Gadgetory

from pocketnow.com this is PocketNow weekly hello and welcome to episode 02 five of the pocket now weekly the first podcast of 2013 in a series from pocketnow.com where we discussed the awesome and the awful in the world of mobile technology from windows to android iphone and everything in between I'm your host Michael Fisher senior editor at pocket now and I'm joined by the man with the bronze ipad mini as will become your new title I think Brandon minimun good day to you sir good day and by the man from Utah Joe Levi the android guy how are you today absolutely fantastic I am pleased to hear that we had a very very minimum amount of pre podcast chatter today so I actually know nothing about how you guys are standing in in the world and I would love to know Joe how your uh how your new year's was New Year's was fantastic i actually made it up past midnight this year yes playing Settlers of Catan oh that's awesome that's such a fun game did you have some people over the over the householder was their family only affair no we went over to our friend and neighbors house our kids and their kids spent all evening watching just horribly terrible kid shows most of them had Barbie princesses of some sort in them as they should and the grown-ups tried to keep ourselves caffeinated so we could stay awake and not make stupid mistakes lang road on settlers first door that game and I think that's an awesome thing to do and I receive and second of all I I used to make fun of my parents something fierce when they couldn't make it to midnight on New Year's Eve I was just so I was so outraged that anyone would would not want to see the actual thing do you remember you like the you know the New York City ball drop did you watch that this year either of you oh yeah absolutely that's what we do all the time but remember i'm in utah so we watch it at ten o'clock and that's good enough we can go to bed after that ha lucky you that's a good point i used to think when i was a kid when I like heard about the ball dropping I used to think it was like they would and I'm being sir I'm not being funny this is what I thought I thought they would get a really strong baseball pitcher to like grab the to grab a baseball and there was like a big ceremony at a baseball stadium he would throw the ball into the air and he was so strong that it would take a year to come down that's how I thought the new year was rung in like legitimately when I was like four did you not have television no i don't i guess i didn't watch it enough i was busy getting all the wrong messages from Sesame Street I was busy like telling people off and oscar the grouch quotes so i don't know it's just amazing i even watched the ball drop in new york city in years now because I've been too busy where we've just haven't planned the evening right what did you do brand it I didn't do that much I lost I watched a lot of movies in the last week or two one of which was pitch perfect have you guys seen that know what's good about it's about acha acapella groups oh yeah glee the movie that's right is that what it is I would people got yeah it's uh it's such an awesome flick if you like music at all and it's got some pretty good actors in it it's just a really good movie I feel like you told me about that before and I need to put that aside I need to put that on my watch list you want to watch that in Vegas uh I don't think long time and it's like we won't have time and I just saw it four days ago you're you're high um yeah I wish if there's any video watching it's going to be us editing our coverage and it's arriving at ease that's right and we're gonna have Jaime Rivera with us so we're not gonna be able to watch the pocket now daily like Tony and I did in Berlin yeah yeah we will just incidentally since CES is coming up next week we will be podcasting live from CES I believe just once but it's going to be a lot of fun and we'll be in the same hotel room and it'll be it'll be nice so that'll be look forward to that yeah and and this year we aim to be I mean in every trade show we attend we try to be video heavy so we can actually show you stuff and do comparisons but this year we're taking it up a notch we've got three people on the ground which is more than we've ever had and we're gonna have a lot of comparisons a lot of hands-on out of Michael a lot of me a lot of high may and so the best thing you could do actually subscribe to our YouTube channel because there's going to be a delay from when we upload the videos to when they hit pocket now because we own pocket now we have to write them up put a nice image and so forth on YouTube is just boom it's there and ready to go Oh mm-hmm go light on my content until then so you don't get tired of me but that won't be too hard because I feel like we've been in kind of a this this post holiday content trough for a minute like it's amazing to see how slow the news feeds have been have been moving in comparison to how they were before the holidays I feel like I feel like like y2k happened you know and this is kind of like desolate landscape with the occasional like leak and so there's a couple things going on but it's the incubation period this is when all the good ideas happen because everybody's at home with their family back in the real life and I get to see how the product X Y or Z could make this better and then they go back with a renewed fervor you know it's so true I actually there there are at least two editorial ideas that I've one of which I've already written and the second one is coming up tomorrow that yeah that sprung directly from my time with the family over the holiday and watching kind of normal people interact with technology and not just normal people but older normal people I feel like those are some of my favorite pieces to write because they re ground me back in this back in the real world instead of this world where all s geeks know all the gestures and why are you know why don't normal people know this you know so it's it's good to get out there for some perspective in fact yesterday what some don't know is that back in college I had this sort of side job business thing where I would help senior citizens with their computers and those and and I still have a couple of remaining clients and I saw one yesterday she got a new imac one of those really thin ones and it was amazing to you know that it's amazing hardware um but something strange happened she needed Microsoft Word and she didn't want PowerPoint or Excel so every few years I think I do the same search on Google how to buy just a word you you can't so you have to pay a hundred and twenty dollars for for for Excel PowerPoint and word and then I'm looking in the mac app store where pages or yeah pages is nineteen dollars I don't understand how Microsoft could still have this motto I guess because Bobo net is like me still cough up 120 bucks for one piece of software right but it's just such a broken model that Microsoft has it's unbelievable yeah I don't know fortunately I don't have to deal with much on device word processing cuz my needs are not that great but I do I did have an app purchase experience though recently as a result of some advice my roommate gave me and you guys may have heard of this before and I'm sure tons of listeners have but i am not much of an iphone or ipad gamer I'm not much of a mobile gamer at all but I was faced with glowing reviews from my roommate and friend Bob who informed me that I absolutely must buy this game called the room have you guys heard that's so funny i just finished the room a few weeks ago really but it's it's uh it's it's ios-only right i I can't confirm that but I do i do think it's it's the truth and I don't generally like puzzle games you know I'm not really a big puzzle guy but this is so well done and it's so creepy the atmosphere is so unique and the graphics are just so beautiful and it's so nice and it's challenging in just the right way without being frustrating and there's enough hints if you get stuck it's it's really what was it brenda was at 499 or something like that yeah it was around there did you find yourself using the hints often or did you get by without them I started off with this really noble idea that i wouldn't use any hints and bad i think about 45 minutes into the game i was like you know what these are actually quite helpful and i'm just gonna get frustrated without them so i don't think anyone could actually play the game without the hints and did you get to the end I have not I'm actually not even probably halfway through how long did it take you to play all the way through this awesome meets puzzle it's really not that long you know there's a box within a box within a box and then there's another box there's there's like three boxes maybe four right and it doesn't take that long probably about five hours of gameplay oh it's you know that I'm gonna save it and listeners I mean I don't often advocate games but you just need to look at the reviews for this one I think there's something like 45,000 reviews and it's almost a perfect five-star rating and a little hint if you can play it on if they have an iphone version and then the ipad version played on the ipad 3 i put it on the ipad mini and if there's two minutes there were too many jagged edges and then i went and played it on the ipad 3 i'm like wow this is unbelievable for that Retina Display yeah yeah so let's see if we can let's see how Joe Levi's doing it was still absent Joe I little patches of silence but that point I can pick a most okay he is switched to a.m. sound I decided 802 11 n was just too much so I'm going back to 802 11 be that way you sound like you're calling from a cell phone somewhere in the in the in the Sahara okay can you hear me now mmm there we go now it's clear that's much better it's bizarre it's a Bermuda Triangle of Utah today ah ok so we've got we've got Joe Levi back after a little bit of a audio issue and we need to jump into news and surprisingly incredibly um there's a lot of new platform news out this week like I guess this holiday season was the season for all these nascent platforms to come out of the woodwork and say hey we've been working for a while and we've got something beautiful to show you so we've got what you bun to Ubuntu sailfish and open webOS and they're all three of them have have big news this week so Brandon and I were talking about this pre show and I think Brandon you've got probably more organized thoughts than I do because I've just watched all three of these I've just gotten caught up on all three of these just before the show so let's let's talk about it i mean what excites us most and Joe I didn't mean to exclude you anybody what excites us most about this what always excites me about a new mobile operating system is that someone someone that had to be pretty smarter a group of people had to sit down and create new paradigms new way of doing things a new wave new ways of thinking about things and it's it's very unnatural for us because we know the Windows Phone way we know the Android way we know the iphone way but to have to like learn something new um you know it's it's a little bit of a challenge which is why you know there's this you bunt to for smartphone video out there that that is about its pretty long as 20 minutes only half of which is actually the phone and you gotta kind of watch it a few times to get it or else at first you're gonna say this is two different I can't I can't imagine how I'd ever want to use this what what I think is most interesting about you bun to is the way that you switch apps like in in all their operating systems do you guys use fast app switching a lot or do you just kind of stay in the same map and go back to your home screen oh I never go back to the home screen know if there's a multitasking functionality built into the OS I will use it like I will try and get that cards modality back that I appreciate it from webos he had and and have you ever met somebody who doesn't know that they can they can use fast app switching and they always go back to the home screen like mom or dad totally totally absolutely and and then you show them and you're like look you just double tap the home button or you just tap and hold the home button and look you get out you can see all your programs and there and they look at you like why would I ever want this like oh why wouldn't you ever want this this is the like this is this is the best way to be productive a smartphone so anyway the problem with all the idea all operating systems right now is that to get to the fast app switcher it's behind an action wall so on the iphone i think it's the probably the fastest double tap and android is a tap and hold of the home button or if it's a Nexus device with on-screen buttons you just tap one button which is probably the best and then a Windows Phone it's a tap and all of the back button in an ubuntu it's a swipe from the right edge of the screen which which makes it real easy to go back to the previous appt the problem is the reverse doesn't work if you swipe from the left edge you get a list of programs instead of going back to the previous app if they were to fix that I think it would be a not a revolutionary way too fast apps which book one of the most fluid efficient ways to do so so that I completely agreed that I was going to say the same exact thing Ubuntu uses the mobile app excuse me the mobile platform of you want to uses all four corners or all four edges of the screen for specific gestures it's a lot like Windows 8 in my experience on the surface but it also has the same intuitiveness problems where eight and that's exactly one of them you swipe in from the left and you get your your recently used apps and stuff and I like that that agric recent stuff into a list but you swipe from the right and it goes back to the previous app which is wonderful but then when you try and duplicate that functionality by going over to the other side of the screen is saying ok so I want to go back to the one I was at before I switch oh wait no now I'm in the recent list so it's but you know it's something that you have to that I think you could get used to pretty easily but like you say it would just take time it would take a learning process I wasn't turned on as much by their whole philosophical the philosophical talk of like we don't want to lock screen to like to keep you from your apps because we think it's wrong to keep you from your apps it's like no right you just I mean you know you're doing something different and I appreciate that but lock screens have a real utility and that's to prevent your apps from going free in your pockets you know yeah and then and then so they don't have a lock screen yet there's this like way you can unlock the lock screens yeah you like swipe something and then it like on lok SI right so they really do have a lock screen they just think they don't like using that term because you know it's 22 comments to yeah yeah good i thought there was instead of having a lock screen that has specific apps that you can get into that have to be specially coded for the the lock screen to be able to work or widgets on the lock screen or whatever their lock screen is kind of there but you can get into other apps it is a quick launch basically i want to launch this particular app in it launches and unlocks at the same time the curity on that I don't know there bhuntu so their security heavy and we'll see how that works I I'm not sure I do like how the lock screen are them the front screen whatever they call it the facing screen has this kind of there's an there's a kind of circular animated pulsating light show that is it's not necessarily subtle but it's not too flashy but apparently it changes over the course of your use of the phone so it evolves to to kind of reflect you there was a big push on the video the guy was like it's like a fingerprint it's like and by the way I'm sorry I don't mean to keep calling him the guy who did who did the video I feel underprepared do you know who was on who was the host of that video it's that that british guy oh oh right okay well i was right then anyway it you know they say it's like this very unique signature it makes the phone yours and that's you know it's cool they've obviously made some really big strides toward making a unique and cool UI they've brought back this kind of the just type experience from webos a little bit where there's a persistent search bar near the top of the screen like on Android but you know and you can search the device and the web at the same time which is nice but there's there's a lot of new UI paradigms at work between the recently aggregator stuff commit I'd imagine the physical thing that you're talking about where it can show you a variety of notifications they have it showing how many tweets you have how many messages you have what your how many how much talk time you have left I imagine they're not going to keep that because usually you want to see more than just one piece of information and I guess it's going to learn that like first thing you do when you turn on your phone as you go to Twitter so it's gonna always show you tweets or your battery is getting low so it's gonna show you how much talk time you have left but like what if you want to see your messages and how much talk time you have left I I think that that's going to be changed you know what and maybe it'll be flippable like that Motorola circles widget that I love that would be neat or you can like take your finger and rotate it around the die exactly and that's what it looks like you can do that it mean it it looks like that that functionality is if it's not built in already it will be but there's a I want did you see the part in the video about the apps I was it was about to to kind of talk about that today no apps are our first-class citizens yeah well html5 apps are first-class citizens web apps are first-class citizens that's that's the breaking point so yeah so there's another thing with as far as absco there's web apps which are you know prioritized on the new view bun to mobile it seems but there have tie-ins to the Notification Center so as a result they can control things like little envelopes and the status bar and stuff like that which i think is unique right I've never met a web app that can can do that I guess it's just a generic like notification service thing that should work on multiple phones and I've never heard of any web app doing that natively on the phone so I guess it's a new kind of API that developers would have to tap into right and you know I I think that was cool and I so that got me pretty excited for a second where I was like oh wow this is something new what are they going to do because the whole question in my mind and I think the whole question in anybody's mind when they're watching a new platform a video of a new platform is well what are you going to do about the app situation cuz that's that's the question you know blackberry is gonna do their thing where they run android apps and that's that's a really cool you know idea do we know if this can run android app since it's based on android right you and I don't maybe when we get Joe Levi back in the air he'll be able to weigh in on that yeah so the other thing about having web apps as first-class citizens is for example I I know there's a wikipedia app but I don't want to download it for some reason I guess I I don't want to be that smart so what I do is I have a Wikipedia bookmark and I go there often I'll and they're off and on Google if if Wikipedia on my phone was treated like an app that would mean a few things one I would see it uh with its nice little Wikipedia icon in the app switcher so I could switch more quickly to and from it to its state would but we may be safe eight so whereas if I enter it from the browser it's got to reload the page and if enough time has gone by maybe it's been kicked out by other browser tabs if it's a first-class app it never gets kicked out and three I can manipulate it more I can put it into in the case of you bump to it hangs out in that little side thing in your favorite apps you can link it in various parts of the operating system on your launcher if this were Android that we were talking about so there's a lot of really interesting advantages of having web apps as as treated like applications there are and it goes beyond notifications and it's really exciting to do that and I was really excited because that's you know how I'm like okay this is how they're going to overcome not having an installed you know not having a pool of hundreds of thousands of apps to draw on but then there was this part in a video that I think they did their best to gloss over it was like but web apps can't do everything and sometimes you want to natively code adapt their beautiful and their performance is great and they're great for games he's basically running down the whole list of everything we already know about why apps are important and then he's like and we've got a great SDK for that and then they kind of move on and I'm like wow really ok so fruit for legit stuff that needs an app you still are going to happen developers are still gonna have to code for now a fourth platform that's the proposition here I will shave my head the day when a new platform within the next five years comes around with an SDK and there are enough apps to cover all of your needs after a period of time in other words I don't think that even with this SDK even with you know the openness of you bunk do in the name recognition I don't think this thing will ever have enough apps to where we can call it a home you know what I mean right and I think it's so it's early to make any of those kind of calls but I mean that's my gut feeling as well because I walk around with my windows phone and I think about this this dev thing all the time and even windows phone which is you know getting close to 200,000 app so if it's not there already I still get this impression that when a developer and Joe you can tell me if I'm right or wrong here when a developer is like coding absence like okay I got the iOS one I got to the Android one at some point and then there's this kind of like there's this deep breath and it's like oh jeez and I gotta do windows phone to Mike do I have to do windows phone can I get out of that may wait until Microsoft throws me some money you know I feel like that will only be exacerbated with a fourth platform you know as a web for that's kind of the all-in-one flying language and unifying source information even the apps that we run on our phones are their web fed instead of everything for the app you know that you face and whatnot from the web they're getting all data from the web and that's not going to go away we found and this is kind of telling and I think it I think it doesn't bode well for the web app as a first class citizen model Facebook made their entire app in html5 it essentially was just a container that was a inandhra that app that consumed the ha5 special mobile version of Facebook for the device they abandoned it I wonder if and and I I wonder why you know the in the Facebook situation where they used in html5 web site the performance wasn't good as a native app was that beak was it because the browser doesn't have good enough performance or as because native apps just have much much better performance potential because they can tap into the hardware in a better way well the reason is when you're talking about a native app consuming data all you're doing is asking for that data and the app itself controls the the user interface it controls the animations it controls all of the all of the pretty is that we think a native app should have with it when you're using html5 still that limitation where it just doesn't look as good it doesn't function as well because it's its lowest common denominator it's got a working for every day you're essentially running an app within an app and that alone kind of makes impossible I've I mean I wonder if when we have octa core phones with seven you know 75 gigabytes of RAM if we go back to Facebook touch web app if it would match the performance I guess I guess it would whenever because it you know that the native app is still using those you know eight cores and seventy five gigabytes of RAM so okay so let's let's let's jump this dive into that real quick before we move on to another platform I want I want to ask I want to just get that app question cleared up I mean Joe we didn't get a really high level view of your opinion on this on the Ubuntu situation because we're having technical difficulties so from a UI standpoint and from a nap development standpoint what do you think the future of this platform is well they're putting in a lot a lot of eggs in the html5 app basket if you will and that's that's not a good thing we were talking about how Facebook abandoned the html5 tech that they had inside their android app and went with a native Android app and the reason behind that is when you're sending data to an app on any platform you have a data feed and that data feed is relatively lightweight it's usually JSON JavaScript object notation which is it's lightweight it's fast it contains the critical data and it pushes that down to the device or gets pulled down to the device depending on the perspective and it's just quick everything that happens with that data feed is all controlled on the device in the app and it's its native it's quick its responsive it's pretty it's fluid when you try and do that with html5 you can accomplish many of the same things but because it is html5 and because you've got all of those web technologies involved instead of just pushing the content down to the page you're also pushing it all of the the user interface all of the the libraries the JavaScript libraries that everything to make the appt look and behave like you want it to and that's never going to be as fast as a native app you're not using native libraries you're using this other JavaScript library and you're running it through a browser so like Brendan was saying it's like running a nap inside a nap and yes it works but it's kind of like working for the lowest common denominator it's something that you do to make your your product or service look okay until you can do it right by creating a native app for it which and that makes a lot of sense of what you say looking okay I mean like you if you capture a screenshot of a web app or if you do a render of your new smartphone running up like say the Facebook web app it actually looks really great it's not until you start interacting with it and you start seeing that lag and you know that the like the page moving from side to side in the browser that you really realize it like well i would really prefer a native app and i'm on your the difference between native app and html5 app and it's unfortunate that the experience isn't yet to the point where you can't tell the difference and not know what it is you know where i'm going with that if you can get to a point where you don't know if it's a native app or an html5 app it doesn't matter anymore and what kind of it kind of happened happened backwards with facebook i mean if they did this and you know five years when phone phones had 10 cores and you know 120 gigabytes of ram you know i think it would have been a different story and this html5 thing is awesome because they don't have to go through any of the app stores to update their apps they just push it live and and this it's the same exact experience across every device it's great but that you know I think that a lot of you know I want to say that a lot of the hardware out there had trouble with the the Facebook touch experience in the in the browser but like you take a modern phone like the iPhone 5 or Lumia 920 you go to touch doubt facebook.com it's always slower than the native app yeah I think that there are ways to fix some of that just through you I and I don't mean fix web app performance because we've just covered why that's kind of going to be destined to be inferior for a little while but you can I think people will put up with that to a certain extent not much but if you have a beautiful not just you i not just a pretty you I but a useful you I that actually does make up for your lost lost time and web apps with saving your time in other areas I think that's really important and I think you want to looks like it'll do some of that particularly with its search bar and it's it's almost kindle like obsession with what's recent because you can just swipe off insight what did I recently do and whether you're talking about a book a web page of some music you were listening to a person you were texting like it organizes everything chronologically in in one part of the UI and i think that's that's that's compelling that's something we haven't seen outside of a tablet I don't think and if we have I forgot it so it wasn't that great so I don't know I think this is this is exciting i'm a little more excited than I than I was when it when it dropped I think you mostest you go ahead brain I said I think that one of the most exciting things is that within just I think a few weeks this is gonna be available on the Galaxy here available to install the Galaxy Nexus the performance will be poor but like that'd be fun you know uh ya know and but unfortunately the downside is that a hardware won't be available officially running it until what early 2014 um x moco and that's really frustrating because uh you know we have no idea we'll have octa-core then right two gigs ram soda little run fine any guesses on what company would say yeah I want to make an ubuntu phone HTC tte while we I I would I did the agency's an interesting thought because what these deese company you know Samsung HTC LG they all need to start thinking about diversifying because all of their eggs are an Android when some of them have a little in Windows Phone which I don't think is doing much for them at this point and you know III could see a company like HTC investing in ubuntu I don't know how that how it's setup if it's you know if it's even a for-profit entity but um I could be it an oem getting an exclusive on you bunt to and really pushing it hard and offering something different although I don't know what like the headline feature would be like what would the marketing message be right because windows phone is already doing the whole beautifully different thing they're already pushing the angle of you know you've never used anything like this an ubuntu would have to do something similar because i think that's their big value proposition it's like yeah you know if it were me and if it were just me off the top of my head i would probably say something like you know they have to push it as not just different better different you know like nonce is different for the sake of being different this actually helps you out they could probably make a series of commercials just on that lack of a lockscreen thing you know I mean it would be that certainly companies have done worse well it's in their video they were talking about hey this is the same operating system that you run on your desktop that you run on your laptop that you run on your super computer in your home from the video right and now it's running on your phone so I'm just wondering how many people out there first of all are running linux on their desktop computer yes and knowing it really is it is but then again of those how many are using Ubuntu and of those how many are then going to say I want that on my phone we're talking a very very small percentage of the field if we go with the marketing message that was presented in that keynote video that we've got up there which is they should do yes it's a cop-out though it but it's a clever cop out because you bunt to on the phone is definitely different than you bunt to on the desktop they've had to introduce all these new gesture paradigms and the way things are organized it's not this it's not like you're taking out a little mouse and a little keyboard but they they really they really spoke to me when they you know had a bunch they had like I'm a macbook pro on the screen and an ipad and iphone said these aren't you know it's not the same experience and they had you know a windows computer and then a windows friend said it's not same experience but you bunt to is like the same thing on a phone but then once they got into it you know it sounded like the same thing that Apple did when they said we made this new operating system it's based on OS 10 but it's made for touch and and it's like great it's based on it but it's incredible entirely different there's nothing to do with one another except for maybe the core yeah what job actually let's do an interesting exercise let's think of we're never gonna get out of the third race oh that's good well let's think of characteristics words that can define a mobile operating system like different like Windows Phone or beautiful like Windows Phone or or or flexible like an with Android or more easy like iOS yeah and it well it used to be stable like iOS but now I think that that can be applied across all three yeah yeah not like regimented like iOS but are we are we sticking to positive ones or we just positive ones like when I was thinking is natural like it figures out how you want to you know interact I mean windows one does that to an extent but more intelligently like you know yes yet you this would be I mean intuitive is really overused as far as UI design goes but that would be a good a good adjective for this once you get to know their gestures so they haven't talked about this yet but they have to because it's Ubuntu Ubuntu literally means community not just the own community in open source and in working together but as a whole working together for for the betterment and I know I've got boo boo fanboys are going to flame me because that's that's a dump down simplification of translating what it's supposed to mean but stick with me it's it's about making a product better together the doing it yes quite often and just continual improvement for the betterment of everybody not just the betterment of you or them or developers or users but for everyone working together that's that interesting stew sell this platform that's so interesting because a lot of consumers have this this like this dislike grunge this no no no this this anger I think towards all the software companies who promised these updates don't especially in android but kind of an iOS because in iOS you really don't get software updates that are major but once a year but maybe you bunt to could be the phone where you get you know monthly updates your phone is constantly getting better because of this community aspect I think that could be a very interesting selling point oh yeah but with the community working on it i could see how that kind of pace would be sustainable but how can quality control be accomplished in that amount of time a minute you know i feel like it takes forever for updates to come out for a reason and then even when they do come out after waiting for six months it's like the first day there's like a forum thread that starts up somewhere where it's like list your bugs with the galaxy s3 software update here it's like it's already up to page 19 you know so I i would get frightened about that and I feel like I feel like even a common user the minute that that starts happening they're like all right peace out well maybe maybe that's the that would be the trade-off I mean I'm sure I don't know how you bun to works now but I'm sure they have systems in place for quality control so when a new update is pushed through and I don't know how often the updates are pushed it when it's pushed through it it's it's stable and and working pretty well but you know there might be bugs and people that use you bunt you are totally used to that and they're happy and fine with that because that means they get you know constantly improving software so maybe maybe you want to / phones will be four different counties are that wouldn't mind that stuff but would want to constantly profile you know what has to happen what has to happen with all these new platforms coming out is the that needs to stop being the attitude and Brennan I agree with I'm not saying I disagree with your view but we are reaching a point where we can no longer say I think this new phone is going to be for a totally different kind of user because we're running out of kinds of users and it's gonna I think that the question is going to have to become is this new phone for for somebody's second phone because I think that's that's going to become even more common than it is right now because my Twitter handles captain two phones because I'm an idiot and I've always done it just as a hobby I've always had kind of two phones because I like different UI interaction but people carry two phones all the time for work and for personal I mean that's the most commonly cited situation where people carry two phones and I think that maybe if this hasn't happened in a year or two there's going to be a real missed opportunity on marketing and advertising departments be like you already carry two phones why not make your second phone one you really like using I don't know I don't totally especially as landlines go away you don't think that that'll be the case I don't think I think the a tiny little minut fraction of the population carried to phone and two funds in fact there's a recent movement to move away from that when the whole enterprise was doing blackberry and the personalized iphone and now enterprises are allowing you to carry an iphone i think the more relevant question the more relevant point is what's going to be your next phone that's what's going to be your second phone and and don't forget most people i think it's you know if you have two phones you're paying for two data plans and two phone lines and that's how could you ridiculous not if one of them is work supplied cuz yeah i mean of course work is allowing iphones in there allowing android phones and what about the people who don't like iphone whatever the people who don't like android you know I mean they want their personal phone to be something else but I feel like I feel like that's easier to do it's easier if you have a house that you live in that you know you're not going to have to move out of when you also rent an apartment on the side for whatever nefarious purposes you need it's a lot easier to change your your side apartment it's a lot easier to move out of your side apartment into another side apartment than it is to move from your your main house because I mean like I just I just think that when you're asking someone to change the only phone they use you're asking them to do the ecosystem jump and all that kind of stuff but there's there's there's Roman therefore for a second phone pitch I think you want here's here's where that are going to win ubuntu is about community and it's about people who want to do things their way it's also about people who want privacy and people who want security now take android take iOS take windows phone and try and write an S mime encrypted email now a lot of you just glazed over said what is that I do that for fun man I I know you do Emmanuel's I'm it has manual control so so for those of you who don't know s my email really fast whenever you send an email you're sending a postcard across the internet that is the literal paradigm it's not when you send a letter to Mom a handwritten letter or a typed letter whatever if you do that anymore you take that you write it you put it in a security envelope that has the security printing on the inside so you can't hold it up to the light and look through it you you lick that seal you seal it shut and as soon as that letter is sealed it's a felony for anyone to try and open that and get at it other than the intended addressee if you have a postcard that you're sending from Cabo that just goes through in anybody along the line who's in the postal service or the delivery chain can look at your picture look at your message and okay that's neat you know Brandon's in Cabo for the holidays and send it along the line they can read that emails are the same way any email today that you send goes out across the internet and anyone in the middle can read that it's a postcard s/mime lets you encrypt that and essentially lock it up inside that sealed envelope and send it along the way I can do that on my desktop computer somewhat easily because I know how but on mobile devices I can't do that I can't encrypt stuff I can't keep things private as they go to and from especially with gmail I can't do that lubuntu especially for phones that's their selling point you want privacy you know what security this is your phone nobody else does it well that's that's all the other point yeah i never knew that at all huh well and all of a sudden the little different well i think i think that's that's good to know and i think we should we should move on from ubuntu i think this is our first podcast talking about anything you Monty related is it the liquid you or is it not is it ubuntu or is it you bun to or what i've heard it pronounced ubuntu i think that's right and I apologize for calling something platinum well I do not stand behind firmly behind my must pronounce EA shin as I will later when i mispronounced three out of four listener mail names just up into and everybody's be gonna be happy yeah they do you OS well I think it was good that we covered it rather exhaustively but we do with there are other platforms that also have been in the news this week and we need to move on and I know less about this but the OS from I'm going to say it right yola is how you pronounce it not jolla as i think i said a few times and other podcasts is sail fish has had a little bit of a hands-on treatment from engadget from miram shah and it also looks compelling as a new OS now correct me if i'm wrong guys these are the guys that split off from nokia and took kind of what they've been working on with me go to make a new OS right yeah yeah it's it's it's a similar and a lot of ways to me go but I I think it looks it's it's more easy to understand and then ubuntu how do we decide that you boot into ubuntu ubuntu a lot of double o's i think in and then we're going to hold it on pole yes so so what I like about sailfish is that the way that it your home screen are apps but it's kind of a combination between they can be icons they can be widgets or they can be kind of like a frozen state of your app like the last screen that you were looking on and I think that's a really cool way because you know you usually deal with you know you're pretty much focused on apps when you're using a phone another cool thing that it does is this top menu system with the gesture where you pull down from the top and you don't even have to select the item at the top the magnitude that you pull down the distance that you pulled down determines which menu item is selected so you can access these menus so fast by pulling down and then it's gotten this idea just to kind of go through one two three then it's got this idea where you can take an image and turn it into your system theme where it changes the colors of the UI it applies a background and most screens and blurs the background just the right amount so you can still see your content I think it's so much better thought out than Ubuntu and you know I i I'd much rather spend some time with that based on when I saw in this video correct me if I'm wrong but I'm looking at the the wiki article out at sailfish OS org and the SDK makes it look like it's a very much linux based OS in the true linux-based not the android linux based am I reading that right no no you maybe I'm not entirely sure okay so if that is right i'm looking at you know all of this crossover between what we just talked about native apps and SDKs for a mobile linux that would be synonymous here so there's a potential that we could have cross platform between at least these two apps and maybe even work together you know you write one app and run it in multiple places well that's that's the dream right I mean like that that would be incredible if that were theoretically possible I just want a phone that runs every app from every operating system and it's sooner why so do so badly you know I would probably pay as much as I would like fruit feel like I'm not like a car but like a used car I'd probably pick a couple thousand dollars i'd probably save up for a little while for a phone that could run any app so you're talking about the the vm alas the the vphone what the v phone OS a vm phone OS lens it runs virtual machines so you you'd run everything on it so it just a is it does it do it well I mean that sounds tough a part where it have to yeah it's good to say does this does this exist is this from the 24th century no it doesn't exist but I also want it in a tricorder buddy yeah what's exciting to me about selfish is that and I we can't talk about this as long because I think none of us are as familiar with it as we were the the you word is is that it's based on a UI that looks certainly maybe not better thought out but you know just different is it's still different but it looks a little bit more simple it looks a little simplified and it's still really focused on being beautiful the fonts choices are really awesome Brandon like you said you can take an image and use that images color palette to modify your UI palette I mean like you know it's got some cool stuff and it's got that fun stuff we liked for me go with the notification panel off to the side and you know pulling down on the stuff and it looks great but I think this one this is certainly closer to launch isn't it I'm kind of like mining the fact file right now to look forward it's like final product sometime in the first quarter of this year yes so it could be any day now I know right i I don't know these guys going to be at at CES did we find that out they will be there and we're trying to see what we can do about getting a meeting yes so another CES plug for for next week if you've forgotten since the beginning of this podcast so I and it finally just to close out the new platform discussion open webOS has it continues to improve and it has been ported now to the nexus 7 which is kind of this giant this culmination of an awesome desire on the part of the webos community for a 7-inch tablet which was going to be realized by the touchpad go back in the day that the miniature version of the HP touchpad which was cancelled literally I think days before its full production was to was to begin and the Nexus 7 is much sleeker much smaller device than the touchpad go was going to be and it's really really going to be cool to see webOS on a 7-inch display unfortunately it's still in alpha state so we've had this thought I have I have this ready and everyone on Twitter thank you so much for telling me repeatedly about this because you know that i love webOS and the minute that this exit its alpha state I i have a Galaxy Nexus thanks to Jaime Rivera here in the Boston office i also have a nexus 7 i will i will load that as soon as there's legit hardware acceleration and as soon as it's actually you know usable and the guys that the open webOS projects are doing a great job and there making a lot of fun project I think my favorite part about this whole thing excuse me fun progress my favorite part about the open webOS to Nexus 7 port was that it was apparently done largely by many people were involved it seems but it was spearheaded by a kid who was excuse me a guy who was home from college on his holiday break so the point is I really didn't take that long yeah or maybe he's just a genius oh it may you know maybe both of those things are true um yeah I'm thinking both of those are true we've got a lot of really smart people in the community yes speaking of the nexus 7 a little thought and maybe this is a nice segue into Android um yeah we saw in the news good I am amazed by how people love the Nexus 7 unlike any other product I think I've ever seen released I mean people have put away their iPads they've put away their 10-inch tablets and they have with open arms except the nexus 7 as their favorite device and they use a constant both of you guys use a nexus ntment probably constantly right absolutely I love it yeah it's it's my daily tablet yeah and and you know it would have been mine if I could get past the color saturation issue but the point the point is that this has been a very very popular device for for google + 44 asus and they're still sold out last i checked or maybe just a few days ago there they finally have some inventory i can't wait for the next one because they're obviously going to fix the screen problem that's that's my best guess and it's it's not too far off now this you know summer last year is when we got the nexus 7 and like I'm just trying I'm sort of fantasizing about the ways that then the new Nexus 7 could be better it's going to be thinner and a better battery life have a better screen probably a higher resolution screen and of course it's going to have that awesome form factor so i can't forget away i can't wait either but you know i am a little scared and i'll tell you why every time there is an improvement to a product that is like the Nexus 7 which is kind of built like a tank and it's got soft touch and it's like you can kind of throw it around without feeling too much guilt because it's hard to scratch it because it's built like a like a running shoe or something any time there's an move made to improve a product like that it usually results in something that is yes thinner but also agile dainty r yes it more agile and here's a think prettier and you feel like you you you are going to be breaking it or you're going to be scratching it you're going to be and I don't want to feel that way I want to be able to throw the thing around let me let me sort of put your fears to rest maybe one of the reasons the nexus 7 feels so good in the hand and is so durable and built like a tank is because it's made out of plastic which is cheap they did that to keep the price low that and all Nexus devices going into the future are going to be more affordable than not and so it's you know that that bodes well if you want a device that feels about the same these is that you know soft touch plastic on the back and the the plastic instructions so I think they're going to stay with plastic construction I hope so yeah I mean I guess the only substitute material that i think i would be happy with would be would be polycarbonate and not you know not with the glossy finish on it but something like HTC did with the 1x I think that would be fun but it would also be more slippery so maybe I just maybe just will we'll see I can't wait until the rumors start rolling in either but we have a lot of a lot of leaks on smartphone lineups in the Android section and if we can let's just power through these because these are all is all kind of the same story right it's right before CES some companies are getting ready to present and we have leaks from three different companies from HTC from LG and from Huawei I think for the record none of these are from us these we're not our exclusives around like that we were just reposting leaks from other sites and HTC has this list of like what is it is 19 devices I think it's as massive bulleted list of code names and I love hardware code names their stuff in here like Apollo of course deluxe aveda impression night like a knight in shining armor monaco opera there there there on quattro HTC's code names are especially fun because they get reused a lot in the developer community people refer to their hd2 for the rest of time as the OSB I don't know I'm remember I don't have one I believe that was the Leo was it yeah so it's you know I think and I think HTC sort of continues to do that not only because it helps them internally but it helps them in the enthusiast community because people kind of like feeling like they're on the inside you know totally yeah it's it's just it's exciting to see a whole array of secret names like occasionally you get you no one will pop out and it's like you know oh did you know the Samsung spheroid is coming out and what's that you know they're like the Galaxy frame you know but like look at like these are this is quite a list but I got very nervous when I first heard about it because I was like HTC is prepping how many handsets didn't they do this in 2011 and they saturate the market with a bunch of phones and wasn't it a big disaster but these appear to be variants we've seen them do this before in the beginning of the year we see like 40 phones and they only release like a third of them right and maybe you know that's probably standard procedure to to an extent but a lot of these are variants like four five six there's at least six or seven of these on the list rm7 variants and and some of them I think are contingent on the success of a different device released for example I've seen the Quattro show up in HTC weeks for several years now and I bet that is their bigger tablet that they think well they did the jet stream but maybe a better bigger tablet that they were going to make if if the jet stream was popular or the or the what's thought the flyer was popular they just never got around to it so now it's just was bumped read the code name was reused right yeah it's gonna be fun to see what they what they bring out at mwc which i think is going to be it's going to be there Big Show and I feel like we always talk about HTC in these kind of glowing terms but we've also got LG which has I think more interesting rumors because we kind of don't know what to think about HTC's lineup right now with the exception of the m7 maybe and the and the deluxe but LG is is rumored to be prepping a phone with a 4.7 inch screen with such a thin bezel according to a story that Anton wrote here at around 1 millimeter that we can basically call it a bezel list of ice that's pretty cool that's pretty cool I was I was at the AT&T store this weekend messing around with the the LG optimus G which I still think is the best phone on the planet right now on interestingly does not have the touch sensitivity issues that the nexus 4 has and i was i was about to buy one like buy a used one from from swap ax because it's just such an awesome phone but then i had to like pinch myself and say no no no there's going to be a 1080p version of this maybe with a bezel lyst design very very soon man to close my browser but iiii think they're doing the the maybe yeah this won't be branded as an optimus g2 or something but the you know LG's on a little bit of a hot streak and I think they can and well even if we look at the Nexus 4 you've got those nice rolled edges that it I if you haven't ever picked up a nexus 4 I can't really describe it it my description doesn't do it justice the edges are rolled so it makes swiping left and right very nice fluid or beautiful it just feels so much natural than on any other device I've ever used can I ask you something like that Joe absolutely is that really true like if you take if you pick up your Galaxy Nexus which doesn't have the rolled edges and you swipe and then you swipe on the Nexus 4 do you really think that it feels that much more natural I'm just asking your opinion I have just now picked up my galaxy nexus in fact and my nexus 4 I have them side-by-side for all of you in radio land and yes having a flat screen with there's kind of a bump edge on the Galaxy Nexus all around the bezel so you know where the edges it's it's a rough start so when I swipe I want to start swiping just just inside that bezel so I don't feel that rough edge but if I'm trying to swipe without looking at the device I can't feel it yeah I have to feel where that edge is to know where the edge of the the device is so i can start swiping with the nexus 4 I can feel that edge and it's nice and it's curved and it's it's gentle it's not as abrupt and it just feels so much nicer guy I found myself just unconsciously swiping back back and forth on my screen at times just because it feels nice just treating it tenderly treating it it's a it's like a woman it has to be caressed and I I'm doing is mediated I've got the I've got my neck sorry some men are into caresses Joe let's let's let's let's open it up to all humanity it's all right that's that's true yeah you've gotta you know kind of you gotta what I don't know what you gotta do go ahead Joe do you do you feel since you have both devices in front of you is it me or is the nexus 4 is glass a lot more slippery smooth whatever you want to save and the Galaxy Nexus oh good grief yes has to end on the front of the device I don't mind that but they have the same slippery liciousness on the back as well and it does the dance off the table this is that I absolutely hey the first thing that looked on my mind when you brought up any any LG products when you brought up the LG optimus and it's not just LG because but when i had the optimus G on AT&T that thing would fall off tables I talked about a lot of pockets document of the review the Lumia 920 does the exact same thing it's got such low friction that if a table is anywhere near away from level the Lumia is like sailing off into the distance just keep it away from tables it was ridiculous I mean it's amazing there are actually videos on YouTube of there was an article I think wpcentral posted an article headlined like does your Lumia 920 do the funky dance and like a video of the phone just sliding around on this table all on its on its own ex-players I I think the next thing has to be in a hardware design has to be something that allows the phone to be glossy if manufacturers wanted to be lousy but that doesn't permit it to just slide all over everything like a bar of soap in the shower and row has that has the bumper solve the problem oh absolutely the bumper solves the problem except you can't put the bumper in your you know and your holster on your belt because it's too big and do you Russell what I rocket when i sent a belch oh I'm as I do you do the holster thing I totally have a holster thing yeah I am that much of a geek love I used to do holsters of it from like 2004 2008 like if you had a nextel phone you had to do a holster otherwise you'd nobody took you seriously yes so so you know it's only half as geeky it's not this big you know vertical one strap down my leg um okay this is the only phone that I have ever used that has spent even though I'm wearing the holster on my belt that spends at least half of its time in my shirt pocket and whenever I'm wearing a shirt that doesn't have a front pocket like I am right now that I'm at a loss i keep trying to put it in my front shirt pocket and i don't like to do that because whenever i bend down to pick something up whatever i'm afraid that this device is going to sprout wings and jump and throw itself against the mill it did absolutely will but i want to talk we're on LG and before we move on to 28 huawei there's another thing that gets me more excited about all the lg's rumors because a 5.5 inch LG phablet is also in the report with a full HD screen at 403 ppi and then there's a 7-inch tablet mentioned as well and whatever that maybe that'll be cool maybe it won't but the LG like I think took the most visible and painful leap into phablet territory with the the view / intuition and that's why this this phablet is interesting to me because I don't think they're going to do that again I don't think this is going to be the view to or if it is I don't think it's going to be named the view too I mean did you guys think that they're going to go toward a more conventional form factor with this or are we going to see another almost perfectly square piece of absurdity I think LG woke up and I think they saw the sales numbers from the view and the reviews from the view and I think they're not gonna do the view again yeah I completely agree and that's why they think it's exciting because we know LG can do awesome stuff because you know arguably the nexus 4 is awesome and I think the optimus G is really awesome so that'll be exciting to see and I feel like somebody just assembled a dump truck really who did you guys doing some file cabinet fun I just decided to reorganize my desk yeah just just hanging out that's cool she was looking for all of his LG products on the Shelf friend there right but I was looking for I was looking for my view so I could like you know use it as a frisbee has no other functional value and final is that because it's the the screen orientation is that why is the hell I'm Joe I haven't seen a view before I given you've I've seen it I haven't held it before you even compare to the verizon verizon wireless store and had a look at the intuition I avoid verizon wireless like the plague going to a verizon store and look at the view it is like photos and videos don't do it justice it is a very good example of strong but wrong as far as design choice goes i did its bold but boy I mean Brandon of course you did the unboxing so I should men talking over you the views terrible doesn't stop with you know a design that was too bold and inappropriate but you know once you turn all the device that's the screen quality is integrating the device is laggy and it's using LG's pre optimus g UI which is different and it's terrible and then it's so weird than the optimus G came out and it's like I kind of and i think i said i was on a previous podcast i think i prefer LG optimus G interface the skin whatever they have on it versus stock Android cyanogenmod 10 whatever else is just so good but the view is like the ugly ugly duckling yeah it's so if LG were to upgrade the OS running on that and include the the version the skin that's running on the optimus G would that change your opinion would it be enough to change your opinion it wouldn't because the hardware is just so incredibly cumbersome obviously they imagined a world where people had hands that are as as big as you know dinner plates because you just you can't use it it's like it's so bad I'm getting upset can we move on yeah that's please let's let's let's move on because we have another company and finally the company is well way um that was the sentence that that should only that couldn't even a mother couldn't love the last company on the leak list was Huawei and it looks like they're renders are out for their their windows phone offering the w1 their windows phone 8 offering packing at 2011 power battery and it appears that it's going to come in white cyan pink and black and I really hope that these renders are or photos are um like I hope somebody turn down the saturation on these because the cyan is kind of like it looks like what would happen if if a budget crayon company made scion and the pink is a lot more like that awful carnation pink from Crayola than anything magenta the colors don't look very pronounced what article are you looking at I see white blue red and black that's not cyan and that's not pink exactly exactly oakum pletely and you know I think the black and white ones look okay but those colors I don't know what um I don't know we could we spend a whole a whole podcast talking about color I just wrote a piece on the iPhones color and I just I'm out of synonyms for color like when I got to the point of saying spectrally diverse I was like I'm done I'm I can't write anymore so anyway these are the the huawei windows phone 8 device and that should be that should be fun to see I'm interested to see what they'll do with Windows Phone 8 but we also have to Android devices the ascend d2 and the something else I don't know I lost it it's I guess it's just the ascend d2 with a 1.5 gigahertz quad-core CPU and a 13-megapixel camera which will excite anyone who doesn't remember that it's not about the sensor size as much as it is about the lens optics so um you know why wait I have I have this hope for huawei every time a show is on the horizon and we're going to see them because I know they're kind of going to blow it out with their booth design which is usually like huge and massive and they usually have really knowledgeable people and there they tend to be I think really / staff there's a lot of people to help at huawei booths and that's great so I mean they're obviously serious about this and they're getting the the rough treatment from the US because of you know maybe maybe legitimate intelligence concerns or you know State Department concerns but we always really trying and they really really seem to be serious about building their presence and i think i saw a spec tweeted or something referenced where it says that Huawei's self branded hardware production is up like a ridiculous percentage compared to last year like last year only twenty percent of the stuff they put out on the market was branded by themselves like it was otherwise they were didn't OD am or whatever and this year eighty percent of their mobile products were self branded so it's cool it's cool to see a company grow like that and I just hope some of these products are good because my one experience reviewing a huawei phone was with the ascend p1 and it was okay but it wasn't really you know memorable so is huawei going to be the next HTC do you think wow tip of my tongue Wow bold bold words between that and the Brandon saying before do you think that's really true Joe I feel like I'm on 60 minutes all of a sudden ah you guys are hard hitters I don't know is it is why we're gonna be the next dates you see I I mean do I think that they will have a stellar a meteoric rise followed by a lengthy process of kind of increasingly saddening financials no but I don't I don't that's because I don't think that they're going to launch a skyrocket anytime soon that's going to be amazing so the basis before my question was what is you know HTC was the the secret power house behind every cool device back in the day oh I see what they're the ones who designed it they're the ones who made it you didn't know was HTC unless you really started digging into it but because they were bad name is not stuff utstarcom or yeah yeah yeahs or compact or HP yeah whatever right right and then all of a sudden they shed the we're making stuff for other people were making our own and we're self branding and look at this and they had just like to use your words this meteoric rise they wow they were great and then and I don't know what happened and hey something sad and it makes me want to weep well that's so I see I see why we kind of doing the same thing they've made granted not as spectacular as noteworthy devices for for OEMs for a while and now they're going self branded but are they going to face the same challenges in the same aim ultimate I don't want to say demise but that's the only word I can think of that's facing HTC decline yeah i mean i don't i think the difference in Huawei's case is that I've never seen and maybe you guys can cite one I've never seen a huawei product that's like like blown me away and like knocked me over with its with its awesomeness whether it's self branded or whether it's branded by another company any of you like nothing comes to mind yet yeah I'm just wondering if if this one could be it yeah I don't think it is I it doesn't look it doesn't know and and the other thing like they're breaking like it could be something special but right but it looks like the LG l9 like it looks just kind of like an unremarkable thing to me to phone yeah it's me to phone and and there's also a me two phablets which is the last leak on this whole list is this ascend mate with a 6.1 inch display and this seems to me the epitome of this kind of me to thing taken to the extreme where it's like you know what yeah we got a phablet also and look it's giant like 6.1 inches is ridiculous and Samsung's probably about to do that too and yay whatever we'll see but that's huge and it's 720p and the battery is rumored to be 3,800 milliamp hours so that's impressive it's impressive yeah I mean it's cool but you know it's not gonna it's not gonna get my flag waving you know I mean it's like okay whatever apparently neither is 13 megapixels but no exactly things in ocean the ocean it is d um now we got the leaks out of the way I want to talk briefly I just kind of want to this is slotted in the rundown just so that I can give a little bit of a punch in the arm and encouraging punch in the arm pat on the back to our friend Joe Levi who wrote a sweet piece about called eight scenarios where the NFC it would make sense yeah I love this because everyone who is kind of craps all over NFC and is like whatever its use lessons you know they can't make it work and whatever and it has a lot of challenges thank you sure I thought this is I love this piece because you know I I'm like the grumpy old man who thinks NFC is a waste of time in and you know thinking power but Joe clearly outlined eight scenarios where I cannot argue that NFC wouldn't make life easier my whole premise was that this whole idea of you know you get into your you get it yet home and you tap your phone to change your phone profile it's missing the point of technology that should happen automatically you can do it with tasker and a lot of other situations but all of these have something in common I want to figure out what that is it's like you you have a piece of you have a credential that you need to present to something and you don't want to have to bear the inconvenience of like keeping something with you is does that make any sense what do you guys what am I Shia yeah i mean you're talking about access based on you're talking about very very easy access control and the thing that spoke most specifically to me was something i do literally every single day i go underground i get on the train and to do that i have to pull my wallet out of my pocket and if i were a real square i would have to take out my charlie card of my wallet and put it on the card reader so i could get access to the train but i don't I just slapped by wallet against the thing and the NFC or the RFID works through the wallet leather and it goes and that's what everybody does but even that is so inconvenient when I have a phone that has NFC and the ability to store that information and I'm just waiting on the transit authority to adopt that technology and that's I think about that literally every day and I think about it further when I'm I put my phone on top of my wallet when I put it on the table to protect the lens or to protect the screen or whatever and anytime the phone wakes up with a text message it starts going crazy because the NFC element starts trying to talk to my charlie card in my wallet and I'm like gosh you guys you guys are meant for each other please just become one and when I saw that as i think item number one or two on here on Joe's are too close like yes absolutely and but then there's more there's ticket stubs there's business cards there's you know obviously the dark angle wallet when parking meters is a good one I never would have thought of that so how long did you do this looks like something that you had to get off your chest for a while Joe is this uh something about well we wrote quite a few articles about NFC and what you could do with it we shot some videos we did some stuff we got a pretty good response but everything kept coming back to what Brandon was saying yes you can do all this stuff you know with with NFC stickers that you can buy for a buck and a half a piece yes you can do this with key fobs but their NFC and it should just know it and do it so how can we use NFC that's actually really useful now with technology that's available now yeah we just have to roll it out and so this was I Tony's probably upset with me because it took me about twice or three times as long as a normal editorial to write and it came out a little bit later in the day then I would have liked but it I feel somewhat justified in spending the time doing the research and coming up with some more use case scenarios that really aren't there shouldn't be that difficult to comprehend and to put into place and could simplify your life I mean even the the calendar event and map and navigation locations embedded in your ticket stub I mean that would be so much easier the business card that's a no brainer let me tap a business card to my phone so I don't have to type it all in exactly and it just as a maybe a little bright point one of your last points is the bluetooth pairing NFC initiated bluetooth pairing and we already see that kind of an action here and in my house it's takes place almost every day when I tap my Lumia 920 to my JBL powerup dock and tell it to pair and it works very nicely so maybe maybe we're closer to this bright new future than than we think well let's hope and in the the thing that I like from brandons take away is most of these have some kind of credentialing they all focus around that and that's kind of the point i was going to with the the bluetooth pairing every single bluetooth idevice shares one of like two or three codes except for one and that's my car my car can put in any code you want and what do i do well I've got an eight digit code but that's still just eight digits it's not letters numbers whatever it's that should be pretty fast to hack in honesty using NFC gives you the ability to use much much stronger keys and yeah you know you've got the people who are going to say NFC is wireless technology so attackable we've seen that happen before and yes there is that potentiality but based on what we have now which one is easier to hack a four digit code that's the same on every device or you know a 200 character good that rotates in his random mmhmm yeah I'll go with more security um I don't want to to talk about this for more than 50 seconds but for anyone who wants to read that piece listeners you know where to go to read the end of Joe's NFC piece and while you're there you can have a click on one of our more recent videos where I used the the galaxy camera as a daily driver for a weekend which was an absurd experiment that was a lot of fun but barring any any questions from you guys we are butting up against a time constraint here and fortunately there's not much room there's not much news in Windows Phone or an iOS so we can actually jump in a listener mail but do you guys have anything you want to close out the Android section with before I go I don't want I know we're kind of suddenly pressed for time here I got something small for windows phone and then I actually have to go it's funny I we do these podcasts wen Stephenson and he he's you know he's waiting in the other room oh I still all lonesome I still have yet to see the office I would love to I got to come visit the office sometime yeah um okay let's then let's get out of Android let's jump into Windows Phone and the only thing that is actually newsworthy from this past week and I don't even know if it was very news where there was an nokia set up a Lumia 920 audio quality demo with this kind of rock guitar challenge with the guitarist from Billy Duffy no excuse me name is Billy Duffy he's from the cult and he played a guitar and he played this really maybe a riff from one of the one of their songs i don't know i don't listen to the cult and it was very marketing it was very p re it was very advertising he it was I don't know it's not a very interesting piece but basically it just demonstrates that the Lumia 920 is the phone to have with you if you are video in a concert and please just from me don't be one of those people who videos concerts it's not fun I don't like being behind you I don't I don't like watching the video you're capturing which is awful jumbly and full of lens flares from the light action and your speed you know your microphone is going to be blown out unless you're using the Lumia 920 but in which case you know please still don't do it if you're standing in front of me just just don't just don't do it I did so if you do use the 920 but but be careful because Michaels behind you and let you in space don't effort to it anyway that was a lame video please Brandon you I think had the opportunity to play with a 924 first time in a while recently right yes first time in a while the last time I played with one was in New York where we really couldn't touch the phone right and I've been so curious because you've been speaking so highly about it and so I had I had three observations the first thing is the placement of the power button I love how it's so center in a centrist Oh sort centered in the phone mm-hmm isn't that nice right below the volume right below the volume keys it's it's right where the thumb naturally rest sitting in exactly the right spot yes yes very very nice place on the power button the second thing is I thought that this what is that the true motion trumotion hd+ yeah the high frame rate thing mm-hmm that actually matters and it you don't really realize it but when you're on a regular kind of phone you know your typical android phone or Windows Phone you're flipping around and you're moving icons quickly you can't actually see the icons while they're moving which isn't that big of a deal because you're probably trying to flip pass them to get to something else and then the screen stop then you look at them but but in case that does matter to you 920 does a really good job of keeping the the icons readable while you're flake flicking them are on the screen yeah I feel I was talking about this on New Year's Day actually over breakfast with a friend of mine and we were talking about on sand that frame right thing it's I think it's akin to watching one of the new like The Hobbit in 48 fps I was just gonna go there were you yeah like I mean I but I feel like a lot of people hate that because they're not used to it and I don't think almost anyone hates it on the Lumia because it's like it's it's just so smooth and I didn't even notice it i'll be honestly i didn't notice it for the first couple days it was only when i started using the nokia lumia 98 10 to review it that I was like why is this a little bit like it's not jagged it's not bad it's just it's a little worse though why is that then I was like oh right because the it's like almost half the frame rate of what the Lumia 920 is giving me yeah so yeah you do notice it so that is darn interesting and then the third observation is something I really didn't pick out from the pictures I like help the top bezel is thinner than average and then the side bezels are about average but then the bottom bezel is just huge and I don't like that because this the screen is not centered in the face of the phone no it's not it's just me no likey well you know what's nice about it and I understand aesthetically why you would make that complaint what's nice about it is it gives additional room below the display not only for the buttons the capacitive keys below the screen but you get like another almost an inch of space below the buttons so that if you're playing a horizontally inclined game or if you're just browsing something in landscape mode or whatever you don't have to hit those damn buttons all the time which is what I was doing I think on the Lumia 900 though I could be thinking wrong I was playing rise of glory and I was flying around and I would hit that damn home button every time I'd jump out of the game and on this that on the 920 it never happens so it's nice to have a little a handle there but that's interesting i mean the nexus 4 is the same handle which i love I guess the nexus 4 even with the handle isn't as tall as the 920 m van anyway interesting phone more at CES I want to have somewhere fun time with that with your 920 yeah absolutely yeah we're gonna have a device exchange and maybe I'll finally get my hands on a nexus 4 that'll be fun yeah I'll bring a nexus for jen's I love to stay on the talk more but I actually have to go now all right well uh Brandon run it was lovely having you on the air as always Brandon tell everybody where they can reach you on twitter at brandon minimun very very easy to remember and the next time you and I speak on the air will be at CES so i will talk to you then yeah definitely all right have a good my man say out of Stephen for me all right thanks friend well we just want to hit iOS real quick and then I want to jump in a listener mail we call that student the android guy talking iOS what could go wrong Apple is already apparently testing iphone 6 and iphone 6 with iOS 7 this is a story from january second this is just yesterday yeah i mean i think this story prompted the usual this came from cult of mac or it came from tnw the next web and then it was via cult of mac whatever this prompted the usual backlash from twitter full of people kind of snarkily replying really apples testing the next iPhone I'm so surprised the interesting part is going to be the iOS 7 platform which who knows if it'll launch with this thing the main question i have for the iphone next whatever they're gonna number it is are they going to make it more or less flexible because we've seen the curved iphone displays already i want to know are they gonna are they going to go towards that are they gonna ridgid it up so that it doesn't Bend like we've seen oh I know what you're talking about iphone 5 & a session you know what's crazy is one of those listeners if you don't know what's happenin bend the iphone 5 really easily apparently like without breaking the screen which is crazy or anything it looks like it's just this nice ergonomically shaped device to your face i'm talking to your face not to your butt it's right no it actually doesn't look bad first i thought no this is a photoshop render somebody just bent an image of the iphone 5 and this is whatever but I mean if that is indeed true that looks like a viable design for an iphone reminded me of what the HTC chacha / um you know what was it called in the US the HTC the facebook throne you know yeah there was the cha chaan then they had to change it to the cha cha cha for spain or so that right yeah yeah anyway it looked like an HTC chacha except it was knife on five because somebody sat on it with it in the back pocket but whatever we'll see we'll see if that's interesting I don't want to talk anymore about it and and there was an iOS bug that resulted in in do not disturb being stuck on and I like apples response to that because it was a January first thing was a date fueled bug and then Apple was like yeah that'll fix itself in January seventh so sorry oh yeah I will take care it reminds me of the wasn't that the bug that they had with the the date issue with the the old zunes where they didn't play on on New Year's Eve because it was a leap year and there can't be more than 365 days in a year so you just can't play anything shot down yeah I think it's funny when when bugs happened to smart phones because they affect the clock functionality pretty often and I got to tell you I don't know how how hard it is to code an alarm clock that works right but it's probably more difficult than most things you can do like you'd build for a smartphone OS or for a computer for that matter right now i have a macbook air where I have a third-party alarm that doesn't go off when the thing is in standby so with the screen is off the alarm doesn't go off i have a microsoft surface with a third-party alarm app that doesn't go off period and i have i have a bevy of android phones only half of which kind of reliably sound sound the alarm so I'm like out why is this so difficult I don't understand how a clock that that that's gets that goes off at a specific time is a difficult thing to build okay so you've got two things one is we're all very very concerned with battery life and various manufacturers are playing around you mentioned it in your in your camera phone video which by the way that was epic camera thank you oh that was so awesome I thought it was just a gimmick but it's not it was about if you going back to that if you haven't watched the video yet it's not a gimmick it's a legitimate experiment and it you owe it to yourself to watch the video i love you there's even a little joe levi cameo in there i saw thanks for that Michael so all these different manufacturers are trying different ways and with Android especially it's not just google and android OS it's people who are writing drivers for the devices you know that the chips and whatnot inside the device as well as the device itself as well as the overlay to the OS to try and bake that sleep deeper the deeper the sleep is the less or an hour yes it gonna be consumed yeah exactly you get more battery life but when you do that stuff like the real time clock becomes less real time and less clocky and you've sometimes you got to turn on the device and wait a second or two for it to realize oh crap time is a nice time yeah it's this time and at times I think that even has to go out and negotiate with the the cell phone tower to say said to get anybody what time is it yeah you know and just figure out and present it so yeah there's there's something that needs to be dealt with in and handled there because the clock should be up to date regardless it how much would it take to just put a simple watch technology in there you know it works crystal just to keep much good yeah I mean it shouldn't be too tough at all we've got more high-end technology than that the second issue is programming and again speaking as a developer I'm less concerned about the middle use cases as I am concerned about the edge use cases and for you non-programmers non-techie guys out there listening when I was a kid my mom had me sweep and mop the kitchen floor that was one of my chores and I noticed something interesting when she came to check and make sure that the job was done right she didn't look at the middle of the floor she always looked at the edges mm-hmm she looked around the edges because if the edges were clean the middle was clean but if the edges weren't clean I had to do the whole thing all over again the same thing goes with programming find your edges and there might not just be two edges there might be several it might be a polygon shape or whatever theoretically metaphorically speaking but you find those edges and then you develop test cases to test those edges and make sure that your code works all the way to the edge because most of these problems are one-off problems the Android missing December bug was a one-off problem do we start counting at zero to 11 to get 12 months or do we start counting at 12 12 to get 12 months right is month 11 November or December depends on where you start counting you set up those you find the edges and you set up those tests and solves a whole bunch of problems but it takes more time front to to find that out and when you're under the gun to get something out on a deadline you've got management who says deadlines are more important than quality and then you get into the Oh we'll just fix it with a patch which we've seen in Android is not the best best way to go about doing things because that patch so you never come so you're saying that it's it is in fact much more complicated than than we think shifty reporting as simple as an alarm clock fortunately I think the answer that is probably yes but image you know that that's a worthwhile reminder I mean that is it is a worthwhile to remember that we are all carrying very very complex machines in our pockets even though they are now ubiquitous in in the first world in the first and second and even parts of the third world so more so just to tangent on that a little bit herb world countries it's so much easier to put up a cell phone tower running with one back haul and then people can get cellular data or cellular voice or both for miles and miles and miles around they don't even have to have electricity at their house let alone a phone line to their house to use their cell phone charging it then becomes interesting but right but I think specifically are more helpful and it should be more prevalent in third world countries than we have them over here there are much more value in utility here for us they're just secondary we've got everything else right we don't need anything more right good old copper anyway sorry about the tangent let's all right that's all right we can't this is where I would end the podcast right normally but we absolutely must look at some of this listener mail because I want to start off 2013 with you know right and listening lutra listener mail so everyone who is asked if we would do ever do a two hour podcast the answer is yes just pray this is your gift for the new year no we're gonna actually I really want to blaze through these not because they're bad pieces of mail but because some of the answers are great and if we don't get to one of these Mabel get to one of them next time but I want to ask because we have Joe on the air we have a first time right in from listener it's okay i know it's i know it's my fault i know it's a no it's because i have not studied enough foreign pronunciation but i can never pronounce names it's pronounced pardon Oh Martin's not reminds number two on the list too uh this is from I'm just going to try my best dushyant schrick handy I completely massacred that but Dushyant thank you for writing in thank you for letting us know on Twitter that you had written and we can't address all of your points i want to reiterate for 2013 that when you write in please do your best to keep them brief but we will try and maybe get to some of your additional points on a future show but this is the most interesting one particularly we have Joe in the air Dushyant asks do you think Google has just used or rather misused the open source community for its own profit as far as Android is concerned I'm asking this because some people feel that Google is simply use the developer community and not given back to it so to speak that's an awesome question I have no idea how to answer it I can see the basis for that question and I think there's growing sentiment in the developer community that that may in fact be the case that having been said google has provided us with the platform they have provided us with the user base they have provided us with the market or the Play Store now to to make that platform a viable competitor you know definitely a second place if not a first place competitor to iOS so from a development standpoint developers may be sitting back saying I don't think google is giving back as much to the google project the code base as they would otherwise have liked but when you step back and look at the ecosystem as a whole i think google has done significantly more than their fair share you know Google they're not a development house first and foremost they use development to accomplish their ends whether that be distributed web serving which believe it or not is a bigger deal to Google then than just search because without that distributed computing set up and the custom operating systems that they have to to power that search your search experience would not be at all what it is today so first and foremost you know they're they're doing distributed computing and cloud based computing oh they're also a search engine who has all this other stuff without that framework without that infrastructure in place we wouldn't have the Google services that we have an Android would be less less viable as an alternative let alone arguably the number one number two out there so look at it from a stand back and see the whole ecosystem standpoint rather than are they just contributing enough code and I think that the answer then becomes evident that is a much better answer than I could have given and I can do nothing but say Joe I am compelled to agree with you because it was very well argued I'd like to bring up this conversation again in the future because I think it's a very interesting one and thank you for bringing it up listener but this ties in to the last piece of listener mail that we're going to deal with we have actually two more in the buffer for next week because they were great questions but Martin I'm actually going to hold your peace and also the gentleman from China who encouraged me to just call him neo because he knew I wouldn't be to be able to pronounce his name neo and Morpheus voice to read email right what if i told you but Martin and neo we will get to your mail pieces maybe not at the CES email but in a podcast but in a future 1 i'm down to fifteen percent battery so we have to wrap this up though and I want to wrap it up on a tangentially related piece of email from our old friend Callie Dom's waya who asks he's been wondering about the application of the App Store Google Play like viber whatsapp tango and Adobe Reader they have no ads or any encouraging paid services yet they're beautifully designed and supported how do they get the profit this is a question that I run into kind of often and you know when it's a service like Google which we were just talking about yeah they can make it they can write a google search app and they're delivering they're serving ads they're getting more eyeballs on their content and whatever but how do some of these companies that just seem to be ad houses make a profit on like Kelly says does Dropbox paid services pay up for millions of free accounts of free storage or is one dollar yearly enough to keep whats app servers running smoothly I'm yeah I don't understand how some of these houses make make their money you know I I don't either and I'm afraid I'll go back to what I tell my kids whenever you see something in the market or the Play Store or iTunes or on the web that is free it's probably too expensive because free is seldom free it it costs you something whether that's money out of your pocket whether that is time to complete surveys so you can download something or whether that is them collecting your demographics and usage that then they can turn around and sell to someone who then can market to you or some combination of all of them it usually is too much money to go with free and I would much rather spend even four bucks on an app to get an ad-free version that doesn't do that stuff then then I an ant based version another thing is they could just be trying to get their name out there and right it could be a bad building thing right exactly that app itself is their ad and then down the road they then either make a lite version or turn that into a lite version which is free and add extra bonus features kind of like Evernote has done yeah were cracked either the internet comedy side cracked.com for windows phone 8 just has a light app right now or for a while they just had a light app and then you know later on down the road that roll out the paid version yes yeah so that that's true that's true might be multi stage saying but I like your broad advice up front their Joe because it it's like some advice that I got at my college graduation party from an old crotchety friend of my father's is like hey you know Mike yeah well you know there's no more free lunch I mean not that you were getting a free lunch but you know what I mean no I don't say it what no I never mind it's good advice it's good advice and um guys thank you for writing and I'm sorry we couldn't get to all to listen to me on this episode we had some technical issues Joe is broadcasting from the other side of a subspace distortion today it's as are even brandon is having some connectivity issues so maybe there may have been pipe problems on my on the tubes are all fouled up today but we have to to wrap it up so we're sorry for running a little long before we go out and i know we've got super time yes crunches I do have some breaking news breakingnews breaking news that by the time the podcast is out it's going to be hours old but I am a supporter of a Kickstarter project for the pebble epaper watch yes which was supposed to be released in September and then we were which by the way that was my birthday present to myself and then it happened so I'm a lousy gift giver for myself it was supposed to be out for the holidays but then they did the empty box thing where they gave you a card to print out and had a rhyme that says I promise I got you a watch but it's not here so sorry I email just came through says project update number 27 it's all red dozens almost time it's one yeah yeah I did yeah listen I wrestle o people at CES at CES they are going to have a press conference January 9th at nine a.m. pacific time which i bet will be the announcement of availability of pebble yes that is awesome news we've written about pebble on the site as well I have two articles focused on on the pebble project one on the project product and one on the project so look them up a kunai kaam if you want to read more on those and Joe I didn't know you were a backer too so it's you me and a friend of mine named chris is a great we're gonna be able to pool our resources awesome yeah I wait what color did you get I got black I didn't you know it's such a what did you get III did as well I was debating between that or gray or orange they look nice yeah but yeah it's just that everything even though it's small it's still a pretty high profiled about it's not a pretty watch I mean it's it's really it's really not very pretty um so I wanted black to kind of minimize its very pronounced bezel right right but anyway we uh that's great news thank you for bringing that in Joe and and thank you for being on the podcast today I'm always glad I could be here despite the subspace distortions to PT and I think with that we're gonna we're going to close that listeners remember that next week we will be broadcasting from CES it'll be Brendan minimum Jaime Rivera and myself maybe I will learn how to roll my r's by then I doubt it behind me of any better Savannah Rivera but that wraps it up its first episode of 2013 on the pocket now weekly involve us in your conversations on the internets Brandon minimun as he told you is that Brandon minimun on Twitter Joe is at Joe Levi and you can find me at captain two phones you can also follow pocket now officially at pocket now tweets on Twitter pocket now on facebook and google+ leave us a review on iTunes or xbox music if you will because that helps us out of it and if you have a topic question or suggestion for the podcast like the awesome questions we had today or you just want to say hi please email us podcast at pocketnow.com thanks for listening we'll see you later good day or 5s whatever it's going to be I think les plus exactly i think it's going to be a rewarmed over five with new software with new up uh uh uh hey talking sometimes talking hard