both listeners for your free or mail and and for for listening obviously thanks to all the listeners who sent in may always still have so we got a lot of pieces this week we're gonna have to push them some of them to to next week but before we kind of wrap it up here this has been a great show i'm sorry that Brandon is not here to join us for the for the wrap-up and high made you uh do you have closing thoughts for us before we head on out to the rest of our day closing thoughts is this has been a crazy year michael hasn't it with the season with everything i mean you'd raise the awesome job reviews and I'm his life you know I'm really liking what the panoramic looks I I can't wait for next year to see how many you know innovations we get because it's just crazy right now I i love you know before like 23 years ago it was like everything was iphone the only cool thing out there was iphone and everybody was just trying to catch up and i just love the fact that this time everybody's just asking about other alternatives and that's you know for everybody that calls me a fanboy i just i did i crack up inside because I'm not and I'm more I'm more apples biggest critic which is something you know I'm just everybody's biggest critic and I think that we are on a Segway to something beautiful coming up next year and I just can't wait I think you're right and it's it's it's as Joe Levi off and says it is a wonderful time to be alive and it's a great time to follow the technology space because this year has been absolutely outrageous with a lot of innovations where we're seeing some of the fiercest competition we've ever seen in the space which is which I didn't necessarily expect because we now have fewer relevant players in the space than I think we've ever had before and so then it's just getting really really impressive and and I also can't wait to see what next year brings but thankfully we got a couple weeks left before that happens and and then I got to see you or see yes that's gonna get some awesome person at CES that's gonna be a ball and we are going to I think we are gonna at least try to podcast live from CES so we'll be able to do that thing where we're actually in the same room and we can dock well in that going to be amazing that's gonna be awesome all right well on that note on that hopeful note we are wrapping up one of the longer episodes of the pocket now weekly great conversation today thank you very much for joining joining us hai mei ah thank you thank you for the invite us all absolutely we got to have you on a little bit more often hear it was a little too long this time listeners feel free to throw a tweet our way as most of us are pretty active on the Twittersphere i don't know if anybody tweets as much as I do but hi Mei is at hai mei underscore Rivera is that correct that's right good Brandon is at Brandon minimun and i am at captain two phones thanks everyone for listening and you you