Gadgetory

you just over a week 2015 will be behind us pocketnow crew will be gearing up for CES and the promise of a fresh new year full of smartphones or be upon us but 2016 is not here just yet as we settle in for the homestretch of the year that brought us Windows 10 for sensitive iphone and not in the Star Wars almost said Trek sense and Google's return to form for Nexus phones we've still got a lot to talk about that's right all the great TV shows worth watching maybe on haight is for the holidays but the mobile tech news machine didn't get that message even though it's only been a few days since we last fired up our microphones for the pocket now weekly podcast there's been pleasantly surprising assortment of mobile happenings going on and damn it if we are Nick shin to share them all with you so sit back relax as we talk smart phones tablets wearables and all of our fabulous portable electronics wizardry this week on episode 180 of the pocket now weekly podcast i'm your host Stephen shank filling in for Michael Fisher here in beautiful for instance he where is dark as sin out and stormy and at least is hella warm I am joined by Adam doubt in the Windy City how are you Adam it's the rainy city today but I know thank you I can I can certainly commiserate and our producer as always ghouls Wong joining us from Boston Massachusetts more like tax excuse its am i right cha yeah my girlfriend is sick of me saying that but I don't care it's a funny joke I so we're gonna stop being funny I'm sure about that we can't do we on weekly podcast without the help of our sponsor friends and this week we're bringing you the podcast with the help of Scottevest the clothing company known for making the best pockets in the world if you go to scottevest com slashed pocket now today you can get twenty percent off with special coupon code wait for it pocketnow specialists in functional fashion for 15 years scottevest designs multi-pocket clothing lets you carry and use all your gadgets and 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reason for you watchers do help join in we're going to need your help to get this through without having our own voices you know drown everything out this monotony of will be entertaining Who am I kidding there's a couple ways we want you to contribute to the bakken that would be podcast and you can do either of them if you're watching us live in Google Hangouts we'd love you to hop on over to the Q&A panel which I'm going to try to figure out how to use you know Michael is usually the one handling this and it yet something we're talking about on the air that you would like to hear more about enter your question in there or comment or you know whatever you say hi other reviewers will vote up their favorites we'll do our best to answer some of the most popular ones on the air or just the ones most germane to the conversation we're having if you're listening to this later or if you just have something sort of more long-form but you spit on point you can shoot us an email podcast at pocketnow.com we're going to be answering a couple of those listener marrows later on in the program that if you send this one will do our best to get to it on a future episode of the show how do we get into the interface jules that's a good question here the Hangout QA for me it's a convenient little thing over on the side here i move my mouse over to the left there's a little messaging style window that says Q&A that's the letters with an ampersand between them I said it's similar in your stream viewers if it's not I would I would love to hear so I know exactly what to tell y'all to look for other YouTube browsers a pop up Jules hell does a pop up to look for in youtube if you're watching us there but hopefully we will hear from you guys I'm going to pop over now to see if anyone's there already mmm yes yes merry Christmas from the Netherlands oh thank you she got to jolly I'm already murdering name this is going to be a good i'm gonna go to ja ja ja okay a nice long episode with ya when i butchered names throughout yes uh for it's only been what three business days since we last brought you the pocket now weekly uh so going into this I was worried you would not have enough to tell you about but I am surprised there's a lot going on here some mentioned in the intro let's dive right into it we don't have a ton of time so and there's a lot to talk about we've got oodles noodles of news yes let's start this weekly news trainer rollin with Android here and no speaking of Chicago and Adam here uh Motorola has some new weeks out they don't have them out but they got out anyway well we're taking a look at what we've heard is the next-gen moto x ah it we're tempted to call the Moto X I don't know if it'll be play pure edition special sport whatever it's going to be but the next go to X we hardly saw a leak of it like a week or so back I thought that was kind of weird-looking we talked about this in the previous podcast Adam you see this leak when it first came out and see the link when it first came out and clicking to it frantically as we speak it was a weird-looking guy uh it had a big old circle on the back i I thought it was hacked together you know maybe it's a composite of shots of it's a frankan phone and had these weird really prominent a little speaker grills presumably speaker grill holes but little holes on the back of it just didn't look right had this like Lumia 8 30ish Oreo thing on there hey it seemed wrong it seemed weird it seemed fake and now we're kind of thinking maybe not cuz this new leak out this time it's an internal shot it shows us some of the the spacers on the back of the phone where come on as well go there's no circuit board just yet but there's this big ol heat pipe in there yeah it's got plumbing yeah not liquid cooling even though it's a pipe i guess it is their liquid in this some sort of thermal compound designed to channel heat away from the super hot parts the soc and move them to areas of the phone work and dissipate safely grant it still into your hand you can't get the phone the heat away from the phone still in there somewhere but you know spread things out there's not like one super hot spot that really gets annoying there man i just found that we can get oh wow alright um good luck with that moto alright and i would have thought that this isn't a real but now look closely at this newly care for the heat pipe and you see over on the right we still have this grid of was it 16 little holes there and crisis i look closely they don't even seem like they're spaced evenly it's weird-looking there's no obvious speaker there yet I can sort of see where one might fit but and the commenters had a field day with us talking about it might be like ventilation holes for the the heat pipe system I I don't see exactly how that would work but it's an idea there get something it's so nothing an idea yes just gonna get stuck in there right yeah yeah yeah and you know what else I'm learning is that continuum is not going to make a very good podcast companion so we're going to abandon that particular ship and move on subtitle of this podcast should have been like failures of Windows 10 it's when the song specifically we're gonna get to that a little bit later but continuum gia playing nicely for you know got to it and I'm 50 or the XL or the 950 uncle so and I'm trying to go from like you're like oh but looking at this other page with the with the pipe I'm like clicking the back button no no clicking the back button nothing's happening why would it be responsive we don't need that in computer well i actually i'll talk about that in editorial today alert but anyway before we move too far away from that we've heard the new Moto X could have a Snapdragon 820 in there certainly the highest end of the 2016 Snapdragon lineup but hopefully we've heard it shouldn't be nearly as thermally problematic as the 810 was so it seems a little weird and why are we getting a heat pipe on this but I think that like I said a little earlier I think there's a good reason for this even if it's not running super hot like the phone wouldn't function without it it still can make it a little bit more comfortable to hold you're doing a high intensity gaming or what not really pushing it to its limits this just it keeps it from getting that one little hot point that's burning your fingers oh and also one commenter pointed out I didn't notice this when initially posting this but there's these little seals it looks like around a lot of the student where components will go maybe looking at some nice waterproofing on this guy yeah that would be awesome Shay a lot to look forward to continuing on an Android here Adam what if you tell us about this have you seen this google next-gen messaging thing um I have I'm still trying to figure out what it's for but definite damn good question so a wall street journal published this I think yesterday and I read this the story you know once or twice through and it seemed like I don't know a joke a goof I double check to make sure it wasn't backdated to April first but it's weird sounding that's what we're talking about here is a google hangout supposedly remain even hang out but Google could be working on a next gen messaging app and the big hook to this thing is supposed to be artificial intelligence powered chat BOTS like robots you talk to you know I'm not granite other messaging systems have had their own interactive botsa various forms here and we've been heard about facebook prepping something like this for messenger where you could like ask it questions and we didn't know you would try to answer them itself didn't know it pass it off to a live human operator who give you your answers but supposedly Google's looking to have some sort it sounds like taking google search like the voice powered google now stuff wrapping this up into it's going to be all text based or maybe voice but putting this into a messaging system so you like text it hey find me a nice place to eat around here and you'll get a message back saying okay here are some restaurants in your area but isn't what Google's for I mean look I don't get it does that I mean don't get me wrong messenger apps SMS apps on Android or kind of like Twitter apps on webos there's a crapload of them and they all have their and minuses so I mean I can kind of see that this is a this is a an area that Google has left largely on the dress but I don't think chat bots are really going to be the answer unless of course it's there for lonely people oh you know what I get from them I mean it's not supposed to be like you know supposed to a touring testing we're it's trying to prove it's a real person it's like it reminds me of men I don't see the point yeah so is it's a good question what is the point of this it's being presented as a way to draw users into this messaging system because right now even though hangouts is baked into Android it has a lot of competition from third-party things especially facebook Messenger and whatsapp stuff like that and Google needs some you know big draw to get people to use its service because unless your friends are on there you're not going to use it unless there's some really well feature in there you're not going to use it so it's I guess it's supposed to be if you go there for your searches maybe you'll stay there and talk to your friends yeah or maybe if you're always on there chatting with your friends you just want a quick way to bang off a quick search I don't know I I don't see it but I guess maybe if they made like a core feature of android wear this is messaging was built in so instead of having you know your google search bar something it was persistent like chat thing ah but it reminds me of remember old look at the name of the service used to be something where you would send a text message to it with any question and they would fire back with an answer I mean it's usually what we do now with a couple of those too yeah sounds like sort of the next-gen version of that only a I driven there's talk about Google may be opening us up to third-party developers and having them make their own chat bots which would be I guess specific to certain tasik maybe a video game developer could have something where you have a you're trying to get through a level instead of calling the nintendo pro tips line flash back to you 90s they're running up your 1 900 numbers you'll just like text nintendo chat bot it would tell you how to kill all your friends and super smash brothers Oh in super smash brothers ok I hope you were going to finish that sentence so no don't don't kill your friends just over a video game that's got you in trouble there so I think we can wrap this one up as a we don't get it yeah there's no word of a timeline here when Google might be hoping to do this I i would really curious to see where this is coming from yeah I have a feeling the reporter like might have heard some real tidbit of information that Google is actually working on something here and we just don't have the full picture because clearly Adam and I seem to be agreement here this just sounds weird don't eat it peaking of things Google's up do this one seems a lot more plausible sort of a next-gen two-factor authentication appears to be in testing now there's been reports from users on reddit who have got invited to try this out a system that uses your smartphone to authenticate you for Google logins across the ecosystem across phones tablets your PC the weights appears to work is you get it set up on your phone has to be presumably only works with certain phone just mention of compatible models we don't have a complete list but presumably a recent model you know lollipop or marshmallow needs to have as the secure lock screen in place so just like android pay in that regard but once you're authenticated on your phone this sort of works as the length of the hub of which you authenticate and other devices so you go to a computer go on your laptop or something even a friend's laptop but liking for the first time type in your email there it wouldn't even ask you for a password on the device instead it will just give you a notification on your phone hey someone's trying to log into your account on so and so do you want to authenticate this and you did yes you know and go from there up do you think it sounds good idea Adam I might be off here but I think Microsoft actually has a very similar system place but Microsoft uses it as a risk factor and to God as a two-factor authentication where instead of sending a text message it'll send you you know and that you know to a notification into an appt saying you know is this legit so I guess my google is just trying to remove the password from it which seems less secure to me I don't know I kind of think more secure like I'm thinking what if you're like a public computer maybe you don't know if there's like a keylogger and the keyboard or something you know yeah across the machine you want to be using it temporarily this allows you to authenticate without giving any of that secure information to the possibly untrusted machine I suppose but the point of two factor authentication is to stop that in to begin with if they have their username and password who cares they still don't get the code so oh yeah but I'm also wondering what happens if I'm you know at work and I leave my phone on my coat pocket and I try to login and I don't have my phone with me so well has thought of this in the system currently and testing it advises users that you can always enter your password in it's a backup if say you know exactly you don't have your phone there's maybe no reception your battery died have other options to kind of like a fail-safe but then again I'm wondering does this make this less secure you always hear about people getting hacked not by someone figuring out their password but by figuring out their security questions you know it's easy that what about clone phones to my wonder saving him it anymore I don't know well they do in the movies back in it Oh or something yeah it's in testing now I'll hopefully we'll hear more about this as Google rolls it out to more and more users uh I think it's a neat idea I question exactly when people would use it but especially if you're if you need your on-the-go a lot you know necessarily have access your own computer all the time but you do have your phone on you this might be something worth checking out it's the type of thing where it needs to be bulletproof but if it is then aid nothing wrong with it and this is exactly why I Google's requiring up Bowman secure lock screen there I kind of like the idea especially if you have up on the fingerprint scanner this sort of ties your google login to your fingerprint rather than a password at all sure one hundred percent agree on so biometrics are fun fun fun they are do you have anything with biometrics on it yet ah fingerprint scan or anything like that no no okay I get no no my laptop my laptop does and I do use that for login on that really so you're the one okay yeah it's really not graceful but right especially because of windows boots up and those does like five second lag before the the fingerprint software loads and I'm swipe swipe swipe swipe now it's not good yeah so let's keep this google trainer role in here uh we've been talking so much about sales over past few weeks Black Friday Cyber Monday and then just week after week of getting your last minute holiday shopping done a lot of hardware deals there we talked about a bunch of them last week in the podcast this week we're not talking so much about hardware deals as software stuff and Google's year-end holiday sale has come to the Play Store there's a lot of stuff going on there some of it not great deal some of them better have you looked at any of these Adam I need to browse through that's actually probably on my list for tomorrow there's a lot I think we've got a half off albums on google play music that uh seventy-five percent off video rentals a bunch of apps on sale and some good stuff I probably would pick up if I didn't have already Monument Valley is stupid cheap a lot of them are like ten cents or just a dollar minecraft story mode you're looking into get into that action that the sales on news newsstand subscriptions some books on say a lot of stuff check it out loud go to google play on your pc phone tablet whatever and check some of those out will not last long you probably have least at the end of the year to take advantage of those um let's talk a little bit about hardware what is not an android spectrum here for some reason phablets are big all of a sudden and no pun intended there we got a couple new ones that just launched ZTE with its axon max 6 inch full HD big old battery 4140 milliamp hours solid mid-ranger qualcomm snapdragon 617 processor some big 16 and 13 megapixel cameras at a price that's not the cheapest thing around but pretty good for what it looks like you get the equivalent of around 4 30 for the chinese market here we haven't heard anything about this guy come into the west yet though but CES is just around the corner nzd you could certainly bring the sky around show it off a little more get some buzz going yeah so hopefully we'll be hearing more about this guy I think maybe the more interesting of the fabula is we just saw literally just happened samsung and the galaxy a 9 yes rumors have been this guy coming up for a while now and I had to double-check this because Samsung just released a bunch of new galaxy a series phones a new a three a five a seven confusingly the 2016 and that 2015 on already got those the beginning of the year we did not have a first gen a nine I think is the first one first time this phone has ever come out with this name and it's a pretty solid looking piece of kit again it's a lot like this ZTE it's got the six inch full HD display this one's an OLED processors of the beefier there it's got that new Snapdragon 650 to previously the 620 which is pretty solid octa-core 64-bit new Adreno a GPU on there we don't know a lot about where Samson tending to send this guy yet presumably like the other galaxies A's it's focused not so much on the US market as it is markets in the east but we know because introduced it in China and hopefully what we hearing more about this guy in the weeks to come you know it's interesting because you know both of these phones have the you know the 6-inch 1080p panel and the the Snapdragon 6xx yeah processor and you know 13 ish megapixel camera I think on both oh it's just none of these are really screaming mid-range specs to me except for the processor I'm just kind of wondering where our criteria is when ATP isn't mid-range these days well I mean maybe it is but then you get in back into that question of you know how much screen resolution do we really need I'm just ya know I'm just wondering these you don't look so bad for with Rangers actually no absolutely not and I think a lot of users have been now moving away from the flagship phones and to the mid Rangers sure you can spend a couple hundred dollars more and get this really premium polished model but if you can save that much money and the phone you get it's no longer about making compromises it's you're getting hardware that's maybe I even last year's but like six months old is now considered the mid-range I only wish for your mind I only wish I'd seen this story come out a little bit sooner because then I could have trolled cliff Thomas by telling him he'd get a galaxy a 9 before he get his HTC One 89 Jules mentions a blue one x 2016 1080p 150 bucks that's friggin nuts cheese and a lot of these guys at CES I'm sure the flagships might hold off for a little later in the year I'm expecting a ton of of super high-end action but me rings galore yeah but neither of them have a 5000 milliamp hour battery so it's still pretty good uh yeah the a mines got 4,000 which is nothing to shake a stick at I mean even with a big screen I'll get you through a day no problemo I'm hoping I'm gonna be carrying the the blue energy to add at CES just because of the 5000 milliamp hour battery oh I'm just gonna carry a car battery strapped on my back with the younger it has nothing to go from there there you go the lines get too big I'm just at a cattle prod and shock my way to the front it'll be a little spectacular I like it I'll ask for a new strategy before we wrap up android here once it touch in with ooh one of my favorite developments in smartphones modular technology it sucks that you can't fix your smartphone without having you know tiny tiny hands and a giant magnifying glass and where you're going to be destroying the thing even worse in the process here most of us we take our phones well actually most of us probably didn't get them thick we break our phone we get rid of it we move on to the next newer model but fairphone thinks that's not the best way to be doing things it launched its fairphone 2 earlier this year with the idea that it can help reduce electronic waste by making the phone built out of modular components it isn't so much like project ara we're supposed to customize things but instead it allows you to replace bits as they go bad so then we always like seeing a phone with the external or removable battery because not only does allow you to swap out the battery without waiting for the phone to fully charge just pop a new fresh one in there but over time batteries their chemical things they lose their capacity so it's very nice to be able to you know a year down the line switch it out for a brand new running at the top of its game component or even a bigger battery in some cases or yeah even a bigger but I love those ridiculous ones that make the phone three times as thick and a 15,000 milliamp hours why not yeah oh it's just preaching to the choir yeah fairphone 2 it's now shipping to its initial backers it's a bit expensive for what you get I'm just talking about what makes a phone the sky is looking at 1080p display two gigs of ram snapdragon 801 just like the the oneplus X which is it is an older processor it's still pumping along and you probably unless you're using your very again we could pushing talking about gaming like in the pipe on the Moto X unless you're really running high on stuff like that and 801 will probably get you by just fine but it's a lot for what other asking a lot for what you're getting there this guy's going for or 0 5 530 euros please its flagship level pricing there but again this is a phone you're sort of paying for the warm fuzzy feeling it gives you not only is it are these components replaceable so that you're not making electronic waste but the components themselves or ethically sourced all the capacitors these guys are going all out down to Africa getting their 10th album from of Mines that don't exploit labor or they don't you know Percy environment so you pay a little more but you can sleep at night so that's very close to six hundred dollars ussg I don't know but I think we move on to other platforms here I'm gonna take a look in here QA see anything a nice going on here Oh see Windows 10 fan do you plan the upgrade the pocket net web site you a more modern 2016 look um I'm not sure exactly what I'm supposed to be talking about here but i will say stay tuned is all i'm willing to offer there I think wheels are in motion you will be pleasantly surprised and what you're talking about its modern looking I know I really like the bucket now layout but i think i just hate change hmm uh that a dumb windows 10th it also was no Buller will we be making a pocket now mobile app um I'd like the first point out our pocket now mobile web site is optimized for smartphone viewing ah i prefer the desktop you want smartphones though i may be in the outside there but no i did not believe we have a standalone mobile app and the works right now but again i don't want to say too much about any redesign plans but i would I don't think you'd be wrong if presuming that would extend to the mobile side as well so again stay tuned well you know we were thinking about it but then we'd have to make a blackberry one so we just decided I car out to be discriminating because I want to make a blackberry yeah we are an equal opportunity website so you know we have to make simply in webos and yeah just did rabbit hole you know anyway sorry go ahead jobs see Jamal ask where's Mikey Mike I know he's doing is holiday thing like everybody else in the world here and adam and i will be doing shortly jewels as well but we're doing things a little early trying to put aside the end of the week for our our special time with our loved ones let's be honest he's just gotten lazy ever since you found out but Stephen and I can do this he's just need a serious mean why bother when were you know hitting every point like we are an ounce I know uh alvin tsui asks do you think we'll see 256 gigabytes of internal storage in devices in the future god I wish we would uh I am probably the biggest proponent of Clifton is asking a question oh sorry Jules you're distracting me yes we will get to that uh we haven't seen as many high storage devices out now as I would like to considering all the other places that components have been pushing limits screen resolution is probably the best there we've been sort of hanging behind an internal storage I think it's a disservice certainly I am I love having all the me I want on my phone straight away not having to rely on you know this the cloud or streaming services I just popped a 64 gigabyte microSD card and my brands new 1 plus X I can't wait till I get a hundred twenty eight gigabyte one because 64 gigs it's not enough storage for a boy like me 256 awesome but I actually I agree with that and then actually kinda makes me jot down an editorial idea for Tony what is up with that I mean everything else is getting better and better and better you don't got more RAM we've got more power we got more battery we've got it what what is a internal storage the sad thing is I deal with internal sorry sir the sad thing is I get it because most users do not have this need they certainly don't want a phone that's like eight gigabytes with only two gigabytes free when you get it but the 16 especially the 32 gig space that's more than enough for installing your basic apps maybe even a big one or two maybe even having some media on there a couple albums and for most users I'm i feel like this satisfies their needs that their direction need 64 or 128 are the exceptions not the rules uh I'm gonna say I'm gonna say Windows Phone brings 256 gigabytes first that's not a bad idea especially people using continuing um that's right that's tough placement there that's the money right there that's going to be that's going to happen you can write it down december twenty third i said that yeah but certainly the flash chip components are out there they're not physically that much bigger than the 1628 gigabyte ones it's just a matter of demand I don't think it's there just yet and manufactures I've gotten used to be able to charging a premium for these certainly it costs a lot more to move from a 64 128 gigabyte phone as it does compared to like going from a 64 gigabyte hundred twenty gigabyte microSD card right though they kind of realized if we had these big ass storage on phones we would have to or we would be able to charge a lot more consumers would expect it and maybe that's not very tenable so let's pick one more Clifton have a question here you'll once out uh what are we asking Santa for Christmas Adam why don't you start here um this year I am asking specifically for amazon gift cards because the only thing i want is here i know but the only thing i want for christmas is like a seven hundred dollar camera so i don't see any of my family getting that for me so that's for not what I'm asking for but if you're asking like of what devices are out there right now that I would want it that I would want to ask for I would go and this is probably in the same realm of realistic expectations of the camera but I would probably go with uh with a pixel tablet this just because the Nexus 9 man so with with with marshmallow is no Gouda you don't like no it's awful the marshmallow killed my nexus 9 songs with it waking it up to 60 then again you never use a lock screen so maybe that's like a condiment but I mean it's like I will wake up my tablet I will draw my pattern for to wake up the tablet and it will sit there for a minute until it times out again and turns off again and I'll turn it back on and says oh you need to put in your pattern it's just nerve so no I definitely i used to have problems with the the double tap to wake i think i had them more with lollipop marshmallow seems to be pretty good with not dying on me now that beside i did get an update recently which helped clear up some stuff but anyway pixel is really nice Oh although hmm alright so think on that a little um you got ya not geez I don't really want anything for Christmas and that hardware wise i'm pretty set now but i can't say amazon gift cards but you can say i don't want anything dad don't I want to I want to get through CES with my sanity intact their health uh everyone tells me I'm gonna get super sick I think I have a very strong constitution I'm always like low level 60 stops you from getting super sick but I'm very interesting what wonderful bugs i pick up so yeah happy and healthy new years what I want that's a lame i know that's not we have been doing these q and A's for a while now we are running short on time have to hop back into news here yeah there's not that uh because we have a lot more to discuss uh let's head the shift gears over to microsoft land here and talk windows 10 mobile which man has think is taking a beating lately and my commenters have been pointing out they seem to think that we're really hating on windows 10 mobile here we don't hate it we're just kind of disappointed we're not hating it we're just we just took off the rose-colored glasses I mean it's Windows 10 windows 10 mobile specifically is a beta test I mean it really is i mean there's it's so buggy and there's just so much that's just man um you just I ran over Adam lanes review and we collaborated on a very little bit over the weekend and he and I were on the same page with every single point it's just it's buggy it's it doesn't it doesn't behave in a way that you would expect some of the settings are still a mess I mean I still don't know where NFC is or not turn on I always search for it and it always says well here's NFC and so then I say okay great but where is it so i don't have to search for it the next time it never tells me it doesn't do little things that other yeah it's frustrating because it is hard all the big announcements back in the early part of the year it seemed to have so much promise Microsoft if I be seemeth company got what it needed to do not just on desktop and mobile individually but as this cohesive vision for how products would work across device form factors sounded really great and certainly we saw the company testing things as early as it did it unprecedented level to which it's bringing users on to try things out early not just on the desktop but also on mobile we've had the insider program for windows immobile going since like februari I think all this time you think would be enough to work out these little issues but no there's just this glitch is throughout and very frustrating I mean to be fair they're doing a lot new here this is kind of a big undertaking but Microsoft it's still a giant in the industry yeah but it's it's hard to see it stumble like this but one of the big st. big things that has going and going for it is you know the community of fans that are around it yes this is our which is and you know Michael had a wonderful piece that he wrote about about this you know talking about the fan base of Windows and how sometimes they can be local to vocal to their detriment but in general the windows community is actually really fantastic it's it's it's almost up to a level of webos that's the high bar that's that's by high bar so um but yeah windows the windows community is really super helpful with trying to you know get things figured out like I was you know I've been tweeting about the Lumia 950 for you know few weeks now and every time I run into you know a roadblock I'll get you know five or six people yeah Chinese nice even though there are all these problems out there there are users who have been running into this as well they can offer you some advice on maybe how they found workarounds until microsoft works all the kinks itself right which is great and so is it is one of the one of the shining beacons of of being a windows 10 mobile fan yes having that much support for for as much hate there is between platforms as many fanboys as their art their smartphones in general its work phone users they're good people they're willing to help you out when you want to do a jam no indeed unless of course you miss identify something in an article in which case they will tear your face of god no you don't do it desk i'll give up all hope ye who enter here yeah anyway um yeah so things are struggling over on windows 10 mobile Jules tells me there's an update wait there's nothing headed out now that they were done with those for the year well updates coming one way or another sooner and or later especially for the existing windows phone models animagus one dark on us there there we go oh yeah really uh yeah windows 10 mobile updates for existing Lumias pushed back till next year hopefully by then I don't blame microsoft word holding things back until things are working as smooth as they need to so keep the faith and keep watching for what happens there over on Android Microsoft is having its own problems could start bringing Cortana cross-platform earlier this year first testing and Android than an iOS and a few weeks back we had the you know the full launches of Cortana for both platforms and everyone loves hot word support you can get start talking your phone and it listens does what you want it to when it works it's lovely but Cortana it's not working so well and its back it's working so unwell Microsoft had just turned it off entirely used to be able to say hey Cortana to your phone we've you're on the home screen or thin the app itself the only platform wide stuff was with the other promised cyanogen OS intergration which I'm not sure we ever saw come out hadn't been following that but Microsoft it was causing problems with the microphone on the phone in general like users wouldn't be able to make phone calls because Cortana had like locked itself onto the microphone there so until they can get that worked out that's no longer functioning and Android which is a big detriment I wonder how many Android users were actually using Cortana to begin with i'm downloading as we speak yeah okay without Howard support but still yeah yeah you can't get everything and before we move away from windows 10 so far we've only had three windows 10 mobile models from Microsoft launching the Lumia 950 950 XL and the ones at 550 yeah but there's supposedly been some more on the horizon some of them we heard were getting canceled some have been uncannily we've been talking about looking forward to the Lumia 650 for a while now now we haven't seen much in the way of real weeks of the hardware here but the guys over a window central have got their hands on especially some internal slides showing off the phone for one reason or another they weren't able to share the original pics but they commissioned these Oh lovely and I mean capital L lovely renders of what this hardware is supposed to look like man if it looks half as good as these I think a lot of Lumia 950 owners will be hitting themselves in the foot I don't know how idioms work but they'll be very upset because this 650 it's a classy looking phone nonsense we're gonna be happy for the platform yeah and yeah that's that's what's gonna happen nice metal trim on this guy supposed to be positioned as a fordable phone for business users and of course we continuum and microsoft school because an enterprise business will continue to be a big focus of the platform going forward I am really excited for this guy we've been heard you've heard that this phone may be coming out in the next month or two Microsoft may be looking to introduce it sometime around mwc which isn't late februari this year and like i said if this looks half as good as these renders make it out to be microsoft could have something really special on its hands here ok one more platform to talk about we could talk about webos briefly did you see this atom that webos is moving to the three-point oh no what what no be any good it's just for LG Smart TVs but oh okay it's so it's nice to hear that it's still living on in one form or the other I don't know I guess cockles of my heart yeah it's okay I mean it's one of those things where you know maybe the guts of it or webos but it's not it's not the soul you know well the less old man you used to be cool used to be mobile what happened to you know then they got all stuck up in those TVs change is happening all across platforms and one change becoming too well just started coming to smartphones is pressure sensitivity Apple had it forced touch first started on the Apple watch now 3d touch on the iPhones and we've been seeing it who is the other guy who did this it's a ZTE or Huawei sure Jules will shout it out but word is that we're about to see the sort of pressure sensitivity start coming to every smartphone normal everyone but a substantial majority of smartphones starting next year s companies you know call them copycats or what you will but integrating their own systems for pressure-sensitive screens and if presumably will start seeing more and more apps taking advantage of these the report we looked at said well one in for smartphones launch next year may have some degree of this functionality I've yet to actually try this for myself I'm not an iphone gummy in the phatom now I have not so no success for me and it's difficult for me to appreciate the usefulness of it not having done this myself but already I touch me interactions a bit tricky how you have this you know position and input are tied into one you can't you point to something on stream without also saying I'm tapping on this so we've had like long presses double taps all these different ways to try to signal how we're trying to interact with the phone will this pressure sensitivity getting us one more really improve things I don't know I'm really curious to see how they implement this yeah I mean it's one of those things where it is forced touch to me sounds a lot like long tapping but at the same time it seems like it's a little bit more useful than what you typically typically get out of a long so I definitely want to try it out so maybe we can visibly yet Michael to bring a success to CES so we can play with it for understand how it's easier to explain to new users I mixes all the time on the podcast but I got my mom her first smartphone a month a few months back by now and it was very difficult she never interacted with a touchscreen device before it was very difficult to explain to her how she should be pressing on things and invariably she would press to shortly press too long and the phone the timing is very sensitive for the app has to respond to short taps long taps differently I can imagine it being much easier to explain to someone just touch the slightly versus you know smusher finger on there it's maybe a more natural way to I think that's even more subjective but I'm currently fighting with this dual touch thing and I got a new macbook and that has that that multiple layer of touch thing and I'm familiar with this well I don't know if it's the same thing um but I'm I don't like it no sir I don't like it nope that will not do but again it's new and maybe it's not as fully fleshed out as it could be so as platforms start to learn to take better advantage of it and i really think that as app developers start building apps that don't just have this as a gimmick but if they've had time to work with it they understand how users naturally will want to use this maybe six months from now we're going to start seeing a renaissance of force touch and it's its variants becoming a lot more useful so i think the idea of more hardware getting this can only be a good thing so hopefully that will pop up in some of next year's most popular phones speaking next year's most popular phones of course the iphone is going to be stupid stupid super popular iPhone 7 we've heard rumors here and there what to expect and there's this really to my mind kind of scary one that popped up a while back suggesting the phone could drop its lightning connector and now there's a couple stories that came out this week that seemed to add a bit of credence to that well one that in credence to it one just sort of expanding an idea a little more first we heard that Apple is looking to possibly add new high-quality recordings to its streaming option and Apple music so not necessarily higher bandwidth what does it have to be but higher bitrate and higher sampling rate so we're talking 96 kilohertz 24-bit audio CD quality probably sounds super good to most of you but there are those audio files out there who can appreciate a maybe higher sampled recording problem is the the DAC and the iphone there isn't really equipped to output the sort of thing but if you plug in a pair of super fancy digital headphones through the phone's lightning port well sure they could have their own DAC and be capable of delivering the sort of audio in the full quality that Apple's streaming it in and so this rumor is one thing and then that sort of adds on to the theory that well if we went if Apple were to go Lightning only this would certainly be a new draw for manufacturers who wanted to start producing lightning equipped digital headphones we already saw one it was ridiculously expensive but are out there next year could bring us a lot more you know I give the feeling if Apple does go this route had those headphones will probably start getting a lot cheaper really quick oh sure and I'm variably companies would release adapters that would give you a little dongle to plug in your existing analog headphone too wouldn't that be great speaking I was it was it the palm what's the home you need an entire just to use the headphones the view as an economic one yep and what how well that ended up oh yeah it was great um yeah someone a designer whipped up some renders of what the iphone 7 might look like if Apple indeed what in this direction of dropping the headphone jack us right now it's one of the thicker components on there remember that ridiculous rumor we heard that they would like slice the top and bottom off the round connector yeah yeah yeah gladly not going there but which by the way here's a veer party look what you got yeah that's our connector yeah Weiss have five pins I don't know oh it was data and power in stuff that is the data port as well that was everything but we saw these renders someone whipped up some pictures of what an iphone 7 that dropped headphone jack could look like and it is preposterous lieth in these are iming a speculation based on the size of devices but if we got a new 4.7 inch iphone 7 it could be as thin as was your five point two millimeters which is nearly two millimeters thinner than the current gen I believe it has got a little thicker this year and again apple and it's still living down the shame of Bend gate so you have to wonder if making the phone this then would really be a great idea and of course we have commenters chiming in well okay make the phone or you know save space by getting rid of the headphone jack sure but what if we you know just put in a bigger battery to make up for it wouldn't that be really nice to nobody does that now he's interested oh my o.o but yeah okay take a look at these renders they are some beautiful looking things whether Apple goes this way or not I don't know certainly when the company dropped the 30-pin connector and went full lightning that was controversial in and of itself I don't know that this move will necessarily be any more controversial and Apple has the clout to get away with a sort of thing if it wants to do it it's gonna do it we're gonna have to live with it oh absolutely but once again as I've said many times over the years if there is one company that can do that and get away with it it's apple boy how d all right that is it for the news here Jules we have a sound effect going into listener mail you know I'm on this vodka sticker because I really have that much awareness of oh it's a big bong as a de ba sayo x uh Adam why don't you pull up that first listener mail there and okay alright so this email comes to us from Robert De Rose now and says so many new pay services here on here or on the way like Walmart Samsung Apple and love and which they'll target yeah yeah yeah I'm someone who loved the wallet / android pay and was disappointed with the lack of support by retailers sure then came Samsung pay I use it everywhere do you think that Samsung has the right idea and everything else is a waste or is a grass peed in age technology and I should support NFC in the future always a pleasure listening to the podcast hmm thank you um I actually have a lot of thoughts on this do tell well I'm a purveyor of mobile payments I mean I've used every mobile payment that has or i should say i've used the big ones you know the the samsung pay and Apple pay and Android pay and all those and I love them I love them to death um as a matter of fact there's a spoiler alert editorial coming out about mobile payments very soon um I am in favor of any new mobile payment system that comes out I used to think that you know it'd be better if we just had the one standard you know the one samsung pay or yeah whatever but the more I thought about it the more I thought the more that we can get users used to the idea of paying stuff for their phones the better off we're going to be because we'll work out the standards later let's just get people using it right now and if if target and say and walmart can do that by integrating it within their apps hmm so much the better because I mean you're going to be there you're going to be using the app if you're a cartwheel you're going to be using their stupid cartwheel app that's cool it's a target thing it's really stupid don't ever use it okay um it's a bad experience but I mean if you're already in there and you're already using it and you could just wave your phone or point your phone at something and pay that's gonna be better because that's gonna get the idea in people's heads I can buy stuff with my phone and it's super easy together more directly to to the question here I think that Samsung had the right idea with this magnetic stripe emulation especially with the NFC seems that is great it's available before let's talk about not being able to pay with these things I found it's available more often than not at least in retailers in my area I'm going to say about thirty percent that's it ok but this fall back to have an eidetic stripe support I think a huge boon for samsung unfortunately it kind of got here too late I can't deny that especially with the hardware in the galaxy s6 and Samsung not enabling Samsung pay until months after its release now the u.s. is in the middle of this move to a chip and not pain but signature and it's not inconceivable that we're going to see magnetic stripes in general start going the way of the dodo pretty soon right you're a year or two ago that would have been fantastic yep of the options available now that Samsung lets you do this and it has NFC support it's the best of both worlds yes absolutely you have a choice between something a samsung phone that does this and another manufacturers everything else being equal and you like mobile payments by all means go with something that supports Samsung pay yeah yeah you took the words right out of my mouth so Samsung is got a good head start in this particular arena with that MST but it is a little bit too late and it's going to start not working in more often than knowing why you can fellas exactly speaking of great things and maybe don't always work or not always available we like them to our next listener mail here comes from Lucas who writes hi PocketNow team longtime listener have a question for the podcast it's really bugging me what's going on with wireless charging Qi charging in particular is it dead but for two years ago I got my Nexus 5 i'm started using wireless charging but now i have but by now i have a che Qi charger in my car 01 on my desk and one besides my bed and due to this I don't have to touch a micro USB charging cable for a long time now that's amazing but now in 2015 only seems like only a few Lumia devices the galaxy s6 end up getting wireless charging it's disappointing the new Nexus phones haven't had this what do you think's going on is because of quick charging or the COS not that people are using it in general you know I think this is sad I really loved wireless charging i used it occasionally on my Nexus 5 but I didn't leave it plugged in all the time because I worry about it being a jewel thief and i'm wasting a little bit of power when not in use always sending out that signal that's there um I don't know if that's what people don't use it and certainly who've seen manufacture some of the bigger phones this year didn't have it other ones did um I think technology though it's continuing to evolve and made some big progress this year as the companies behind these platforms started joining forces not Chi but the PMA and who are the other guys there was a third one and we now is wrapped up with PA yeah they're part of PMA now so yeah and and now that a lot of phones are having have chipsets for wireless charging that support both of these standards likely galaxy s6 compatibility issues are becoming less of an issue and yeah you make a good point fast charging is a big draw on a lot of phones at least people seem really upset when a new model doesn't support it or doesn't have the standard they want that said we do have fast wireless charging in the galaxy s6 does this but again you're going to have to have the right this is introduced a whole new standard problem as 6 plus by the way that s6 s6 plus as that yeah the note 5 and the sx plus have it the s6 and the s6 edge do not think this is a problem not everything is working on the same page here I don't know if next year is going to improve the situation any I thinking that the options are there if manufacturers want to take advantage of them the question is the weird part is that it seems like PMA and Qi both took really divergent routes in in in getting their product out there PMA went after the providers starbucks and the car searched and the different places they they wanted to get wireless chargers in their stores whether or not anybody was actually using them in their phones whereas chi went the other route and they were trying to push their product into phones but then nobody had the support for so he's kind of never the twain shall meet it was kind of like the chicken and the egg thing now that the technology is there for both i think there's a much better possibility that chitra or that i should say wireless charging and now that we have fast wireless charging as well I think there's it's poised to me to come back just like webos so no it's I think it could potentially make a comeback this year it's not dead um but it's just it's a VHS versus beta thing so we just got to figure out which one's gonna win and then 11 wins then we'll be we'll all have it and everybody will like it damn it may I stuff I'm a HD DVD player I miss those things you would that formats man debt technology technology alright you got one more listener mail here a lot of you think its own Adam oh sure hi pocket now from unicorn workhorse that's a great name it is a cracker I want to know your thoughts about the idea of Google enforcing minimum hardware standards for android phones for example some standards could include 1.5 gigs of ram 8 gigabytes of available storage 250 I PPI screen resolution 1.2 gigahertz processor eighteen hundred million of our batteries yada yada yada what do you think what's such a change produce phones like the lowes Android one models boring similar devices would it make them too pricey and too expensive I see this as a way to help eliminate fragmentation but then again please speak your mind so because we don't always have to agree with each other I added that last part but um personally I think that would probably go against what Android and Google is about I think Google is trying to push out the idea that this can be installed on just about anything um and I also think that pretty soon we're going to reach a technological point where even the crappy stuff ain't all that bad yeah so I mean you know where I think we're already at a point where just about every phone has 1.5 gigabytes of ram and a little rebellious to it with every phone worth buying so I mean III don't think that it would necessarily that Google will necessarily have to enforce this I think the industry is going to enforce it for us because there's not going to be anything less than that available no largely I'm with you there I think as I guess answer the question straight up no I don't think this is a good idea I think Google should do that and my first didn't think was well this is sort of a market solved problem here that a lot of the phones were seeing are already well above these standards but these are just the phones that we're talking about we don't talk about the crappiest phones out there the phones that you're going to get for you know thirty dollars with a prepaid provider and some of those can really you know fail to hit some key specs series we're still getting devices with like FWVGA resolution name is that good enough for user needs that's the thing i think yes that a lot of the times you can get by with really really bottom of the bucket here hardware and the fact that Android can still run on these even if it's an older version even if it doesn't support all the bells and whistles of modern hardware does that's still good it gets users online especially how this is a so much more affordable way for people to access the internet and having you home broadband connection and a computer just getting people engaged getting them connected is valuable enough that I don't think setting a minimum bar here for hardware that would unfortunately as a result probably make things a bit more expensive especially on the bottom and here I don't think that would benefit the the community as a whole it's frustrating when you when your device doesn't support the latest app so if you can't you know guarantee hardware update our software updates or when you know I got 8 gigabytes of free storage that is a pipe dream there so I think we'll still be seeing phones with no 8 gigabytes total and you just get like I don't know to I've when it shifts yeah um but we always have better options out there and certainly as users get more educated about what they're looking for they'll be able to you choose the phone that best suits then and again even if you're not getting really high-end hardware at this thirty fifty dollar price point a hundred hundred and twenty dollars you can get a very solid phone that can run the latest software with not too many difficulties so I would not like to see Google do this okay so we agree but for different reasons yeah it's not like it meeting of the minds here before we head out let's pop back in a Q&A here for a brief moment here see if any other goodies comments going on here da da da uh ok I got it you asked me talk to me directly and nearly gonna have to respond to you windows 10 fan is back with another comment here name the specs of a shank phone ooh I'm kind of liking this Snapdragon 650 shoe here I think I go with that 4.7 25 inch 1080p screen a 32 gig storage minimum if you have that animal microsd expansion so much the better here no I could go with a fingerprint scanner I've been on the fence before but I would like to have one I think an XC again I much juice for it right now but why not I'd like to have all the harbor options out there USB on-the-go compatibility is a must i loves as close to stock Android as you can get battery I guess 25 milli twenty-five hundred milliamps wouldn't do me and have a doubt phone would that have a doubt phone um around the same screen says I'm gonna go a little bit bigger 55 25.2 somewhere in that neighborhood um probably 1080p at 1080p minimum you want to go higher than that okay whatever the camera is gonna be the most important thing for me something I don't care about the camera yeah see i wanna i want to galaxy s6 camera module whatever that I think it's so me I don't know any whatever that whatever's in there I wanted my phone batteries got to be at least 350 at three thirty five hundred milliamp hours because I want a horse um what am I missing Ram three to four gigs of storage space 32 no 256 there we go right we're making this dream oh yeah yeah and you know android would be fine um iOS would be fine not sell this phone aki sailfish yeah sorry guys um but uh yeah I think I hadn't we can have as manufacturers you heard what we want here duh the John Matthews talking about the new Moto X leak on the inside do we see a place where a fingerprint scanner could be uh yeah we heard a rumor the microsoft motorola could be getting back into the fingerprint scanning game it was one of the early players the had a phone the support of this back door was baked into the platform with that little that's tops trip on the atrix 4g uh from the leak I didn't see anything like that but then again there's a lot of places you can put a fingerprint scanner I love what Sony did with the side mounted power button scanner even if it doesn't work as great as it could mmm an option I think probably a front of him over the home button because it's not going to have one being motorola but like integrate it into maybe the screen or just the bottom there yeah that could happen but no nothing on the back that we've seen but it's weird-looking hardware I don't know man couple of OEM zar working on screen based fingerprint sensors this is all capacitive if you already ate some capacitive sensors in the screen why not yeah he put it right there baby let's get one more here Sebastian Chavez shabas do you think HTC will make a comeback next year what were they need you to make this come back don't call it a comeback yeah because it's probably not gonna happen have been for the last I don't know was it three years now there's been this downward spiral we really want them to do well and you know this yes flagship one phone it sounds really great it looks sort of premium and then it lets people down in one way or another sales never seem to be where they are the company has months works doing better months where it's not but there's this general decline in sales I don't know if it has what it takes to pull things around I would love to I guess one job hardware and you know maybe we can down I mean that's all it has to do everything else is there it's it's got every all the other good stuff it just it just keeps screwing up that one major thing which is the camera and you know I I don't think it's been doing its promotion job as well as it could it's made some big miss steps and at Robert Downey it's getting celebrities that aren't really clicking with its message there it's not engaging users nearly the way you know what I'm selling much less an element one other thing that HTC needs to clean up from tells its customer service I have never had them personally but my two on my on my other showtek beard calm my other podcast both ryan and cliff have had atrocious experiences with customer service I've only had good things uh HTC makes the Nexus 9 shortly after I got this thing last year I noticed not dead pixel but they're a couple like super hard to see barely there dark spots in the backlight you had to look at it under a magnifying glass to take a picture of this thing okay once i saw it i couldn't unsee it pissed me off I got an RMA he sent the back new one and like a week or so no problem easy really lemon squeezy well click click once your guys number was so but anyway okay uh that's about all the time we have for you guys on this week's PocketNow weekly um thank you so much everyone tuning in to us really in the week here ding dong listen real over my mom I assume will be back next week I don't really know uh hopefully Michael will say about yeah we were here every week one way or another thank you to all of you who tuned in and talk to us in the queue a thank you to my co-host Adam doubt they keep your producer Jules one you can find these guys on social media I am at Stephen middle ish maybe not Stephen shank on twitter there that's to make him his at dead technology and jewels as always is at greenpoint 0 thank you to our sponsor Scottevest purveyor of fabulous multi pocketed mobile electronics friendly of wearables hope that wearables in a different kind and yeah and tune in next week for vaca now weekly or 181 until then everyone enjoy your holidays whatever you're celebrating and uh keep warm take care mm-hmm oh yeah find us find us at places there's more I don't always do this it now or is it done the internet pocketnow.com pocket now youtube uh pocketnow twitter google+ all the places where you find people online google play they'll be able to listen to the podcast I don't have an outro skip this week in case ya onto that there he feels together in the last minute for everywhere Google us until the internet hi that was so great can you get like everyone and then on a high note that's about you folks I got a thing here wait you got a thing again where is it play play supposed to go yeah any of y'all for putting up with us yeah we're still a lot