Gadgetory

there are 52 weeks in a year but you wouldn't know it necessarily looking at the mobile technology industry where competitors often schedule major events right on top of one another well that's what happened this week in tech and that's what we're talking about on a special episode episode 04 four 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 your host Michael Fisher editorial director at pocket now and I'm joined today by editor in chief Brandon minimun good morning to you what up son and managing editor and Tandy no do good afternoon to you good morning good afternoon good evening everybody yes gentlemen we are on a tight schedule today we have a short podcast schedule that's good because we're we're sticking to a finite series of topics and that's good because it's not going to allow me to ramble on about about the new Star Trek film which I'm seeing tomorrow and very excited about and in order to prevent me from talking any further about that I understand brand amendment has a thought thread related to mobile technology I have a thought thread related to the things at hand good good relevant relevant discussion we like that oh yeah yeah keep it keep it relevant so Taylor reviewed the galaxy s4 for AT&T and then he sent it to me senior editor Taylor Martin that's the guy and so he sent it to me and I had this idea that I would use the galaxy s4 for a period of time and then write an article entitled chronicles of an HTC One lover gone galaxy s4 now it's a now it's important to point out the reason that I'm an HTC One lover it's not because HTC pays me or something it's because the one is in my opinion the best smartphone ever and I wanted to see you know how the galaxy s4 compared against it I played with in New York City with at the launch event I've read all the reviews I've heard Michael and Taylor talk about it at length so now it's my turn to live with it and it's not going so well how many days into it are you I am a mere 24 hours into it Wow so so it hasn't been long enough and I'm going to give it a good amount of time at least at least a week or so maybe five or six days and there are a few observations that I have which which have been observed before but in my case are really really bothering me number one is lag and you know Michael and Taylor pointed the point of this out in there and the reviews where you know you do catch some light when you're going back to the home screen when you're flipping through various places the screen animations there's something wrong with the screen animations to the point where the frames get so slow in some cases you can actually like count the count the frames and see the animation unfold and and that's totally different than the HTC One which magically seems to have no lag and I really mean that there hasn't been more than one time which was probably my own fault when I've experienced it's like uh so so that's number one which is number an amazing reversal right i mean we're used to saying like old versions of sense are really really laggy and TouchWiz was really responsive for a long time and so it's kind of interesting to see though that the mirror effect of that yeah and it's also interesting because they have the same processor but the one on the galaxy s4 is clocked a little bit higher so it should make up for some software issues um anyhow so so so that was the first thing I noticed and I'm really having trouble with that the second thing I'm having trouble with which hasn't really been cited very much is screen brightness the auto setting sets it a little bit too low for my taste so I turned off auto brightness which is a pain in the because now I've got it at like sixty percent most of the time and then I go outside and it should be going up to one hundred percent because I don't have it on although it's not and on the HTC One the the baseline screen brightness on auto is just right that that's true and actually you know what I was starting to think about was two things first of all you have that really awesome and convenient brightness adjustment in the notification shade thanks to TouchWiz we have one of my favorite parts of TouchWiz and second of all I wondered if if Tony had seen any of the on his on his octa-core version which was formerly the one that I was using and if he'd if we could just jump in for a quick thought there before you move to your next point yeah I was making the list so about the leg first of all disclaimer I have not used the quad-core Snapdragon version i've been using only the dual quad-core the Exynos 5 version and I've been sending e-mails back and forth to Michael and the ones who have used the octa-core version and I am not experiencing lag and Michael pointed out to me that the of course my daily usage doesn't imply maximizing the number of homescreens 27 i'm using currently three home screens and that might have something to do with it i have enabled and disabled all the s features and i haven't seen any lag so this might be something which the Exynos 5 brings to the table in addition to the quad core but again lag is a subjective thing we perceive it differently by no means i have seen at any point slowing the phone down to the point where i can count the frames and as far as screen brightness is concerned super Emma let's are are washed out in direct sunlight so I agree to that I'm not sure whether your Galaxy s4 guys has this feature or not it should have it the the brightness toggle and the notification shade once you set it to auto within the auto you can set it from minus 52 plus 5 so say auto on 0 brings you thirty five percent of brightness but within the auto setting you have a from minus 52 plus 5 setting where you can further tweak the auto setting what do you talk how do you do this so say drop down the notification shade yeah there should be an auto button yep checked out as the press press it on yep and within that move the slider the end you'll see that it changes from minus 5 25 within the auto settings so that means that if you go outside and you put it to plus 5 the auto setting will be plus 5 degrees or plus five notches higher than without it hold the phone when you see this granular control yeah where do you see this plus 5 and minus 5 well if you hold the phone and get the notification shade down yeah you'll see the toggles and then you'll see the brightness controls I see a slider and an auto check box that's it and and the slider can you can she move the slider yeah okay so if you move the slider towards the right you'll see a plus 5 I don't see a plus 5 then this is not the core version and this is a yeah this is an artist thing Thank an aura us carry so what I'm saying is that within the auto setting it allows you to play with yeah you can set the baseline from minus 50 five and one increments and you know ice for fine cumin oh I think I have something like that there are next year brightness slider the notification shade is there like a little sunshine on the left it isn't yes it is but one side tap on it nothing happens but the slider is capable of being moved either to the left and to the right and the small number just changes accordingly okay so can you send me a screenshot just curious sure i'm sending you right now a screenshot with the it's set it to plus 5 and let's get rhian while i do sigep yeah like a like a bloody nose at the worst possible moment uh yeah every time I podcast to get a bloody nose yeah so anyway brandon i want to mention here the rest of your thoughts in the s4 before we move on to the week's events sure sure ok so so also you know when i got the s4 i packaged with it was a smart cover which is pretty awesome i totally agree with you guys that's a must have although it's too expensive the S view cover right the SS view cover yes and to be honest I don't remember a time in device history where a case has has had some intelligent in I don't censor integration with the software ya like like like uve of the iPad Smart Cover right which which turns the screen on and off and that's it but this thing like goes goes a few steps further it does turn on and off the screen which I love I love just flipping it over boom screen on but but you know answering calls from it and seen your notification seeing the time I think that's freaking awesome I think that's a nice leg up on the one so the other thing the third thing that has really irked me beside screen brightness and lag is the device I don't know what the word is it gets dirty it gets disgusting if you don't use the S view cover because the S view cover it wraps around to the back and you get like this fabric e stuff on the back so you're not getting your dirty fingerprints on it but the HTC one with the aluminum on the on the back and maybe a less porous front glass panel does a pretty good job of deterring fingerprints and grime on the galaxy s4 this is the same as the galaxy s3 and I guess I forgot about it because it's been a while since I he's a galaxy s3 it just accumulates this crap and and it's so bad that if you use the phone for for more than you know 10 minutes just checking a message or something it literally gets gross right and this is the part where everyone's like well what are you would you stop eating french fries and using your cone and so then it's like no you don't even need to try you know you don't even need to you can have washed your hands and it's just natural like whether it's sweat or just natural skin oil or whatever it just accumulates on the phone so quickly when they uses this this glossy coating so yeah it's it's interesting to see that you're you know experiencing that as well before before we move on can I also say something about the s4 vs the HTC one because since this is already an editorial category this is my opinion and everybody knows what I said about the galaxy s4 and everything I said still stands i definitely agree with brandon and everybody else that this thing once you use it for like five minutes it's a grease collection it's a sweat collection it's okay let's not get into that but i've been using the s4 octa-core version for almost two weeks now and part of those two weeks were like four days when I was abroad in London for the NOC event and I've been also using the HTC One in parallel one was unrolling one was in on three UK and a local number I can tell you this much if the galaxy s4 wouldn't have been built with this coating with this technology Samsung does it and would make the phone feel a little bit more how should I say this premium was substantial and premium at the same time I would probably choose it over the HTC one because the camera on the s4 just kills the camera on the age see one and I will prove this in a series of camera comparison posts and the optical version i'm using yeah the active perversion i'm using in particular is by no means affected by the slag issue but disclaimer again I'm talking octa-core and you guys are talking quad core yeah you know a tony i think that i haven't looked but i bet that you can buy a replaceable backing for the galaxy s4 I looked I looked and no and I was in UK and I looked in every major store which had accessories for the s4 there's aside from the S view cover you can't find anything for the s4 yet I think if there's one constant in the world of smartphones is that the accessory makers will if there's a demand for it they will make it so I see metal battery doors in our future I see you know matt finish polycarbonate in our future I see about exactly a soft touch back on a gasket for be I'm curious whether the official wireless charging battery cover which will come from Samsung will be changed from any perspective that'll be hyper glaze to the max they are sticking to their guns with this and you know what it doesn't seem to be heard in them too badly they've already sold what 6 million of these things is out that i read that statistic right i have not read it but that was in a cave in the past yeah they said i think they've already now don't quote me on this but i think they've already sold six million and they're on track to hit 10 million by the end of May first you know would be amazing you know with that if this SQ cover let you see the time all the time oh yeah you had mentioned that before so the S view cover what it does is it lets a piece of the display shines for the window and that probably wouldn't eat up so much battery life if just the time was constantly displayed may be floating yeah because it's you know it some mo glad so each pixel is is lit individually yeah so but I guess I guess you know over the course of 18 hours that's probably a good for twenty thirty percent and and so while we're talking about the what we're talking about the galaxy s4 I want to talk about a variant that was announced this week and this can kind of segue us into the week's news this is this it was a rumor that I thought was complete BS it landed I think the day before Google i/o which is what we're going to start talking about in a second and it was a rumor of a Samsung made well well a galaxy s4 running stock Android and when this thing was announced I don't know if you guys were as surprised as I was I thought this rumor was just bogus and then when it landed when oh who had it on stage that guy yeah Hugo how God him I'm sorry I'm horrible with names right now I should have known this before we went on the air but anyway when that when that made its debut and where was a samsung galaxy s4 legit running stock Android I had an array of mixed feelings just kind of emanate from my soul I was excited and then I didn't know why I was excited and then it wasn't sure if I was excited you felt that way when you learn that the stork wasn't real I did I did when I found out the truth about the Easter Bunny I was crestfallen that so I want to know how you guys felt about this and particularly Tony because we talked about this a little bit on our editorial round table yesterday Toni was clicking down by the event overall but I want to know the one piece of hardware that actually did come out of google i/o smartphone hardware what do you think about it and it's actually one of the one of the two pieces of everything would happen yesterday that I'm excited about so first of all awesome things Samsung is a power and Android and with this google not only recognizes it but they're giving them even more power but i have a couple of questions nobody told us the specs will this be the snapdragon version will this be DX newest version it's got a snapdragon if it is the snapdragon version then all the rumors regarding the no user no power user and no heck ability friendly rumors will go down the drain because one samsung delivers a stock bootloader unlocked galaxy s4 the community will just rip off the rom maybe it will be even published on google servers and everybody could Nexus if I there s force it's kind of it's so funny and that's and that's already happening anyway I mean people are unlocking the bootloader Zaun their galaxy s4's and loading custom roms but once this happens it's going to be like a Samsung made stock install of it with with all the drivers in there and everything in people is just everyone is galaxy s4 they can you know get this stuff done is gonna do it it is it was Hugo Barra and it is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 version so yeah um what what what gets me going gets my flag waving what is far wood wood wood was your skirt up my skirt gets blown up when I think about how the galaxy s4 with stock Android is gonna have and we talked about the song imma hang oysters gonna have better battery life and it's going to be faster and so and that fixes out that that fixes a lot of you know the battery was already pretty good but the lag issue it fixes that so it I think for some people it's gonna get them closer to two preferring to have it you're the one i think it's going to be a really tough sell for most regular folks at six forty nine ninety nine it's so expensive and if it is hugely expanded and it's so funny to see google kind of vacillate brazenly between these things like we saw the nexus 4 launched last year at this obscenely low price point you know which was a result of some compromise but still you it's a very high quality smartphone for a very low price and then you see this device which is of course also a very high quality smartphone but had astronomical price do you guys think that google is training us to accept a higher price for the next Nexus I don't know if I you know no I think they're so inconsistent it's impossible to predict I think what they're going to do with their hard work I don't think it's it's the case I think this move with the galaxy s4 is this this particular version is a pseudo Nexus it's a combination of a nexus and the galaxy s4 developer edition obviously samsung wouldn't and it's logical they don't want to cut the price because they want to gain some money out of this and google also wants to push the nexus brand forward so i guess that this was such a decision that will probably benefit both sides but still whenever the nexus the next Nexus comes we'll see the same price point the same tooth to to sound the same love to 300 yeah no really no another another interesting piece here is that they're doing the unlocked LTE thing I did I was just thinking that that's nice yeah and it's and it's it's you know team is it's got a lot of bands in there a lot of bands because it's got to do it's got to do 2g 3G and 4G / t-mobile and AT&T been so this thing is is jacked up very versatile hardware yeah that that's one of the things that makes it appealing to me I just think it's going to be so interesting to get our hands on this and to you know not that you can't do it right now like Brandon you said before yes you can run a galaxy s4 right now with stock Android and you know that's not an impossibility but to do it in a sanctioned manner to do it fully supported to have it come out of the box powered on and see stock Android load it is sweet right it's an entirely different experience to because as I said on the Hangout and that'll be the last time I say that um we are have been trained by Samsung over the generations of galaxies products to see to expect to see less and less Android more and more touch with yeah and the end and also open another benefit here is that it's going to get key lime pie when the nexus 4 is getting q I'm pie when the Galaxy Nexus is getting key lime pie so it's a little bit future prepare in that respect right right whereas the hardware to last in a while it's got awesome hardware and and it's unlike the galaxy s4 which probably will get the next version of android sometime in the next five years you know yeah well it's uh it's it's definitely going to be interesting to see I think we can say without a doubt that we are going to grab one right we're gonna we're going to be given this one the review treatment we're gonna grab the crap out of one good good then let's talk about the rest of i/o briefly we did cover this a lot kind of already and I I do I am a little more interested in moving on to nokia but we do have to touch on I'm kind of the rest of this what was the most exciting thing I'll ask you first Brandon for you from yesterday is in terms of the in terms of the longest keynote in history you know Google I I think yesterday was very interesting for like the futurist for the for the guy that really likes this idea of a changing society brought on by technology you know they were talking about you know self-driving cars in the evolution of maps and you know they were took they had this whole section on new web compression technologies that promote YouTube which presumably might fix the buffering issue on YouTube they're talking about new image compression technologies which might make every web page load faster might make our data bills lower travelzoo ways to make animated gifts uh yeah it's the best part they were talking about machine learning of um again we talked about the sister on the Hangout about identifying what it is that makes a picture beautiful and letting a machine do that for you and they know Google Plus now has all of these quick enhanced features that are above and beyond all of the quick and hand stuff that we know about today so I thought it was very fascinating for me as far as the actual unique things that were announced I've been messing her out around with this google music all access thing trying to figure out if it can pull me away from Spotify um and what's the verdict do you have one else I don't have one yet hi I'm so like I mean it's the same thing with when the move from one platform to another if you're if you're on a phone operating system meet you got all your stuff all your experience is on all your playlist they're all on the old thing and then you gotta figure out a way to transfer them and decide how to live with this new thing right but um well there was also the enhancements to to voice search google now and i was using some of that in the airport today was picking up some friends from out of town and I was just like you know I haven't really been able to talk to Google now like a person like I could talk to Siri let me just try this I'm like hey we're you know ok Google where is flight and 2486 and it's like oh here's your flight information oh my god all right thank you I didn't just I didn't have to talk at it like a robot like I was typing into a Google search bar so how else can you interact with Google now that's different than I'll for the update then I followed that up with a query about because I wanted to go get breakfast I was like hey how early is the friendly toast open and it got a lot I was all suppose I don't want to go to that right well then when does the rosebud diner open and that it and understood all that sentence wise so it did it did nicely but we have a flip side of the coin so brandon i'm in your boat i am a futurist obviously I'm so you know been watching Star Trek since I was 7 i'm in love with the future and that this concept of of enhanced computing in our lives going forward Michael so in love with the future that he hates the present it is true i'm also in love with the past though but in relation to anything but the present but tony has a different perspective because tony was really looking forward to hardware at this event and I think his position is not at all unsympathetic I definitely wanted a nexus 7 follow-on but Tony what was your biggest disappointment from the show not necessarily hardware I was hoping or waiting for a new update for android wetter that was four two three four dot 35.1 75 point 55 I don't care that's what I wanted I was excited about two things the AOSP galaxy s4 and google music but google music alexis is at the same time a disappointment for me because i cannot use it in my region so it's not available here now yesterday you and jaime were talking about that brother extensively nuts it's just a show google hasn't gotten a hold on the global released i cast her yesterday when i said that i was disappointed by the google i/o event I've been receiving tons and truckloads a flagman I've been wiping my face off ever since but I'm just that kind of guy I'm not taking back my words I'm still disappointed in google and whatever i said yesterday still stands because and here's the argument i give arguments unlike those who just contradict me without arguments for me as a user it doesn't bring anything new to the way I interact with my android phone I am not using google now because it is not available in its entirety in my region I am not using google play Alexis because it's not available I don't care about swiping off a facebook Messenger notification on my galaxy s4 and it's wipes off on my HTC One so it's just the minor things I don't care about uploading pictures to my Google+ and had them automatically get my black spots or myself in my skin these are just minor things and I think people shouldn't settle for such minor things see i think so i think they're major things if you're if you're invested if you're both your developer it yes well no no i mean if you're a customer who is invested in google's ecosystem and also lives in an inner region where all the stuff is implemented one hundred percent I think that's the difference and I think it's important to get your your perspective hi mates perspective other people who are in markets where this stuff is not going to launch for a long time or may never see the light of day you know it's important to remember that that the world is very different depending on where you live in terms of Technology Center me a company's ability to roll it out you conclude don't get me wrong and not be the one who says no to everything I'm excited but the level of expectation and the level of google i/o versus the level of excitement brought by the announcement is is there's a huge discrepancy as I mentioned yesterday if all these would have been announced via a press release nobody would have cared maybe the galaxy s4 maybe the s4 an AOSP version I would have wanted to do a video on all the new features i would have been woulda still been impressed but then again i'm a futurist right so this is why i think that there's I under I understand exact were coming from and I you know I think if I think that the keynote was so different to me i was watching the the twitter feed and everyone everyone even the veterans have been reporting on this stuff for ages like you guys was commenting on the length of this keynote and i think it was very different this year i think the pace of reveals was slower it was a trickle of stuff but I kind of liked it because they would jump from something like the the bombastic galaxy s4 Google addition to something to like do 45 minutes on coding stuff and you know back in messaging services and I'm like okay oh my god I'm phone asleep and then they would come back and they'd be like oh no but look we made you to look at the voice improvements like how cool and then they dive into something else I didn't care about then they'd come back so it was well paced for me was like a like a well-paced evening out on the town I enjoyed the following it so I don't know I i think that there's going to be a lot to report on moving forward from from google and of course that's always been the case but a lot of this new stuff is going to enhance the user experience for a great many Android users and I think that's a good thing and of course that the elephant in the room is that there's no new version of Android not even a small version update for daddy which was leaked in the logs right sort out through which is leaking lock so we were pretty sure that we'd see a 4 dots 3 which it sounds like 4.3 will be an update to Nexus devices to enable low-power Bluetooth among a couple of other things so just like just like point2 or yeah yeahs point2 at point three is going to be a small update not many devices are going to get it and well you know this the five point 0 is coming they're not going to do a 4.4 or 4.6 or something they're gonna go to 5.5 point 0 when they release the new Nexus hardware in the in the future yeah until we see a until we get a paparazzi shot of a construction truck offloading a giant fiberglass key lime pie on Google's lon I'm not going to get excited of them can we just purchased for fun I killed can we each have a prediction of what key lime pie will bring yeah um as long in one condition i'm not i'm not gonna go first okay don't you I go first no I don't want to go at all uh fine I will go first to get yogurt and maybe last um I think I think I think holo UI introduced in an ice cream sandwich which once was a sort of revolution in UI design it was flat it was efficient it was pretty is getting stale and I think that they I think it was gonna go in the other direction a little bit it's gonna get a little bit more Flair a little bit more textured colorful um a cut like a little bit closer to where senses I think just just not you know sense 5 is so like it works for everyone because it's it's flat it's gray it doesn't get in the way I think they're gonna get a little closer to that to a new UI paradigm you know they fix the speed thing in jelly bean and I think they're gonna have some further performance enhancements maybe finally you know fantastic support for multi-core processors maybe some some battery technology that that happens at the kernel level to really save on on power somehow um why are you just like blowing through every prediction possible this would be the best version of Android ever well since you guys aren't gonna go I do at least three I wasn't gonna go I'd see what do you think so it's interesting I don't I don't um I don't agree with that that hollow is getting stale I think that you know if you've been looking at it for a long time if you've had a device running stock Android for a long time and maybe you're you know you could be tired of it I get that but I think hollow is still quite futuristic looking I think in some ways it's more advanced looking than even the modern UI on Windows Phone which at one time was like beyond futuristic to MIT to my eyes it is it I don't and I don't see Matias Duarte deviating from that you know he's still the head of Android design he's still got a very straightforward idea for what what the visual language of Android is and what it's going to be I think we might see some brightening in fact because look at the direction the rest of Google is going be a Play Store and email bright white white white white every with it they're caught it's like I think it's called car DUI it's gonna be awesome for AMOLED screens I was just Tony I was just thinking the same thing I'm like man while you were just gonna blow through battery life a ton more although I don't know when the last time someone was someone ran a test to see just how much battery life is saved by by black screens and you eyes and AMOLED screens but i don't know i am I looking forward to this possible possibility of a bright white future for Android not really i don't think it looks i'm not saying it looks bad but when I happen to Google now it is a little jarring it's like wow this is really white you know if you're in a dim room or you're in a restaurant you're like hey Google now and it's like yes and just affects your eyeballs I'm like oh my god so I it would be interesting if key lime pie introduced some UI customization like you know how on Windows Phone you can switch it from white to black and backward on the home screen yeah that would be cool that would be cool & E and the OEM could say okay we're shipping an AMOLED display here we're gonna do the black theme right oh yeah but I think customers should always be able to toggle it left or right any west's customer should always have the choice but we don't see that happening too much that's true that's true especially once the carrier's get involved as we saw with that galaxy s4 setting thing before before we move on to to Windows Phone do we have a closing thoughts on on google i/o I will go first and I will go last I I knew somebody under Tony wasn't good i I thought Tony might bite on that one I know I'm sorry I was I was just uh I was yeah can you please repeat the question sure I was just one question was actually this is how much wood could a woodchuck chuck info which I could chuck wood a lot yeah all right you're right i think which is improvement were wilson answer that yeah you think we should move on I never move on good because I want to hear this story because this is something we haven't really talked about we talked a lot about IO yesterday and this big deal but before that happened we had a big announcement from windows phone maker nokia they had a big event in london Tony you were there in the flesh and we have seen the results of that we've seen the Nokia Lumia 925 see the light at no actually that was the Lumia 920's oh man we saw that launch and we saw a little bit more on the 928 so we saw some great videos from Tony and but we haven't heard about the event itself so time to tell us what it was like what the atmosphere was like as Stephen Elop did not do the presentation so what was the energy like I mean to just just take us through that story man for me the most disappointing thing was that Elop was not there and while I was standing outside a Victoria house I met this awesome guy his name is Beorn big fraud League force he's the global events director at nokia and we had a nice chat and it just so happens that this victoria house is just across the cross the road from the hilton and I was just fooling around and asking beer now so he loves gonna cross the street and get in the back door and if it was like you know will he lops not gonna be really here but he's gonna be here in a way and I was thinking okay the man's busy he's gonna be patched in through skype or for something and have a short message for everybody who was in the audience and so I'm pursuing this idea so yeah he's going to be like well not really in a way so it turns out that that particular way in which Elop was there was at one point when they demonstrated the camera features and especially nakia steak on drama shot the the entire background the entire screen and projection was was a a crowd and within that crowd there was a lapse picture who was just cheering and that was elapsed presence and there was a lot of speculation why he lap was not there some said that he's one foot out nakia because of the recent developments with the board of directors some others said that the 925 is not that of an important device so that Elop should be there I don't know so for me the biggest disappointment was that and yeah and the second one it's always nice to see him right i mean like no Elop is is a great mentation given he's the first presenter in mobile tech yeah he's really really good he puts on a nice show without being flashy he's honest he's straightforward he's clear it's got a good voice really nice and he does i really like when a pony proceed yeah yeah the second disappointment and i've been i've been following nokia ever since they announced their strategic alliance with microsoft in 2011 at the mwc and then they back to room with more than a thousand people and then in 12 2012 they had a smaller room maybe up to 5 600 people and then in 2013 this year michael you can testify to this i'm not sure we were more than 400 people yeah and at this event in particular I i would say 200 300 people so the the grandeur the the size of announcements and events is just continuously decreasing and I don't know why why Nokia is going this route because the all the keywords in the presentation was that the most advanced smart phone of the world got even better this is the Lumia 925 so for that for that pompous grandis words and tagline you need to show some power and nakia is doing the exact opposite here's the most advanced smartphone of the world oh there's 200 people in the audience yeah I bit and and so I think I think the reason behind that or one of them is something that a lot of commenters have mentioned you know if you think of the 925 less as the next evolution and you kind of dismiss a lot of the Pampas this is stuff that nokia has to put out there to make it the announcement worthy it's basically a 924 you know it's basically a 920 refresh for other carriers right with a couple improvements just to keep the line fresh it's kind of like the HTC one x+ was to the HTC One X right yeah Sturgis just a mid-cycle refresh to get people re-enter ested a little bit but not too interested right not too much yeah exactly because you get a whole bunch of people to buy into this and then when you launch the EOS whatever that is in the fall I don't upset there's a problem right why didn't you tell me yeah so that aside I was I was happy that Nokia brought a lot of devices to play with they had actually three or four sections each of them dedicated to one specific feature of the phone one section was featuring two skateboarders who were just going up and down at half pipe and you could use the drama shot feature to test the Lumia 925 against your phone the HTC one with the Zoe or the s4 with a drama shot then there were some dark rooms for for low-light imagery and photography then there were different stands where you could see different features of the phone so yeah that that part was was awesome yes so they've added this sixth lens to the to the the sixth element to the camera assembly right I didn't know that there were five before yeah I had forgotten that there were five i mean i think it was Apple that made the biggest amount of noise about a five-element lens it with the iphone 4 yes yes yes that's understand right but then okay I think they were more when they launched the 920 I think there were more focused on talking up the optical image stabilization but apparently the sixth the sixth lens on this element I'm getting on my terminology wrong but this sixth edition it brings some real improvements in terms of according to the conversations by Nokia blog some natural details it improves low-light performance and improves colour reproduction and it does a little bit better as far as brightness control and Tony were you able to take any shots like what did you do any of these comparisons I had made shots but I couldn't compare them to the Lumia 920 and that was the main thing I wanted to do because at that point in time we had three Lumia 920's really the 920 which is on AT&T the 928 which will come soon to verizon and the 925 for t-mobile and the rest of the world so I was normally fishing for that comparison I don't care about the 925 versus the HTC One or the s4 because they're not directly competing but the 925 as it is now it is directly competing with the 920 so well I couldn't manage after we go I mean speaking to that point about about comparisons I you know I think it does I when we do comparison videos this has been very annoying to me because I've been one doing the comparisons because I'm the only one on the team besides I think adam lane with a Lumia 920 so whenever I do comparisons I'm always doing like HTC One okay HTC one vs galaxy s4 HTC one vs for iphone 5 and Brandon that was you HTC one vs Lumia 920 mmm the 920 is the oldest phone it's always is consistently the oldest phone in the comparison video lineup that doesn't hold up against the iphone 5 but it does against other Android devices in particular so it's been really annoying to have to like em like I you know take into account the the fact that the 920 is in a lot of ways like a last generation device so it's it's nice to see the 925 a 928 kind of updated a little bit so that when we get it in here it's like okay this is the latest from Nokia maybe it's not a blockbuster but it is the latest from Nokia and now we can compare the latest from Nokia against the latest from Samsung's and that is correct and apparently according to nokia every iteration of the 92 family the 92 x family is a step up and the question the answer which i was fishing for and i finally managed to get it how is the 925 better in terms of camera than the 928 and the 920 and of course there's the sixth lens and some software improvements and as i learned nokia is tricky we got the Xenon flash on the 928 nozzle which is awesome and it should be standard on all phones well why do you think it's not if it uses off I got an answer for that too but it's it's an unofficial answer so I'm not gonna say who told me that but the 920 is the 920 as we know it the 928 has the same sensor the same lens construction and the same software but it has a xenon flash so overall it is a step up from the 920 now with the 925 it has the same sensor but the sixth lens camera system but it has a dual LED flash so as interns there's a flash it is a step down but in terms of the entire imaging system it's a step up so they're trying to balance things so that when you draw the line the difference is minor between nine right right because I was it was a simple question why doesn't the 925 have a xenon flash and the answer was while we're trying to balance it out you know cuz the Xenon flash is on the 928 yeah but that's got five lines to construction yeah but you know on the overall they're approximately at the same level so I'm not sure what you're doing there but to quote we love all of our children the same way yeah yeah that's that's like one of the best corporate canned responses every that's like um it's like here's this really generic analogy will you go with us on this no okay we're gonna say it anyway I but so I didn't get to say this when we talked about this briefly yesterday or whenever it was I think that xenon flash is a really cool thing I really also though think on devices like this and I'm not a pro photographer I don't think they're necessary I think that I I always turn the flash off the only time you know the only time I turn the flash on my smartphone is to demo the flash for a video I'm shooting for pocket now I never use it in ordinary circumstances because the low-light performance is so good on the 920 and the HTC One so if there's not enough light to make a make for a good low-light photo there's not enough light to have a photo in my shooting yeah but then shooting in low light always always induces some noise but if you have a xenon flash which is a powerful flash and you have that setting where where you not only blank out the background but you have kept your capturing the light from the background to with your subject being well lit with the Xenon flash that's the perfect low light shot yeah I saw you use it to great effect with your 808 and yeah Barcelona so yeah I don't know I'd then you know what let me know when I can when I can really rent about 925 well I actually that's what I was going to ask you about peace so we've talked about the event itself what do we think about the device itself we have this kind of weird hybrid aluminum polycarbonate Frankenstein I don't think you understand then I'll help out put the full stuff at all right I'll drop mine mine and their first I I've said this before but I don't think it looks as good as the 920 I think the 920 has a really nice cohesive design philosophy driving it we have that elongated very very nokia camera bezel that elongated pill shaped thing and nothing else on the back there's no the perforations for the speaker which are required are on the bottom edge of the 920 so they're hidden you know it's a it's a very intelligently designed device to me the 925 looks like it looks like a prototype version of the 920 it looks like the thing you show to the press and the customers to say look what we're working on and this is going to get even better it doesn't look like a follow-on to the 920 it looks like a step back in my opinion even though the aluminum is pretty cool that's that's where i'm sitting from a hardware perspective how about you Brandon I think it's a nice there was a funny sound I think it's a nice middle ground between between plastic and and metal so you get kind of the best of both worlds because you know sometimes metal isn't as grippy as as like a good soft touch plastic true and so you kind of get both here and I really like that yeah I like that too i wrote an article to that effect i wrote that oh wait I did that wasn't it was like wait a minute do we have a duplicate what about you Tony so listen to this guy's this is the sound of metal Tony SR appropriate to do press our breasts tags our name tags were aluminum pieces so it was a slab of aluminum on which it was written your name and the company or the output you're working for a nice touch and at that point plus with all the rumors of a aluminum phone everybody was excited of course we're going to see the aluminum Nokia and then the presenters came on stage and they were having a how should I say this they were praising aluminum as a material that it is a awesome conductor it is an awesome antenna and if I recall well whenever Apple came out with a full aluminum construction everybody was like you cannot be plastic and even nokia was like polycarbonate is the best antenna ever that's where week anyway damage control yeah anyways so I was naturally expecting a phone which is completely made out of aluminum as an HTC One as an iphone 5 yeah a lot of people were and and it's the reality is that there is probably visible to the eye like five percent of the phone which is aluminum because just the outer rim and the sides of the phone are aluminum the back is the slimiest feeling polycarbonate ever I just saw I thought of a soft touch you know it is it is like you know the feeling when you touch a glass yeah it is exactly like that ah so it's very very non textured at all so I was ok what's all the hype about the aluminum film because this is not an aluminum phone an aluminum phone is the HTC One an aluminum phone is the iphone 5 so just don't make such a huge fuss about it just say okay we've introduced aluminum but we're still keeping the black cover number two nokia was saying that all the colors in the lumia range are awesome and that that's the signature for lumia phones and we got two or three flavors black silver and white from the Lumia 925 point nobody understood and okay I can agree to that why don't we have a removable back cover with the Lumia colors right why don't we have a removable back cover which also includes the Qi wireless charging standard why do I have to purchase a super ugly super thick and super inconvenient cover for it to work it's not even a cover it's like a sled it Out's terrible yes or slapping thing yeah I am and it's thick Brenda this thing you sent over was this is a render I any when you were I was out searching for an image of the 925 listeners i just sent Michael a picture and Tony of what it what I think Michael wish would have been the 925 which is kind of a slender version of the 920 that kind of has the same aesthetic but but is cooler yeah you know in its funny Tony you were mentioning like why not why not have a removable battery when I first saw the images of the real 925 with that isolated polycarbonate back I thought that was a removable cover I thought oh okay well it's a little ugly but at least we're getting a removable battery and there's also a gap so you you'd be tempted to think that you can remove that at one point because since is not a unibody construction there's a small gap between the aluminum which comes from the sides and the plastic polycarbonate on the back right number three the shade the color differs from the black aluminum on the sides to the black plastic on the back it differs from the silver aluminum on the sides to the silver aluminum on the back so you get two different shades of color which doesn't look that that good it's more visible in the silver version and if you guys seen the video you know what I'm talking about yeah another white one is is white poly carbon on the back and alumina on the side and I think that's the sharpest looking one of the bunch i think that one looks pretty good but it is it am i right in thinking that the front side of the device is not white as well and the white one like isn't it aren't they all black on the face because it's it's the glass itself yeah well the enemies the display is always back but there's a like the bezels black to the bezel yeah the bezel is always a little bit black too and it's just there's a little bit of aluminum which comes from the rounded sides going bracing a little bit front from the front but it's not visible from every angle reminds me it reminds me the iphone 3g and 3gs remember we all had the black face plate but then the some of them had the white back right and i'm remembering that right right mmm yeah I was too young then thanks um so yeah so that's the 925 is good to get it wait in an also final thing and I don't need to go into the wireless charging i wrote a whole article about how i was annoyed that they omitted wireless charging i think that's not the way to go it mainly though i think i was mainly mad because it's hurting the standard because nokia was the big champion it was like we're gonna do wireless charging on the 920 it's a flagship thing it's like yes finally wireless charging is getting its day in the sun and then you know for the next iteration so like yeah maybe maybe not well for the record they went or at least i've been told that they went this way because they wanted to keep the 925 as thin and as light as possible right now because they got it is about how heavy and tank like the 920 is so the 925 is extremely thin and extremely light not to the point of inconsistency but so unlike a 920 yeah well it'll be interesting to get these in our hands Tony as I recall we have some 925 not 28 units coming our way yeah that's good ice oh yeah I miss windows phone 8 I like I wanted to ask you and I guess I asked 22 at the last time I used windows phone was at the end of last year with the 8x and I had a lot of trouble with it because it didn't have apps that I really needed like Spotify which I understand is has been there for months yeah and Mike are there any apps left that you really wish we were in the Windows Phone episode from Instagram I was gonna say with the new Instagram yeah uh you know most of my app needs I think it's a matter of perspective because i have been using the blackberry z10 again for the past couple days and wow another topic we'll get there yeah and well I really actually I've been enjoying that experience a lot more than I anticipated even though I liked it on the first pass I didn't expect to like it as much on this return but I really like it and the problem is there that app ecosystem regardless of the big numbers they're thrown around it just doesn't have what I it's not a good fit for me because it doesn't have things i use constantly you're talking about blackberry I'm talking my blackberry now this gives me the perspective to say when I hop on to my 920 when i take a break from the blackberry and i switched to my nighttime phone my 920 i've got almost all the apps i need if instagram was there i would be almost one hundred percent content and despite the figure the the growth slowing that we're seeing on Windows Phones app store I think it's in a really good position let me ask most people will be able to find what they need good I'm ask you guys question ask something that was mentioned at the i/o keynote yesterday I forgot by whom was that Google believes in the future where developers make a one version of their software and it runs on every device and they don't need to do this crap where they have different SDKs different api's I'm not necessarily api's but the SDKs do you guys think that that's a feasible future and I'm not talking about building html5 apps in the browser cuz that's lame sauce with do you think one day a developer can sit down write one app and have it run on everything one day yes I think so because the more I think about it the more I look at this stuff the more I'm convinced that while there may not be room for five or six platforms there's definitely not Oh the future is not a one platform future and I don't even think it's a 2 platform future I think I think people are diverse enough and have different enough tastes to want different user experiences and but they also want the same apps across all those all those platforms so yeah I think one day that could be feasible what do you think Tony I am hoping for it but I am skeptical because it is against what these companies are all about nobody and I'm talking about Apple Google and Microsoft they are the leaders now and of course let's include blackberry too they don't have an interest in having you as a developer work only once for all the ecosystems they are fighting to have as many developers as necessary on their side on their team there they're competing in download numbers in revenue numbers in numbers of developers developers and if this would have if this would happen that I could write a code once and use it on all platforms this will completely dilute and cancel this competition between them it's interesting yeah it's and i'm not convinced i have enough insight into the developer world to offer any more insight i just think we need to keep an eye on what's going on and since interestingly it's very interesting to me that windows phone's app numbers are such are in flux or the app growth rate and i think that the windows phone is going to kind of be the one of the Canaries in the coal mine as far as developer attitudes toward less popular platforms but I'm not worried about it I'm just saying we should keep an eye on stuff but ever since we talked about the the Instagram application I've been trying to find the the name of the application but my sclerosis is kicking in so nokia announced an application which will come exclusively to Windows Phone and it is only available on iOS it's a camera application I'm sorry I don't remember it and that with that application it's Hamlin's no no no it's an act like I don't know paper camera hence the camera whatever I can't remember it and with that application you can share to Instagram yeah yeah yeah if it for Windows Phone only right it's yes yeah I know what you made it in they use some kind of back-end way to do it without using instagrams if you guys are something like that like it's some weird hack that is not chancing right it's not against the terms of service we can't answer Brendan's question just quickly they announced it 145,000 applications in the Windows Phone store and this is crazy to think that blackberry just announced 120,000 and they've been around for two years less or two years fewer right blackberry 10 rather yeah yeah but at same time windows phone has much more as a much more compelling catalog but we'll talk about that next week we said this was going to be a short episode and we covered what we want to cover and we've got to go we've got to get to other tasks writing articles for you listeners making videos and so on so we're going to take off and that's going to do it for episode 44 of the pocket now weekly thank you for listening and find us on Twitter Anton is at Anton de noche aunty oh and DNA gy and at official adn on facebook brandon is at brandon minimun and as always you can find me michael fisher at captain two phones follow pocket now officially at pocket now on twitter pocket now on facebook and google+ leave us a review on iTunes or xbox music and if you have a topic question or suggestion for the podcast we will get to your listener male eventually podcast at pocketnow.com can I do some altro music oh yeah it's going to be the old outro music circus bombon to have a compartment thanks for listening everyone hey Jessica next week