Gadgetory

if two's company and three's a crowd than three is a podcast and two is a conversation something whatever that means to you if it means anything you've stumbled upon a very lean episode of the pocket now weekly the once-a-week podcast from pocketnow.com where we discuss smartphones tablets and the state of mobile technology in 2013 I'm Michael Fisher editorial director at pocket now and it's a lean episode because i'm joined only today by jaime rivera multimedia manager good afternoon to you good afternoon to you sir how's everything ah man rough it's not it is a very difficult day on the on the podcast because we were supposed to have Tony with us at managing editor Anton Dino Joe but he was unable to join here the last minute of obligation pop up Brandon was too busy and he was busy with Steven shanks so neither of them could come on the show both Adam Dowd and Joe Levi were unavailable due to other commitments and tailors getting coffee is ya know he's getting a car I think but you know really yeah one thing of the other yeah besides I'm buying up the entire American coffee supply today because I need it so desperately so your entire American coffee supply which comes from Honduras columbia and and I I think dang boy and go out of kate's it in in chemical factories I don't think there's anything natural about and Dunkin Donuts yeah I still can't believe you prefer Dunkin Donuts a ver starbucks man seriously yeah starbucks just tastes like they take a blowtorch tube to a guitar I don't know that's the eternal debate right anyway it's the eternal debate fire away it is a so it's a two-person show today listeners thank you for joining us and we have a little bit to talk about there might be a little bit shorter than usual but now that I've said that of course it's gonna be 90 minutes long we've had her crazy busy week haven't we haven't talked to you even via I am in its days you've been like so busy you've been unavailable well it's been crazy man we've got a couple of good reviews coming up good good devices that are arriving I it's been good it's been and we've had a couple reviews this week we've had yeah the HTC one review for the sprint version of the HTC One went live on Monday which would came courtesy of me and then the the samsung galaxy note 8.0 review for by our own tailor martin came up on the following day on tuesday yeah and was that that was Taylor's first tablet review right that's right that's right and that was uh that was your editing work on the on the video review I thought that was a good review it was a good review I don't know I told you I liked that note at eight point oh I wish it had a better display but so far I feel that's like the perfect form factor for for you know for stylus but anyways we'll talk about that I think no I think you're absolutely right and we should we should talk about it briefly now because I i think that the 10 dot one with its horizontal form factor is not all that conducive to the kind of work that I do but something that's a little bit smaller and portrait orientation with the S Pen that's a nice nice size sweet spot for that kind of device you know seriously i am not sure how long it's going to take android oems to figure out the fact that no landscape tablet has ever taken off none yeah well is that is that true that's actually true think about it how many landscape tablets out there have you seen have had as much success as the nexus 7 or the ipad none but i mean there are mitigating factors that right because they because the ipad has just a bunch of of issues in its favor and the nexus 7 was too cheap to ignore but yeah but you're right anytime that I have a horizontal tablet come into my life I'm like a landscape tablet I'm kind of like okay how do I fit this into my flow I've been using the envy x2 recently as I think I mentioned I mentioned on the air last week right yeah I did yeah and as I tweeted recently I think it's kind of reminded me of or maybe I didn't tweet or maybe this is a first heard statement there's kind of reminded me of all the reasons I really don't like Windows 8 now but that's a software thing right so and we can talk about the software stuff that that gets down to that and I kind of don't want to talk about it with only you on the air because with no with no control rod I feel like we'll just we'll just lose everyone um i don't know i think i would need am laying on the podcast account yet definitely that would be awesome I mean I Adams got a lot of perspective on Windows that he's been he's been there for years he's actually RR he's our oldest member in pocket now and he's been here ever since the beginning so here's a thousand right yeah exactly you know so so going back to the noid the to the note 8 point Taylor's perspective on the review I love them you know it is a good tablet I think it's a good concept but just like the Galaxy Note one I feel that it requires a second version you know a version that improves on it on everything that the first version didn't have like like the terrible display that it has like the fact that that you know the speaker placement just so many things of the tablet could have been great and Samson just went to cheap on it I think that was the the biggest problem in the review yeah I I think you're right and I also was thinking about the display at sub 200 DPI or a ppi yeah yeah that's that's that's pretty crazy and I I you know to be honest Tony and I didn't I or at least I didn't see that much of a problem with it in in Barcelona but then again it was really early in the morning and maybe I did I haven't looked back at our hands on video or some of that just don't remember that being the issue an issue with the display I do trust Taylor completely though and i bet i was surprised i think it's a promising product i just feel that the you know again Samson they're not charging cheap for it starting there let's start there it's not a cheap tablet and I said what is the price center just to refresh and remember the the price but it was a little bit over the ipad mini i believe yeah i'm going down to pricing and availability you Wi-Fi only 16 gigs just hit the UK for 339 euro okay that's a lot more expensive than an ipad mini yeah well yeah well three ninety-nine ninety-nine so that's what 70 bucks more right is the ipad mini still 329 not yeah yeah okay yeah so yeah and you know when we talked to Samsung about this in Barcelona we mentioned that actually we were talking about like okay so here's the price disparity is seventy dollars more than the ipad mini and samsung's kind of immediate response was yeah but this does more we uh you know agree it's great yeah I didn't have more utility hardware it does more of what people haven't really started caring about yet right so it's yeah it's like it's it's sort of future proofed in that respect and it's not at all future proofed in terms of some of the underpowered specs like the display how many times have you used your s plan come on you've been a big galaxy note 2 ambassador you got me to use one yeah I dad and and tell me I mean how many times you use the S Pen because i don't i love the phone because of the size and everything but not because of the s-pen ahhh when I carried it more frequently i used the s-pen quite a bit but to be quite honest I haven't I haven't really used the note 2 recently it has fallen into disuse in my household thanks to the HTC One here yeah yeah lucky you yeah stop it diet which you know I'm starting to think about the one and and we can talk about it very briefly obviously the entire tech space has kind of fallen in love with this unit and it's something that I think we've been waiting to applaud HTC for a while rather than just kind of encourage encourage it and hope that hope that the company creates something amazing that we that we know it could do and I think a lot of people regard the HTC One is an amazing device and I'm certainly one of them but I've been prompted recently in the past day or so to just kind of take a step back and make sure and just check in with myself and make sure that we're not all just in this crazy delirious honeymoon phase that's going to pass at some point and we're all going to realize that we've oversold this device have you dropped up dangerous you know he dropped it I have not but brandon has and his that that chamfered edge that beveled area is quite susceptible to impact so it's soft metal there so yeah no no it's just important to retain some perspective so that's what I'm trying to do over the next couple days over the weekend I'm going to just make sure I look at the device with a bit more of a critical eye I mean already you know the review is out I still stand by the review I still pointed at the low points in the in the device and there are some low points in it but from what I've seen from everything I've seen over the course of now I guess 10 or 11 days of using it um it's it's it's it's the most solid android phone i've ever used yeah I is just really something else so I I can imagine I you know after your review and Brandon room and Brandon's review I've really you know I've it's not that I changed my mind i still feel that i will be more suited by the galaxy s4 for my particular specific needs um but uh yeah I'm curious I want one can you please get me one I was gonna ask you by the way since you got the sprint version as a review unit yeah does that one have a sim tray yeah does and sprint usually in the United States sprint has this thing where they have not historically included removable Sims I think both the galaxy s is the galaxy and the gun 02 they have integrated Sims this would be the second phone aside from the iphone 5 that has rule sim now the question is have you tried placing another sim card on it I haven't I realize like my debt that sends my tech cred into the basement right that's like the first thing I should have done if I were well here's the deal I mean in the case of the HTC One I believe there are there is just one model and that model I'm by the way I'm just throwing it out there i'm not sure but in the case of the iphone 5 for example there are three models and blt cdma variants does support gsm you know you can use it on AT&T and it's unlocked on verizon by law but then on Sprint's it is locked so i'm curious to know what happens when you try to pop another sim card on that i will get back to you on that i like that was one of the things i meant to test before the before my review actually and I didn't get to that that was like the one of the two things that slips through the cracks so I will do that i'll follow up but what is interesting that you now that you bring up the differences between the HTC One units the and I just wrote an article about this the one on sprint does not have any carrier branding on it yeah she has a and the one on eighty-eight she does and not no one in eighteen t has the Death Star yeah now what a question I mean there were minor apps i mean i thought there were only like one or two right what up the bloatware yeah the bloatware oh no it's friggin ridiculous there's so much blood on this thing spray oh no sorry aight the AT&T variant is the one that only has two yeah i think they wouldn't really slide on the on the software there so there's a balance but it was interesting to get comment from rent and HTC on the lack of hardware branding because you know that's unusual in the United States we've had some commenters helpfully chime in from other parts of the world where apparently in Argentina it's very uncommon to have carrier branding so that that must be nice oh and my country it's zero carrier brand that seeks way that's crazy because in America you know how it's frickin nuts like verizon's throw in there check mark on the home button the galaxy note 2 and Dora Mike yeah 4G LTE stuff everywhere like there's always always always silk-screened carrier stuff and on the HTC One that's not the case so it's so unusual to carry this device and you know basically have people asked you like Oh what carrier is that on because it doesn't say it on it you know anywhere it's do you even even more interesting is is that not happening with HTC because you know Samsung pretty much you know obviously Apple change the game with the iphone there's no carrier branding anywhere but then you know Samson did the bold move of you know bringing the galaxy s3 as a one device where you can pretty much just flip the battery cover and you don't know if it's carrier branded or not if you get an original battery cover you don't know if it's a sprint brand that our AT&T branded device on the s3 yeah and and in the case of the HTC One you know HTC has always been the company that tries to fit the phone to as much as the carry requirements as possible and still for the first time ever we see an HTC phone without carrier branding that's really interesting it's cool yeah not only did they take the step of catching up to where Samsung was last year of saying no it's going to be the same hardware across all carriers we're not changing any we're not adding a keyboard for you but they also took in the extra step and they were like no also no branding at least on sprint so that's interesting in Sprint's comment on this was very enlightening where I was like what HTC must have thrown a bunch of money at him or something like that but no Sprint's basic position was that yeah look if we don't put sprint branding on this we can go ahead and later down the road or even immediately if we want to siphon off you know a couple thousand of these units and throw them in the boxes within throwing a boost box or throw in a virgin mobile box and for a prepaid device without yet without having to rip off the logo or without having to change it you know it's just one less step for them and that makes a lot of sense logistically right well well there by a new company now so that's another all right I keep forgetting about the SK Telecom thing yeah yeah i was going to softbank so we're soft soft not as they say I'm sorry yeah I was gonna ask you one last question okay you are a photography tog raphy buff you love taking photos I'm like it yeah it's super amateur but yeah who cares you know that the point is you use your phone for the camera a lot true true so bottom line are you making this phone your daily driver and tolerating the camera coming from a Lumia 920 I am and it's working out quite well because the Lumia 920's camera is excellent but what are its hallmark features optical image stabilization and low-light performance yeah and you get that on the one you don't get the optical image stabilization on the one but you do get the excellent low-light performance and frankly the 920 I which I still adore it frustrates me because even after the software update I still have some kind of soft focus issue I have to take a shot multiple times to get a really good sharp one and with the one you know it's obviously a camera of half the resolution but it's other aspects kind of jump in to fill the gap Plus as an Android device it has Instagram and then well there's that fine get me a phone get me a phone now let's just leave it there before you and I you know have our first podcast fight on the on the air right well it's we've been talking about the hd2 on this whole week so let's let's let's move on a little bit before we jump into windows to cover that one more remark about the envy x2 a lot of people have been asking if I'm going to review it it's a little late to review the envy x2 I mean it's been out for months now we are probably not going to review it but I might try and sneak in and after the buzz if possible yeah you could probably just film the macbook air and since they look pretty much identical they look so similar but you know it's so no idea envy x2 is so beautiful but there's so much that's different about it and there's so much that I don't think works I'm a little surprised it got the high reviews I've got from other outlets because I I'm not seeing it but we'll maybe we'll save that for after the buzz I'm just I'm still getting to know it I don't know let's be honest I was an HP customer from the year 2000 to the year when I when did I buy my first mac on 2009 mm-hmm I was a nine-year HP customer from the times of compact to HP I used everything from pocket pcs to everything I liked HP's taste their taste not necessarily in design because not everything is original to them but they you know they did something very smart when they absorbed compact they kept the designers from compaq and these are very good designers I mean they your yeah i mean and i feel that that x2 that is like the only Envy i would ever buy not necessarily because it is um not necessarily because it's um it looks like the macbook air no I don't like the macbook air actually I just feel that HP you know it's it's probably not a bull design but it's it's like the way windows 8 was intended to be used but then Windows 8 has its own flaws that make the tab that make the product uh not not its best thing oh god that's the thing I mean using the envy x2 I my complaints are seldom about the hardware and in data use I first of all I'm still on my first battery charge I think it's been three days since i unbox the thing and I've used it every day yeah i've used it over totally so that's amazing and the hardware is quite beautiful and having the detachable tablet its top-heavy which is very annoying but that's about my only complaint about the hardware that on the fact that the keyboard isn't backlit but it's not the hardware that i'm complaining about us the software it's just man windows 8 I you know and I'm still relearning it i'm still trying to get the gestures down that the surface taught me but jumping constantly between the modern UI desktop and the traditional Windows desktop which for some reason I'm forced to do considering something about my usage habits forces that it has rendered the experience very disjointed and I really have been having a very difficult time so okay Microsoft of you're listening to this we don't hate your mother your modern UI just do is above it just do as a favor whenever 8.1 comes out could you please give us the option to turn it off well the modern ease now ya know cuz the future is there right if you know in the modern do I but but I mean okay can we just either stay on the modern UI or stay on the desktop and not have that flipping around well why don't you yeah you have a surface RT and just remove the old school to fake desktop because i miss the browser from the server side she actually and i have a such a stupid question this is why i kind of wish we had a third on the show who is a little more familiar with windows because i might my i want to make this clear my experience with the envy x2 this is not a review unit this is a personal you know it's mine so I I'm not working when i'm using it i'm using it as a user I'm yes I'm getting some impressions from it as a as a reviewer as a writer as whatever but basically I'm just you know experiencing it for my personal use so there are things that I come across where I'm like wow I can't solve this problem like I'll jump to the browser and I'm like wow I still I wish I could jump into the like the surface RT's version of internet explorer that keeps me in the modern you know interface land which too because if you are in the modern UI you get one browser and then if you're in the other you while you get the other right and I'm on the end on the envy x2 I have to go to the whole desktop with the browser anyway it's ah got it so so uh anyway I need a class i basically need a windows 8 class because i can't and the thing that i was excited about it compared to the surface on the surface you can't run like old yeah Oh old games and stuff I then it was like maybe I maybe I'll be able to run Hugo's house of horrors are like spit wad Willie or some of these old dos games on the on the envy x2 and I know there's different processes open state was behind really yeah but ya know I'm getting those you know this device does not support full screen mode errors and stuff like that and granted I didn't do any research before i picked up the product i just have what's in love with it ever since berlin and i was like maybe i can do it no I can't and then you need a rocket science degree to understand the error codes it's like error 2002 x3 god I know which I didn't remember those but I didn't get any way anyone look it look all right before we before let's let's jump into Windows Phone 8 while we're on the Windows Phone bandwagon for a second and talk about the Nokia Lumia 928 which has been leaked for verizon this is basic the verizon variant of the Lumia 920 right yep but it's a different phone I mean it's amazing well I'm trying I'm trying to understand this I mean there was nothing wrong with the Nokia Lumia 920's designers I from the wait but the design looks a lot like the Lumia 720 or the a little bit like the HTC 8x is okay well that's where I'm trying to go um you know when when microsoft launched you know when microsoft and HTC launched the windows phone 8x they were like these are the signature windows phones and we understood that you know they parted with HTC for the for the signature experience I wish there was something like that on Android know the Nexus products or not um but but what I'm trying to say is that I'm trying to understand what happened in that meeting because then we get the Lumia 720 which looks a lot like it and then the new flagship coming to to verizon keeps the same designs I'm like is Microsoft influencing design in any way for these products look so similar to each other and not get sued by anybody that's a really good question i don't know what's happening there I know verizon is continues to be the prime offender in redesigning hardware for itself oh yeah you know I mean the lumia 822 is a great example of that where that looks like no other phone and if anywhere I think there's an international version called something else I don't know but it looks nothing like the original 820 that it's based on I think I actually have one sitting right here in front of me it's oh god it's just ugly but then that's just how much you like the phone you don't even remember if you have one there yeah exactly right it's a solid performers just in the ugliest case ever so we know verizon has a very strong influence on how devices are designed particularly ones that are on kind of underdog platforms now this 928 928 doesn't look bad at all but I find it interesting that this speaker grill on the back suggests that they've moved the speaker from the side bottom from the bottom side to the bottom back yet avenues but I'm looking forward to that xenon flash man you saw that oh I'm looking at that right now is that what that is that's a xenon flash on there so it's got a small LED and it's their adult video spotlight or something right yeah and it also has a xenon flash that is gonna be awesome I mean the only other device that had a xenon flash was like the the what's Tony's phone that anyway that that's what i call it now I don't call it a peer review at the 808 pier i call it tony's funny Scott he's the only human being on this planet i thought it holds that phone actually me too yeah but I love hanging out with him cuz whenever he uses it i am envious until he starts typing or doing anything that a smartphone requires but when he's taking photos I'm mph it's gonna be very curious to see this thing in action III and I'm excited I think we need to keep some perspective here and from an American standpoint it's very important that Nokia get a version of the 920 on verizon cuz right oh yeah the high-end Windows Phone experience on verizon is what it's there isn't any 8x well it's the 8x and that's about it well I said there isn't any well yeah well rumors are that sprint is gonna be bringing the achieve s to their lineup so that's pretty cool but you know it's good to have verizon bring in some real premium stuff here I'm gonna ask you a Windows Phone question that that's actually I should have asked you this like like when we talked in Vegas yeah um do you you came from windows phone seven and then 28 just like I did um do you notice that the keyboard was more accurate on your Lumia 900 back in the day than on the 920 um no because the Samsung Focus the original Samsung Focus had the most accurate keyboard probably that I've ever used in my life you know where are the most frustrating thing for me to go from my 8 old HTC Titan to the 8x yeah is that the Titan was like perfect yeah obviously the screen was a lot bigger um but you know I never it's the best keyboard that I have ever used Windows Phone either on the dell venue pro that's they're in the drawer or the time that's also they're in the drawer it was perfect but then when i moved to the ax you know to be honest with you the reason why i don't use the phone is because the keyboards expedition is terrible mmm oh wait what and Windows Phone 8 yeah oh it's not no it's not it's it's great what do you mean it's not it's a prediction problem with me it's a precision problem though it could be that I'm used to bigger screens now it could be because we're all getting used to bigger screens right but III there there's obviously they had to chain everything at a kernel level when they're bringing stuff from windows phone 7 Windows Phone 8 so there was probably some kind of just very minor very moderate tweak that happened in the keyboard that maybe you and I are both experiencing or it could very well be sought be hardware because we know that Lumia 920 brings a lot on the hardware front to change the screen yeah so I'm not sure what it is it's still I still find the 920's keyboard to be excellent it is still one of the best keyboards I've used but i still i miss my samsung focus keyboard and it's interesting to hear that you have a similar experience with an older Windows Phone 7 device that's crazy yeah yeah I still have that tighten too yeah I have the title the original tighten the be the dell venue pro was my first Windows Phone it was my favorite like it was my that is such a sad story that thing could have been so amazing right it could have been the perfect phone yeah yeah I i would still really like it if if something like that came out again listeners for the record out of every phone that i've owned and owned currently owned the dell venue pro is like the first phone that i really really want it i really wanted it and then thank you and then it took forever to launch and then they killed it like a couple of months late in the yeah before we before we start talking about this pre 3 i've got in front of myself emporia so I'm talking about the sob stories of mobile let's talk about the Nokia catwalk real quickly this is the phone that people keep throwing around in comments like it's going to be like whenever somebody brings up a cool story about some other phone like if the if the the underserved nokia nokia fans or like get a little bit bent out of shape about not being mentioned in long enough to be like yeah whatever catwalks gonna kill this thing so whatever yes i pop open the story expecting to see the rumors of a really really cool you know EO slight device but no the spec leak here that we're if it's are to be believed it's it's like an aluminum 920 right it's an aluminum 920 and i'm looking for spotify here right now to look for my my song of right said fred you remember that i'm a mom however that i'm too sexy song yes from nearly 90 horse and the guy was saying they using yeah he's shaking his little tush on the cat walk away where did the get that me oh these code names are always greater than tit yeah but okay so so the thing about this catwalk is and I've been following it obviously for parking out daily um we thought that it was gonna be the 928 we thought that it was gonna be the 928 so much do you remember those news with Stephen Elop through an iphone on the floor from yeah from this presenter well the presenter was telling him where is the Lumia 928 I want a Lumia 928 I have an aluminum iphone here and I want this on a nokia he said something like that um right so we were expecting this 928 to be the aluminum design that that's pretty much the catwalk so far it seems that the EOS technology is probably not there yet because it's not on the specs and we just wonder what's what's holding nokia back from from adopting you know other materials now for the record I matter about us speaking here personal opinion aluminum is not the best material for a phone your HTC One and my iphone 5 can talk about that I mean it is I don't know it looks terrible once can speak to it yeah oh yeah but but i'm saying you know a lot of people want this aluminum phone i don't i want a 1080p display Lumia that's what I want well the this aluminum is so gorgeous and it's so amazing to the touch I am terrified of dropping it as i said in the review i feel like i'm gonna drop it all the time because it is so smooth and slippery but and it's not gonna it's not gonna deal with impacts well i don't think but we'll see I don't know we have a commenter asking not a comment or a letter writer actually asking about phone material which we might not get to actually i'm not sure but we're not going to get to anything if we don't move on so we have windows phone yeah 1080p lumia i agree would be amazing and we're starting to see well we will start to see by the end of the year windows phone 8 devices supporting 1080p is that correct yeah gdr3 would be the update so by the way i believe there are two updates that have to happen before gdr3 so that's probably gonna happen by the holiday season yes okay well that's gonna be cool I not that I'm you know it's funny when I was doing the blackberry z10 vs HTC One comparison I was talking about the screens and I'm like well one of these is basically a 720p I think it's actually 768 or whatever yeah I don't know yeah so that's still so I'm gonna expose a little bit of my math ignorance right now and I don't care but like I know they still consider and whatever 1280 by 768 to be 720p screens but are they technically because it's not by 720p in the other no it's not technically 16 by nine it's like 16 bytes is 16 x 10 right okay all right that's what that was the missing the aspect ratio is what I was missing anyway yeah the aspect ratio is what's different but the resolution is the same yeah the point is i still want to do this blindfolded thing or phones in a duck blind thing and take him out on the sidewalk and show people at 720p screen in one hand and a 1080p screen and the other and ask him to tell me which one looks better because I'm still convinced that half the population wouldn't be able to tell the difference but now they're beautiful I can't tell the difference and this is just funny I you know I obviously reviewed the Xperia ZL yeah and Brandon asked me about it this morning on a call that we had and he was like so how's it going I'm like I hate the display I'm like having a nexus 7 moment here right now I love everything about you except the display oh oh yeah and so he's like what phone are using I'm like I'm back to the note 2 and he's like what you got less pixel density I'm like well some of us just you know some some of us just fine certain pixel density to be enough being a friend yeah yeah that's a that's a big conversation let's talk android let's to be since we kind of sort of segue into it a little bit then got away from and the HTC first the facebook phone has been announced the last time we had a pocket nah we CLE is well last week of course we had the podcast i think about 20 minutes before the facebook event started before the event yea which was just dumb so you know we were not privy to the details and then we we saw it so we talked about it then on the pocket a lot like I via the following day tell me I'm a your feelings on on facebook home ok Facebook a you're starting with Facebook home I want to start with Facebook home because that's the more significant thing I wish you would have started backwards all right go go to talk with HTC first then we're okay you know I look at the HTC first and i remem the nexus 10 really I love the nexus one I love that phone I mean it was so thin so light so slick so very well made it was a beautiful phone and you know 720p a 720p display on a 4.3 inch you know the device and it's so minimalistic you know obviously it's submit to your phone I understand that but you can you could get stock Android on that thing I don't know I I kind of like the phone I feel like that as a sentiment that has been expressed by many people in the tech space over the past couple days where people are like wow it's really tough to get a stock like experience on a device like this these days particularly one from a manufacturer's high tier is HTC so yeah I mean if they would have snapped at you know I wouldn't care about the dual core processor if they would have snapped an eight megapixel camera on that thing you know even if they would have given me the HTC One X camera on that thing I wouldn't have cared if they would have given me that camera for me that would have been my next phone yeah seriously but but you know you know aside from I feel that the HTC first you know HTC has got their market very well defined they know that HTC home is for teenagers that you know adults we have already moved on and we know that there's something beyond facebook there's also Twitter no there's not google plus there's also two enough really yeah which is just funny you saw this this uh just a little commercial you saw that google is giving away like 21 Nexus devices on a giveaway for the next two weeks yeah and okay the requisites for you to participate in that is for you to follow google play on twitter not google+ really twitter yeah well that's good to know that they've got some you know realistic thinkers in the marketing department there exactly exactly but you know going back that's how much they care about google+ but the point being is i think that the phone has a future it would it would have been great if they would have made like a line like a high-end HTC first uh for the you know for the adults that are learning about facebook like my dad right yeah and then a low-end market for the teenagers and they didn't do that that's the sad part but obviously you get the op gonna be in being able to install it on your Galaxy s3 or galaxy note 2 yeah I don't know I'm glad what are you what are your impressions you like the phone I've had to make a serious effort to formulate some impressions because i'm just so completely disinterested and not engaged personally I understand how it is a very important device for facebook it's a very it's even a very important device for HTC I'm having a difficult time envisioning what consumers are going to go for this device and I think I talked about this a little bit on the live last week where it's like you know if you can install facebook home on another device I don't understand what would push you to get the HTC first I don't like the design I I differ from you I think the design is I think the design looks like an original iphone from 2007 painted with soft touch and you know with like giving a button interesting perspective I don't know ok so here's the deal you make a solid point and I remember we were at the round table before your pocket now live and we were talking with Brandon and he was like uh no he was like you know the the iphone is no longer the phone that everybody wants you know they don't want the phone that dad has they want their own phone and they're going into Android so that the phone makes sense and I was like not really um you know I gave my son the option you know I was like okay uh what android phone do you want or because i had bought a 1x you know it was four months old i had barely used it sounds like i have my first iphone 4 there in the box that i'm not using and i have the 1x which phone do you want my son is 12 years old he said the iphone hmm and so you know but I had another iphone 4 there and then my my wife's older son was like you know hey so I got a 1x I got an iphone he's 18 years old what phone do you want he's like I want the iphone um I don't know why because we had iphone so it I don't feel that that teenagers want to break away necessarily from the high end stuff that they feel that their parents have yet I don't think we're there yet but again you I feel that we're matching in perspectives that there is really no market for this phone true you know obviously it is for teenagers the question is what a teenager prefer this over a galaxy s3 that will most probably drop in price in the next month right yeah that's always the question right that's the eternal question that arises anytime we just got some mid-range devices where it's like uh-oh does this I just got distracted by tweet I'm sorry there's like I want to spend my fifty dollars on mid-range device that's brand new or a device that last year at this time was a flagship that's definitely gonna last for long because it's built with premium stuff you know I don't know I don't know for a hundred dollar difference between a flagship in a mid-tier device I would earn the extra hundred bucks and I would just go for the high for the flagship even if I was teenager yeah and that's a predictable answer from from all of us right because we like flashy new cool stuff but let's talk about this awesome awesome development in the Play Store I read this news and I was initially not going to include it in the rundown within it it got me so excited that I just wanted to talk about it very briefly there have been a record number of apps apparently pulled from the google play store yeah and we're talking about a quality assurance move on google's part the breakdown is not exact we don't know from this report exactly how many we have google to thank for and how many were actually developers you're pulling their own apps but we're looking at something like 60,000 apps we have fed from the play store from februari to this day and it's you know I just I don't know if I was I don't know well I don't know if I prefer that approach or Apple's approach where you just don't get the app at all ok so here this is that's a very timely thing because this morning I was looking at a post on io9 talking about I believe it's a comic book series I cannot remember it I tweeted it earlier but I'm not gonna look at the link now it's a comic book series that are a graphic novel series are possibly just a fiction series that I'm not familiar with I sound very undereducated at the moment but its 12th installation the the cover art includes a depiction of two men kissing or something like that and Apple has decided somebody within Apple apparently has decided that that is graphic content and so that issue is not going to be covered in the in the in the app store now it is only a matter of time until the decision is reversed but because it's their PR that they're going to get is just ridiculously bad but you know I that leads me to say I don't prefer apples apples model because you get situations like that whereas in the google play store you know yay pulling you something after the fact is roughly analogous but I don't know I I feel like I still prefer Google's approach guy I feel like apple's app store is a little too draconian for me still oh true okay let's let's just say that we're happy that Google at least did it I'm very happy that's why I was elated to see this because how many times have you looked in the Play Store or other app stores and just seen like just page after page after page of crappy ebooks masquerading as apps crappy ring tone generator stupid soundboards fart apps you know you're my face no wait a second you're talking about Windows Phone there well I said smaller L in the blackberry from blackberry app world to the Windows Store the bastards other I'm serious you try to in the past you try to look for Spotify or Pandora or any of the big things and there were all these like alternate like there were not even alternatives I don't know what they were they were like launchers into the net to the browser or whatever in Windows would and I'm like man windows funky please write this down um that's like a really good idea but anyways anyways black black black berries them the big offender nowadays yeah let's just be happy that it happened but hey you know one thing we we actually didn't discuss facebook home you didn't give me your opinion on what you think about facebook home we just talked about the phone by the way right so I don't would you use it we use it everybody knows what it is so would you use it I don't I guess what are you I would use it to try it out I would never use it as my I don't you I am the opposite of the target customer for that I have a Facebook account I enjoy my facebook account but i do not want it to be the center of my mobile experience at all because i have something on the order of 700 friends and you know i'm not saying that to be like well look at me I'm popular but like every single interaction there are some of the interactions that I don't want to be bothered with that all the time I don't want that on my home screen every time I look at my phone yeah I'm probably the most compelling thing to me about the facebook phone as chat heads but like it's like I say I'm not the target user I try and think about users like my my mother for whom facebook is in fact most of what she does on the internet in terms of interacting with relatives friends sharing news you know everything you know i mean i think that the facebook phone would be compelling for my mother if she did not already have the iphone 5 which she adores so interest goes back to your point well interesting but i don't know if you did know this listeners but the APK was leaked by modaco recently and we were we were actually just getting ready we're rushing to film a video about it you know just to give everybody a a hands-on of the APK working that the ones i was working on yeah joe uh Joe actually got it to work and Taylor got it to work as well um and you know I just find it interesting the Taylor's response was like man this is so beautiful really and I'm like really and he's like yeah because we had just gotten off the air from the from the from our roundtable and you know he was saying I don't want to use Facebook home i barely use facebook at all i'm a Google+ user so rarely well if you alone Taylor might be he was like men the cy is like very very nice it's very intuitive it is like very smart made and I'm like okay uh right okay okay let's let's let's wait for it to happen again I'm gonna be like you Michael I'm gonna give it a try um and again I am sadly not very tolerable when it comes to you know things that I'm not gonna be we're waiting for version two so it's gonna get one try I feel like if I'm Tony right now talking it's gonna get one try and then if it doesn't work for me but I was just uninstalled it I love you know it's true ya know you know exactly right and i think that i will be surprised by two it's important to remember how much of our experience if we let it can be governed by expectations i have so often been surprised in this industry and IA it's because i have preconceptions i have prejudices for or against a product get it in my hands and it surprises me and that's what I think some in some ways we have to be careful about because it'll color your perception if something surprises if you're not expecting the world from something and then it actually delivers a good experience there's a really very real danger of reviewing it to positively yeah and the opposite is also true but we try and keep a leash on that but let's talk I'm done with I don't wanna talk about the facebook phone anymore you're done with it because I'm done with that yeah good my my bubble has burst on the facebook phone for the day and that is a very clumsy segue into this cool story from Stephen shank and editorial that was posted just today this morning entitled the tablet bubble may have burst and this is fascinating to me and Stephens basic point is like but it is like hey look there was a big tablet explosion and even so we're in a world where tablets are not terribly popular outside of the ipad consumer tab yeah and i love the point he makes it's a very simple point but it's something i've also been thinking about recently and that is because about a year ago at this time i had just been hired by pocket now or about a year in a couple months yeah and i was hired by i don't think this is a secret really i was hired in order to write about tablets yeah and that is because there was going to be a point at which the part of pocket now was going to focus exclusively on tablets and a blur was gonna focus on phones and yeah if that were still the plan i don't i don't know that the tablet division of pocket now would have had enough to write about mmm you know it's kind of interesting we're i recently filmed the top 5 smartphones and then when we were trying to think about you know what are the top five tablets for the next video we're like how many tablets are that are actually that are considerable for for this video you know that's like it's it's the ipad and everything else and now the surface pro yeah but you the some people still debate if it's a tablet or not um you know I feel I'm classifiable yeah i feel i feel that Stephen made a solid point like like okay if you would give me a hundred percent of your time you know in a number how much do you spend on on a tablet regardless even if it's an ipad nexus 7 whatever tablet it is how much time do you Michael Fisher spend on a tablet a hundred percent of my usage is that the hundred percent okay so you know in a hundred percent of your day how much percentage goes to a tablet Oh probably 15 to 20 if we're talking about day if we're talking about usage of like mobile devices higher percentage so obviously i'm talking about tablets and okay the point being is if i would have if you would have asked me this question a year ago since the hype was the ipad 2 years ago sorry uh-oh fifty percent uh you asked me now and i barely use it five percent of my day what I forget about the tablet no way what do you write do you read in bed uh I don't read in bed you don't read in bed you know and finally like I had my emails before I even get out of bed in the morning i use a tablet i have a kindle well that's a tablet sort of oh it's a reader to reader it's any of you know it so i read my email on my phone you know read the experience of reading email is not necessarily better on a tablet than on a phone you know other things are better like navigating the weber things like that but not necessarily reading email which is what i do most of the time in the morning okay I'll buy that yeah so so I feel I feel the tablets are something that's nice to have and people are quickly realizing like for example I you know I my wife has an ipad and she ended up giving it to her older son because she was like you know it's something nice I love it it's cool to have around when we travel somewhere and I don't want to carry she got back but but I don't really use it other than you know on the on a trip or something so so Stephen makes the same point he says it despite what some people might tell you a tablet is not a replacement for laptop it's and I got for a piece of electronics to add to our repositories yeah absolutely i but but then there's there's an interesting counterpoint in the comments which we don't often think about who's there's a commenter who says basically like yeah not for you guys but for someone who who primarily uses a laptop for browsing email and that's about it a tablet is a really solid choice for a computer replacement so there is a subsection of people out there who do that okay you did again my mother's getting a lot of representation this bike has my mother day okay so the the I don't know which which reader wrote that comment he has a very solid point but then i'll give you this much the problem is that even though tablets are getting cheaper the better tablets the ones that are still leading the market are not cheap so if you come to a point if you're a college student and you come to a point where you need to choose between an ipad which is not going to let you do everything or a computer that's gonna cost you sometimes even less than an ipad you know some people are compelled to end up buying the computer the problem is not that there isn't a market for them no the problem is that the market has you know the taste and the need for computing has evolved so much that the tablet is a little late actually because because people's needs are more complex we don't even use printers anymore well do you even have a printer now a lot of things have changed over the years and so tablets are a great product to have yes there is a demographic that benefits from it yes there is a market obviously that's why they sell but you know I'm I'm a fourth-generation iPad users saying that I have a nexus 7 in my drawer that I never use anymore and that I have an ipad mini that I always keep in my backpack but I rarely remember to pull it out why because there is just a point where since I know that the tablet is not gonna do everything that I sometimes will need then I just don't bother and I just pull out the laptop I get that completely because I have carried around my macbook air two places and eat you know because I have developed a cool workflow on it because i use it for most of my day sometimes pulling out the ipad 3 here or the nexus 7 it's just more hassle than it's worth i already have the computer here it's nice and light it's portable i can use it and i can type faster on it still so yeah I think there are different use cases for this I think it all comes back down to the point that we so the user or you were already it all does depend on user and yeah for users like us it's a tablet is not a laptop replacement but i think i still i don't know i think the real question for me the real interesting part for me was that it's a year later a year ago at this time i was writing editorials like will android tablets ever be compelling and today we could still if we weren't in such danger of yourselves in the headlines we could still write pieces titled that we probably still do and I just don't see him um no that's not true i know we still do and I do see them but I don't write them anymore because I have nothing new to say yeah fortunately we have enough people on the team now where other team members have something have a new perspective on I have no new perspective on it because really these things even that the the Sony Xperia Tablet Zelda bear that was a very nice now it's so absolutely gorgeous and Steven references in the piece but like what's what what what is driving the conversation it's the google play store it's the content offerings it's the ecosystem which android is still trying to get a get a grip on so i don't know you know it's funny because i think that that tablet z is like the perfect example you get a waterproof talent that's been extremely thin that it's extremely beautiful and still people don't buy it well yeah and edit but is priced dad pretty high too right well i mean it trust me yeah somebody was asking me why do you want a waterproof phone and I'm like why not I not exactly why aren't phones waterproof already at this day and age of watches have been waterproofed for the past 30 years agreed three uh anyway yeah well before we get too proud there what I would so want to stick with tablets but I want to move into iOS a little bit because we are talking about this purported next generation iPad bezel showing up oh that's gonna happen that's the next generation iPad is gonna be an ipad mini bigger that's just the way it's gonna be yeah because that's the way the industrials is that they're gonna retain the industrial design of the iphone 5 the ipad mini yeah you know it's kind of interesting because the ipad mini does have sham furred edges as the iphone 5 and has the HTC One but you know I think that they use a denser aluminum for the ipad mini because mine is in pristine condition do you drop it often well i haven't dropped my iphone either and it's got dents oh it could be there might be some material differences there i'm not sure i'm not what's the news on this one the news on this one is that the bezel appears much thinner on the lot well you know that apple apple and that you know they develop the technology on the ipad mini that also works on the iphone five and you know everything that's I OS six based you can actually hold a tablet and put your finger on it it'll detect that you're not using it for anything just holding and it will not scroll or do anything so you know I think that that was just the move that was coming they need to make the ipad thinner lighter and smaller but keep the same green size yeah I mean for me getting the ipad mini wasn't a matter that I was dissatisfied with the bigger iPad it was just that it was a bigger iPad and I just you know if I have to be carrying a tablet and a laptop I would rather carry a small tablet anything you know the laptop so so so I feel that you know the ipad the ipad 5 has to do that I mean the iPads design is already dated yeah it is and so so this is what Apple has been getting beat over the head with for like a year at this point right the ipad 3 the ipad 4 they're both too heavy yeah and i think that they are probably that is going to be one of their biggest surprises for us or maybe surprises and air quotes but it's going to be one of their biggest reveals at the next iPad announcement is the weight and I really think it's going to be a very light next generation ipad now it's gonna be difficult to do considering the battery has to be massive right to to deal with the pixel density of the display and the backlight has to be bright and all that kind of stuff but i think what going to find a way to do it well they actually the the cell on the ipad mini is a different type of cell that they pretty much invented it's a single cell battery that's extremely thin so they'll bring this technology and just make it bitter and most probably bigger sorry and most probably what they'll do is just shrink the internals for the battery to be bigger and just take over where the processor is right now for example I don't know I just I feel that you know in the case of the ipad the design it's it's just funny do you remember when the first generation ipad was launched people don't really remember how thin computers were back then if you don't you actually that was the wrong way to refer to slot how thin it was how thick how things yeah yeah yeahs and tablet PCs were back then i mean they were humongous i mean i remember when the first tablet pc was launched the HP Slate it's not it was under a or whatever there was 1000 it was the HPT it sounded like the terminator but but it was a slate tablet it was a beautiful product that had this like click on keyboard it was really nice but it had all the fans and everything within the tablet and so so you know you know there were two things that made the iPad the WoW product when it was launched number one is how thin it was back then and number two ironically how cheap it was back then because the tablet pc cost two thousand dollars back then write fifty hundred bucks and then you give people a tablet and you charge in five hundred bucks so now we're in an era where you have a nexus 7 that brings down the price to 200 bucks you have a nexus 10 which is also cheap rings high-resolution everything you know Apple really needs to figure out how to differentiate this iPad further or else android tablets are gonna be gum you know much more important as time goes on you know just because of the price I think in a software from a software perspective we're gonna see them do that with iOS with the next version of iOS and I really think that because there is so much riding on it and because they know that Apple is going to bring some serious heat in software and I've continued to be excited for it yeah that is gonna pop up in kind of strange ways that at least I i know i don't expect and that is this other story that also came from you on april fifth that there's a there's a patent that has revealed that iOS maps is gonna get street view yeah well just the question is were they gonna get street view from i was just gonna say how is that going to work i mean that doesn't have a fleet of cars with cameras okay for the record listeners of Apple has patented like a million things that they haven't developed yet yeah right this so so you know a first question to you like is there any hard evidence is actually happening there no well they've patent so many things you know they're just opening the patent for people to pay them if they come out with the idea first you know they figure out to implement it you know it's just the way it is but I don't see if the pet yeah you know or they'll probably license it from google most probably i don't know i I just don't find the point for iOS maps anymore when you have google maps on the iphone just seriously yeah and I wonder I would like to see the adoption specs on that yeah you know and just you know following on what you said about iOS 7 and what to expect you know before we move on up just a point Apple is actually moving a ton of their engineers from the OS 10.9 project to work on iOS 7 yeah because they are this weekend yeah yeah because they are far behind that was the news last weekend and you know it just proves there must be something really significant coming yeah and when was the last major high-profile move of desktop and employees to mobile and I wonder when the first generation our generation iphone rizzoli exactly so i mean i think we're looking at something pretty substantial there which will ultimately be this is maybe an obvious statement but which is going to shape the future of Apple not just in terms of mobile but in the desktop products as well because we know that the future is not on the desktop really now no it's not and it's just to prove but you know speaking of the what's happening right now with the overhaul of iOS 7 you know we we had this piece today of you know what this update on the Google Play Store tells us of Android you know just moving a little back into Android I don't know how have you gotten the update to the google play store on you know I know I've been too busy I am well well just just remember listeners you go back to the link the APK is there in case you want to download it it's very clean Michael it looks good it looks cool and it's it's as whitish as white at times when Android has always been about dark areas everywhere like the settings menu and everything has been just dark um I don't know I noticed that on on Taylor's note 8.0 review where everything TouchWiz was whitish and not darkish as it was in the past on this eight-point oh so it does seem like if Google is moving into using different Matt's different designs more and more simplistic and I really if it could have been any more simplistic so key lime pie is actually gonna be very interesting well spot will most probably see it you know in May and then we'll get iOS 7 in june with WWDC so this is gonna be a really interesting summer yeah he said it is you have to remind me you've reminded me have to put WWDC and in my calendar because i don't have it there yet and i forgot that there are major events happening and in May and june because i was thinking about the summer recently i have there is breaking news from my from my personal life sphere right now i just got it on my pebble my father has sent me an email that says hi Mike sprint has don't call me Mike by the way only my family can do that sprint has terminated my service the internet will have to do the reason what the RIA the reason I got that email is because my father is one of the last few handful of hundreds of thousands of people on the on sprint's identity work the legacy nextel network which is steadily being shut down site by site and I guess they finally got to my hometown by the way I'm still bothering sprint to try and go on a ride-along so I can see one of these idents aight dismantle months I hope they allow me to do that they have been they have been getting back to me on their own schedule so hopefully I'm able to see one of these and report on it listeners I hope you get to see my video on that at some point but in the meantime I have to get my father a new phone that is not based on iTunes technology off geez poor little out for next tale that won't be too difficult wherever will I find a non ident own let's talk let's close it out in iOS the curved screen for the next iPhone you think it's gonna happen uh why not I would love that why not I be lady that's one thing that I liked about the dell venue pro I just you know Apple Apple is about prototyping so most probably what was leaked as a prototype because it did look real it didn't look photoshopped I didn't realize this was an image this is crazy this from gsmarena yeah yeah and so it doesn't look Photoshop but you know the reason why I think that it's probably fake is because usually when Apple builds these you know prototypes what they do is that all the numbers at the back below the iphone text are all access and these were actually numbers like real numbers so I you know it could be photoshop I think it's fake yeah it looks like a 3d model it looks like a 3d model but still i mean the dell venue pro addict crib display was good you know we've seen so many obvious ly and roy you know the Nexus S on the next and the Galaxy Nexus had an inverted curve I don't know it would be awesome let's just see it looks like did you just talk about the iPod the iPod Nano uh no no yeah no I'm sorry i was i was wrapped up and looking at the image this was like a pair of ipod nano from dad that is an awesome boy yeah yeah exactly that would be so cool yeah we'll see we'll see i'd love to see that happen right but what were we just talking about apple's industrial design language and we were talking about them bringing that all in line with the next ipad which is going to look like the ipad mini probably but what then they're gonna go a different direction with the iphone hardware that doesn't make much sense well I'll tell you something I mean a if you would ask me if I prefer the iphone 3gs with the curve backer the iphone 5 I prefer the 3gs well because it's friendlier to the palm exactly so for me I I think that it would be a smart move even if they wouldn't curb the display they would curve the back would be awesome I'm gonna say this i don't think the image i'm looking at on this story which listeners if you want to see we're talking about it's in the link on the post it's from April fourth if I love this image i would buy this phone almost regardless of what OS it ran because i really like this hardware I think that's so not Apple I don't think there's any likelihood that this is legit I think this is a fanboy concept well so so did we say about the iphone 5 i don't know if i said that about the oven but i said that i look at the iphone 5 weeks and I was like this is not as his BS yeah let's all write that or not we'll save let's jump in a listener mail though because we do want to go at some point here soon and we have a couple of compelling pieces of listener mail and now we have actually one more since I mentioned that stainless steel bit off to jump into the mailbox to read that because it's not on the run down the first piece of listener mail is a piece of meta pocketnow discussion from Carlos Monroe and I hope I'm pronouncing that right Carlos pocketnow asked on Facebook who the sexiest member of the team is all right so listen I I know was that I don't know i was at what it was not me it wasn't me either ok so let's that's not spit we know who it was i say i don't know who was but i don't wanna so listen uh I don't run the facebook page I had to find out about this cuz I think Brandon sent me an email with a screenshot or something I was like no have you seen how many fans yeah I didn't I'd i looked at the comment thread for like 13 seconds and then I was like I'm die can't I can't be in this um but that's not what Carlos is asking about to his credit he's saying many people were declaring sassy Bob as the sexiest member oh yeah I don't mind naming a female sex sexiest for politically correct reasons but is sassy Bob that girl this is still Carlos speaking from the opening sound bite that no one who came in after November 2012 can really specify is she really sexy enough to be sexier than team members so yeah that there's a story behind okay so there is a story behind that and and this is the reason I selected this piece of listener male Thank You Carlos for the letter by the way is because that's a question that always used to pop up on our older PocketNow videos intro we had that you know that electric guitar janod chicka chicka dancer there and you know rotating tiles containing excerpts from previous videos and one of them was sassy Bob who I guess did a couple of videos for us before I came on board he sazkebab did a couple of his daring yeah well she did a couple of very good videos for us so uh the way the way this work was we actually we contacted sassy Bob top her job because um we needed a female person on the on video we wanted it would be nice you know listeners you've seen you've seen the commercials that we so a lot of people are asking us like when is the next after the buzzer what are you gonna do it after the buzz on the nexus 4 so it was more than a year ago that we came up with the idea of these commercials and we thought you know since it's it's kind of difficult for us to be able to schedule a lot of things you know with honest specific like oh it's gonna happen every Thursday it's we want to get there but it was still not there yet because of the amount of content that there is and because of the way NewsWorks you can't equals x do that ya know you can't always do that not in technology not yes no and not even you know not even the big outlets tough enough to keep the podcast on the same day every week exactly exactly and so so once we had that idea you know we were Brandon it's like it would be awesome if we hired a girl and and he was like men there's this girl from from the I've seen on on on YouTube you know her sassy when she does app reviews and she'd be awesome I like okay contact her and so we actually contacted her and she did you know she did an HT beat the review of the HTC rhyme for us and bit which was viewed the rhyme that HTC the yeah yeah I'm about tentacle yeah the girlish phone you know the purple that was a quote girlish phone yeah so she was there on time and she and she did an awesome video cuz she went on the road asking around to people you should watch this video I know what asking asking people it's like do you like this film would you buy this phone just because it's you know purplish or pinkish or whatever and she asked le she went to salons beauty salons and she's a very very creative girl on video yeah it's just too bad that you know at the time that we hired her we actually did a tryout for the commercials that everything was working well but you know she actually got a different proposal immediately and and she was like you know I I I really wouldn't want to pick but you know this is actually like the thing that I've been dreaming for sounds you know I it was great it was awesome working with her we the sadly we just couldn't continue yeah she is actually she has quite a quite a large following if you are wondering who says he bob is its SAS SI b OB she's on Twitter as that I think she's definitely in YouTube as that and she she continues to generate a lot of video so oh yeah she's really really really good sorry town I'm sorry that I came aboard after after she had departed it would have been nice to meet her but she she was it's so funny that she was like such a huge part of the of the pocket now branding considering that she only did about two videos for it but she was on every single intro of every video we did for what more than a year so more than me yeah so hopefully that clears it up thank you I'm it for the behind the scenes intel on that from from the days before i was around yeah and sadly now people have to see me doing the commercials oh well oh well oh well you do you do great commercials yeah you're you're nice like that right well i am recording next to my Star Trek intercom panel and my my cell site notice sign I mean that you know you've got the studio for that I mean you know I'm the booth lets the last piece listener mail or second last pieces from Kenneth Meadows the second I included this specifically for you hi maybe because I have no idea what to say to this I have a friend who is computer illiterate she has a 16 gig ipad wants access to all of her pictures she took with her digital cameras and the iPad she used the SD card to ipad converter plug in and copied over pictures from her digital cameras now the device is full she does not want to use cloud storage because doing that would mean paying annually and without Wi-Fi she would have no access to her photos I'm completely stumped on what to do hope you guys can give some suggestions uh I'm looking so listen I mean you're the expert but let me just weigh in right before you go here it sucks that she is a 16 gig ipad I never recommend devices with low onboard storage for exactly this reason because you will eventually will one day regret it and I understand the objection to paying annually for cloud storage but in the same breath I I don't it is a very worthwhile thing to invest in and if you're gonna spend money on something cloud storage is pretty damn valuable so that's my opinion so okay so here's the deal and in the case of the iPad you have two options actually so she bought the kit and that would import photos by the fault you can't really just view the photos from the car which is something unfortunate on iOS I believe I'm not really sure because I haven't bought that adapter because they haven't brought it out while they have brought it out for the ipad mini I just I don't care about it and the reason why I don't care about it is because I actually rarely ever see photos even if I can I carry a batch of photos and that's it so what I did is it depends of you if she has windows on her personal computer or or Mac but it regardless itunes allows you when you sync with iTunes you can tell itunes to reduce the size of the photos and that's something you should really do because digital photos i mean if you have an 8 megapixel camera even on a phone or even from the tablet photos are much bigger than what the tablet is actually able to display so it's really it's really pointless for you to carry photos on their full size so my advice to you is remove the photos from the ipad and then just pull into your computer and then import the photos from the computer into the tablet using iTunes and just tell itunes to reduce the file size of the photos that is a suggestion that see this is why I'm glad you're on the air because I would not have realized that and I hope yeah thank you thank you ok that is option number one option number two get dropbox and just throw the photos into dropbox and you can actually select folders from dropbox to remain permanent on the device and you can also tell the device what is the file size or if you want the vice you know if you want the the dropbox to reduce the file size for optimization or not and so you could just download that specific folder and tell it that you don't want it in full size for the photos and that way you can use cloud storage so you can actually access these photos from everywhere but also though they'll remain local on the ipad as long as you specify it that's an even better suggestion that's yeah awesome i love it and drop out of courses that's actually what I that's actually what I do really yeah yeah you guys everyone in the team is a big fan of Dropbox I seldom use it but I should yeah so there it is hopefully that one of those suggestions will work out for you for your friend Kenneth Jaime thank you for the informed advice like I was saying I wouldn't been able to provide that first suggestion I probably would have eventually got around to thinking about Dropbox but yeah I have a final question from our old friend I cannot pronounce douchey nth I mean I know it can't be it can't be pronounced the way i'm pronouncing it so I'm sorry but don't pronounce my name right so right now because I haven't been to the are rolling class here happy at Joe Levi's become an expert yeah with the addition asks while everyone's going on about plastic polycarbonate aluminum has build materials for phones why doesn't anyone think about stainless steel yes that's right good old stainless steel Apple did what in the band on the white iphone 4 is that what it is I foreign for us yes right cheap readily available and scratch proof to a large extent what do you guys think about that scratch proof to a large extent no well more so than aluminum right no actually a stainless steel is amorous watch brown than aluminum just try it off look at your watch look at your watch count your it's not bizarre softer than aluminum right you know you're using a pebble sorry but if you have you used the regular stainless steel watch you'll notice I've got a watch band on my pebble that cost a good amount of money it's not you know it's not plastic anymore no no I know that you replaced that the point being is the thing is your your bracelet is Matt it's it's it's black color it's DVD yeah it's tinted but the thing about stainless steel well stainless steel has a couple of problems the first one being it has a couple of problems in a couple of benefits the first benefit of the first problem of stainless steel is it you know it's actually more resilient than aluminum for a dent but you know I scratched the bands on the four and for us a lot more that I that I could you know scratch anodized aluminum hmm so I don't aesthetically yes somebody's already thought about it Apple did and I think they moved away from it after antennagate so that's actually a problem second actually stainless steel is not as light as aluminum yeah i'm looking i just googled stainless steel phone and it would be would there no kiddo there's the LG shine was out a while ago as a dumbphone years and years ago and that's coming up on this is like having a stainless steel finish but I don't think that's true I think the thing was plastic wasn't yeah and now there are some benefits from Taylor it might not be right go ahead good well there is one benefit from stainless steel um this is actually something I was gonna film a video on this and I just I haven't had the time but the cool thing about the iphone 4 and 4s is if you scratch it dented or whatever happens to the same let's see i'm actually gonna give you a tip just go into a supermarket and buy a soap scrub for washing dishes you know that green with the brillo yeah yeah okay so you buy that and then you just scrub the stainless steel with this with this uh whatever thing and it'll actually polish the dense and remove them because you're actually this this material is made out of stainless steel particles as well so you're scratching metal with metal don't do this all the time you can only do it like once but you remove all scratches and dents from the band with that thing in about five minutes yeah I it's always difficult when you have to do you advocate like self repair for things like scratches especially in displays like a lot of people do the toothpaste stuff oh yeah and man if you're not careful if you don't use the right grit and stuff you'll end up with a really cloudy finish on whatever you're trying to polish so watch out for they'd be careful there have been some stainless steel nokia phones it looks like the nokia 8800 might have been a stainless holiness yeah that was a beautiful phone yeah really was the man nokia says made some house i was thinking about that phone a couple of days ago i was remembering their advertisement campaign it was really good yeah it'll days so yes stainless steel is out there the problem is it's not lighter than aluminum to my knowledge and none of us are chemist here by the way despite my recent foray into the sapphire world so okay so but you know it's just clear you hold the iphone 5 and then you hold the 4s which is only partly made by stainless steel and you can feel the weight difference it's insane like stage yeah so yeah so that's that it's a solid question thank you for for bringing it up we were not going to be able to fit it in but it looks like we came in a little bit under our usual over time at least but i think it is it is about time we cruise out of here so how might we have closing thoughts from Honduras actually I'm gonna ask you a question uh what okay after all the phones you've tested reviewed and everything what would you agree to be your favorite material for a smart like what forget about what people consider build quality what had what have you felt has worked best for you I have never fallen out of love with the polycarbonate used on the One X phone last year and the one XL that delivered to me a better experience tactile in a tactile sense than the Lumia 900 did which used polycarbonate as well of course but it just felt different on the one that it was shiny on the under Lumia 920 well on some finishes of it including the 1i have yes which is annoying but so yeah the 1x really really that polycarbonate was my favorite and continues to be my favorite finish on a phone what or material that if M is used for what about you in my case I would have to agree as long as you choose a light color for that polycarbonate being white because the problem is it's a real smudge magnet in dark colors but for the record listeners i mean i've been using i use the first generation iphone you did too uh aluminum is a great material but it's not gonna look good after two months of usage actually i didn't i didn't use the original if i use the iphone 3g i never sorry sorry Brandon bit yeah Brandon did but you know the point being is yes I mean we're seeing this resurgence of aluminium on on phones and it's really cool it's awesome it is I just I just wish you would see how much I take care of my I was actually gonna use a bad word right now how much I take care of my beloved iphone 5 and how bad it looks already after no falls so you know even if it's the resurgence I feel that at this moment probably aluminum will get better years from now but i feel that polycarbonate is still the material that all last longer for you to your contract uh so motorola v60 what was that made out of ooh that's a good member just like that was the big like it was like a metal phone and that was the the piece of novelty that they were selling i'm ok part of that motorola branding was like mini metal moto but that's that's a good question i don't know what metal it was that was my favorite phone of all time it looks like a quick Google searches saying anodized aluminum well interesting well that's interesting because they use the sort of aluminum finish that was actually brushed and not analyzed yeah well you know but they were also about what a hundred and fifty versions of the v60 so who knows like that some of them were polished some of them were not yeah I actually have the v60 I where you can remove the covers remember that oh yeah yeah you could put on the yang could put on like a cheap plastic like a red cover if you wanted to yeah yeah and then some of them had extendable antennas some of them had stub antennas god oh yeah you know you're making a good point we've had cases with the VV 60 and the v3 the the razors the original RAZR where metal has actually worked okay like fine you know good point good points there sadly for this year's line of smartphones I was actually gonna write an editorial I'll probably probably will wear its title chamfered edges don't work that's gonna get about 150 comments in 20 Shaffer edges don't work but they're so gorgeous but you know this I say this before before I forget man you were right I baby the hell out of my HTC One I'm so worried about it that I that I don't put it in pockets with zippers that could scratch the casing like I you know yeah if this were something i bought an intended to use for two years i think i would be too too scared to even bring it out in public and that's saying something that is your girlfriend was be jealous man ah well she would feel the same way he's cuz she's a phone nerd too anyway yeah it would be great if it if it really endured and after the first time I dropped mine I'm sure it'll happen you know we'll see how it goes actually I shouldn't say mine after the first time I drop a review unit because I still don't have a personal one yet but i probably will end up buying one because i really like it that much but we gotta jet so I it was awesome to have you on the show again thank you for being my you know other half on this very lean episode of the weekly hey I'll be your wingman anytime yes you could be mine yeah I've got a sweet top gun reference thank you for the first one on the podcast it was good i wanted a pod top gun reference before we hit episode 0 40 so thank you but this was this was episode 39 of the pocket now weekly so find us both on twitter hi mayor over there is at high me underscore Rivera and you can find me at captain two phones and you can also follow pocket now officially at pocket now on twitter as pocket now on facebook and google+ please leave us a review on iTunes or xbox music and if you have a topic question or suggestion for the podcast or you just want to say hi you can email us at podcast at pocketnow.com thanks again for listening we'll see you next week with more people on the air goodnight nay you