Gadgetory

from pocketnow.com this is PocketNow weekly hello and welcome to episode 02 eight of the pocket now weekly the once-a-week podcast from pocketnow.com where we discuss what's awesome and what's awkward in the world of mobile technology I'm your host Michael Fisher and joining me this morning from seven hours in the future is the man of steel managing editor Anton Dean naudia good morning sir good morning everybody good to be back and the man with the optimus G editor-in-chief Brandon minimun good morning to you here's the thing we started off friends it was cool but then it was all pretend yeah that's even gone oh that would everything just got immeasurably better thank you I was about the shazam you it's actually a fun trick to play on people because it sounds like you're about to say something here's the thing it does we start off friends and they're like oh you're something here singing Kelly Clarkson I've done to my wife like 11 times and she's getting tired of it I'm just gonna say I'm sure she appreciates that still after after all those 11 times I was wondering if if it reminds me of those fake out answering machine messages from the 80s oh yeah like you know the answer machine because like hello hello hello ah gotcha i'm not actually hear that yeah yeah just mention it because whenever i get a call from somebody I don't want to talk to I answer live but I'm blame my voicemail it's like hi this is sony and i'm not here and then depending on what he or she tells me I'm just back or not that's awesome there used to be a call screening on some cell phones that would allow you to do that like it you could for 30 seconds you could listen to the person leaving the message and then decide whether you wanted to pick up or not oh yeah it was awesome we have a lot of announcements and we have a lot of thought thread we have a ton of topics this is ridiculous I thought we were going to coast through this episode to be honest I mean we're in the low between CES and mwc and I thought it was going to be a slow week but absolutely not this has been leaked city things have been crazy so let's jump right into it and let's get to the announcements pocketnow is in the middle of is still after like almost a year is in the middle of a whole bunch of changes ninety-eight percent of which are awesome and I'm only saying that to cover ourselves because I'm sure there's some not awesome but I just can't that was about to say would I was like what two percent but no one of them is is really really cool and I get to participate in it when it comes up tomorrow but I need Tony to talk about it since it is his brainchild so Tony tell us a little bit about pocket now live very quickly well very quickly everybody has been asked or most people have asked us for a video podcast and we decided to keep it classic because you cannot beat a classic but we thought that how about we do something for those people and those so for fun and for everybody so bucket now life will be a weekly hang out with the readers a very casual one where we just sit down as friends talk about all things mobile and people just can join say hi ask questions and stuff like that i will be you'll hang out right the google hangout yeah which will go live on our youtube channel and then once it's done it will stay there as a recording i will be hosting it weekly except for when the editor-in-chief will be joining us that is going to be his show we're gonna have a neat Brenda and we're gonna have lots of fun yes we are and I this we already had kind of the pilot episode last week and I was not on the air i think i was filming our commercial at the time but it looked like a ball i watched about the first five or six minutes of it and I thought two things i thought well first i thought like I really want to be on the air and I kept like shooting a mast remember the email yeah so annoyed but I was so so jealous of Brandon's fake sunglasses and high maze devil horns and Anton's real cigar yeah that was not an avatar no it was not a problem I was and actually I have some Honduran cigars from hi my so I could I too could join in the cigar this ignorance now those are for me but no those are those your prop idea what I'm gonna be hell over you were supposed to bring them to me to Barcelona no there me either who's like it'll settle this offline all right that sounds good um but so good I'm very much looking forward to my first time on the unpacking now live so but just as a clarification and thank you John you for saying what I forgot to the weekly is for now and for the foreseeable future going to remain an audio only podcast so if you want to see our faces we are very flattered and thank you continue listening to the weekly but watch pocket now live as well and pocket now live sisters talking alive is not a video yeah ha no it is nobody let me be clear it I think totally different and unique and less structured exactly it's not just gonna be the weekly Redux it's it's it's much more casual and and just an entirely different kind of fun so that aside pocket out alive announced we are gonna jump into a thought thread which I had a broad idea for today but then Brendan had a better idea which was more specific we like specificity and increasingly incredibly we like LG Brandon take it away LG uh so i was using the iphone 5 since since it came out and it's gotten to the point where the iphone 5 makes me feel bad inside because it's so boring the hardware it's great it's then you know we've been here before but i wanted to do something diff i want to go back to android ms android I feel like half the year I'm gonna android half the year i'm on iphone and half the year i want windows phone that doesn't make sense ok so no i really like the nexus 4 but there are two big problems with the nexus 4 that makes it impossible for me to use the first one the biggest thing is to touch sensitivity issues and people that have the nexus 4 say you know what are you talking about it's perfectly fine yeah if you use it for long enough you're gonna get used to it but if you're like me that switches phones a lot you really notice these things and so that was a big issue and the other issue was the lack of LTE well just so happens that the world has created a phone that solves both of those problems the optimus G on AT&T and it's uh I was in the I was at an AT&T store the other day and I'm like I wonder if the touch sensitivity issue is not there and it should right because it's the same phone but it's not there which is kind of weird and then of course it is out to eat but I wasn't up for a new contract so i paid like 400 bucks to buy this phone this is very unusual for me to do to buy a phone off-contract that's so expensive but I I really wanted it and I'm really glad I haven't um it it really feel I mean it's so fast the battery life is boss like like yesterday it was off the charger for 14 hours i was using it heavily and it's funny cuz when you we haven't fun that has a really good battery life you start doing things differently like I've got the craziest live wallpaper i can think of my screen brightness I screen brightness baseline is seventy-five percent so it goes between 75 and 100 percent and 14 hours later I was still with twenty-seven percent battery life after using it heavily and nice and if I may when you're running that live wallpaper on the optimist tree as I recall it doesn't impact its performance at all yeah yeah that escort pro is just uh is just a sexy beast so so it is fast you know it's a little boxy it's the only thing I like and it's also very fragile has the glass on the front and glass on the back um but like I love this phone it's the biggest downside is that it's still an ice cream sandwich but it feels like it's it's got jelly bean which is strange like everything so smooth and responsive and I don't think and also another downsides of development story's pretty terrible because not many people have bought have purchased the optimus G so there's no cyanogenmod 10 for it yet there there aren't any there aren't that many cool custom roms but I'm really digging this thing like I can see myself using this for a while we do I think that was gonna be my question like I also dig it and I understand exactly why you dig it and but can you see yourself using it for for an extended period like I mean it's it seems to be far enough away now from the cutting edge considering its you know delayed jelly bean introduction and all that kinda stuff like it are you missing any of that are you missing the expandable notifications and the you're missing out on some google now enhancements to right well here's the thing started I mean yeah I am I i missed the extended notifications and i miss google now um to answer your first question the way I was thinking about this was that my next phone is going to be probably the HTC m7 because i want that droid DNA but faster thing with better hardware and so forth and I want the 1080p screen and five inches i can i can do that on at all kind of phone that's not a phablet but the problem is the the the m7 is probably not gonna get released until march and you know i can't wait these two whole months or whatever it is three months until until that so that's why I got the optimus G cool so it's so it's it's a it's a stopgap phones down yeah it is a luxury stopgap it's one that you're really enjoying using yeah yeah huh that's that is awesome and good on LG and you know we have actually some news that I think we can we can kind of leap into this if we if we want to because LG II has some news that I just I just I just can't believe you are not the only one Brandon I I think there have been a million Optimus optimus G phones sold worldwide so far but more importantly LG has just announced that it managed to sell excuse me that it managed to steal the second place spot in total phone shipments from Apple in the United States for December 2012 I don't get it I I don't get it either i I'd like the optimus G is the literally the only smartphone that if you ask me right off the top my head tell me an LG smartphones the only one I can think of I know there are others and I you know if I tried a little harder but you know it's not on retail shelves it doesn't have a big big visual presence it has almost no marketing support advertising support here in the states at least in my area and yet they've for December they were second on on smartphone shipments or phone shipments Tony do what's the its smartphone its smartphones yep i thought it i thought this was including their dumb phones then this makes even less sense to me this is coming from what the counterpoint research Yonhap news agency has a report on the counterbore research report so it's basically a research report based on analytics and just a small clarification complete this is not the first time that LG snatches the second place from Apple LG was ahead of Apple before the iphone 4s it's the iphone 4s that managed to get apple on the second place pushing LG to the third and ever since the iphone 4s until recently apple's been sitting on the second with LG in the third and now probably with the iphone 5 selling slower than the optimus g LG tube back the second place but if you look at the differences is just one percentage between them so it's thirteen percent for LG and twelve percent for Apple it's not a huge difference but the fact itself that LG is second is is an excellent news because the US market is dominated by south korean companies samsung leads LG's the second and then Apple is the first company which happens to be a US company which is right there in the top three but on the last pot right I hadn't I just had no idea that LG was moving this many units like I mean I've never seen an optimist g in the while I've certainly never sent a view in the wild you know I just it's it's stunning to me I think it's and I don't think we're the only one judging with the comments I don't think we're the only ones surprised by this the the optimus G was basically a phone for the US market of course it was available in canada japan and and in its home turf in south korea but the US market was its main market and i think from those 1 million phones sold the majority is on the US market right what we've got to speak in the optimus G I don't want to get it too far away from this because the the optimus g pro has been confirmed for japan which will kind of help them build the success even further we think this thing I guess the improvements in the pro Tony this is your story as well is that it packs a faster version of the s4 pro at 1.7 gigahertz that is that is true and even though LG had no official wording or information about this phone its again Japanese carrier Angie docomo who confirmed this phone as part of its 2013 lineup and in that confirmation we have some specifications coming from the carrier and not from the manufacturer itself so 1.7 s4 pro 5 inch full HD two gigs of ram 32 internal storage blah blah blah I'm thinking we'll probably see this phone in Barcelona at mwc LG's a little bit silent because they want to show this up they want to capitalize on the show but NTT DoCoMo had to mention it as part of their lineup together with the Xperia Z tablet can I just say something here ask a question please so so this phone is going to Japan and we haven't talked about Japan much the the perception I've always had was that in Japan it's already like the year 2050 like they have all this advanced technology but i guess the cool stuff yeah but but but wait a sec do they have like do they have phones that are several generations ahead or something i don't think so i mean like this is the best friend they're getting which is a phone that's coming to the US this year it seems that the the phone technology in japan is at the same pace as the US isn't it they have some specifics market specifics for instance of every Japanese film I've covered almost probably still have a has an infrared board and a TV tuner but that aside I'm not sure the optimus g pro will get to the US just think about the samsung galaxy s3 alpha which is the ds3 on steroids for for the same camera here in japan that's a japan specific phone but so well they have slight upgrades but not huge different it's not a huge leap between normal the rest of us and them yeah yeah yeah that's what I think it is I mean it's not like the optimus g pro has a 16 core processor with 128 gigabytes of ram in like a 4k screen i mean these specs are all specs that we'll see in the m7 so i would love to know if if there's something besides the over-the-air TV tuner which is built in every phone in japan which is who cares about that you streaming over the internet they good what they do do I do but but you know what I mean like there's always this perception of like that it's so futuristic over there but I don't think that's the case anymore you know I think that used to be the case I yeah I think that they were always ahead ahead head and we started to reach parity in the years following the iphone release and I remember when they think when the iphone the original iphone was released in japan actually now it might be wrong on this but i don't think it was a very big seller and it took a long time as a very slow burn over there for that too to become a popular device and now it is so i think there's a big cultural gap there but i think that the the disparity between you know the japan's lead on on the rest of the world's for smartphones go is not anywhere near as wide as it used to be a high grade c go on i was gonna say and if you look at some older technology just modern technology i think like NFC was was ubiquitous in japan like 10 years ago and people people are using it to make payments and so forth and it took like some of those technologies took the us a little bit longer uh but but besides that i don't think there's anything to speak of i was about to say that i'm gonna take both of your thoughts and take them even third or about the only phone maker which comes from japan it's sony which is relevant I mean are they huge no are they in the game yes but they have so many other players like Panasonic sharp if I'm Rico well these are old Japanese companies and they are not relevant on the landscape so they as far as market is concerned they are a great market but manufacturers from Japan are not doing that well on international markets I want to just to bring them back to the optimus g pro really quickly this i'm so very disappointed in this design and i hope we get a different one because it's essentially the optimus G with it looks like maybe a little bit wider radius corners and at home button it's kind of home button and don't get me started look like the sgs3 yeah well the real disappointment is the back because the optimus G that we're familiar with has this wonderfully patterned back that that really serves to set it apart from every other device if you look at it I mean it reflects light in a very curious way it's a little like the Nexus 4 whereas this press image we're seeing seems to suggest it's just a matte finish regular old back it's like they took the one special thing about the optimist cheese physical hardware and removed it for the clinic's no damn sense today good that could have been LG's thing but it looks like on the on the g pro the back is removable which they in which case they can't do the cool backing that plus don't forget this is a carrier phone I'm willing to bet my buffalo nickel that the optimus G the optimus g pro from ntt docomo will be different from the optimus g pro which will be sold internationally i hope that that is true and i'm sure that that is true and yeah and there's there's a white one and but i think having a removable battery doesn't preclude you from doing some cool stuff like Samsung did it on the ax t VES with that fake metal you know there's another phone that I'm thinking of that I can't remember right now that's that did something cool with a removable battery door so you can do something cool with it speak of removable battery I was curious to see I think was you My gods at CES that was swapping batteries sorry yeah I'm like no my note 2 yeah yeah hmm okay my question is how did you charge that second battery I had to I had to I was using hymas note 2 because he wasn't using it cuz he was using the 8x so I was like hey man can I borrow your note 2 to charge my other battery cuz I didn't have a separate battery charger for it so oh so so it's not you don't have like a little recept little no cage thingy which I would do if if the ports were standardized on batteries and I could use it for more than one model but you know that all the batteries has their different so can ya yeah every time every time I I hear people scoff at non-removable battery i scoff at that because I I don't want to ever March yeah I don't want to ever have to root that's not like like good experience no it's a lose-lose because you're you're charging one battery you then you take it out any charge another one and then you leave that second one in the phone and then you have this fully charged lithium-ion batteries setting out for you know days and that's not good for it they prefer to be charged at about half half charge or at least last time i check the science a couple years ago forty percent yeah yeah forty percent so I mean and it's inconvenient and yeah it's kind of annoying but I gotta tell you and I wrote a piece saying that to I was like everybody stop whining and use external battery packs stop whining about they have to do this but I gotta tell you despite the inconvenience on the charging side it is really nice just to be out you know on the trade floor or wherever and your phone powers down you just swap in a new battery rather than yeah but actually anally think imagine having a battery which will go through one day of heavy usage without you swapping batteries or charging constantly that now you're just that's that's the world I want to live in now you're just having a pipe dream uh-huh I actually I got close to that with a note too actually but no no luck at CES it's as if that's a phone killer we are we talking enough about about Galaxy devices can we jump into this the biggest rumor of the week I think still from South Korea still from South Korea we got word that then there's no update on this that the render of the or the official image of the galaxy s4 may have broken to cover on picasa like a month ago and nobody noticed until like the other day now this is still this is like buried in rumor this it shows a device very similar to the galaxy s3 with more squared-off corners a bigger home button yay and kind of the typical TouchWiz nature UX UI and there's a lot of qualifiers on this we don't know if it's real if it is I just want to come out and say it I am bored already okay well here's the thing i'm not gonna do it again no seriously here's the thing about the galaxy s4 samsung has two choices one is to make a device that looks like the galaxy s3 that resonates with people the millions and millions of people that now know what a galaxy s3 looks like or they could do something different and I think for a company that has sold so many millions of devices that is profit focused it makes more sense to go with the first option it's safer and people are still gonna buy it I mean there's gonna be a group of people that say this this design is tired and boring like like you Michael but yeah most people mom and pop will be like oh it's another one of those newfangled galaxies it's the new galaxy yeah but there's a fine line there right because you know I feel like if you can do that if you're taking the design forward you can do that if you're iterating and you are doing something new with an existing design but it looks like if this is true which you know it might not be if this is the real design it's kind of like they took the galaxy s3 and someone said now you guys went crazy with that their pebble design let's just take it on back a bit and it looks like it looks like some kind of cross between a galaxy s2 and a galaxy s3 it looks like a step backward to me I I'm sure that this is a fake one you are there are ya first of all as somebody commented on this Samsung never used a battery percentage icons and its renders plus we have the same touch with you I Samsung always launches new touch with you eyes but just to get back to your design points guys I would agree that it would be normal or natural to deal with the season samsung looking the same way I mean the galaxy s3 the note 2 yes 3 many about every recent Samsung tablets or any device coming from Samsung is using the same design principle and I think that this is what they do they come up with a new design every year use the same design language for all phones on that lineup and then next year bring the refresh so I'm out of buffalo nickels but if I had another one I'd say we'll see a completely new galaxy s4 with a new design I hope you are correct and I would not choose to argue with you on that and this does said I mean it rings kind of odd this this particular render and I agree with you that they would probably show something a little bit more bombastic on the software side and I didn't know that about the battery percentage clue so thank you for that well uh something else to consider is that if you click the picasa link it's now taken down no that's interesting yeah yeah that could mean one of two things either that the there's been a takedown notice to cease and desist then this is close to the truth he had had his share of fun and that's it ok so yeah a lot of speculation on that we're not really probably probably probably probably not not real but we have more speculation so don't worry about it we have one of those exact inner peace I think after Lee titled Tony more samsung galaxy s4 rumors and speculation what it what is going on we have we have a name we have a code name kind of released or not released but speculated upon called projects je broj of jay is in is an old project which was rumored back the day and let everybody to believe that because of the shape of letter J the galaxy s4 might have a bendable screen that's debatable but apparently project J has recently renamed to LTS out use or in Latin else use which means higher and there are lots of reports but one of them specifically claims that there will be a larger 26 milli amp 2600 milliamp hour battery with wireless charging capabilities yes Michael your prayers have been answered yes and the model number will be TI 95 which is not a huge surprise plus then then there come the other speculations which probably everybody can think about the 8-8 core cpu which was announced at CES a four point ninety nine inch full HD display which again was in at CES but nothing is for certain so let's that's interesting I will you know these kind of spec pumps are expected as you say and the GTI 9500 is no surprise to anybody 2600 milliamp hour battery gets me a little excited that sounds pretty cool and of course the wireless charging I feel like it's odd because I feel like if we were having this conversation at this exact time last year and I've written some editorials to this effect like the wireless charging was so the pipe dream and now it has in a very short time to my eternal delight it has become the new thing that everyone wants to have or that some carriers are demanding that that phones have I think verizon is playing a very big part in this in the United States so I just want to say I'm happy I'm very happy to see that and I wish that Samsung had delivered more completely on its promise to launch a wireless charging solution for the galaxy s3 because it still hasn't globally it still we've yet to see that surprising i mean it's uh it's become it's become pretty pretty entered we just need some hot and sexy um dwyer lyst charging devices like that thing you sent you sent me like michael was that oh yeah the tilt slightly yeah it looks like if you took them like a like a check mark and it into the real world as a 3d thing I mean I can't even explain it it is it is so peculiar in its shape and its multi-cut you know there are many colors offered it looks like it's just custom designed to match your HTC windows phone 8x or 8's or your Nokia Lumia whatever any of the multicolored ones we should be getting review units of these so I will be sure to let everyone know once it comes in so you should definitely follow us on Twitter listeners if you don't do that ah facebook oh yes and unfit I keep I don't mean to keep dismissing Facebook Tony's runs that Facebook you've got a campaign like a champ I occasionally want to answer our own our own trivia questions or our own when was the last time most of this come from Brandon do they yeah whatever it well then good on both of you we're not done with Samsung speculation we still have word of a possible what I think is a very very accurate possibility for the Galaxy Note 80 and we have written some pieces on this we've been covering this is one of the most fierce fiercely rumored devices because Samsung has basically come out and said that they're going to drop it on us at mwc and they have to fill in the gap with the s4 I mean no s4 but no date exactly right yeah they couldn't just pull another CES for their like here's this TV and the tweeting refrigerator you know it's I need to do something mobile and this galaxy note 8.0 if you haven't seen it looks a lot like the the Samsung Nexus 10 except built for a portrait form a built-in portrait style and this particular example is white and the screen resolution is terribly low even for the size what is the screen resolution is 1280 by 800 is not a denied as yeah especially with a pen input device where you're drawing diagonal lines if you're into that kind of thing it's gonna look like a staircase input let's talk about that because the did the S Pen is just bound to be included on this sucker because it's a galaxy note it would just be stupid if it weren't but I did not necessarily think they could fit an S Pen into a device that looks as slender as this one does and maybe it's a little thicker than I think do we have a measurement on this I was about to talk exactly about this yeah please those those of you who watched the previous pilot version of the hangout last Friday when I held the ipad mini and my hands hi may Rivera said that I make this device look small I have huge hands I'm getting a fair grip of the ipad mini and the ipad mini is exactly 200 millimeters that is seven point eighty seven inches in width but this galaxy note 8.0 is to 11.3 millimeters so that's 11 millimeters more I have huge hands I'm not sure I'll be able to hold that with one hand that's gonna be a problem because I see that it has a headset at its top haha and yeah i mean this mock-up actually i believe it and Michael if you look closely out the the back of it yeah in the bottom left corner and that image that you're looking at you can see a little stylist yeah there is a crevasse they're also looks to be some sort of like it ear piece on the top at above the sky love that finally somebody's been answering my prayers but please let me keep it with one hand let me hold it I can't hold it that one to 11 is too much even for my key chains I wish we were I wish we were joined by by by Joe on this episode the former the former life tweeter of the podcast Joe Alleva because this looks a whole lot even more like like something out of Star Trek Voyager and maybe that's why I'm inclined to like it weaved things getting all I've been getting a lot of hate in the comments though because I don't know people are not liking this this render for whatever reason or excuse me not render this legal design this design I do I like it I me too yeah I mean you know you've got a slight bulge it's the well it's like you turned a nexus 10 on its side and slim to town interesting Lee I didn't like the Nexus 10 feet well maybe you're a portrait kind of guy maybe um well I we'll know a lot more about that as we get closer damn NBC but let's jump into HTC if nobody has an objection oh please do because while we're talking about leaked shots and renders and all that kind of stuff we talked a little bit last week on the podcast about the render of the m7 that had leaked and the images that have since become public or you know whether on purpose or not have shown a very very different device then that leaked render that leaf render was not that was that was like from 1994 I think it's pretty bogus right I but you know it excited me because that previously crendor was like it had some cool design elements I could suggest to the edge to edge screen and it had those drilled out holes on the top and bottom I am posting trot yeah I mean it looked like something different and this one like if I hadn't seen that I'd be pretty stoked about this m7 but I did see that so now I'm looking at this what could be the m7 and I'm like oh wow you guys did the droid DNA except rectangular it's the droid DNA which is which is frustrating yeah it's not it is for you guys but you guys have seen it in the state the rest of the world has not so it's exciting for the the all the other people who live in on this planet well as seven billion minus 200 something million no because you have to remember China has the butterfly and yeah that's the same device no doesn't it looks exactly the same as the DNA yeah but it doesn't look exactly the same as the m7 render no it doesn't I'm or the big what are you amped on it yeah yeah I couldn't wait for this design and this this form factor to get to Europe I mean I was drooling over to Joy DNA like crazy last year yeah so I'm I can't wait to find this phone in Europe and get it you're gonna use that beats audio no no I'm just got a disabled and use my super high-end earplugs well let's uh let's talk about a little bit about the software and that's cuz you know physically we I don't want to go back and forth on whether or not this this is real or not or whatever but look at this look at sense 5 i'm so nice yeah like 19 we have I agree like it looks it's very very pared down from what we've come to expect from sense it's flat it's like Windows 7 to Windows 8 yeah yes yeah yes um and and with that comes efficiency in in in terms of the the data that fits on the screen like the the folders are outlined by this like gentle outline and not this thick crusty thing it's it's just you know I've always really liked sense but you know the the keyboard every button has a little shine to it it's like well I want any to shine is this is there like a light on behind me it's you know like this is I just this makes me even more excited about the m7 because for example HTC I think has the best email client it's just so print Haute is really good isn't it yeah I this is good I agree i think the story of the m7 now if we are to believe these rumors is going to be software and it's going to be sense 5 and you know really that's where the focus should be on an HTC device right now because we've we Taunton so much almost year ago about how much we loved the One X is hardware and the One X's display and not so much the camera but you can't have everything but the polycarbonate we liked a lot and all that but really what held it back for most of us i think was was sense and being laggy and slow even though they had slimmed it down a lot and if this what we're seeing that from sense 5 is at all accurate it's going to be beautiful and if HTC has managed to solve the responsiveness woes which by the way they did quite a bit in the droid DNA if you remember from from my review they could have a real winner on their hands with this sucker so I'm very amped they could go go go go go go go i'm gonna i was about to wrap it up mmm okay since you said go 17 times i'm gonna go go the problem is that can competitively unless there's a killer feature you're gonna have the HTC m7 you're gonna have the galaxy s4 you're gonna maybe have the g pro or some variant of it all with almost the exact same specs hardware that's not that different and what's going to make these devices stand out is the marketing push which hopefully HTC will do and and if there are any killer features which we haven't seen coated we haven't seen killer features in a very long time I mean maybe um you know PureView in in the Lumia 920 or let's name some other cool features a lightness in the galaxy s4 or like well I mean beautiful displays even though Mike hardware side yeah yeah incredible camera performance on non PureView device's battery longevity I like the droid razr maxx which improbably hasn't sold very well but but you know it's gonna need one of those it's a standout hmm I just hope HTC One throw out another guy using the phone from the airplane oh god that commercial was annoying it's just it was on all the time in the way that the Samsung spots are but it was just not as cool somehow I don't know such a concept I'm telling you if they bring back the a we always talk about so they bring back the you campaign Oh God yet I mean I will probably burst into tears just from the sentimentality if that's a word like yes my phone is the first thing I see in the morning okay I love that I add god that's my favorite I come out of all time HTC please bring back the you campaign it is so amazing you know I was about to say oh yeah word on the virtual street is that the HTC m7 will not be launched at mwc oh right but it will be launched earlier than nwc somewhere around februari 19th most probably in London or somewhere else at a dedicated special HTC event now if this thing turns out to be true then HTC is joining the elite of Apple and Samsung and other companies who are making dedicated special events which will suck for you and me Michael because we'll both be in bound to Barcelona but we'll probably see the phone at the show floor so this is just a rumor right now but prepare for this to happen it used to be that we could spend our travel budget on going to a few events a year but now we're gonna go like 20 I know yeah yeah and you know and I get and we talked a lot about this at CES and I get why companies do that but it does yeah just make it a little less convenient doesn't it we were just well we were talking about another I won't get into that right now until we get confirmation that we are attending the the last piece of news in the Android section for us is this sony leak which appears to fertel at a phablet entry of their very own at six inches or a little over six inches six point four four inches please stop that is HUGE that that's huge for flow in that massive but you know what I whereas I wasn't excited when Huawei did it with the ascend mate at 6.1 inches I am I am I could get excited about a Sony phablet because I feel like the company has a real eye for design as we saw with the Xperia Z and ZL I and you know about a billion phones before that I'm getting I'm getting glad that we're starting to like um we keep seeing OEMs go bigger and bigger but there's a point at which they can't like no one's gonna do a 7-inch phone because it's physically impossible so we're almost there to where we can stop seeing this madness but I kind of agree with you my pot I think if there's one company left that can do a massively sized phone I want to see Sony do it absolutely yeah and all we have really is this picture of this gloved hand in a lab holding the display glass with this it's just it is massive isn't it that hand got fired yeah yeah let me everyone put your hands down undelete yeah it would give it let's see the rumored is it's it's 1080p kind of like it would have to be right and so but at this size the pixel density would be closer to 340 PPI instead of which is good we're still good it's still very good yes absolutely but i like how Steven puts it in this in the in the article he says as you can see from the pic it's not so obscenely large that you'd struggle to hold it assuming that its frame doesn't add too much the models width but it could still be a bit of an adjustment yes I would say so it's it's monster so till we hear more about that we can put that to bed but I just didn't want to leave leave stony completely out of the news this week as we continue to reel from their fun announcement at CES so let's jump into windows 8 and windows phone 8 and kind of tackle the rest of this news here there's there's something from just this morning I was so excited because I didn't think there was much windows news but then I was like Tony what are we going to talk about he's like yeah we just posted the story of this this morning this is the most exciting rumor I personally have come across you can hear my voice it sounds 6i Tony tell us about the real PureView windows phone the nokia eos which is not gonna be the name and all the cannons gonna sue but yeah here's the thing when when nokia announced the Lumia 920 with PureView technology and we wrote an editorial about the fact that the PureView technology on the Lumia 920 is not pier view because the pier view 8 away no we know how it functions and the Lumia 920 doesn't function like that but it has optical image stabilization and Nokia reassured everybody that there's peer review 1 and peer review two and PureView light and PureView XXL and blah blah blah but it's the real purview now the thing is that according to some the verge sources we will apparently see the real PureView windows phone which will hopefully be announced at mwc together with five other Lumia devices it will pack a sensor similar to the one in the 808 PureView which begs for a question if it's going to be a 41-megapixel sensor will windows phone 8 support that huge resolution and its camera application if not how will they overcome this but that's another topic and it will apparently be made just like the iphone 5 entirely from aluminium and it will be a fully high-end premium phone AT&T is gonna have it sometime this year so that's all we know at the moment about this and of course windows phone on board this is the phone that I wanted when I heard it before I heard about the Lumia 920 when I knew there was a PureView device coming to Windows Phone and I don't think I'm alone this is this rumor is the phone that I wanted that I hoped for that I half expected to come and I was like many I was pretty disappointed by the 920 not being an actual PureView device quote unquote so I did this nothing could get me more excited than this rumor I if this is not true I will be I will just shut myself in the booth by myself for a day and kind of bleep the I will buy this the minute it becomes available like I I'm so excited about this go ahead Brandon did you have something how did you know i can do you take that intake of breath I know yeah I did I I just thought of something unrelated that we didn't talk about the android section I'm gonna bring it up real quick I don't know if you guys saw this but I'm google announced earnings and I don't know if it was Eric Schmidt was talking about two things that they see as an opportunity in mobile and he was talking about how phones still aren't good enough and everything and and you know people thought that he was referring to the motor alexr what everybody said to think that one is that the obvious that phone battery life is still not that good and so that that tells me that you know this this mystery motorola phone will probably have amazing battery life but then he said something that people don't really talk about which is that when you drop your phone it shouldn't like you know become destroyed as if the future motorola phone might have some sort of indestructible quality where you can't crack the screen it's it's resilient to falls that is entirely unsurprising to me and i don't mean on exciting I mean unsurprising because Motorola has always focused heavily on excellent hardware as far as durability goes they're one of the only carriers that do that internal board coating to waterproof their devices they've always been really rugged and also they've they've had a big focus on battery life for like like two years so that makes a lot of sense to me you guys think that this is a hint for the new motorola super phone for TX yeah absolutely I do probably yeah no it's good that you brought that I mean no totally I we've talked about kind of my love for Motorola and where it comes from and Sophie I mean the company doesn't do everything right but man they can do they do durability and battery life better than almost anybody else so it'll be exciting to see my my nexus 4 just slid off the table does just walk away is your optimus G does it have a case on it yet no it doesn't and it's a little bit better with the walking off the table still happens but not as much before we just to bring us back to this the nokia windows phone thing despite i will say that despite being disappointed by the Lumia 920's camera not being the 41-megapixel beast of the 808 PureView i recently yesterday took it around town and took some photos with it alongside the galaxy camera and that resulted in a comparison video that is up right now in which almost every commenter has agreed that the Lumia 920 pictures despite being having a narrower field of view and despite being a little artificially warm are much better than the Samsung devices pictures now I don't necessarily agree and you know the comments sections are always kind of flooded with very vocal windows my hands um but I have to say that barring all that you know throwing all that out the window the 920 still takes very very good pictures for a smartphone so that sounds it's gonna meet my 808 PureView in Barcelona it's gonna say yeah we are now that is where we're doing our galaxy camera versus 808 PureView comparison video right Barcelona yeah yep that's going to be some of the best scenery ever seen in any of our comparison videos so I can't wait let's see can we jump into the Microsoft Windows Phone 7.8 SDK has been released for all the poor people still stuck on Windows Phone 7 hardware you're about to get small tiles and actually this story came out yesterday but I think since then a new story has come out indicating that the 78 package itself is actually sitting on nokia servers waiting for carrier approval so this should be happening like right I feel for the guys who are still stuck with the Lumia 810 grid's and the 904 all the others who will get the 7.8 but somehow I'm failing at becoming excited about this yeah it's it's not terribly exciting but it you know what but it is though it's exciting if if you're one of those people right and I feel for them too and but you know if you dropped a bunch of money on an 800 or 900 you know you don't necessarily have the time that you didn't have the money to buy a 920 you know when it came out 10 months later or whatever it was so yeah but me you buy a new windows phone 8 once your contract expires because you can sit with 7.8 forever now you can but it's good that you know it's good that they're able to it is their homes it is a little better now and I actually for old a bunk I gave smaller live tiles when windows 18 was an outside I can't imagine going back to just full-size tiles now I mean it's just it's so much more efficient the use of space on the screen now despite my gap teeth you know who's excited about the surface pro well apparently Jaime's not I'm ready to I'm excited to read his tantalizing article entitled this is why I'm no longer excited about the surface pro um wait is it up yeah oh boy i love i love it and that's gonna need some heavy moderation and i told him to prepare his handkerchief or whatever to just wipe off the amount of flag which will fly his way oh god is what his last one of his last windows fun pieces like couple days ago ahead last time i checked it like 160 comments after a very short time boy oh boy so any let me start about as sad as yes i'm gonna and very very quickly about it i am excited because it's a computer it's not a tablet and having a computer in this form factor is excellent for mobility it's like having mac OS running on the ipad it is from this point of view an excellent solution for those who want to be bros and having a mobile computer with them and which is not a laptop and i also agree with the price nine hundred dollars $1,000 is an ok price from my perspective here and in romania and i'm going to say exactly why it's not from your perspective here in Romania the Lumia 920 goes for one thousand dollars just as the iphone five so i would gladly pay one thousand dollars for the surface pro but if I I think of it from a u.s. perspective because I'm a remaining working at the US company i have to thank both ways this is a huge price to pay for a tablet right it is and that's why I think they're going to have to make the case at Microsoft stores and at best buys and partner dealers whatever like they're gonna have to position this as very much the the more portable computer not the you know not the less portable tablet does this sucker have vents on it i forgot does it have like it says yeah yeah it's also quite think i have to try to erase my the experience I had with the surface RT because i was so turned off by this the surface concept that i have to remind myself that this is different and I I feel it's not even fair for me to give an opinion until I you know go to local best buy and play with one for a bit I don't think I could ever see myself owning one but dad just gonna say are we gonna get one I I don't see the need like you know for example you can get it instead of a laptop for instance yeah if you're if you're up for a new laptop and you if you really like Windows 8 and I Michael have you checked the app situation in the windows metro store thing no I haven't you have not yet I keep looking for excuses to use the surface again but I still keep I keep having to do real work oh it's funny I just asked you that because I've got tiles now I upgraded to Windows 8 just last week oh yeah so so I'm in the store now it makes no sense on which is when you feel nice to have tiles on a 24 inch monitor which is not even touch screen and just clicking with your mouse pointer on the tile it's awesome gross it's it's gross it's just it's it smells of wasted space and anyway so let me but you know I keep you know I spend most of my life on the desktop and what's what's interesting is that if you want it to not if you don't want to like deal in the Metro tile environment you really don't have to like when i launched an app i press the start button on my keyboard and i start typing and then the app shows up in the tile interface and i click and then I just pin everything that I you you can just pin stuff and out to your taskbar like Windows 7 and you don't even have to go in there that much and it's just it's it's comical when you do because like you click on the maps app and you get like a 24-inch depending on that your honor is 24 inch rendition of a Maps app that you would have on your smartphone it's just like what am I supposed to do with this Brandon and in the metro so called Metro X Metro interface do you click and drag or do you scroll with the wheel to navigate through the tiles oh you scroll with the wheel which makes sense yeah yeah um I want to just say something a little bit positive about about this which it like I'm from films on the flip side after about a week of using the surface what I've started to do is I've been on my macbook air and I've been doing stuff typing and if there's a screen element I want to interact with about maybe twice for three times a week I've reached up and touched it like and and you know what like for all the arguments about gorillas arm and for you know it is kind of an awkward move and whatever but you know what I don't that's probably one of my favorite parts about interacting with the surface is being able to do that when it's in its you know kickstand deployed in keyboard out mode I really like that so I think having a touchscreen on laptops will despite its awkwardness I think it will eventually become the normal yeah it's gotta be yes it's so natural now it really is yeah and we're so used to touching the internet directly let's reach out touch yes well it's looking forward to at least even if we don't we don't have an office one here going to spending some time at the microsoft store with one and being approached by somebody in a colorful shirt to experience the new microsoft will be the fun winding down on the Windows Phone news just very briefly I've got a piece coming on this in like a day or two it's actually i think the outlines complete i just have to you know write it which is always the story sprint is going to get its first windows phone in a long time and yeah half the podcast has already skipped head to the next topic at sprint is the smallest national carrier besides t-mobile in the united states it doesn't have there's not a reason a lot of people should get excited about it on at first glance but tune in to pocket now on friday friday morning and you will see my arguments for why exact you should be stoked about this especially if you're a windows phone user so this was less a news article and more of a teaser and opportunity to pimp my work mm camps and yeah I'll probably talk i'm probably ruin it all on the hangout tomorrow and finally now this was a late late addition to the rundown because I it didn't get in in time for last week's podcast and I wish it had because there's a rumor that a sous is considering windows phones which okay cool but also possibly a Microsoft powered padfone I hear that Ford might come out with a one-wheel car but they're just not they just uh thank you scrapped it because it didn't make sense right right right yeah you think they see the same thing is going to happen with the windows padfone I don't think anyone cares about the PadFone it's a thought I do and I love the concept I just think it's impossible to achieve at this moment using Microsoft's tools or Microsoft's platforms I mean is that because of restrictions Microsoft places on the the way the way the bad phone works is that when you dock your phone into the tablet which is not a table it's just the screen all the processing is done still on the phone and the UI automatically switches to a tablet UI to accommodate the large screen now with Windows Phone there are three resolutions which are supported wvga and the other two after out well our 1280 you cannot really make it switch to a tablet and that means the tablet would had to run some how Windows RT or Windows wendys be blown up Clive tiles I don't think is who's gonna get a product like that on the market no and plus imagine 1280 by bever 720 or 768 on a 10.1 inch screen now yeah I mean it will look bad in Metro in modern UI I mean it would look it would look bad but wouldn't like that if they somehow managed to bridge the gap which is rumored mid-2013 with that project blue windows blue which will bridge the gap between Windows RT / 8 and Windows Phone 8 then yes let windows phone 8 run the phone let windows RT / 8 run on the tablet connect the gaps connect the dots bridge the gaps and then yes this could be a great concept hmm advice can I say something one of the problems of the PadFone concept is that if you've got your screen which is basically a dumb screen and it's in your living room and you know you're like you know you're at your ad you just woke up you go into your living room your phone still on the charger and you want to like use your tablet oh crap my phones in the other room you know it doesn't have to be in the other room because the tablet actually charges the phone uh but then you have to charge the tablet too yeah that's true yeah it's just engineer I I think ok it was one of the first pieces i wrote for the site was about the original issues padfone and I was like this is a really cool concept if you are if your vision of the future still comes from no offense Tony if you if your vision of the future so comes from like the 90s when it was like imagine a phone that turns into a tablet just by plugging in but you know I don't think that's where the that's that's where the new future is I think the new future is living like having a lot of stuff in the cloud which I know you I think you hate Tony right no I live in the cloud but I use a really loud yeah I disagree with you because I think that this will be very helpful helpful for many people but the sous failed to make people understand the advantages of the bad phone concept and the pricing on the Batphone one in padfone 2 was just outrageous but imagine I I when I had become mobile and work from somewhere else I'm taking my phone and my tablet or my laptop with me with a bat phone I take only one device doc your phone into the tablet have one device with you it will charge you have your speaker's and everything is on the phone so it would be a good thing for me as a user yeah he's on crack well I think you know what I would like I would like this product to come to fruition just so that we can talk more about this because I think this is one of the more I'm usually really invested in our is the PadFone a good idea conversation but we do have to move on because hopefully we'll get the opportunity to talk about this more let's jump into iOS and where did the news has been slow but the rumors have been hot and Haley yeah and guys we should make something up Apple's gonna make a phone out of potato potato chips yes oh yeah you heard that too good i just added that yeah entirely starch-based iphone coming fourth order that board it's edible you get rid of it yeah emergency ration phone um yeah like I see the point where I retitled the headline on the on the run down like latest iphone rumors are many comma confusing because there's so many of them we have this like rumor of this four point eight inch iphone math which is probably a error in translation and afford four inch low-cost version and steven makes a good point in his pieces where he's like apple just it took so long for apple to get to the 4 inch screen size why would they immediately now jump to a four point eight inch version like it does and they and it not only doesn't make sense they don't need to i mean if you guys we are watching the market and where the trend is and android is setting the trend with high resolution and hide this pipe huge screens about the smallest screen size you'll get will be the iphone all the others will be 5 inches plus so there's a huge market niche for those like me who prefer smaller screens in a world dominated by five in smartphones if you want a smaller phone you either get inoculum me out or an iphone i I have a theory if if iOS 7 isn't groundbreaking and spectacular it it's it's gonna be tough to sell the next generation iphone when there's so much awesome hardware out there for android so what Apple would do is say well you know the truth of the matter is we're losing sales people aren't buying the iphone the iOS 7 is not that interesting let's cater to different types of users if only to expand the market because they're through a fair amount of people that won't buy the iphone because the screen is not big enough or because it's too expensive then if they saw both of those problems much to the dismay of steve jobs they would sell a lot more phones I would you know I would I think it would be cool to have a four point eight inch iphone to be honest and I think they can do it let me speculate on this just for a second Apple has lost the specifications wore a long time ago the iphone 5 still still rocks a slower chip than most of android phones they took their time to get to dual-core processors not to mention one gig of ram so the spec war has been lost wow I think I think they threw the spec war i mean i think they were like it looked at the spec war and they said you guys go ahead and measure your DS exactly we're gonna make a good product yeah and that's that's what I was about to say that the it's because of the business model the the iphone works as as it is so this is why i think that the next iPhone will not be that much about hardware improvements though we will see some but the main selling point will be software and that's whatever iOS 7 will bring yeah and if iOS 7 will not come or it will be as boring as six and there will be no hardware improvements that's gonna be the start of the decline for Apple i would agree and i would further say that the next iPhone stands a good chance if there's I if those OS improvements come if if we see a revised interface paradigm for iOS the next iPhone stands a good chance of being the one that I that I buy and use for a little while yes oh yeah you guys agree that the iphone the next iPhone whatever its name will be is about the most important phone Apple has ever released because it's a make-it-or-break-it phone I would say and I'll just jump right in I would say that the one after this coming one I think they've got one more I think they've got it they could do a 5s that's not terribly impressive you think they can blow I think they can pull an SES I think they have enough time to do that I think if they pull a 5s and then do another unimpressive one then they're in some degree of trouble that's what I think mm-hmm Brandon yeah I don't know don't bother me about that why am I getting all these messages all sudden on skype you're getting messages on Scott are you getting skype spam skype has been very weird lately I just got like a year's worth of iams in like five seconds and it stopped god it's this is everyone everyone get bought by microsoft it'll make it better yeah yeah we'll make your appt full screen yeah we've been having listeners if you haven't been able to tell we've been having skype problems on our podcast today and we are going to look into an alternate means of delivering the weekly to you so thank you for bearing with us before we leave iOS we have weird one more thing from just today is that right Tony that is true and the latest numbers from Kantar Worldpanel RN and we had some previous numbers in November where Apple was recording a historical high in terms of market share in the US and the the latest numbers are ending just before Christmas so we don't contain Christmas gifts and activations and iOS is still dominating the US market with 51.2 percent followed by Android with 44.2 percent and rim is of course sinking from 6.1 percent last year to 1.1 percent this year and when those phone is is well I don't know stagnating maybe I mean point five point four percent in one year for from 2.2 to 2.6 I'm not sure that's a good sign yeah well I think what does windows phone is a special case because they like their their big new revised push didn't come until later in the year so but it's interesting that the iphone if from what I'm hearing of what I'm hearing is correct the iphone adoption rate in the u.s. is so very different than it is worldwide like it's much higher in the state than it is globally yes that is true which is interesting because it's kicking iOS happened down the Avenue all over the rest of the world it's like 75 percent is and that's just normal because Apple is using a different business model for other countries for instance if you buy an iphone 5 on logs from Apple 46 49 99 in the States you you'll buy it for 6 49 99 pounds in the UK or six forty nine ninety nine euros in Europe right so it's the iphone is a very expensive phone in europe while well android phones are cheap compared to the iphone even if you buy the highest than one is cheap still cheaper than the iphone except in romania if you buy a Lumia 920 at the same price as the iphone 5 which is crazy yeah not to not to call out another another publication on the podcast but sam biddle at gizmodo had a really really really cool piece called what was it and android is popular because it's cheap not because it's good and it was a good example of an article that actually was really good despite its clickbait a headline but it's true to a certain extent well yeah to a certain extent and and that's where that kind of nuances is what is the first thing to die in a comment section of course so I think last time I checked gizmodo headquarters being burned to the ground rabid fan boys that's uh thank you for thank you for tying tying up the iOS category 4s Tony I was struggling getting news for that it's just amazing how like unless you're butted right up against WWDC or another apple event the company for all its if for as far as its fallen in recent years as far as secrecy goes it still manages to keep a secret better than mmm almost any company out there I think even though that was not the gate with the ipad mini on the iphone 5 yeah well that's true ipad mini was maybe the worst kept secret ever at a raffle but yeah yeah so it's you know it's it's tough we kind of the iOS fans out there kind of s2 have to subsist on rumors but it's okay because you know that's what we do we bring your rumors and speculation in addition to hard news so before we wrap it up for the show I wanted to tell our listener is that we had a we had an email transition recently and I am very happy with the results but one of the unfortunate side effects is that we lost all of our listener mail so make sure and send us some new listener mail as you are very good at doing listeners so that we can you know field your questions and comments at the end of each pocket now weekly that we have time for but before we wrap it up and before I give you that email address gentlemen do you have closing thoughts for today yep yes completely unrelated tune in tomorrow to PM eastern for a live hangout with the pocket now team Brandon minimun Michael Fisher myself will be there and on a weekly basis will meet with you guys come over say hi let's do some life boot up tests and have some nice casual debates about everything mobile and it's going to be awesome do we have to have anybody else from the team coming come on so far it's the three of us but everybody on the team is welcome to join so I'm gonna send some emails out to the guys some reminders because the initial email went out and the worst case scenario is gonna be the three of us best-case scenario it's gonna be more I have an idea for the pocket I live tomorrow let's talk about something entirely different let's talk about not what we talked about today it'll be fun that is that that's the entire idea it's gonna be completely different from the bucket now weekly podcast we'll just talk about whatever comes to our minds that's good i'll get my cigarettes again yeah I'm not allowed to smoke in this office building but that far for closing thoughts a few smaller announcements relating to video but they are small but there are things that I think we're all excited about number one is that we're launching a YouTube channel redesign with some new imagery and fun stuff number two is that we have a new intro coming you know we have our pocket now video intro I well done yes but this one this one's gonna be a lot shorter a little bit a little bit more punchy and you consider them Duncan no that's too out of any more it'll be more interesting than that it's it'll be you know be to the point because people really don't want to sit there and watch it intro we like having an intro so you know what kind of video you're watching and the third bit of news is that in the in the near future in the next few weeks you're gonna see a new guy on video perhaps a couple of new guys on video still still working that out and so we're doing some cool stuff in video McGee land are we going to do hazing are we gonna do like a crazy pocket on hazing ritual what do you think we should do for that I think we should drops it we should drop some kyocera echoes and microsoft kins in a big sock and just wail on the new guys with them that's what ideas are not playing for the premaxilla no I I think the worst possible thing we can do is give them either a kin a kyocera echo or an optimist view and make them use it as their daily driver for a year that is an awesome awesome idea that will drive them insane and record the progress every week yeah yeah yeahs week week 37 I uh I didn't get much sleep I haven't eaten either i keep getting haunted by grammatically incorrect dialog boxes and my fingers ache from from holding this is this unwieldy POS yeah yeah like it well we will look forward to the new faces on the team and i'm really looking for the new intro the new intro combined with our YouTube redesign makes us look like like like like the persons we are yeah but it but also look at these are the people we are but yeah if like if CSI was cool that's what it makes us look like it makes it look like we know where we're talking about right which you know I think at least fifteen percent of the time is true for me you guys are probably close to 80 / I'm at 16 someone good oh no it's cuz it's been doing long right um well good well if you uh if you listeners want to hear more from the guys who at least at least fifteen percent of the time know what they're talking about tune in for all that fun but for now that's going to do it for episode 28 or 028 of the pocket that weekly and find us on twitter as i say before Anton is at anton de noche brandon is a ten Brenton minimun and you can find me at captain two phones you can so follow pocket now officially at pocket now tweets pocket now on facebook and google+ leave us a review on iTunes or Xbox music that is still important to us and if you have a topic question or suggestion for the podcast we need them all over again or if you just want to say hi email us podcast at pocketnow.com as always thank you for listening and we'll see you next week bye bye I