Gadgetory

the big trade shows are done for the winter but that doesn't mean there's nothing left to say about mobile technology in fact we're gearing up for a very busy season and it's time to talk about it welcome to the pocket now weekly the once-a-week podcast from pocketnow.com where we discuss smartphones and tablets convertibles and phablets and all those pocket communicators stuck in between i'm michael fisher and i'm joined today for the first time in a while by joe levi the android guy welcome back to the show Joe thank you we've had a lot going on between this episode and the last time I was on yes we have I'm glad you're back it's been too long actually we are also joined but for the first time on the weekly first time ever by one of our newest team members straight from from one of the carolinas Taylor Martin welcome to the show sir thank you thank you one of the carolinas it's nothing not specifically no does it bother you when people get the carolinas messed up when people say you're from East Carolina and you're really not I've never heard anyone ever get it wrong so no there's first is from result like six Carolina's out there so super Carolina so i'm down at laura you think are you if we do that we have to also consolidate oh carolina by shaggy wait a minute wait a minute is that it is that an actual song by shaggy yes yes it is I wish we could lead in with that song on the podcast um Taylor you're not a new guy what I love is Taylor's been posting a lot of YouTube videos for us recently but we've had a lot of cool like positive feedback but occasionally you'll get to like a commenter who's a jerk and then someone will rush right to Taylor's aid and and they'll say something like usually myself no I like you because you exacerbate the problem you're let you just go that the trolls and that's nice but no it's something like some random people will come in and come to your aid and be like come on guys he's new and I read these comments and I'm like Taylor why don't you just tell the listeners how long have you been been doing this has it been like three years doing what part doing like mobile technology in general yes written content I've been doing for a little over three years all right yeah a video maybe like a coke collectively maybe a month sorry well it's uh it does not show you where loving the work that you're doing and it's so nice to have both you and Joe here as guys whose youtube talents I respect oh thank you i'm glad i could join the team he's uh you can't have you yeah thanks we're also glad that your studio is all spiffy we were talking before went on the air about our respective studios and Taylor's got his Android army of how many figurines do you have like 20 in your studio a 14-14 all right and then Joe's got a bunch of starships behind him only one of which is the enterprise's I've been recently corrected and we said to school Michael because of all of us he should know Trek better than I all my Trek paraphernalia is in the other room i should bring it in here but that's the problem like behind me I've got its grey wall of acoustic foam and I want to hang some stuff on it but I can't hang anything on it so what I've got right now is just out of frame on every video I shoot I'm looking at it right now I've got a notice sign which I took from the roof of a theater I did some acting at a couple months ago and it's there's a cell site on the roof and like during intermission or pre show or something like that I was up on the roof I found this sign from the cell site that's like notice beyond this point you're entering an area where RF emissions may exceed general exposure limits and was like I'm taking this sign I'm really excited about but I can't hang it on the foam but I want to hang it but I can't so it's annoying three but we'll have since died and that route I made sure there were other signs i made sure wasn't taking the place i think i'm the only one with dual wielding rubber band shotguns so i need to incorporate those somehow into my set absolutely can you feel like a can you build a water balloon slingshot in here and is your show at some point yes that would be great I do an intro and then just boom water balloon in the face or something good Michael can give you tips on that he knows how to how to handle water in the tech industry really well I do that's right yeah it does tend to go all over demo tables to let you know ironically enough in your picture on skype you're holding a glass of water oh I am are night no that's uh that's like a cocktail okay just kidding oh yeah I mean it water let's jump into announcements shall we we have a couple and then we're going to actually we only have one because we already welcome to Taylor Martin to the podcast that's very nice but we have an introduction for a new series called the pocket now TL DR which shares its name with another series from another from a very popular youtube series does anybody know off the top of his head with the title of that series is from the other guys yeah no i don't i had to search that article to find out what on earth TL DR meant reason you haven't hang out enough message boards yeah well maybe I have and I just didn't know what it was ah it's just one of my mini ash and cheese that's one of my many acquired nicknames when I started getting very very post and all of my articles oh really tldr yeah yes see I figured the term was general enough that it would be okay by the way it's chris pirillo who has a really cool channel on youtube and the Lockergnome yeah it's the Lockergnome daily report so I think that's funny that they used it as a different you know they used as a double abbreviation but we're not you know ours doesn't stand for anything it just stands for yeah there are articles that are that are too long and mostly Taylor I feel you because I'm usually the one writing 1,500 or 2,000 word articles and I'm people are like to log I can't believe our shot through all that and like I can't believe you commented and that's it's a this is the TLDR as for us it's like a sub 500 word format for us to just dump small ideas that don't necessarily deserve or warrant a full editorial so that's blasphemy by the way what is 500 word ordered it's not know come on did you see did you see Brandon's that I referenced in it no no I didn't look at the megapixel article now is the nexus 7 1 so in the listeners in the initial article I kind of discussed what what led me to come up with this idea and it was another editorial from Brandon on the day of the nexus 7 launch where the headline was the Nexus 7 has no rear facing camera period good period and then I click on the headline and Brandon's editorials maybe a hundred words like it doesn't even clear the ad block on the left side of the page and I'm like this is amazing this is to the point in it I don't know if it's gonna resound with readers and then we are comments were full it was crazy so anyway that's the source of that and watch out for more of those and we are all going to going to write them at some point I think unless no but there's something to be said coming remedy you know if you can get to the point why fluff it up why do whatever there's only so much more information that you can dig in from other sources and well I think this but this guy says this and 37 other guys say that you know just here's the scoop there you go let us know what you think in the comments because this article is not about what other people say it's what you guys the readers say right yeah it's about that here's what I think now what do you think that's kind of the core of the of the new series so i'm gonna have to break a mental complex to get through that at my previous I don't know what to call it the publication I worked for before I acquired the nickname their fluff dog so he did why we get so in between TL DR and fluff dog you had a bevy of nicknames indicating that you wrote a lot yes my favorite though is the haters later yes I acquired that one on youtube last week really hailer Martin the hail hater Slayer it's probably my favorite I remember you mentioning that and I think I was that at mwc so I couldn't like you know focus I said it on a hangout with wrong but it's okay you ignore me sorry what were you saying yeah somebody talking by the way my life is that you is that you scratching your beard periodically Joe like it periodically I get this really the sound of like a thoughtful a thoughtful bit of sandpaper rubbing what's going on no no that's not coming for my hand I don't know what's no III had to shave well I didn't shave I trimmed my goatee down real short cuz i had to speak at a funeral and my wife mrs. the lengths you used to grab onto it and haul me around by its oh gosh so no it's not me scratching my I go to yet it's not long enough for that all right I'm to peep for my mic so I don't think so well somebody's somebody's just listening in on the podcast and rubbing his chin thoughtfully let's jump into the jump into the thought thread here we typically start to show with a thought thread from Brandon who's really good at kind of leaping us into topic or the mood but we don't have branded today and none of us have anything unless I'm mistaken jump in if i'm wrong but none of us have anything that we're kind of chomping at the bit to talk about that's not already in the topic list so i was hoping we could role play real quick haha i was hoping you could get off the air uh so i thought we might start off the show with a piece of listener mail just to kind of change the you know change everything up and i we have we have more listener mail at the end of the show but this one is kind of stretches across platforms and I think it's suitable to start the show with so let's kick off the show with a piece of mail from Bob Newman who apparently tried multiple times to get this email through and I'm glad that it finally got through but bob says he's in the throes of deciding between Blackberry Android and Windows Phone and his dubious about Android because he wants as much privacy and security as can be had in a smartphone he's dubious about blackberry because of its teething problems and his dubious about Windows Phone because he doesn't like live tiles and the UI basically but he says I really like what I've seen of you bum to ubuntu agony I'm never gonna be able to say that and Johan to ubuntu and yola I'd be grateful if you were one of the other guys would answer the following will who but will boom 22 or yola installed on an android phone enable better privacy and security than android gives will they be handicapped in any way compared to installations of them on hardware built for them and is it possible to turn the animation of page turning in the flipping tiles and windows off thanks in advance Bob Newman I can take the windows thing no it is not possible to turn live tile animations off in this version of Windows Phone so unfortunately Bob if you really hate those flipping live tiles you're going to be stuck with them if you go the Windows Phone root as far as the ubuntu and yola question is concerned I think that's a fascinating one and I specifically wanted to lead off with this because I thought between Joe and Taylor you guys might have a general idea of an answer to one of these questions will you bun to or Yolo installed on an android phone enable better privacy or security i mean i i've handled Yolo but I've only seen the UI skin so I know very little about its actual security abilities Joe you just did a video about the you OS so what about that so bhuntu it is it's linux but it's not really full baked full cooked linux like you run on a desktop or a laptop computer linux at least not yet we'll get to a little bit later there's some interesting crossovers into the android we're older than the hardware that they're running on ubuntu specifically is one of the districts of linux that at least in my opinion has more privacy capabilities than other flavors of linux and other operating systems in general I think eventually that's going to come over to ubuntu mobile Lubuntu for phone and and you'll see a lot more encryption a lot more cool things that you can do to keep yourself private and secure using that OS than any other OS right now it's all just speculation all we've seen is some some really early proof-of-concept versions of the OS running on android centric hardware so it just I don't know I hope so yeah it's too soon to tell really I mean I've used I've installed on my nexus for at least eight times now maybe nine or so I mean there's really not much to know about it other than how it looks right yeah maybe how it operates but even then you can't really tell because it's so laggy and it crashes and yeah it's just too soon to tell never that was my initial impulse to I think it is they're both so young in this implementation that there's no way to tell at this at this point and AB staged you aren't there not there yet so if you're used to running you know an encrypting chat client or an encrypting email client or something on you know your your desktop a boon to distro you don't have that same app available just yet over on a bluetooth phone right right so yeah thank you for the question Bob I think I think what it comes down to is if you're in a rush to do this it's it's probably gonna prove you to go with an OS that's actually established and it sounds like you're leaning mostly toward Windows Phone you know blackberry has to grow quickly or else it won't survive so i think you should still keep an eye on it i know it's got some teething issues and who knows whether those will improve or get worse tend to think they'll improve but you know if you don't believe if windows phone is your preferred option and you can find a way to get past a live tiles flipping on you all the time you know there is a way to configure your home screen so that it's mostly dominated by tiles that are non live and you can configure third-party apps not to update those tiles as frequently or ever so if you're in a rush you're probably going to want to go that route but thank you for the question and thanks for leading us into the show considering we did not have a different thought thread but Jen's I'd like to jump into Android if it's all the same to you sure let's do it yes there was there's a phone coming out from Samsung that it runs Android it might be kind of a big deal it's called the galaxy s4 and there was a leak recently on Twitter it came from efflux but in any case it was it this is a very legitimate very reliable league source and some other outlets reported on it and we reported on their report and it looks it has since been revealed to be a render and I don't know guys tell me how you feel about this because when I when this was when this was revealed to be an expensive mock-up I was beyond relieved because this is probably the ugliest thing I've ever seen it doesn't it look like an iPad Mini like shrunk down to phone sighs yes and it's 2d so right yeah like that's how thin it is paper-thin galaxy yeah I'm glad that this is no longer news I'm glad this kind of this this cropped up and immediately got extinguished in the space of a couple hours apparently is the cut yeah its expenses have prepared them for its own site it's just a placeholder image well while they wait for the for the rest of the world to to catch up so at least better mock-ups I know yeah I guess they don't want to spend spend as much time on a mock-up as whatever but you know it i guess it I don't know did you guys get fired up about this when you when you heard I'm Taylor and I think we're in the middle of a gtalk conversation when this leak dropped yeah I was like oh and I didn't really look at it I was like galaxy s4 and just sent an email and then I look back at it I'm like wow what is that so I looked at it and saw note 2 without the ugly home button and the first thing that came to mind was hey they got rid of the home button right oh yeah would you like like you and I have both separately opined should happen to yes yes yeah the bottom line is that we still don't know what the galaxy s4 is going to look like we've got some screenshots out today I think indicating maybe corroborating that this I scroll I controlled scrolling is happening and I have never been more disappointed to have held off on an editorial in my life by the way I was at mwc before any of this stuff came out I was thinking of this I was like oh we were playing with AirPlay with the stylus you know the S Pen on the Galaxy Note 8 and I'm like you know the next move is just going to be to eliminate the stylus altogether and when you look at the bottom of the screen it will scroll for your like that'll be amazing are you guys amped about about eyeball based scrolling or does it freak you out like it like Tony's losing sleep in Romania about this he hates it he's gonna like leave the planet it doesn't freak me out but I just think it's extremely unintuitive maybe I just my eyes jump around all the time I'm a TD I don't want to scroll with my eyes move well what if what if though that it like establishes a target zone it's only the bottom of the screen maybe it's a point at the bottom of the screen that you just focus on with your eyes you just look at it and then that's one of zeros gift to stare at it you have to give it the stank out or something promise because I mean because it's like that's how it is a smart stay I'm like if I glanced at the bottom of the screen ass Scrolls down that's gonna be annoying you know I don't yeah totally yeah so I mean it's like the red button you don't push the red button right right but you don't look at that part of the screen unless you want to scroll but inevitably I'm gonna look at that part of the screen because I know something's there but it's not there you know it's you don't think you'll be able to train yourself not to look there and tell you wanna scroll no I'll be thinking in my head don't look don't look don't look and then I'll look it's gonna happen and even if you don't look now you've just eliminated that part of your screen so haven't you effectively made yourself a smaller screen by not what they're oh I can hear the debates now it's going to be just like the on screen android buttons like in the comments like I love those 72 pixels because of a stupid glancing oh I don't have to be more than 72 yeah so how do you click on something do you just stare at it and then go cross-eyed you got a double blank if you want to click on something oh no is he like I think here's the thing I'm so amped on this because it's if you Joe you have a note to Taylor you've used an ode to we've all you as no choose you guys know what I'm talking about with the S Pen when it's an airplane mode and you just bring it to the bottom of the browser winona scrolls for you I'm gonna like that and then I hate it too same thing you do why cuz you put your you get your S Pen down there and it Scrolls like you don't you don't know how to track your your S Pen you just close I'm fine on your head spin I don't care what the galaxy s4 is made of if it has eyeball based scrolling i will use it for at least a day even if it is the cheapest plastic ever and just while we're there i want to say that samsung finally responded to this to all of us complaining that the galaxy s3 feels really cheap by there was an executive vice president YH Lee spoke to cnet about why the company chose to work with the materials it does and apparently just to kind of paraphrase Steven here even though aesthetics absolutely matter to Samsung manufacturing concerns play a large role in its decisions about materials it's a kind of about speed and efficiency and I guess there's the samsung is saying that they cannot produce enough hardware or they can produce it fast enough if they use metal phones if they use metal in their phones rather and there is a lot you can do with plastics and Samsung makes some points about it but I gotta tell you I found this response to be needed but very disappointing because it probably means the galaxy s4 is going to feel just like the s3 does which in my opinion is very cheap the word you're looking for here is lame there are lots of other companies out there that are doing stuff with plastic and and non-metal backs covers whatever you want to call them that's why I yep yeah they feel good in the hand they look nice they don't attract fingerprints they're not slippery Motorola's even got there Kevlar its Kevlar and it feels nice how much more difficult would it be to use a different finish on that plastic so that that thing wasn't so slippery in a fingerprint magnet and smudged all over the place absolutely the hyper hyper blaze has to go I think they have to figure out a new finish they can use I mean they were saying that battery door on the s4 and on the note 2 is polycarbonate I mean it's not you know it's that special type of plastic we all love when it's naked because it feels different it feels cool but if they just slap this hyper glaze coating on top of it it's like oh wow yeah it's a fingerprint magnet it's a grease pool and it sucks day man yeah the the Nokia article that I wrote yesterday or the day before I actually wrote it on Monday but in the comments they were talking about how the galaxy s3 is polycarbonate and I'm like oh my god yes of course it's plastic but we all know what I'm saying here why not oh no way to really distinguish between the two it's not the same yeah it's it's paper thin versus you know hug aids of an inch thick yeah while we're on the subject of phone materials and just so that we don't spend all that much time talking about this this interview which I found interesting but now we're done with Sony Xperia Z Taylor you have it you unboxed it tell us your feelings on this glass then amazingly either beautiful or boring phone I love it made it the software is actually the part that I thought I would hate the most about it but it's actually not that bad if you remove all the Samsung or not Samsung Sony up and saying samsung for several days now since I got phone okay whenever to see yes I kept calling at the xperia x yeah I've been calling it everything but the experience II but uh but that's software if you remove all of Sony's widgets and and try to just put your own widgets on there like dash clock it's actually not that bad I don't like the sony widgets at all other than that the software is very stock like you can change the accent color but it's really very vanilla but the hardware is probably the best thing about the device and it's a beast at benchmarks I was telling you about this yesterday yeah it absolutely just destroys benchmarks but it's actually a little laggy and use yet a little in the comments on the unboxing were calling out like I saw these time codes like seven minutes 23 lag was one that was like lag 0 out of 10 not buying yeah one bit of lag on a person like two out of 10 would not buy it's been it's not like it lags a lot but it just stutters when you're scrolling between screens sure um but but like it's quadrant standard score was 7800 versus the 4800 versus 4800 on the nexus for Jesus Thank same CPU same GPU there's got to be something going weird with the with the synthetic benchmark sure so I don't know anything about those things that's that's your guys Department I mean as we were talking to I think you and I don't like him very much yeah I don't care for benchmarks but I ran them just to see because we have two devices with the same course basically so yeah yeah so what I ran it and it was very different but the the actual design of the phone is really nice yeah like i like it alot i want to hear about that i kind of want to hear about the hardware like I mean I've handled it but I've handled it on a tether surrounded by a bunch of people pushing me and you know like how does that side mounted button work for you I mean the thing is like it it looks like a potato bug landed on the side of the thing oh the trade show that's the that's the device that I was trying to film when the guy like jerked it out of my hand in the middle of a video are you serious yeah nice it's some it was some german dude he's just like started yelling at me and german like it was in the middle of a shot anyway anyway um yeah it feels really nice but in the hand it doesn't really conform to the hand it's squared so it's like a it's like a larger iphone basically you know I know in a way it doesn't it's really the hard edges kind of make it odd to hold and the buttons are impossible to touch or like press without readjusting your grip the button on the bottom of the screen no the the button the power button the volume rockers happens really yeah because the side buttons really low isn't it yeah the power button is you know like I uh I just over halfway through halfway up the edge of advice and the volume rockers right below that so to get the power button you have to readjust your grip and to get into volume rocker you might as well just use your other hand wait a whole thing the volume rockers below the power button on the right hand side yes kind of sense does that make none none whatsoever and all of the ports since it is waterproof and dustproof all of the ports are covers or are covered right and then it's waterproof rating requires those those covers those covers right like it's not coated on the inside it's not like a Liquipel thing it's it's a gasket thing yep yes it's and the thing is to plug it up you have to remove a cover to do anything even to listen music to plug in your headphones you're gonna have to remove the cover yeah yeah that's up cool but I didn't know inductive charging in it so to charge it you gotta remove a cover right and that was my next point um there's no wireless charging I actually messed up and said there was but there's not it's actually an add-on you can buy a case for it that usual utilizes the prongs on the outside of the case for for wireless charger induction so I i want to i want to say i think that the covers a lot of people are making a big deal about the covers and rightfully so because they're they're annoying and whatever and on a device like the droid DNA i think the cover is kind of an excusable but on a device that is as thin and and relatively aesthetically pleasing as the xperia z i think that i would be willing to deal with the covers considering it's waterproof I think that's I think it's r it's always really cool when device can withstand immersion I think well the problem is that the covers are hard to push back in all the way um I found myself pushing it covers back in and they don't go all the way in and they'll just kind of slowly work their way back out mm-hmm so there's that and there's four of them so there's not just one or two covers or four covers or babysit although granted granted you're not going to remove the micro SD card slot that often or your SIM card but there are four slots so it's yeah it's a little excessive what do you think Joe over there I feel like shows just being over there just just like wondering what what the order is he is all about no I think it's beard again I found out what that was i'm sorry i've got a collar on my shirt that's brushing on the microphone I thought I did that I tucked it in so I look all geeky be glad this isn't a video podcast the xperia z i love it i did an article about the Xperia Z versus the the new HTC and how it's going to be an awesome fight to watch I like what Sony is doing with you know kind of push in their their builds and whatnot into the AOSP to kind of give it a nexus like experience I I hope that comes eventually to the Xperia Z as well in addition to the other experience that are already there so we could have a sony nexus phone essentially covers I don't like covers at all in fact one of the first things that I do with covers is take an exacto to them and remove them of course that means I'm not going to be waterproof anymore and I can't do that with a review phone so I'm not recommending that Taylor but I hate them I hate them I hate them I can I can live without a headphone jack and just do bluetooth audio I could live without you know a power jack if you will if it had wireless charging built in but it doesn't so yeah that's kind of a I don't like it thing for me yeah I don't understand why they didn't include wireless charging i would rather the device be just a tad may be thicker or taller or anything just to include wireless charging because that would make the a world of difference absolutely after having tried wireless charging I'm a convert I've I've tried three different wireless charging pads and with the exception of the one for nokia which was designed for their their Lumias i love it i in fact I've got my nexus for the unbroken one everybody i got a new nexus 4 you can stop asking hey it's sitting on my energizer pad right now see wirelessly charge this is the thing about wireless charging this is the thing that commenters generally don't get and just people in general not because they're stupid but because if you don't use it if you've never used it you don't understand the utility and we actually have a piece of listener mail later in the in the in the podcast about this but if you have used it it's something that is so difficult to give up and I love it and the fact that i have been using my droid DNA because we haven't after the buzz of the droid DNA going up i think tomorrow or today so I've had this droid DNA courtesy of verizon again and the fact that I've been charging it manually because I forgot it charges wirelessly is kind of an excusable to me I just realized this and I'm an idiot but I've been throwing phones randomly on this nexus wireless charger yes you see if they work yeah just to see and she mean she is great because it's an awesome standard I mean like I throw my DNA on my nokia stuff I throat on my JBL powered power up doc you know I've it's it's I love standards there so I keep I keep throwing the note 2 on it just just a pray it works adventurous to hope yeah yeah well and that Nexus your charger man just do a mod it's real easy you won't spent five hours in your kitchen with copper tape all over your fingers just mad it a mine all right all right let's talk software let's talk let's talk let's give Joe a chance here because I want to hear about beautiful widgets I watched your video Joe about the beautiful widgets update I use HD widgets on one of those outlier dudes who like apparently you know uses the blue chip to buy beautiful women apparently but apparently this is a really awesome update and it's really cool and a lot of people use beautiful widgets so Joe just briefly talk about it and tell us what you love so beautiful widgets was a widget that came around a long time ago as an answer to the original HTC Sense widget with the sense clock that had its animating flip tiles on it and it was just just beautiful apparently they plagiarize them they copied their artwork they included it in their widget and eventually got banned from the store and had to release a non-infringing version which they did relatively quickly levelup studio the deadest live alone okay but they did the right thing they released a new version that did not infringe with crappy look in the artwork and said trust us everything's going to be okay and they built in a theming engine where you can have themes and skins for the clock for the weather and for the battery all three separate and independent from from various different people when I highlighted some some Trek themes in there with a name drop too yeah but I've been using that I did go over to HD widgets when beautiful would just kind of got old and not really high res II and then they dropped version 5 and it's amazing it's high resolution though not necessarily high-definition some of the themes haven't caught up yet they have bigger widgets they have all kinds of stuff and it's easy to set up now which was the hard part from the last version like crazy configuration like the like that pie slice lon Trager you think well not quite that crazy but close okay so yeah it's it's nice it's pretty it pulls in your your weather forecasts and updates its using accuweather right now after Google took their weather api down their unofficial weather api but i've never had a problem with that it uses another service as well right it gives you the option um wasn't there I've got it right here I hope not cuz I fit does and I missed that entirely we're both look at that yeah but yeah it uses gestures once you're in the configuration to to configure and whatnot so I like it a lot it's it's a really really nice update it's one of the things that I put on the agenda back when they originally released it's been out for at least a few probably several weeks now but we had a whole bunch of other a whole bunch of other videos that had higher prior this kind of got bumped down the road whether yes weather underground you know whether I love Weather Underground the my thing is this joe i think that my favorite part of this video was that you made it at all because we're frequently asked by commenters on videos what skin were using and I think Joe you said that's right in the article you're like every time I post a video people are asking me with widgets amusing it makes a lot of sense to just whip up a video and be like here's the launcher i'm using and oh by the way it's awesome yeah that's it's really cool um and that's that's really why this video got made was because our viewers and our readers kept asking about it and it would have been that we were answering their questions in the comments of course but we thought that if so many people are asking this we'd be doing our readers a disservice if we didn't give it the full you know all the attention and give it a full video or at least an article so we did that even though we're a little bit late and showing it other stuff had higher priority and my hats off to level up studios they've done amazing work and continue to do so yeah i love the notification if they now have an expanded notification i touched on that and one of the videos i did a few weeks ago about the five apps that make android feel a little more modern and the weather notification from beautiful widgets is fantastic yes yes i didn't show that off in the video but yes you're absolutely right do we know what's next cuz i know its next I know what I want to talk about and it's not in the rundown I want to talk really quickly about whether chose pebble has shipped yet Joe is wearing his pedal on his watch here on his wrist right now welcome to the class yes so we know just to clear it up so Joe I got my pebble first Joe apparently has just got his that's awesome and Taylor I didn't know this until like yesterday but Taylor's also a Kickstarter back over the pebble smartwatch so you are waiting on yours Taylor you haven't got your email notification yet right nothing okay oh not a peep so the first thing i did when i received this pebble smartwatch which i saved something like eighty dollars on by ordering through kickstarter instead of waiting was it was to pay for yours I like 80 or 90 bucks I was one of the 119 people so I got in a little after you okay and what that made 115 uh-uh well what what happened was it's okay guy your left you don't have to feel wrestle you didn't have to feel bad about it because I immediately in a game it all of those money savings by going out and buying a new band for it so the silicone band that comes with it is pretty cool but I was like you know what no I've been wearing a citizen Stars and Stripes for years and it has a big thick chunky metal band and I wanted that so I found a black metal band that has it's like PVD finish on it so it's kind of Matt and it is just what a splendid watch I am having so much fun with it right after we get off the podcast I have to cut together in my video and that'll go up later today so if you're listening to podcast you want to see a video about what life on pebble is like you should watch it this is going to be awesome and then Joe I believe you have a video coming up what next week later this week about it yes I do in a couple days I'm going to have about three four days use of the watch on my wrist and it's got some shortcomings so the title of the video is going to be something around five or so things that the pebble smartwatch is missing oh okay so you're coming at it from the opposite side nice the opposite direction yeah nice yeah i've been using as i've been using it up and I've been wishing for certain things like it like maybe it had a mic interface or maybe it had a you know an annunciator speaker like like not just the vibrate and stuff but you know it's so funny like but I think by limiting itself to only the things it can do very well it makes it makes it a really excellent product instead of overreaching and trying to be something it's not like trying to be a full smart watch on your wrist which the I'm watch does and I think that thing is just a total POS the funny thing is everybody that I've handed the watch student said here take a look at it and then I've sent an email or whatnot they try and scroll the email with touch by swinging the email up or down in two rounds up like no it has buttons to watch I'm also going to do a video on what a pebble Kickstarter backer is missing in his time watch and it's it's like it's just gonna be you with like a naked wrist yeah just staring angrily at the camera for five minutes blinking yes get a sharp one draw one yeah yeah hey I've got the wristband the sweatband from the press conference oh yeah yeah I have a pebble sweatband well let's we're going to talk more about pebble next week when our videos are up and we'll be able to bounce some ideas around and it'll be fun what well we close out Android here let's before we go out on that one Michael yeah yeah uh can you throw a link to that that wristband in there for all of us pebble people who want to upgrade our pebble respect which is the risk end yeah I should have thought that actually that's a good idea Joe I've been asked on Twitter just left and right all to all the time about where I got this watch man and even though i've posted the link now twice i still get questions so i will i mean i've already seen that link because I follow you on twitter so i know exactly where it is but for everyone who hasn't no no no absolutely i wanna i agree i should do that and so Michael Fisher and I have an unofficial contest competition going on but you four thousand followers on Twitter and I'm just coming up on three thousand we need to fix that so if you're not following me I'm at Joe Levi on Twitter Wow if you're following Michael I'm will scalp his people so stop Wow shameless shameless if Joe Lee by redefining the shameless plug ladies Josh shapes plug and by the way download my apps Taylor you want to get in on this you know we're gonna say the twitter handles at the end of the episode anyway but you know yeah i'm not in this competition but i'm at somewhere around 2,000 followers follow me at casper tech good because I'm better than both of them yeah yeah twitter at twitter can we know mr. twitter can we know about the about castleton can i ask you about that cuz i meant to ask you about that in your intro um okay sure yeah it can we come we can I just like what was the origin of Casper tech I mean you're you're pale dude is that where it started yes um my friend passed away late last year he's the one who gave me the nickname he was in a band he was yeah he was a band mate and it was a band of straight edge vegans and on their myspace page it was a trial that I went to they said you know please respect our views you know don't make fun of us for what we believe in and so on and so forth and I showed up with chick-fil-a for everyone oh that's just my humor that's who I am and that's that's how I broke the ice and the I don't remember exactly how it got around to it but the the response was them making fun of me for being pale right because I didn't really have any beliefs that they could make fun of so so yeah that Casper just stuck and through tech on the end because well I'm everyone's tech guy around here so sure so is that it did you ever I mean so this is only a year ago you were still at phoneDog so like it was never something that you took independent you never like had a website for example that was like your own thing called Casper tech right it's just always a name you've associated with yourself personally yeah it's kind of weird synonymous with me but um yeah actually I found out a couple days ago that Casper tech is a manufacturer in an Asian country maybe China I can't remember exactly which what and yeah they have like a DVD player or something so there's that I use it I couldn't buy the URL the domain was was taken and I didn't know why I thought somebody was just squatting there's nothing at casper techcom so they are squatting technically okay but it sits for a company so it's a comedy just reserving it's funny because there is a there's a nascent like carcass of a van idea called captain two phones on facebook and it's mine it's when I was going to do something independent before before I came aboard with now and I never got anywhere I just like I just wanted the facebook you know I just wanted to hold down the facebook site so i kind of just threw a stupid picture myself up on there and i was like coming soon or whatever and then i forgot it existed and I think about like two weeks ago I got a notification on Facebook that's like someone liked your page captain two phones no like what and I kind of a page like what and i go find this like a year year and a half old page it has like five likes and they must be and I was a change the about description to say like if you like this page you are the most awesome super hardcore fan ever because I forgot it existed thank you for your like there it will never be anything posted here but thank you so much it is very funny the names that we kind of come by Joe to you of a nickname my software house is called muckle look at software is that a real whiz that is that like a Utah Native American word or what's going this the story behind that my mother is 85 years old bless her heart and she was an elementary school teacher for 33 years and my brother and I whenever we've get in trouble she'd always yell at us and call us the wrong name and so she she eventually just adopted at one universal generic nickname and that was pedro month Luckett that she got from her mother and so I I just went with you just know it it you took it for a title and there there it is I I am muckle nukka that's been my xbox gamertag and I decided hey you know it's something that that I can use for android app development whatnot so there you go i'm a muckle much this is awesome uncle nugget all right speaking of andhra we have to close out this category move on because we're gonna we're going to lose the morning we need to very briefly Joe answer a question for me is a bunch of fun really based on cyanogenmod yes and no all right moving on to windows the abuse new people canonical they they used an awful lot of libraries and code check-ins from the cyanogenmod repository which is ironic because cyanogen is based on AOSP so everyone was wondering why they didn't why canonical didn't go straight to a sop and get the code and there are two schools of thought one is why reinvent the wheel when cyanogenmod has already done the work and extended what's in AOSP so they're just being efficient with their code which yeah I know no problem with that from from my end the other thought is they needed to get proof of concept phones out there and because the the Google Nexus phones were the easiest ones to develop for and cyanogenmod had done a lot of the work extending the code to work with those they borrowed from and give proper credit for it out I'll follow up with that but since they'd already done all that work and put it in there some people believe that Ubuntu the blue phone project used cyanogenmod just to bootstrap the project and get them out onto devices so they could do proof of concept and the code may or may not persist as they go forward with either their own hardware or other devices but I think there will always be cyanogenmod influence in ubuntu foam and this is a question that you bring up in your piece like can ubuntu as a result kind of run android apps and the short answer to that is a no not in its current state because they stripped out all of the dalvik VM and all the libraries and all the stuff that would be needed to run android apps but the possibility for putting that back in is there so you could do a BlueStacks type thing on your boon to phone and be able to use your android apps there it's close enough i mean it's closer to linux and then windows is but we can run android apps on windows using BlueStacks so it's possible they just took that out specifically and deliberately and probably because they want to develop their own ecosystem their own environment right because why why go the route that's practical and simpler when you can sweat it out in the trenches for four years and maybe eventually fail they don't care then they don't need to care because they've got an itch that nobody else is filling that they're going to be able to fill that in with you know as we mentioned earlier with security with encryption with extra stuff that Android just doesn't care about Google doesn't care about even encrypted email because if you encrypt your email they can't go in and spider it for you know all their keywords and advertise to you sure Ubuntu's got an itch and I think they'll do really well in it what's up there was uh well and in terms of windows home that's who you're talking about correct I care Microsoft there and in terms of sitting in a trench for four years and not succeeding oh I was I was kind of talking about any any new platform that comes out and says okay I'm gonna build our own app system which is I think Noble and really cool but it yeah it's very difficult obviously I was being a little cynical good all right well I was gonna be all solid so we can move on oh ok i lost the conversation there for a bit that's okay that's that's totally fine well it's good because it's time for us to move into Windows Phone and we need to talk a little bit about Taylor's views on how Nokia can can build the next Lumia flagship device and this is cool because I think this is a piece that we've kind of talked about mmm over and over like we've talked about the core of this thing like what does nokia need to do next and we thought we were going to see the answer to that at mwc and i'm still kind of a little disappointed that we didn't but not necessarily surprised but we've got some some interesting suggestions here from from taylor and i want to just run through them very quickly because i completely agree that the slimmer profile and a metal chassis is is awesome that a true PureView camera is something we've been crying about forever and that needs to happen kind of regardless of the weight penalty but what about the 5-inch 1080p display Taylor what's why will consider this a requirement for 2013 um well okay so if you read through that it says that you don't necessarily need 1080p nobody does it's above and beyond what anybody needs and it's wasted energy so you don't necessarily need 1080p and windows phone doesn't support it anyway so Microsoft doesn't add it then you can throw that dream of a 1080p nokia windows phone out the window but they're going to add it I mean they they have eventually they have to end and that's just kind of the point for relevancy that's why Nokia needs to do it to be pushing the envelope with Microsoft yeah you know i mean if if you have a 1080p and 720p and a WVGA offering on android then you know windows will needs to meet that okay at least to be relevant and comparable yeah all levels windows one doesn't need the the hassle of having to apologize for something like it doesn't windows phone does not need any more challenges to its adoption even if it is just suspect people shopping the shelves i'm looking at spec cards and being like a hose is 720p that's man i can have your size the size is the real issue for me and I'm after using the DNA and even the nexus 7 the there are a lot of Windows phones that are just too small um the Lumia 920 is what 4.5 inches it is here yeah so it feels small but the phone itself is really big so you have more bezel to screen than I guess standard smartphones yeah it does every other substantial bezel so I mean you're basically I think you're your point which is a good one is that Windows Phone needs to do exactly what the other platforms are doing which is increased screen size while reducing bezel size and not necessarily building a larger device and keeping up with with spit with its bec wise on the display front right yeah you just said that a lot more elegantly what I love is that you're like two of your conclusions are directly at odds with each other which I always love throwing in my editorials because I'm like yep i'm having a pipe dream and welcome everyone because you've got slimmer profile metal chassis and then you've got true PureView camera so it's like I I really hope that Nokia is able to find a way to to minimize the PureView components but I don't think they can I think they're butting up against physics there at some point yeah and and there's a few lines in there that kind of explain that either I battery covered your butt very well yes yeah I've learned to do that over the years but uh like for the battery I said there is however at least one excuse to make the next Lumia flagship another heavyweight smart phone and battery for solutely down and we've all talked about that how we would rather trade you know extreme thinness for a large battery I would seven out of there ten out of ten times absolutely and you know I think it's important that we have that the next Lumia be a heavy phone so that this very valuable discussion can keep being had in the comments where we say something like this is a heavier phone than some others and then 120 thousand people say workout Susi pretty much moves together with 83 hate-filled comments on that one yeah of course there were so I've got a question on the battery just to throw it out there do you think that Nokia who's throwing quite a bit of weight behind that she wireless charging standard might be fighting the we need bigger batteries argument with the why don't we just have ubiquitous wireless charging everywhere yes if they could make that a little more marketable I mean not everyone has a table for like a dinner table with wireless charging built-in they had those at the the press event which I mistakenly said Michael is that he was not he was there in spirit rather than saying hey we need to get bigger batteries if if Nokia and and whoever else makes a successful push for well just go to McDonald's and you know they've got wireless chargers in their tables or go to Barnes & Noble and they've if they still exist in a week they've got wireless charging in their couches or go on the bus they've got wireless charging so you don't need a big battery we can make smaller phones because look wireless charging is all around you it's it's ubiquitous the problem with that is that we still have these two competing standards which is so stupid I mean she is up very obviously to me she is the future they have they have agreements with so many companies they're in so many phones already and then you have these other Joker's not to you know maybe I'm being too flipping I don't mean to say that I mean anybody that's trying to make a wireless charging standard is worthy of our respect but I think that who is it Duracell that does the powermat stuff yeah yeah so you have power about kind of over here d and they're still using a different standard right it's they're incompatible with with chi am I am I correct that is correct yeah and I guess copy you know competition is good and but and the irony behind that go get us far good the irony behind that is Google supports the non Qi standard they are a factor of not Chi and I think that is the powermat standard but it's ironic that LG has chetan it because it's an optimist g essentially and the optimus G supports Chi and there you go and now the Google flagship has a wireless charging standard built into it that they are not a backer of but now do you think do you think that's evidence of like corporate fool headed full hardiness or do you think that they're doing that or just stimulate the competition or some some other like you know Machiavellian Google scheme I have to imagine that Google is supporting the standard that they think is more technologically superior and or has a better chance of succeeding right LG made a different decision based on that same how that same question when it was presented to them and we'll just it was kind of caught in the crossfire when their next Nexus partner was supporting a different standard than they were and they said well okay let's fly with it and and we'll just go ahead and run with it and not disable it luckily they didn't disable it in the phone so can you like can you help me out here and and both of you guys like what is Chi in smartphone why's she is in the droid DNA it's in all the it's in the Lumia devices that have wireless charging ability that's that's Chi it's in the galaxy s3 cover right that's a that's a cheese standard the new wireless charging ability in there and a galaxy note 2 what else is I'd seen the nexus 4 yep the LG optimus G uh what else are we missing I mean there are other ones like their third verizon phones that oh the the 8x the HTC 8x on verizon has it and that's chi i mean like these are all like high-profile products yeah from big manufacturers that are selling in a lot of numbers i don't see how a nan Chi standard can survive if I were gonna put my money behind the standard I right now I would put a pine tree yeah me too that's where I go and that's where i have i've bought three separate chargers now wait are they all nexus for charges are they all plates no I've got an energizer charger the single bay that i showed on video I've got the nokia charger that i showed in another video and then I've got the nexus 4 charger and spoiler alert the nexus 4 charger is better than all of them hands down god I love that it's so amazing i love it even if your phone does not have wireless charging built into it by that thing just you can put your phone on it too to have it at a nice beautiful angle where it's always in reach and ready to go yes it's that good I want to I want a fat boy for my car though one of those pillows yeah yeah there's a great to somebody tweeted a picture at mwc of a of a samsung employee passed out on one of the fat boy pillows in the nokia boom yes awesome if any of you are crafty out there that fat boy pillow is just a pillow wrapped around the standard nokia charger it's exactly the same innards just with a different packaging the big old pillow on a big old pillow on it so you can make your own so we have a least something cool here even speaking of Lumias the Lumia 920 it appears to have an update coming out with which allows for color adjustment neither of you can I don't think either of you of it I've been Lumia 920 so that's going to fall to me to install when it finally drops but it looks like it has cash clearing controls and some additional display calibration settings which i think the 920 sort of desperately needs not because it's a bad screen but because it has that polarizing filter which kind of takes some of the joy out of using it and you apparently you can amp up the color saturation or reduce it and you can change the color temperature as well which is pretty cool and it looks like they've got a cool little test pattern where you can see just it's like it's like adjusting the saturation on a galaxy s3 except it's cooler looking but this is it's in beta it is the 1308 firmware and it is apparently surfaced on the Nokia care sweet so if you have a 920 you should go read Stephen shank story about that from March fifth and I'm excited about it what yeah it looks really nice yeah I'm exam it really excited about windows blue I'm excited about more stuff by the way I know we stopped talking about the pebble but pebble is yet another reason why i'm not using one on 24 a while i've been stuck on my galaxy note 2 for like two weeks because i've had to use i had use it for the show and now i have to use it for pebble because pebble doesn't have a windows phone tap out oh my no mm-hmm no it's like fun to get spotify on windows phone and then the pebble comes in with god I can't and then there's another app that I can't use on Windows Phone but nokia is looking to change that this closes our windows phone category and this is one of the coolest moves i've ever seen nokia make so we all know windows phone doesn't support Instagram we've complained about it on the podcast we complained about in editorials and then commenters say what's the point of Instagram and then we have a big fight but Instagram is important it has 100 million active users over a hundred million and Windows Phone needs it desperately but instagram has kind of stubbornly refused to acknowledge its existence and so nokia has it has packaged this app for lumia smartphones called hashtag to insta with love and what it does is it allows you to take a photo put a filter on it and immediately share it to your social networks and it automatically appends this hashtag so what Nokia is trying to do is get instagrams attention through sheer force of like Windows Phone fanboy you know volume and I think it's a brilliant move what do you guys think about this I hate Instagram so there's that get out of my podcast my point is F fault for so long for better cameras and then the most popular photo-sharing application for mobile completely ruins that doesn't crop down to 6 12 mi sook stove it's 500 x 500 isn't it 6 12 06 12 thank you all right you it doesn't make them it doesn't ruin them it makes them different it makes them artificially artsy uh but they're still all right right we've had debated over and over but uh so that's interesting I didn't know that about you Taylor it's good it's good to have a diverse range of opinions stop talking now Joe so technical stuff aside I'm not going to say whether I agree or disagree with Taylor because I want to come back on a future episode of podcast it's the whole social sharing aspect that really is the go to feature in Instagram and what more do you need to say if you want information about any particular topic subject person place or thing instagram lets you immediately tag that and share it all over the place and you can get information about that person place thing whatever right there in an app and it looks nice filters notwithstanding all right now so yeah how do you think about nokia's monkeys move here I mean I think it's brilliant I think it's absolutely wonderful there they're saying hey there's they're not thumbing their nose at Instagram but they're they're kind of jab and I'm saying hey if you don't do this we were going to and we're going to show you that there's a way to do it so yeah there's a demand I find it fascinating that that instagram has remained steadfast and it's kind of silence on the issue unless there's something I've missed and I don't think I have you know in especially now that it's not just this small start-up it's owned by Facebook it got a ridiculous amount of money thrown at it to be bought by Facebook and I guess well wait it hasn't cleared yet right or we still waiting for a DOJ clearance or something like that are they officially integrated I don't know I think it's a done deal but I could be wrong I could be too i don't want to look it up because my keyboards very noisy but in any case i would think at this point that Instagram would've at least come out and said yes we're we're planning something for windows phone but maybe we'll go ahead too originally they didn't even want to develop 480 they didn't even know that's right yeah because they were on iOS only forever and then when they finally did come to Android Tony assigned to me the editorial it's like what's the big deal on Instagram on Android and I'm like okay whatever I'll check this out and then I immediately found out I loved it for about about a year and a half maybe two years and then for the last I don't know the last probably eight or nine months that i used it i didn't use filters and i only really used it to share to twitter and facebook i never checked instagram so i'd take a picture posted to instagram and make it post a twitter and facebook together so what what i ended up doing was setting up an if this then that or if this then that trigger mm-hmm where if i post a picture to facebook it automatically posts a pic twitter picture to twitter but it takes that picture uploads it to Twitter and then post the texts so you miss you so so you you you fundamentally misunderstood misused greatest inventions of our time I understand okay the only thing that would take me back to to Instagram is posting to Google+ Oh God ah google+ group less you guys go hangout on Google+ yeah we'll take all the cool kids with us and we'll hangout on Google+ and for it you can stay I don't know what do you want are you on my face still yeah I'm on Friendster still it's um google+ page updates profile page updates just rolled out there actually pretty nice it's awesome stir a little plug there and go check out Taylor's Google+ page go hang out in the white space clientele has a google there's probably no jobs have a Google+ page it's very nice there's not as much white space know what that might be V the chrome extension i'm using I don't know man i'm falling asleep iOS guys would you believe it there's new iphone 5s ipad mini 2 and ipad 5 rumors are you are you aware of this there are rumors about apple products they're coming out with more stuff i thought they were done no yeah like that huh there's an onion headline from like a decade ago it's like dell reaches goal of being world's largest company shuts down well we reached it we're packing up shop no um the iphone 5s is still the rumored brand name for this new product it would make sense i mean you know 3gs 4s 5s so so the iphone 5s that's just like the iphone 5 but with siri right because this just for esman Siri right well embedded journals didn't s what better internals in a better camera to write before well uh was it Phil Schiller I think Phil Schiller said that s & 4 S stands for dead literally estimates area oh yeah yeah and I think s 4 3gs meant speed if i'm not mistaken yes it's yes and remember what they couldn't decide whether to capitalize the s or not like it was it was a whole lot of when nobody knew had a set us a iphone 3gs um this is just pronounced if the iphone 3 cos the iphone 3gs it's like every time I roll up to an edit and NEC booth I'm like oh yes I forgot you own you've got the casio partnership why do you pronounce that again geez geez one kiss cos own and they always tell me and I always forget um you know that I just wanna make fun of it I do i do but no it's no it's legit is that part of the same part of my brain that can't pronounce ubuntu correctly oh yes i get so much crap over that because i say you bun too yeah me and i say it phonetically i say it how Google Translate pronounces it yeah that is just how I've been saying it for probably I don't know eight years I don't know yeah and um yes I get so much crap over that I know how to pronounce it ubuntu but i don't i say you've onto because if i try to say ubuntu over and over and over through video i'm going to switch back and forth and that's just awful so i just say you bunt to and watch people cringe yeah the last thing i want to touch on today in the apple category here is that this low-cost out god i'm so tired of low-cost iphone rumors but that's what old models are i know is if it but i think we would talk about this pretty often but you know i think apple is under a lot of pressure to continue its its growth and obviously it's living the story of pretty much every major company that has seen astronomical growth and it's like they can't really make you can't maintain that forever otherwise you're just with you you can only own so much of the market you can only own so much the planet and then it just becomes this horrible tale of woe but the thing that is interesting to me about the rumor is that whether it's this low-cost iPhone or this iphone 5s I think it's a low-cost when they're talking about talking about making it out a fiber fiberglass which is fascinating you can't anodized fiberglass I mean let actually why hasn't someone done that before but why use fiberglass and in a production smartphone maybe maybe somebody has and we just don't know about it thing is I grew up on boats and so I I know I know about fiberglass and i know i'm just picturing the first time somebody like accidentally breaks their phone open and like tries to pick it up and they get those fiberglass others in their hands demand for a week oh god they give it it like that welt the other the red down yeah Oh fiberglass is just a little itchy yeah yeah but when it's not busted up and you don't have splinters in your fingers fiberglass is awesome well yeah I guess that's true yeah and like so like you drop your phone you get it all scuffed up what do you take it to like the marine store and like get some gel coat spit on it just auto body shop yet oh you would just take more fiberglass and and wrap it around it and sand it down and yeah we know man there's gonna be like so much sales of bondo sales or just approve your surf shops gonna have an entirely new business line and put some sex wax on our phone God the friend named confused me as a child so much let's looks can we can we close it out here I think we did we've talked a little bit about we've talked enough about Ubuntu that I kind of want to skip over that topic for maybe leave it for another day is that alright with you Taylor fine by me all right unless I just want to say that ipad mini 2 better have a Retina display Oh complete I completely agree but they were talking about how much how much the price would increase because it's people means there is no Retina display at that size that's an insanely that would be a really dense display for a tablet it would be stupidly dense and but the thing is people would still buy it because I think now the ipad mini when it and it launched it didn't launch and do necessarily have a proven space in tablets i know that we were all loving the 7-inch form factor in the nexus 7 but i don't think and and the kindle fire had sold a lot of numbers but i wouldn't say that i wouldn't say that was completely tamed yet right i think people were still normal folks i was worse i was bashing 7-inch tablets at the time were you really yeah I hated them and then I fell in love with the nexus 7 after using it for a while absolutely i got a nexus 7 right after I oh yeah I got the IO edition Nexus 7 foot one yeah well it's white and pink oh it is yeah what is that Nexus 7's I got a red case for it and the suede the diana suede just I guess got sucked into the white cases are not your friend not on the nexus 7 or not you mean it's it's custom yeah right well so i think the the ipad mini 2 can they can kind of charge whatever they want for now that the ipad mini and other tablets have helped cement 7-inch 7 and 8 inches as the as a legitimate category and recognizing that i paid 600 for mine because I got you know 32 gigabytes in 32 gigs and it's on my verizon line oh it's a 3gs now yeah yeah it's an LTE one so it was 5 530 I believe or 555 I don't know it was six hundred dollars roughly if I were still amped on iOS like I actually said I was sitting with my roommates last night we were trying to figure out when we were going to take a trip together and I was trying to access google calendar and I didn't have the calendar app installed or something on my iPad and I was like trying to do it through the web interface and I was like finally after like two minutes I was like screw this i'm just and I put down my my iPad and I went and got my Nexus 7 and I was instantly happier so until I until iOS reclaims my love I'm not going to be terribly interested in a I've had many but if the rumors were hearing about the iOS reinvention are at all true and at all timely then it'll be fun to to give it a shot I actually spending a week with Tony and watching him love his iphone i kind of want want one now just to just see what's up that paints a really awkward picture yeah well not as awkward as wendy and i were both carrying note tues and in MVC and like it's like hey tony i just took this picture you wanna bump phones yes but let's move on yeah um actually there are two things that I would love to see out of the next Nexus tablet or seven-inch Nexus tablet if there will be another and that's high resolution display but actual LTE connectivity what in that that kind of kills it because it won't be carrier device them but it's a tablet so it's not like a smartphone are you talking I'm sorry you try my nexus 7 follow-up yeah oh that's the one reason I didn't go with a nexus 7 hspa+ and it's because one I don't want hspa+ I want to see if I can get it and the display on the Nexus 7 is notable noticeably worse than the ipad mini display well I mean in terms of saturation but not in terms of resolution right in terms of resolution yes no it's what isn't the pixel density higher on the nexus 7 that it is in the ipad mini I don't think so let me look it up I remember the nexus 7 ppi is uh what is it 216 it looks like sounds right yeah yeah it's to 16 and then what is it on the ipad mini 2 16 and a half for the ipad mini it is it's 189 yeah it's 189 know it so it's 163 163 162 so it's lower yeah but it doesn't look as bad yeah it does i think it looks worse than nexus 7 but anyway but just goes to show everybody sees screens differently to me the nexus 7 la is just fine it looks nice I'm still watching caprica guys and it looks beautiful on that thing I gotta take a different path from Taylor though I don't want anything other than Wi-Fi on my tablet yeah I want I want to have just a Wi-Fi tablet and let me tell you whatever smartphone I want so that that way yeah I was going to ask a tail runner to tether exactly Joe I'm in the same boat yeah I used to tether money well I used to tether all the time and I got tired of carrying two smartphones I have two lines I've got to pay for it one way or another mm-hmm so I might as well put a tablet on there because I'm tired of carrying two phones everywhere so you don't want to become a tour to fans no I've been I was I was commander three or four phones at one point so I've consolidated that gun balloon guy he's still like lieutenant tops and some notes Errol you know as the general it would be a lot easier to be to be a multiple phones carrier if holsters were still in style in fashion man yeah I don't have enough that's gonna be my next TL DR I'm talking about holsters I'm not wearing mine anymore so there's some some heat for you if I step dad ordered one and he's like so holsters are still cool right oh you're like sure what pistol do you have we're talking phones and no they're not no there oh um let's see let's jump into listener mail unless you the rabbit's up on Taylor no I was just going to say that I've actually been really happy with having LTE on my iPad I mean I've carried tablets for four years now I had tablets before the iPad and it's just not the same having Wi-Fi and having that tether every time you want to use it as it is just picking it up in it working as much as I use the iPad having it connected as much more efficient all right so I guess I can totally see that point and I think I see why this would be the last thing I say about it i think i see why i prefer tethering and it's it has less to do with convenience it does have something to do with billing streamlining but it has less to do with that even than it does in actually having more gadgets I like having more gadgets and I especially like gadgets that talk to each other maybe it's because I liked dr. Crusher's medical tricorder or something you know it's a peripheral but no I like it when I i have my tablet no you know what it's stretches all the way back to a 2003 when sprint was going to release a sony ericsson t6o 8 and the reason that was significant was because it had bluetooth and no other phones in the lineup had bluetooth and the guy that now runs phone news.com christopher price was like a frequent contributor and he was just so completely amped on this idea of carrying his Palm Pilot around his Wi-Fi or Bluetooth enabled palm pilot and keeping his t 608 in his pocket and browsing from the Palm Pilot because of its bigger screen to a better web browser and internet tethering for me is right but in 2003 right that was like the pipe dream so I think that infected kind of all of us on the sprint users forum or howardforums wherever the hell it was and III still to this day really like the idea of keeping my phone in my pocket and having a peripheral talk through it to the network so that whether that's a tablet or a pebble you know I think that's pretty cool I've always been a fan of the personal area network idea you know yeah i agree i like it but on a device that i use just non-stop having it tethered all day is not a good idea at least in terms of longevity so now i have a phone that lasts most the day in a tablet of the last two days and i can connect it whenever that that's my big thing is i use it literally three four hours a when I'm not shooting video for 12 hours but I right but but yeah I've been really happy with us before uh let's move on to listener mail and then we've got to wrap it up because I've got some some video to shoot and soda your tailor and Joe you've got to get to work at some point here well yeah and I've got an article that has to be written today too I thought that you might be writing something again today to all right good so let's jump into our two remaining pieces listener mail the first is from a guy named King which I like hate pocketnow people i love your podcast listen to it every week thank you for listening I want to know pocket mouse thoughts untrue wireless charging I love talking about wireless charging I bet it's far away in the future to we're able to have a device transmitting electricity that charges a phone or something but what if wireless chargers today have internal batteries that way we can move around freely and just charge them like every week it have a huge capacity battery yeah I would have to so like a portable charger but wireless and keep up the good work guys thank you king so this is an interesting idea what you carry around a boom box with like a wireless charging pad on top of it right that's kind of the idea I don't see why something like that I have the peak 6000 I have two of those and I use them religiously what is that it is a six thousand million power battery pack okay charges iPhones through you through the 30 pin and through micro USB yeah yeah so this is something like that accepted wireless well yeah why wouldn't it be able to you can fit wireless into that I'm right but i think what wireless charging is still somewhat less efficient so i think you would probably lose some some power through through heat and you know through through the added yeah there is a step down like on the nexus charger hot wireless charger for the nexus i think it receives 1.8 amps and then puts out at one amp right so there's definitely a step down there yea though i guess there that makes it practical right initiate that for convenience to right yeah I I guess but how don't have to carry around this device and then charge your phone on top of it versus having to plug it in yeah like I think that's the thing i don't think it necessarily solves a problem like i would rather just if it comes down to it i'd rather a light pocketable corded AC adapter as opposed to like a car battery with a wireless charging plate on top yeah but I think what he's after is like legitimate wireless charging where you can charge six inches away or what it sounds like he's saying is across the house that's the round thing yeah you mentioned that it up front but you know and he says this will be a far away in the future and yet hopefully not but aren't their televisions that are wireless what I think so their wireless televisions the the power adapter is you plug the power adapter in the wall and with if it's a within I think like a foot it'll charge your television it will give you a television power and you can just you don't have cables it's just that science fiction yeah but what that can pretty sure it is I'm having visions of like the house parakeet like flying between the beam like jacket in gray / or Jar Jar sticking his tongue between oh yeah yeah don't worry he'll only do it once I remember like all the pipe dreams about the galaxy s3 like when people were doing the the feature speculation back last year and a groomer that gained a lot of traction was that the galaxy s3 was going to have across the room wireless charging and if I had had a little more sense back then I would have said like everyone you need to chill out this is not happening because that of science fiction's like cray but I still think I don't know I Taylor if you can find that link to the TV I would love to see that I'd be it still though you're talking about a foot right you're not talking about across the room yeah you're not talking about across the room but it's yeah so here's I i think my point of view on this question is the convenience of wireless charging is not that kind of convenience it's not a portability enhancer it is a convenience enhancer in that you don't have to fumble with the stupid wire they have to pick up off the floor and remove a flap aside and plug a cable in you just drop it on the touchdown and you're done so that's that's what I think the thrust of wireless charging is and that's its value proposition and King I think it would be cool to have a piece of technology like the one you described I don't see it necessarily opening or if it happens I don't see it selling very very widely so my two bits on that we've already got all this wireless energy flowing all around us all the time whether we want to call that HSPA or edge or LTE or Wi-Fi or Bluetooth all it is is energy flowing through the air can we receive that and turn it into a usable electricity source probably not without a really big antenna you know we've already seen the coil that you need to further the Qi charger and it's it's pretty darn couple inches around so there's that can we harvest it some day in the future maybe I don't know and then we don't got true wireless stuff and I know I'm talking over to talk to your tailor because you're the good guy and gosh but true wireless charging I think if you're not familiar with the works of Nikola Tesla check him out he was doing wireless electricity transmission over distance there are some yeah a long long time ago there are some problems with that in one experiment he was able to successfully send a huge amount of power across a town from peak to peak and blew out every window in town and there are theories floating around that the Russian village that mysteriously was destroyed way back in the early 1900's might have been Tunguska I don't yeah that no it wasn't about yeah I was a forest yeah they did a meteor impact or they've done right impact yeah yeah there's something that it could have been a military vessel extra yeah I know it the Tesla's tower was only a couple miles away from my house growing up his the remnants of his facility which later turned into a Kodak plant that kids at school awesome yeah yeah but anyway yeah a so you're right we've done wireless transmission of power over distance before it's just a question of commercializing it and making it safe but Taylor what were you going to say there I was going to say one I just tweeted you the link to the wireless television wandering boom watch in your face thank you i watch this basic go ahead that second one the second one is that there is an heard there was an adapter in 2010 created by RCA the aired energy I think it's how it's pronounced but it's really lame this it is supremely thing but what it does is pretty cool it's basically it was a mini USB charger so obviously that would be need to be updated but it was a Wi-Fi charger it uses ambient Wi-Fi signal to trickle charge your device what oh it doesn't charge fast it charges really slow basically it keeps it where it's at and might charge if your phones on standby or something but it uses ambient Wi-Fi signal tuning Archer device I need to get i'm all about this i'm all up on this what is it awesome you link to that said that second thing because I that's that's I just you just blew my mind killer Martin tell them our new guy in the podcast just just eliminated my brain and if we're lucky Michael will post these in the article at pocketnow.com so you guys can share in the Wellness to an incredible discovery yeah I'll see that I just give you more work yeah thanks thanks man thanks i'll hit it anytime good thing I don't already have to waste a lot of time editing out all the sky problems I blew your mind yesterday to write solve the problem that you couldn't solve yeah but I've since forgotten that so it wasn't too let's get into the last piece of listener mail here from Carlos I hate packing out to you I love this opening hinge I baccano team love your show blah blah blah listen all the time to move along awesome colors now that Android for tattoo has official lock screen widget support with good widgets like the new dashboard clock and you can swipe down for notifications what are some good uses for my home screens I love this question so my view on this is that I have not yet used any lock screen widgets I know this makes me a weird weird dude but I am not running a version of Android that supports home screen widgets because I'm stuck behind stupid TouchWiz don't have to edit that out night to have to edit that uh I'm stuck behind TouchWiz so guys tell me I love the question because it's basically now that end it has built in this awesome new functionality they've sort of shot themselves in the foot and made their other their older functionality useless what is your opinion on this hello pebble well lock screen widgets are kind of they're not as optimized as they could be to access the lock screen widget you have to pull the page down or swipe left or right so the main lock screen budget the one that's standard just a clock right doesn't really do anything if you tap it it doesn't do anything it flashes and says hey unlock the phone it's like okay so it's not really that useful I use dashclock and it's really nice it looks great but I have to drag down on the lock screen to reveal the full widget so it's kind of yeah it's like a pseudo widget okay yeah it'sit's information at a glance so you don't have to unlock your phone to get at the information and I love using dashclock as an example because that's what I use it's right there if you need to know when your next appointment is or your next or what your email inbox looks like you can do that so you're saying it lets you get in get out and get back to life yeah you don't even have to unlock your phone it's just right there but it doesn't give away too much personal information so you're not worrying about exposing stuff that should be kept behind that security wall so what did you keep on your on your home screens like to you know what it would so you keep stuff on your home screens that is maybe stuff that is you want to be more secure than stuff you keep going to your lock screen I keep icons on the home screen because you can't keep icons on the lockscreen see you I just say I moved all my accounts down into the dock because i don't like yeah that's my home screen but yeah if you look at like a picture of mine like or the video that i did all of my icons are in the dock and i have two widgets on the home screen to do two widgets on your lock screen you'd have to have two pages to have four or five widgets you'd have to have one page per widget so it's not that useful beyond one widget sorry our advice to carlos is to use the different use cases as their intended use lock screen widget says they're intended and continue using home screen widgets as they are intended because they're set it and end to his point i'm down to where i have one home screen that I use all the time and then I hardly swipe left and right anymore there used to be a time when oh three home screens wasn't enough we got to have five or we got to have seven we got to have nine so you can have all your stuff on it and you do that through custom launchers well anymore even if I have a custom launcher I'm pairing off stuff so that I don't want to have the seven home screens I just want to have three maybe and I use my main home screen my home home screen ninety percent of the time and the others hardly get used at all yeah I've I've narrowed it down to one yeah I float go ahead I put the soundhound widget that I use a lot on a lock screen widget to the left of the main widget and I have one home screen with dash clock and the battery widget reborn that's it and you know when I use launcher or I use active action launcher well I almost got that wrong he's action launcher with covers in the dot the dock at the bottom so they don't look like widgets their folders sorry they look like icons not holders so it's very minimal to it this is this is fascinating as I want to actually have a discussion about this on a future podcast because I too have reduced the number of homescreens i use on average on a phone i still use three pretty regularly but on my Nexus 7 I don't like I think well my home screens are empty it's the same as I thing I made fun of Toni for back in Berlin when I first gave him the Nexus 7 and he was like yes this is how I would set this up and it's just blank and but I've ended up in the same place because I don't find the widgets as useful as I used to I think I think androids widgets do need to refresh the stock ones but that's that is unfortunately discussion for another time because we do have to go gents and I know commenters I want to say this right now thank you so much for all of you who were out there who say make the show longer because it's so much when we first started the weekly I was I think we were all petrified that everyone was going to say why is the show so long and we wanted to keep it to 45 minutes but that is proven impossible because we just have so much to talk about so it's really nice to get the support from all y'all saying that the show is you know long it's just the right size Carlos were sorry we couldn't get to the other half of your question but we do have to move on that first heavier question which prompted probably at least one editorial at one of us right I want to write about a shrinking home screen problem I can I can editorial as anything I see a picture of George Costanza somewhere in that in that edit whoever writes it yeah I was in a pool I'm there was shrinkage all right let's get the out of here what did Taylor was absolutely wonderful having you on the show for the first time thank you would you would you like to come back on the show at some point because that would be fun thank you for having me and yes I would as long as you can overlook my hate for Instagram and I'm not going to do it you're never coming back thank you for reminding my wire never been around the way oh and Joe it was absolutely lovely to to talk to you again and let's let's make it happen again sooner rather than later shall we yes I would like to tell everybody out there thank you for putting up with me I had to cancel last minute on the last scheduled episode of the podcast that I was on and the team kind of rolled with that I let a couple people know Michael didn't find out until much later so i thought i saw the lack of communication there but for it it's good to be back and i hope that i don't have any more members of my family kicking the blood can be around a lot more regularly yeah man absolutely and you know our sympathies on air by the way that I'm scared no now we're all now we all sound like we're on an ISDN phone call from 1985 dude Iestyn was awesome Elias TN was actually awesome yeah what am I thinking of 13 k or something like that well when you had two what two legs of your ISDN and he had one leg go down that was sucky foot i well we'll start talking about video but we'll talk about that next time let's let's close it out I wanted to say one last thing I don't remember oh yes an announcement for those of you who hang out with us in hangouts on the pocket now live there is a special edition parking i'll live happening i believe tomorrow gentlemen am I correct I don't know what date is but yes yeah I think it's tomorrow there will be an announcement very soon hang out with us well you will not be able it is not a traditional pocket a live hangout I think that will wait until friday but this special edition one you'll be able to watch but not participate as we talk probably endlessly and maybe do a little shouting and and get excited or not about samsung galaxy s4 so tune in for that but that is for now going to do it for this episode of the week they find us on Twitter Joe is at Joe Levi Taylor is at casper texier sper tek and as always you can find me at captain two phones you can also follow pocket now officially is pocket our tweets at pocket now on facebook and google+ you can leave us a review on iTunes or xbox music please do that and if you have a topic question or suggestion for the podcast or you just want to hear your name read aloud on the air you can email us at podcast at pocketnow.com thanks for listening everyone I'll see you next week have a great day see ya your video is going to be two days from now and it's going to be do we can we coming out what it's going to be about no Jesse Idol is going to be X things to pebble smart my gone all right you're not gone here you're here Ju just barely holding on by a thread is token is Taylor still there nope wait so I'm still here Oh Taylor still there oh now everybody sounds like they're in there in a closet but everyone's still holding on hold on let me let me just mark this time code so i can edit this new 20 minutes oh what a piece of skype is will that make the cut it's gonna make the app takes probably