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Pocketnow Weekly Episode 008 - IFA Edition

2012-09-04
from pocketnow.com this is PocketNow weekly gutentag and welcome to the pocket now weekly the once-a-week podcast from pocketnow.com where we discussed news and opinion from the world of mobile technology I'm your host Michael Fisher senior editor at pocketnow.com and i'm joined by managing editor and temporary roommate anton d Naja harami how old headless your colon stimmt sprechen sie englisch schiessen yeah ok yeah uh so listeners as you may have noticed this episode is a little different we don't have a third party on the air with us it's just Tony and me today we're recording actually in the same room for the first time ever we're sitting in the same room for the first time and we started the show with the German greeting poorly pronounced though it was and there's a reason for this if you've been following pocket now at all during the past week or if you follow us on Twitter which you should do or if you follow the mobile industry in general you probably know what it is Tony and I are in Berlin yes we are it's awesome and we're we're covering the annual Aoife or IFA trade show which tends for what Tony internationalis fukao still so it didn't it's the exact thing we see as a consumer electronic show but i think the IFA stands for their appropriate german words the acronym gosh yeah ok I've you will always pronounce it better than I will even though it's incomplete that's it's in it yeah it's an event that the big manufacturers attend to make major announcements and unveil new product and we've had no shortage of those this time around so the thing is once we what we have had a shortage of oddly for a sec show a shortage of internet connectivity it's been a ridiculous enormous challenge trying to stay connected this trip you remember you and I talked about this that may be carriers should improve their coverage but you said maybe they think this is a tech show and everybody brings their own internet well guess what we don't know still rely on you carriers but do you keep on feeling it actually was a little ridiculous cuz you were you were playing the you were defending the carriers I was like we're waiting in line we're walking into the the conference venue and I'm like oh this is ridiculous I can't even check in on foursquare because there's too much you know there's too much traffic on the network right antennas like well you know it's hard no I know it's happening we should be I shouldn't bring in a Cell on wheels to the texture probably not invest that much in improving the coverage or the strengths of the signal because it's a show which happens every I don't know once a year and maybe they think that for those five or six days it is not worth it to invest even though it should be because the message the Trade Center is used for many shows right exactly they should I feel like they should have a cell on wheels or several you know maybe a fleet of the but whatever I we don't run a network this is why we don't run a carrier right who knows what you know we've had a great adventure finding prepaid data solutions that it was by the way prepaid data is not is not cheap and it's not efficient and it's not fast it's not fast no there's nothing good about it and the hotel even the hotel Wi-Fi has been horrible hotel wifis are never good I actually had one single exception which was last year at mwc in Barcelona the internet upload speeds were like 35 next they were huge God what great our old man back in the back in Honduras can tell you that of course this year staying at the same hotel internet sucked so they probably realized that it was too good to be true last year and they just drop with frontal yeah and it's kind of amazing listeners to watch what happens on the as we deal with different kinds of traffic here we'll start uploading a YouTube video as you have probably seen over the past week we've had like 20 and the you know for the first two minutes the uploads going great and then something happens on the network that's like you know stops yeah there's some kind of bot working that's like oh you're uploading a video you wait all night everyone else like on facebook can do what they want and of course if you have the time to start it again it's okay if it stops one or two times when it stops the 14th imma just starting your hair yeah just really start parading angrily through the streets of Berlin so anyway that's that's why we're not being joined by a third party in the podcast this why we don't have Brandon or Joe or hi May or anyone there's just not enough data to support a call so on but you know what it's all right we're it's the roommate our on the Pocket net weekly and we're going to talk about IFA and I or Aoife and there was there was news from elsewhere in the mobile world this week like the world doesn't stop when a trade show happens but there's we were just talking about before we went on the air like the prey the pace of trade shows is so fast as I have found out about this is my first one that you it's very hard to realize that there is still a world out there where stuff is happening and so we're just going to cover on this broadcast the special special episode products that were announced at Aoife and I'm that we got our hands I'm so so jealous I have never had the chance to attend an apple keynote when when Steve Jobs was there I wish I would have seen him I'll probably okay let's not be pessimistic I will see Tim Cook on stage but yeah we're getting at is that Apple is not present at any trade shows they make their own events right and this is why we will probably not cover iOS in this episode on the podcast so if you're a die-hard iOS fans still bear with us just to see what's going on but if you just can't can't go through the Android news then it is fair for us to say click away but do tune back in next week when we will have a normal podcast unless you're just like listening to our dulcet tones oh yeah yeah with the with them we can do any exit now we can even do German accent mr. chairman and also if stay tuned and if you hear the view here the distinctive German police car siren out our window it's because we have our window open our hotel room is about the size of the the sound booth I usually record in welcome to Europe no it's great so let's let's hop in here we have a lot to talk about there's a lot that has happened and the first thing that we kind of the smaller news so we'll hit that real quick the is the Windows Phone news we never do windows phone first so this is kind of exciting yeah we want to just get rid of it no no I'm kidding of course I'm kidding unfortunately there was no windows phone news that I have a nun at least worth mentioning of but there will be a special event coming up actually this week then it's two days away from now depending on how we can upload this podcast so we're cool yeah I the way on the third yeah so if you guys see this going up on the fourth you'll probably notice that we had some problems with the internet so we were expecting a nokia microsoft joined event and there's about the speculations about nokia devices and the Windows Phone consumer-oriented features windows from eight to be more specific there was none such thing in at the IFA at the Eva the it with the exception of the the atif that's right yet which we did reach to see it was a silent press release kind of launch there was no phone available at the show there was probably it probably was available in the hands of certain people but we are unfortunately not yet among them right yeah so that the here's the thing listeners the device was not we did not see it the this is the achieve s is what it's called it's part of the achieve device family from Samsung it's brand new and what it looks like if you haven't checked out we've got we've had a couple stories on it I think we did we break this one no somebody else but they think that it was the verge if doors before a special Samsung event yes yes yes it was um so regardless it's it's a windows phone 8 device it looks like it's rocking a four point eight inch HD Super AMOLED display resembles the galaxy yes looks a lot like the galaxy s3 except it's running Windows Phone 8 which is pretty pretty hot for anybody who's wanted some really intense windows phone which was the other one which was the galaxy s2 running windows phone was in the focus the focus s yeah yeah because the focus one was like the Galaxy S 4 windows on then the focus asked to the galaxy s2 yeah so that's that's what this thing looks like and we're kind of looking at pictures of it right now and it looks you know it looks like a samsung phone exactly this rabbit's it's another phone but what I really like about it it's it's it's back yeah it's just it's just nice it's interesting we're talking about design we're talking about looks and we're not talking about the windows phone operating system itself which is the big boom but we don't know much about Windows Phone 8 because Microsoft wouldn't tell us the world not how specifically so we're looking forward to that nakia microsoft event maybe we will see what they are up to yeah we've had we've heard some some leaks regarding that yeah the etfs I'm looking forward to seeing but the really cool thing is that what you kicked started the segment off with with this nokia 920 and na 20 yes there have been some leaks for at least the nokia 920 is a pure view branded device or is gone maybe we I figures rawson yeah branded device but what I've seen earlier today I saw another leak indicating that maybe that might be a an 8 megapixel sensor on that instead of any kind of PureView rated thing and that the PureView branding will be will be attached because they've they've come up with some kind of image stabilization or some something that'll make it better than a normal camera hi i am not excited and you know why it's not because i love nokia i'm a fan of nokia design and watching but just look at the 800 the 900 and even the predecessor the n9 they had Carl Zeiss optics and the picture quality's was just bad yeah I don't know if it was the software I don't want to blame windows phone because windows phone is a neat little platform so and again the focus took great took great pics absolutely so if they don't do PureView they need to come up with something really huge to be on par with at least android phones because currently right now on Windows Phone there's no phone which can be on par with with current android offerings not not to mention the iphone 4s which history it's on par with the with the galaxy s we shouldn't forget the just in a spec sheet way that the HTC Titan to write which there's that big a 16 matrix megapixels but still but it's so much about what happened yeah I know we should just throw it out there but I by the way I understand listeners that we are breaking our own rule and we're only supposed to be talking about Aoife stuff but this is kind of related to the burl interest in a way because the tony has been taking you may recall that Tony is the one who reviewed the nokia pureview 808 and I Tony's been taking it all around Berlin as we've kind of walked around we've done some sightseeing and I have had occasion to use for the first time in my life to PureView 808 and inverse India and no no I my Star Trek communicator phone and run Simeon but it was one of the first Symbian phones and but I just have fallen in love with this 808 which I sort of have expected to by the way that's the mattress that we keep leaning on so yeah sorry about the creaking but the Iowa just I just adore it and I'm sitting there with Tony yesterday we're drinking coffee on the banks of the river play the river spray con obsession American the river spree and we I'm just playing with his PureView and looking at the footage that we got in the stills and it's such a beautiful phone in a hardware sense it's it proves his beautiful images and I said my next phone is going to be a windows phone 8 with with PureView technology and if from Nokia and if they but if it released this thing that it's really not peer review if it's just pure view and name i'm gonna be really really disappointed you and many others meet among them if i say this it's ok to have mid-range phones and even enough flagships necessary but high-end phones on the market but if nakia really wants to pull this off after one and a half years and being close to anonymous I mean don't get me wrong nokia is great they wanted to do windows phone because they didn't want to be an anonymous android OEM they're kind of just one of those windows phone OEM so there's nothing special about okay designa side he can't say that they are up two or three or four notches right would it be apps or not and the special nokia apps and the design really isn't enough right now as to the service that experience but what really could book them ahead of everybody else is a peer review technology even if it's not going to be a 41-megapixel humpbacked its back because they don't want to do that but go with a 1650 megapixel sensor do instead of from eight pixels to one super pixel just do from four pixels to one super pixel and just deliver that imaging quality for for our windows film users they want nice pictures yet they do and and we were up at the top of a 200 and something meter tower yesterday indeed we were and you know Tony's taking pictures out the window of Berlin at altitude and you just I mean we everybody knows this already I know this isn't new news but like you take this picture and you just zoom in and you can you know yes lessly yeah and it's not like you can look through people's bedroom windows from 200 meters but it's effectively like you could see a seagull on their roof or a mouse on their roof you know I mean it's incredible so anyway it's that vs fanboys we are huge fan but I mean oh you've made me a fan boys but I don't worry I brought Tony a an HP veer from the states so I'm working on him from the dead the dead OSN you don't have to work that hard I love it I finally discovered the it's bomb / HP devices now that they're dead yeah I know yeah welcome welcome to 2009 yeah ok let's move on here we um we've got we've got windows 8 to talk about I love to top it thank you we do because windows 8 was the big deal at this year's Aoife especially personally for me who's just and I'm just kind of burned out on on Android tablets by and large I don't want to say I'm burned out on all them but I'm you know there are a lot of Android tablets out there until recently there have not been a lot of Windows 8 tablets and now hope that's changed it's a it's a new it's an exciting platform bloody this yeah and Microsoft is you know it betting its future on it so I understand why it's a big deal so certainly I think the most visible announcement in this domain came from Samsung with that at Eve brand we were talking about before which took us a while to learn how to pronounce right and I've still don't know if I'm doing it right deity of smart PC and at Eve smart pc pro pro we did hands on Zhaan all these by the way guys just to let you know if you haven't seen the videos you should check them out so the difference the difference is between these two tablets they're both what are they 10.1 inch yes it's a difference in resolution ok it's a difference in processor power processing processing power but design wise they are pretty much the same except for the fact that the pro is much much thicker which you'd expect normally for from a tablet which is addressing the brow humor or businesses professional market yes but overall I like the tablets and I like the fluidity of Windows 8 I love that Microsoft brought that battery smoothness which which was their number one main selling point on Windows Phone 7 they brought it to the desktop and of course we should mention that the desktop is just an app on Windows 8 all right the Start screen yeah yeah exactly it is but you know that's a very good point and normally in the past you know we would kind of subjectively evaluate a new product based on how smooth it was exactly when you picked it up like you could pick up a low end android device and be like odds jittery all over the place and will bring redress right and we'll talk about that in a second actually but you can't do that with windows with Windows Phone and Windows 8 plus devices I feel like they are all buttery smooth no matter what they're running on wood and even the Nokia is 610 which you reviewed was that was smooth indeed and it was the first one to come up with tango it had a very slow processor but I did a comparison of that phone with the LG optimus 7 which was among the fastest windows phones out there because it had super fast nand memory but yeah windows film has what it takes so it's the neverending reply of fanboys when they are in a flame war Windows Phone and yes windows phone doesn't need quad core or ho horsepower do deliver that smoothness right and this is what they got right and yeah and i agree with you i'm really glad they ported that 222 windows to windows 8 so we've messed around with both of these I think the pro one the most interesting part about the pro edition for me was that it as a full-size USB port which is part of the reason for the thickness we were speculating honest I don't understand it barley it's not only the USB port which is adding up bulk to the thickness of the device probably there's something else inside there but what if they went with an adapter like from micro USB or from something smaller and then something better than something and just make it tapered I mean holding a 1 centimeter thick brick in my hand it's not fun it's not fun at all especially if you have these super slim the devil is like the Nexus 7 not to mention the iPad ok a bit on the thick line but by the way Michael tell me how does it feel to use a stylus on a Windows operating system oh yeah to I remember doing that small buttons there when microsoft word on tonight wow so yeah when you hop into the regular desktop if you're not in the Start screen environment you happen to the to the regular sorry about the traffic noise you happen to the regular windows desktop and it's like you need that stylist so bad but even with the stylus with a screen at this resolution if you're in Microsoft Word and you're trying to bold some text you're using some of those toolbar buttons up topics just to just find a small arrow which gives you the list of fonts right yeah it's it's almost well it's not impossible certainly but it's it's not very fun and I understand why the Start screen is gonna be so crucial to Windows moving forward um and it has a girl thing right nows and you're right make them acute yeah and but it's cool because Windows 8 is adaptable right like you don't have to use it this way i think the achieve and an achieve pro both have the keyboard dock available right plays all right they do you have yeah and these you can plug them into a keyboard dock and then you have you know you've got both touched control and physical key controls so pros and cons of the keyboard of course there are no doubt it adds a huge speed and gives you functionality and yeah it might give you also extended battery power if it has a battery pack which is constantly charging your tablet right but then again it will be like you will be carrying a notebook it makes it like it's carry handle but its bulk to it it does whatever you may be just want to hold the screen and that's it it has nothing else with you but yeah it's good to have that it gives you an option yeah I think that's going to be the deciding factor on whether ultrabooks or whatever they're calling these hybrid convertibles nah not conversable convertibles animals is a term if I know right that Microsoft uses for those of their slates which either swing or have that swivel which bux open the keyboard I think this is just a just an accessory and they can't call them transformers because there's lots of buzz about men right yeah let's go with an accessory hybrid yeah yeah but high river went for the UM yes anyway whatever you know they were very visible the deity of brand is anytime a big brand like samsung launches a new kind of smaller sub brand it's it's it can be big news i think at eve is going to be definitely I think they're gonna try and make it as big as the galaxy brand has been for for android so that wish they will succeed me too or both of their sings Microsoft's and Samsung's and ours ya know agreed but it's not the only one just because the most visible Sony had a big event that Tony and I both attended we saw they use the CEO of sony which was good and speak which was awesome and he was yep I had never seen speak before and they pushed the Sony push their vaio duo 11 and this one is this is the one that we that we leaked what was your first thought when you seen the either leaks or the official presentation and I'm specifically referring to the way Sony is dealing with the swiveling out of the keyboard yeah so listeners what what the deal is of this vaio duo 11 is it's another hybrid / you know not convertible whatever where it's a tablet and then it like the what was that HTC smartphone that that did that HTC yes 18t called it yeah that I come to it was the Titan first tighten too yeah so what happens is it slides just like that phone it's a landscape slider that slides and then you can pull the screen up so that it resembles a laptop at a very you know at an obtuse angle it sits and and if affordance having the keyboard attached it would look exactly like the surface exactly it looks very much like the surface what I what I thought about this when I got my hands on it I didn't think about it much when we when we leaked it but I got my hands on it after the Sony announcement and it's certainly sorry it certainly seemed to be very impressive it was going to have it the wind taken out of its sales in about eight hours for me but we'll get to that in a second but I was like okay that's cool that's innovative it has this little kind of innovative hinge that props it up back there and it feels reasonably sturdy let me draw did you a on you we will have lots of Windows 8 tablets too what do you think will be the differentiator among OMS I mean they will probably be many without a keyboard money with a keyboard so keyboard will just not consider that as a differentiator but as nakia differentiates with the drive and services what would what would Sony offer me to buy their windows 8 tablet in the detriment of sand sand springs is it only a brand recognition thing or will the XR more or it better not just be a brand right handed on thing because I'll tell you sony you know in the united states has meant less and less as the years have gone on and certainly and you know i think it's going to be hard where I think we're seeing in Windows Phone what we started to see in nor what we've wanted to see for so long and Android which is this kind of thing we're like own okay the software is going to be unique across I'm excuse me the same across all the platforms and the hardware is going to be the lone differentiator of course on Android we haven't seen that yet because OEMs keep putting these really what I windows 8 and the tablets we I think we see two general trends and they're not specifically talking about RT with ARM processors and windows full windows equal in Turkish AMD but I think Andy is in the game but we are yet to see an AMD power windows 8 tablet so that's a no so how do you say that Englishman separate the waters here the waters and upskirt stir the waters draw the line between fans of Intel processors AMD processor yeah but that's only like of like a one percent of the market we'd like to see what we're getting at slowly here is that would like to see somebody anybody offering something special besides build quality besides something which will probably end up as being standardized specifications probably the same Windows 8 tablet from different manufacturers will have closely similar specifications they will not be able to juggle too much with that but I want something specific I want proprietary apps i want free apps i want free offerings I want services I want them to offer me something so that as an incentive for me to buy their tablets beyond the fact that they are sony or samsung or whomever else and whatever comes as a conclusion out of this in terms of hardware specs and build quality sure and i think that's a question that's been asked in other generations of products too but i was too young when I was born my family was buying desktop computers for example I know the market is quite different in mobile but it's in some ways it's also very much the same you know I think my family certainly shopped on price and as a result we often suffer dinner in our computering choices but you know not always but so I grew up with and I wonder if this will be the case because I grew up with the compact brand which HP purchase and but I was very loyal to compact simply because I was familiar with it any wonder how many of these brands bank on that yeah and you know what I hope I will never see and those who purchased windows I was all about to say windows phones with those who purchase windows pcs know this when the species usually come with the platform and a ton of blood were like yes from norton systems you guaranteed to mcafee to every possible and impossible trial and share your application and OEM can think of i hope it will not be the case with windows 8 meter mobile pcs / slate / tab and it started to happen and found platforms as well and then time it's a damn carriers but anyway that's that's another matter entirely but I agree the speaking of though there are still differentiators here the acer is another company that brought us some hardware with the Iconia at the w510 and the acer iconia w700 these are two once again Windows Phone 8 tablets these ones are a little different you know they have this kind of the tablet build to them but they are they're made of some kind of polycarbonate the I don't want to say they are polycarbonate because I'm not sure if that's correct but they definitely felt very different felt like HTC One X in hand you did a little bit or the PureView 808 accepted lighter and they weren't and I meant to say this about the samsung achieve they didn't feel like a stretched out galaxy s3 which is not the last time i'll say that on this podcast too because Samsung has decided for their kind of like hardware design that they want to go with this really light feel in the hand with really glossy plastic that is not what this that suits excuse me acer device is either one of these two five ten or the seven if you check out the specs you would get back to what we talked about a couple of minutes ago there are two main trends like for instance take screen rest of the resolution this w 510 is a slower tablet but it has the same resolution as the Samsung atif smart PC not the pro one so we'll see two trends lower end and higher end probably consumer and prosumer / business orientation so I their standardizing the specifications which I don't know whether it's a requirement by Microsoft or they're just going with what they think the other guys are doing right and as you'll see the w700 which is the other one is on par with the smart pc pro from samsung so it's yeah the higher end range head-to-head which by the way has a rather nice dock to it just do two w700 yeah yeah then figure we didn't manage to figure out exactly whether it will be that useful to have that dock so it's weird like it's it's like an l-shaped dock ok it's it lays there on the desk it's it Sarang and you slide it in right you drop the tablet into the lower rail and then slide it to the left and lock it into the upright rail and which contains what a USB port USB port the charging port and probably an audio out even just that the tablets speakers are on the lower garage yeah and this how should we call it was doc yes this dock is cut out so that the speakers the tablets own speakers managed to get sound and sound is directed towards you so sound doesn't go down to the table but it comes right like like from this you yeah it's like a gutter runoff flat tube yeah the sound like spills out of the speakers comes down and gets rotated and blasted out toward your face uh yeah that seemed cool I was wondering if it was a demo doc at first because it certainly doesn't look really polished enough to be able to literally it will be an optional accessory yeah people who manage to decide whether they buy that or not exactly yeah but in terms of usability and fluidity we don't even need to mention this I think we'll see this a couple of times but then we'll stop mentioning it yeah they all perform the same they do and they perform well so don't get me wrong they're fluid they're almost instant is what you'd expect from from software and hardware to work together nowadays yes and and it's not like we have any occasion to run any benchmarks or any of that kind of stuff by there but in a UI which for me is one of the most important aspects of a device yeah all the windows it with its we great quick grant to of course I remember back in the day and already talking like an old guy when we attended shows device is on display were not locked into a demo mode you could go to the Google store or to a marketplace and by a benchmark application and fungal and play with the settings and do side-by-side comparison nowaday you pick up a tablet you can go into settings you can probably launch an application or two but they are locked in demo mode so it's it's something which yeah I don't think it's good because of course this was a consumer show so probably it was to avoid people messing the tablet not running up thousands of dollars in app purchase bill what we have hands-on with either an Android tablet or android phone which will be coming up later and I think this is re transitioning towards Android no no no I finish my Ryan please do I want to run a benchmark I want to see how it goes aside from just launching the email application simultaneously on two devices right which is entrant but this is sorry windows folks is was this was a rent which don't have to be more angry directed then and I would have totally let you run with it but there's something very important that I that I have to use to close up windows windows 8 we toshiba was not toshiba and yeah what did I say toshiba yeah my old roommate is to say I don't know why I pick that up just now spend a week in Germany folks here but your pronunciation will get all crazy know what was their story if the shiba had a windows 8 oh right convertible it doesn't have a detachable keyboard and if you guys ever tell him why we're not we're not coming on this the sony tablet s is that no this wasn't that the which one was that the so many devices lieutenant it was the sony vaio duo 11 the one which resembles the surface that doesn't have a necessarily a detachable keyboard but we covered it because it resembles too much of the surface with that angling of the screen but brocade get to the back to the topic if you guys remember Brandon minimun are in chief posted something on pocket now regarding our policy of running with windows 8 rib and Windows RT coverage the differentiating factor whether we the deciding factor on whether we cover a tablet or not is that whether it has a detachable keyboard or not if it has a vegetable keyboard you can just grab the screen part the tablet itself then we'll cover it if it's screwed too with screws to the clicky border the keyboard itself or it swivels if it is not detachable we'll just treat it as a laptop / netbook / ultrabook / / / which is not ours sorry just a heads up for you guys so that's why we didn't we spent some time looking at that from Toshiba i think but we didn't functionality wise yeah i can tell you that much it's quality is as what you'd expect from toshiba probably the price point will be as what you'd expect from toshiba super high it runs smooth it has a great screen but we didn't do a hands-on because what we just rattled you so we but it's not the last time if your toshiba fan don't wear it will mention them again I know what you can't wait to get you know I can't wait I'm so jet bringing hills all right so here's what happened so with Tony and I had this big day at the press conference at the trade show and Tony wasn't feeling well I mean we were both being blessed you're completely exhausted and tony was like I don't I really don't feel good so he had to go home I was like okay I'm gonna go to this event there are some of the events of these trade show listeners and some of them some of them occur after hours and some of them are event you want to go every day too and some of them are events you want to go every year to right here right so this one I was like yeah I'll go I know yeah stay home you know it'll be fine I'll go and I'll cover it and I didn't expect there to be much of anything I expect there to be a bunch of accessories and because let's mention that we had not the pleasant surprise with a previous event right now he said it's anything like that was okay when we were all amped cuz we're though we're gonna see some really really hot stuff and then it turned out to be a lot of you know cool accessories but you don't go to chose necessarily to see accessories right so maybe that's not true but we don't anyway so point is I went didn't have a camera with me just had myself and I thought I would just meet some people and hang out and I did and it was a lot of fun and I saw the HP table there and HP and I of course have nothing personal against each other HP certainly doesn't doesn't think about me but um you know what you do thinking once in a while and you know with holy webos debacle I mean there was some some bad blood on my end there until I started working for pocket now and I kind of had to become unbiased and I've been working hard at doing that I just wrote a piece about that today so I didn't want to stop by the table but I was like you know it's HP I should go I should go stop and see what they've got and I see a table that's decked out with a bunch of laptops and you know notebooks I'm like okay whatever I'm gonna walk away thank you guys and but I see this one out of the corner of my eye that looks too small to be a laptop it something's different about it and it looks like a macbook air 11 i will say that that's what it looked like to me and I was like well what's that and of blanking on his name like an idiot the HP Envy x2 yes the HP Envy it's like at least for me but yeah it's the X to the envy x2 that's what the what the product name would the product llegan was it really said it resembles the macbook air but to imagine the macbook air with much much rounded corner still the same chiclet keyboard that i should mention it was yest thing i noticed about the tablet I said hey Michael look at this HP using Apple's keyboard so exactly yeah that was the first thing you said when I start of a joke aside yeah I like it but you're what happened was um one of the friendly guys at HP was showing me this thing and he be pulled the screen off the off the thing okay he pulled the screen off of the keyboard dock and I didn't think that was possible and kind of blew my mind because the thing looked so good together it looked like a really well-built small ultrabook and he pulls the screen off and it becomes this tablet that looks great also standing alone you just looking at the tablet you'd never know that it plugged into the dock and that itself is not necessarily unique but the build quality overall this thing is made of aluminum the doc is aluminum the tablet is aluminum it's got this it's 19 millimeters thick when it's when it's closed you know as a as an integrated unit but the the tablet I mean when it's connected and when it's connected yes closed yeah when it's connected and the lid is closed and and it's eight point five millimeters thick as a tablet so it's very thin its tapered at the edges it feels amazing in the hand and all of a sudden it runs windows 8 I mean we're still in the windows 8 second so it 11.6 inch display is a 400 nits panel so it's really really bright there are two full-size USB connections in the there's a theirs ports on the tablet there's microSD expansion on the tablet and full SD on the on the dock there's a touchpad with them with gesture recognition on it it's basically I you know you can read the specs but I've written about this enough already it's only been a couple days but I'm so in love with this device and I basically told Tony I could when I came back I was like there's I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop I kept waiting for there to be something I didn't like about it and the more the HP guys talked the more I liked it and so this was announced just couple days ago I had no camera on me so I had to shoot the hands-on video with a HTC One X I really should have brought the PureView like Tony suggested I do but at any rate we captured the video HP was so nice to me to come out in the hallway there and kind of you know just show me this thing for five minutes and they were really wonderful so we don't think we kind of don't know is released we know this is coming later in the year and pricing pricing is gonna make or break this might be on par with others unless they sell it as an ultrabook you know yeah and this in case HP really wants to be somebody in the windows 8 oh I necklace yeah it if that was my position today I was like wow this could really be HP's play to like contend with surface because surface is gonna just wreck I mean you know it's gonna disrupt at least the this the third party manufacturer ecosystem of course but it will also depend on whether the screen will be as good as the screen on the X 0 en made tablet in it doesn't always necessarily come down to the price the Nexus 7 I have a nexus 7 and we're transitioning that's why I'm yeah now you're talking about Android I have a nexus 7 finally Michael brought me one from the states i confiscated it it's a great tablet it's a cheap tablet but the screen on that thing is just terrible it basically doesn't have a read it has something which is undefined between pink and magenta or my eyes are not good any more than 150 years of age but its rise or not what you're trying to say here that Microsoft could be successful with the surface beyond the price point if they included and i think the the hardware department and inside microsoft always did a good job so i don't think it will be bad the question is how much better all the other tablets and offerings be right and that's the window it way they were going to be somewhat it's more expensive how much better will that be to justify the price difference and I think that's yeah and that's that's that's a solid point and that that's why I was so so impressed by this by this excellent excellent build quality but in just a short thought did you wrap up windows yeah aight i love what they did I love what Microsoft is showing and i definitely look forward to having many of these devices on the market and this is a small insert brent here hope not too many because the diversity is always good I just hope will not see a flood of windows 8-powered slates tablets just like we see a truckload of Android phones from a truckload of OEMs yeah probably quantity will kill somewhat quality I know the top dogs will still remain yeah the cream will rise to the top yes yeah but but I agree yet I mean and speaking of a flood of Android devices we saw our share of it obviously but it is predictably I mean of course there's gonna be a huge number of these in any trade show but the biggest among these the most anticipated the one I am already tired of talking about not really the Galaxy Note 2 what a weird thing not the note to itself but the whole galaxy note concept yeah yeah concept i mean the initial note comes out we in the tech media a lot of us certainly kind of like look at it and it's like okay we highly motivated right we will see hated yeah exactly and either love it or hate it everyone had a degree of kind of like Rick really this is what you're okay and then it goes on and sells like way more than anybody expected boom you know and it's like okay there's a market for this people really want this this big thing that we've come to call a phablet right which initially was a derogatory term and then became not one as it became successful so anyway the Galaxy Note 2 is highly anticipated I don't think it was a secret from anyone that this thing was going to be announced everyone expected this thing to be announced and then it was announced and we got our hands on it and you know I I don't know really what to what to say it's a galaxy note that's you know bigger yet smaller in the right it has a bigger display but the casing size is actually a little bit more manageable and strangely the bezel is not that thin as you'd expect so yes still comfortably hold it well not touching accidentally on the screen is silly yes yeah exactly and the s pen has been redesigned in the with a different tip so that writing on the glass screen isn't quite as slippery feels it supposedly feels a little more like ballpoint pen on paper I didn't really find that but I didn't have too much time with it on our various visits we were testing out features more than that the most striking thing to me was that they've changed their design language which we should have expected to coincide with the galaxy s3 and you know I'm it's that's not it's not my favorite hardware so I didn't really like the change all that much I liked it better than the original note which I found to be very yes blocky and clunky and i agree with you yet what I what I want to ask you is it you handled it more than I did yeah if you get the same slimy slimy feeling of its back like it's going to slip from your hand or from your table even if you blow on it kind of feels exactly like the same back it has the galaxy s3 yeah yeah with that I think there's hyper glaze on it I don't know that's not yeah just confirm only some love it some don't but if you have either greasy hands or just normal usage it becomes so slippery and don't forget guys this thing is bigger much bigger than the S so if you had problems holding the s3 or holding onto the s3 you will have even more nails with this point it's not the one for you if that's the case and we did a little comparison video between the s3 and the note 2 which was fun I usually you know comparison videos can be hit or miss for me but I think we we found some fun stuff to talk about with it one thing there's a lot that I actually do like about that I want to sound like I'm dogging this unit because I do like it there's a 3100 milliamp hour battery in this thing and it should be yeah with that screen it should be yeah i mean the original note had a 2500 milliamp hour battery though right so it's still the life was good and so better yeah it's got the new TouchWiz nature UX with a couple improvements to the camera in there there's this cool thing called air view or if you hold your stylus over the screen yeah you hover the stylus over the screen without contacting the screen you can see a little a little dot a little cursor where the phone knows the stylus is so just practically speaking in daily use you can see you know that's convenient but also they've implemented in an interesting ways like in the video player where you can go down to the scrubber and hold the stylus over the bar the progress bar yes and without advancing the video the video continues that its normal rate but you can see preview windows of what's coming up so there's little implementations like that that are cool you can hover over the calendar and see your daily appointments without clicking on it and let's not forget this is running jelly bean and IL so let's not forget that together with the galaxy s3 the Galaxy Note 2 are currently the fastest android phones money can buy on this planet yes it has a super fast quad-core Exynos processor there's not a ton of RAM I wouldn't say that it's necessarily faster than the galaxy s3 even though the s3 is yet to receive the highly anticipated jelly bean update we were probably expecting expecting that you have you here there were leaks that it will go down on the twenty-ninth it didn't not to our knowledge we're still expecting it but still either one of these two if you don't like the phablet experience go with the s3 it's a super fast film if you want the stylus the huge screen and you want to be cool because I think know having a pebble this is cool it's depending on the circles you traveling right yeah yeah it's an depending on how big your hands are these and that's always the case with any any fat so you can you can wholeheartedly by any one of these you will not be disappointed yeah and I think we're probably expecting well we're kind of rampantly speculating we're pretty much expecting this to drop an announcement to be made on this in the in the coming coupled in the next couple days right for us yes at least that's what we think it will be yeah right anyways I just I just hope how circling back a little bit to the specifications do you think that they will cut down the X you know squad core to a snapdragon just to get LTE like they did with the s2 or will they probably include a chip to offer both walk or an LD that will be the perfect solution but somehow I think you guys in the States will still get the dual core processor with the with LT functionality even though I hope this is not going to be the case I think that'll be the case too unless that what is that the s4 pro is ready yeah but we by the way we expected that from LG with the optimus G that yeah nowhere to be found right so yeah and I don't think Samsung will ever ever go with the third party ccp interpreter in fact they have the racks another season of the x nose is great right they just need to figure it out how to have the best of both worlds being one the quad core speed that they won of course you're healthy babies and I tell you what I will go on record is still saying right now in late 2012 that you give me dual-core with LTE anytime I'd I cannot sacrifice LTE connectivity and living in the United States having having had it now that you've seen the past interesting Germany oh dear God yeah having dealt with with this supposedly fast HSPA over here but no I mean these are special circumstances I'm not but but really I LTE is so critical especially the carriers in the stage now who are so overloaded on their 3g networks that it's not even funny with the exception of two you know t-mobile who has plenty of spectrum i think but so yeah no I think we'll definitely see a dual-core CPU with it with LT it'll probably the quality and the Snapdragon s4 yeah let me see everywhere but yeah there know and it'll run fine it'll do you know the galaxy s three runs fine on it right all you're eating is fast jellybean is really fast it's you know it's tech yeah I've gotta stay glued to pocket now we'll cover it as news and we're expecting to receive reviewing it of the note too soon you have lots of comparisons with everything interesting so i'll have it all their yeah it's just yeah moving past samsung the entire experience was refreshed by sony at that same Sony event this was very confusing okay guys you know this if you've watched our hands on we actually shot another hands-on video that didn't even go up what happened at the Sony event was this we ran from the Sony CEOs announcement to the to the show floor s what usually happens at announcement exactly and but we were up front I mean we were like some of the first guys to get her hands on the dolly which was great I loved at the same bull which by the way which was ridiculous cuz I had a microphone tied to my shirt and then who Tony is like trailing behind me with the camera and the cord like we're a single unit anyway but the reps the sales reps on the floor had a bunch of these cards these around their necks a stat card yeah just like business cards stuck together with specifications for every phone allowance but every I think every every so people in history so yeah exactly so 268 I know so I like it I think maybe the sum of the reps we talked to who were all wonderfully friendly and really really awesome and super like would help us out got a little confused we got some wrong information from some of them and since the phones had just been announced we kind of weren't examining them terribly closely on the initial hands on and let's not forget that they look alike those keynote didn't necessarily include specification no it doesn't and and the in the phones look very similar yeah and especially original through a hand letters I mean the yeah yeah and this confusing namings like it's like the Xperia T the V the J it's like ok it's like I can't even keep the One X and the 1v and the one you know yeah has history the notorious oh it's they should call it not the Xperia but sony alpha but a sony alpha yeah that's true yeah so anyway the point is we got some miss title videos up we had did hands-on zuv different phones that weren't the phones we thought they were and then we got specs messed up so sorry about that even if you look at the phones they look the same they just want saying I mean they're all rectangles but some of them you know whatever you can you can actually check out the specs add pocket now but the one of the cool ones was the was the the waterproof one yeah because there's the T was kind of the flagship model of the TX was and then the tea was the German specific one or maybe that's vice versa and one of them was was was was immersive oh and to see a smartphone that is a merciful is one thing usually they're really rugged eyes on the dirt a goalie bricks up to 10 meters yeah that's what they told us up to 10 meters is that of course you will never go if you're saying yes Cooper I just give them into 10 meters in here yeah but I actually don't know I'm so reluctant after that giant mess of a speck problem that we have to even talk about these things no we have to we have a saying here it would give the Caesar what's the Caesars so yeah let's say that Sony phones are good I mean the Xperia line was good at mwc to where Sony failed was too quickly act on updates and of course my net will disagree with me because his specific review unit cracked one week after normal usage but so probably I hope it was just one unit of the millions but the phones look what you'd expect the sony phone to look and the sony specific UI is as you'd expect it to be with their live wallpapers it's nothing out of the ordinary and this is what i'm trying to say it's not it's not like jaw-dropping is just another android phone and that's it and I mean how long has that been the case because you have to talk about the Sony stuff right because I don't didn't don't misinterpret me but I like speaking as the average American I feel like I don't care cuz sony has failed so hard at making a name for itself in the mobile space in the United States yes true but still sony phones have great camera quality something which other androids not to point now out one or the other didn't manage to quite achieved so they have said they're great point let's not forget so he's a huge company they're offering massive yeah also services like music services proprietary services they have the record label so they have the power to do something it's just that they're probably right now going in a there in the valley just like HTC was nice but their Valley I feel like HTC's Valley is a different shape right we're like Sony's Valley has been this long intense david hasn't even been a decline in like this is there one let's be fair and see it's a steady climb is it it's a steady climb yeah I don't know all right we'll see about that I don't hate sony it's just that I've never ever been impressed by any of their smartphones that have been widely available probably let's not forget that there and most of them are Asian companies yes but they're specifically Japanese Sahni yeah if I recall this well and if I didn't don't bring me hate mail but no what I want to say is that there's a difference in design language and perception and it's one thing to be used you guys in the US with a motorola design language or the specific HTC for the USA design language and it's another thing to have a sony japanese phone for asia and europe it's just normal that you guys don't like it that much but I don't have anything negative to say about Sony and except for the fact that we want more and we want better yeah and that's it I think they stand a chance here's the thing I I just think I the only thing I'll say is that I think sony has this really really long and proud legacy of making amazing products and they were one of the companies that inspired Steve Jobs when he was about building Apple products you know so I mean I have great respect for the company's just in the mobile space I've just never been wowed so they they look yet ya know that I hope they do bus will be a favorite yeah the next the the company that I feel has gotten it really right in at least one respect and people already disagree with me about this on Twitter so I mean yeah no absolutely not everybody agrees the is HTC and I love what they're doing with the one line I love what they're doing with their new design language on their new products and that applies to the desire x we saw the desire x announced and then choline photo code name to the proto yes as we knew it as we knew it as the much cooler sounding proto but now it's the desire x lols do name prototype cares I know photo would have been so much I would have carried probably carried a phone named proto anyway HTC a kind of announced this quietly it was on display we did a hands-on on it it's a mid-range phones got a 1 gigahertz dual-core Snapdragon s4 it's got a 4 inch Super LCD wvga resolution by the way diesel car outside 5 megapixel back camera 4 gigs of internal storage right blah blah blah ice cream sandwich sense for that oh it's a mid-range phone and that's all it and that's all it is but you look at the casing of this thing and it's like somebody took it's like somebody named HTC took the One X and like narrowed it down and slimmed it by about you know two three one third so it's about two-thirds the size and kind of tweaked the design language even further to make it even a little more bold the lens you know the camera lens is big and oversized yeah and there's a cool yeah there's some cool color options there's a metal bezel around the around the screen which is black it's a and this is going to come down to a matter taste and I'll just shut up because I'm just being a fanboy about it like it's I think it's a beautiful little device and of course its mid-range and it runs sense which probably means it's laggy I think we noticed a little bit of evidence on that under a demo unit probably not final software telling it to true there's no it's too early we're not this is not a review or everybody just was playing with a whole team demo units abused right but in any case it's a mid-range phone we're not expecting huge performance out of it but I would be proud to carry it for a little bit just on the hardware along the casing I really love it so not to disappoint one hot and one cold Samsung and HTC are the leading OEMs when it comes to android and because of their release cycles they leap from HTC One X and the one line in general was announced at mwc in Barcelona in February that was a good lineup it was quad-core phone then then came the galaxy s3 at the end of May and immediately the samsung phone took the first pot as in the hottest phone the fastest phone now I expected it to to be that but I also expected to see HTC's next leap frog since they are in encounter time it was HTC's time to move maybe with the highly anticipated and leaked HTC one x+ which never saw a latter day at least not here I expected HTC to reply to respond but no they did not they brought out a desire x and what did samsung do damn galaxy note is a note to two steps in endgame yeah so I really not sure what what HTC is waiting for their bubbly waiting a little wishful thinking here waiting a little bit for for the year to pass and they'll probably just drop us something drop something on us before the holiday season if they don't this year there's going to be no other events major events and if they wait until MVC 2012-2013 it's going to be bad before them so I'm just hoping to see something coming out of HTC which will at least now reduce the the gap between Samsung and HTC to only one leap frog part of me wonders if that was the plan if the plan was that HTC had this 2011 this thing where they did this taiwanese thing which i understand is a taiwanese kind of a business lucama commonality to like oh we had some success now we're going to flood the market with it with a bunch of different variations on models and then they realized that was a mistake pulled back and then i wonder if the strategy was we're going to do this one line I'm going to do an improvement on it every year like like say Apple does and with moderate improvements in the interim and I wonder if that was the plan so let's not forget HTC had like four phones last year at IFA they only had this small tiny booth which was like I'm gonna try to be a play smart here as here no feet yeah it was like a 50 square feet I like 20 square meters something like that small small smells like a it was like a teenager's bedroom 3 demo units of course they they are pushing the beats by dr. dre brand every phone had headphones attached but that's it one phone and I expected something more from HTC and I have nothing against them they do a great job but bring us more I I'm a little impatient for more of myself and we'll see what their what their thing is but however who had more what did ya is your game you know who always have you know who did the opposite thing another company name starts with an age but is a silent age is Huawei from China and it's not huawei because i seen lots of common no this is not the US company guys it's not huawei it's Huawei but it's but it's or 18 I don't think it's I don't know the HS there guys this is different with shiny speaking listener if there is a chinese-speaking listing service actually love to hear that yeah audio file please yeah that we that would be awesome at podcast at pocketnow.com you should send it please or tweet it to us and listen to the info at the end of the podcast that is a really good idea because I we got to put this to bed once and for all at least yeah yeah so anyway the company in question had a huge display at at Aoife I think it dwarfed besides Samsung who had a whole like gymnasium it dwarfed pretty much any way any other OEM 5 x is bigger than HTC probably eight times as big yeah so like you're walking through the the trade floor and there's this big white like flower like structure and enlarged Bay's of demo phones behind it and a bunch of wonderful PR people walking around would smartly dressed everyone very friendly and very helpful and under this giant sort of fiberglass white flower were some new devices and I think what there were three for this tuesday I've let two phones the mediapad 10 fhd yeah I've got seven light and the phones the Essen they were both in the g series which recently learned that the g series is a mid-range series and the beat is the high end right because good good years gold p is platinum yes hello Janie the g six hundred and the g 3 30 plus the update you can talk about this you reviewed the phone that the p1 the update for the new emotion UI yeah so they want to get this right out of the way the phones are unremarkable yeah unfortunately yeah yeah yeah they're mid-range phones the ascend branded as jess g like you said gee 630 they're not really worth discussing i don't think there's there's enough there no they're just iterative improvements on existing find it's what ZTE does and they were not here this year uh-huh it was what it's the same thing ZTE does it's the seven is the seventh it's the second manufacturer and they go like like head-to-head but they were missing here it's the same thing they always bring an army of mediocre towards right low-end phones flooding the market with yet we made this so anyway um the interesting thing the only interesting thing in the phone department from huawei huawei is was this skin that they built for the p1 and we had michael from Huawei show us to getting i'll give us a walkthrough of this new UI which they're calling i always mess it up and I messed it up in the in this video too it's not imagination you I it's emotion UI emotion you that's probably my fault because we had a lapsus both of us and everything is it the moat is it the imagination he's a shirt and the cortex seriously we're cutting the video together listeners after the after the fact and I'm writing the shell post for it and I'm like isn't it your imagination you I write in terms like no emotion okay two minutes later Mike is it a motion or imagination so anyway that's the story behind that's the story the emotion UI always seemed do it seems to have built for users who are confounded by the Android experience who who don't like the complicated nature of it but you know quote unquote complicated nature of Android so they've built this skin where they've basically eliminated the the Apple on yeah so you can have as many home screens as you want and these big friendly-looking bubble icons and little folders and stuff but you have no app launcher which is a little weird to me because I kind of always considered the app launcher to be the simplest part of Andhra right so I don't I kind of don't know where they're going with this but Michael was really cool about about telling us about it because he was telling us that the that were always intent when they built this was to say all right we're gonna try this we're gonna try and simplify Android but we're gonna pay really close attention to what the users are telling us yep and if if the users tell us that this is not something they want whatever we will just you know cut it out and of course any company you know big hit tries to behave that way but he was really upfront about he's like yeah I mean this is basically you know and he basically said this is a test if you guys haven't seen the video please do so our youtube channel youtube / e 2.com / pocketnow video but if you can't right now i'm sure you've seen em I you I or me we or we call it however you want this is thing looks exactly like that with the round icons and and it is move and don't get me wrong it is not sure that it is something that I would personally want to run on my androids bumble it's a matter of taste it is so that's nothing and of course there's this included application which is a tutorial that teaches you how to do stuff like Android users were morons no we r power users you guys are power users and you tweak you flash you do stuff with your phone which a normal Joe would necessarily not even dream about doing so I'm not sure what what the thing is there but yeah that's suave or here or where is the thumbs and the tablets are also on the mediocre end o the chat we yeah there was something else I wanted to say what is you I but I really go on I forgot I was it yet don't fight in the well fight all you want in the comments about how it's how it is or is not a ripoff of miui i don't i don't know it'll be interesting to see where it goes yeah but the tablets like you were saying follow following the vein this is this is the first iteration right off the emotion UI so I'm just like yeah that's slow 3d sense one point oh right yes to see where this goes with version 2 or version free me too cuz molly is not going away they're really really maybe locally according it to our Samsung devices or HTC's be careful um yeah the huawei mediapad we won't talk about android tablets is the last kind of topic of discussion and as we mentioned huawei had brought their mediapad 10 fhd mediapad 10 fhd and mediapad 7 light there was no mediapad 7 like pro so I don't know why the light was there but this is this one has no sugar right yeah this is a diet yeah so these are what they sound like they're a 10 inch tablet in a 7-inch tablet yeah and our experience with the with the first one the 10-inch one was interesting and it resembles whatever I went through last year ethos Michael about the experience when the non-functioning tablet this year and I will tell you about my story from all right so our first day we roll up to the huawei booth and we'll go to this tablet uh wow you guys have a 10-inch you know what's going on here and they brought it out and we're very friendly and very apologetic but they said they didn't have power we'd have to look at the hardware only and that was the same and that was so that's when we did the hands on it was like oh okay well hopefully they'll get it fixed and it happened with me too in last year in the think either IFA or mwc i'm not sure where but same company tablet non-functioning one i know lots of things happen at trade shows but guys don't bring one tablet with you to the show floor bring at least five or six whenever somebody messes the settings up or the battery dies or the cable just gets cut our bills ice cream on it yeah just you have another one yeah and then they move to their credit when we came back a day later they had not only that one fixed but they also had other one that on display so that you know they fixed it but yeah that day one that was a real disappointment but but the tablet itself like holding that thing up and you can see me waving it around in the hands on like it's a piece of like it's a legal pad it's all that thing when you your home and yeah it's like a hand fan yeah but yeah there's a fancy name for I can't think it's so light um in most tablets when they're when they're that light they feel really cheap in that they're flexible like the deity of you can kind of knock your knock your knuckles on and it sounds like a hollow space behind there it doesn't feel very very high end but this one was solid it was just too light it felt solid but it was too late to feel and like anything but cheap like it was like a pad of paper so um but don't get your hopes up guys this is waiting for something to launch on the tablet yeah is is something that it's laggy probably probably it's not we always say this Instagram feed on the final software or sprung enough final hardware or movie was running 5500 applications in the background but the way we experienced it is that yeah it is lagging it is it sounds like is the seven the seven is really the seventh does that was was kind of a disaster but saw it on the software side but yeah the 10 yeah that's the tennis yeah that's the story of the huawei tablets may be there maybe i don't know maybe we won't we'll see how they have that goes the moving on a tablet that wasn't quite quite so underwhelming sony has revised their tablet s they're sort of folded magazine tablet there they're weird form factor experiment it was was the P no that was the well the P was yeah that but the the the original s had the folding oh yeah yeah the tapered yeah yeah it's like listeners if you're not familiar with it it's is if you pulled a magazine open and then folded the front cover around back and you know how you get that hump where the spine is a sony built this into their tablet i never thought it looked very good but i was like good you know I appreciate new form factors all right cool yeah so what they've done they've rebranded it as an xperia tablet and redesigned it slightly so that that curve is still present it suggests the initial design intent but it is much slimmer and it makes it it makes for a more streamlined device it's still kind of awkward it's still a little weird but it's comfortable to hold and the really cool thing about it is that it is it's the exposure proof yeah sony had this really cool display at their event where they had this yeah well they had this like 90 degree cut out of a circular display table where the sprinkler hit sprinklers were mounted above the devices that were sitting there and one of them was this Xperia Tablet S just getting rained on and water is just shooting down this thing and it's not this it's not a big bulky rubberized construction tablet like it's really thin and nice it's just getting soaked but it didn't care that was really cool and I can't wait to see more of that from others what I'm more amped about is that they the inclusion itself of a tablet in the Xperia line means for Sony exactly what the inclusion of the assumes nexus 7 means for Google and for the Nexus brand I mean they will probably treat this tablet along with their other Xperia phones there sometimes excellent sometimes a little bit behind with the with software but it is an xperia tablet and a fish Xperia Tablet S yeah that's pretty much it as a functionality goes the party is good as you'd expect it functional device it's not the fastest tablet out there but it show me against the job done and it's it's it's innovative to like it's got this guest mode in the software that that we wrote I wrote a piece on this all right well it's like user accounts why aren't why aren't tablets given user account settings and there are third-party apps that do this but this is built-in it's called guest mode it lets you restrict certain apps when you certain users don't sure yes your exactly and I mean I think that's really cool and Sony's bringing that what I think it is excellent about this tablet is that it will have a 64 gig version which will still be upgradeable with a microSD card and yeah those of you who use your tablet for content consumption which is the main usage except what i use it only for work you'll love this one yeah and the price point is not that bad either how do you did just blow by the IR blaster man he's not you're not after about the IR blaster now they've they've done something that when we've written a piece on the inning Joe Joe wrote a piece on this parts like you know why are we building I are windows into these super modern tablets and to control your TV yeah and you know that's cool because apparently apparently people do that so whatever yeah the pricing is not too bad this is what it's 600 for the 64 gig model so that's you know reasonable i wouldn't pay it personally but but you know if you need a lot of capacity and then expandability on top of that and you want to be you want a tablet that will withstand something like a rainstorm and that's running a competent OS like android i mean that's it's a solid choice and let's not forget that it comes with me accessory that the surface like keyboard dock which comes with a go yeah we go we'll go for a hundred bucks if that's important to you then you can grab something like that yeah it's adds functionality it also adds bulk not too much though so it's something to I think it's something to look up to it is cheap do you know how tired I was that day I don't remember the keyboard dock I was so exhausted as is no short amount of commenters have been quick to remind us well I look like crap on camera thanks at 342 all-night Drive and you were like a third 12 12 hour flight yeah and then navigating the streets of Berlin anyway did this is we will move on here because we're coming up on our time limit but we're gonna go a little over the this is cool all right this isn't new this was this was cool this is exactly this was cool months and months and months ago I just wasn't paying attention so toshiba released a tablet now excuse me no that's not right toshiba announced a tablet back at mwc yeah in freaking Barcelona in February and they called it the 8270 which even the toshiba guy i talked to admit it was like the most uninspired name everything this is like yet stands for android tablet like oh okay cool and they announced it back in mwc and they are still showing it here at you know whatever six months later seven months later in bars in a berlin exactly what LG did with the Optimus view yes exactly saw the view but I NBC still got a little elves in the clay acer a cloud mobile same same story I think so with a lot of companies do this I'm not dogging toshiba but the problem is they fooled me and they didn't do it on purpose I fooled myself because I didn't know enough I saw this thing on the table the same night I discovered the HP the beauty and the XD envy x2 and but I saw this toshiba tablet laying on the table and was like what is this little 7 inch guy and what I say in the hands-on video no sorry the the quick tour video we didn't call it a hands-on because it wasn't you know because it's announced ages ago it looks like somebody took a nexus 7 reverse engineered it and then built it with expensive materials like it's got it's you know it's got this metal back on it oh I don't care about that this Queen had me from the first one in the screen this 7 inch AMOLED panel couldn't get much in the way of details on it and the specs we did get were wrong it was calling it as a TFT IPS ya know it's an AMOLED panel with the most beautiful color saturation you've ever seen and they had that this they were showcasing it with this a green nebula wallpaper which was so gorgeous and the device I mean just the way it felt in the hand from from the display of the wave Feldon and it was all such a premium 7 inch android tablet experience it is but it comes at a cost well that is the thing I mean they they toshiba has not announced anything specific but they kept quoting prices I heard two separate quotes from two separate people one of which was yeah it's going to be in the 400 euro price range and then another guy said we're going to be that 500 euro price range this was let's take the cheapest one right even if it's 400 euro what does that translate into dollars it was do we say 52nd about anywhere but the 600 Doppler 7 inch android tablet no no no you may have been able to get people to buy into in a pre nexus 7 world even then you wouldn't but maybe now forget it yeah but one thing to do Shabazz defense is that that this specific tablet is like preceding the nexus 7 with like six months so whatever didn't build this tablet they thought of its internals and its core features hardware-wise the nexus 7 was nowhere to be seen and of course we knew that Google and the suits were aiming to reduce the price point because they want a cheap affordable Nexus brand what the shiba could do not too much is that they could drop the price point a little bit maybe cut their loss at their their gains their percentage of fun we'll just try and break it break even on it go to the dumping policy and maybe probably they will sell it will probably not sell when they are compared one on one with the Nexus 7 you'll instantly won't feel those four hundred dollars exiting your wall so but it's a neat little tablet and if it were any cheaper I'll probably buy one because it's just that screen is awesome and the screen is awesome and it's not you know it's not running jellybean it doesn't have the advantages of a Nexus device the internet but it has a rear mounted camera that shoots okay pictures as a front mounted camera it different mental cameras two megapixel which is pretty cool but the thing is what would you pay for this this is a 7 inch in free mail knowing or telling the Nexus 7 is out yeah like what would it is a premium tablet it's a premium 7-inch it'll get so give deluxe edition 7 inch tablet so say it's too many guy max bye max 2 99's you'd pay double the cost of the cheapest nexus 7 for this premium experience I would too having had my hands on if I were just listening to this podcast I'd say we're both crazy idiots all right but you have to get your hands on this thing and I sound like a toshiba like she'll but whatever i don't care i really like it i like it almost i don't like it anywhere near as much as I like that HP Envy x2 but I for an Android tablet in the 7 inch range if I'm going to carry something that's not the Nexus 7 from what I saw with my brief time I would I would want to carry this so we kind of got to wrap it up here but we we put kind of shoe horn this into the Android tablets let's talk about militantly LG was here ok yeah I know it's this is oak leaf regatta finished with finish with the topics and I just remembered let's insert this into that's right you guys listeners and service mentally in the phone section LG was here we expected the LG optimus G I just mentioned it a couple of minutes ago that first super fun run running the Snapdragon the probe ship which would bring quad-core and LTE and LG teased it the Qualcomm teased it the phone was not hear what was here though was the optimus l9 i think which was the natural follow-up to the L Series which we see Nana Barcelona back then it was the l3 l5 07 and now we have the online which is a meek little phone it's a budget phone but it has someone towards high tech as aspects so it's running it's it's fast and the LGU I version 3.0 it's definitely an improvement over previous versions so I want to talk about that yeah please do i'm gonna die with it because I LG is another brand that suffers in the United States and it doesn't get much exposure and I don't have much experience with it so the I keep hearing about this LG skin that like people just always are like how it's such crap and whatever and it looks it doesn't it's not pretty ok it's not a very pretty you I it's it's not among the obvious either I mean it's no it's nice not say managed right it true right right ok you know this is all subjective but it's not the best you I but I'm doing the hands-on with this l9 and it's my first experience aside from my quick time with the view using the UI and it's responsive and I mean it flies it's it's it's as responsive as the latest iteration of touch woods which is very responsive for it but it has what TouchWiz doesn't a truckload of transition effects from home screen Johannes watch the hands on video if you want to see these in their entirety but like when you're swiping between home screens you can select between various things including like an accordion effect which is really weird looking for like bait bait turning effect yeah Freddie the effect soon it's all you know what it's its craft or whatever you know it's it's the unnecessary improvements but I love you I touches and if you don't want to use these you can turn them off you can make it like any other android phone right but it just it that those are nice touches and as is the ability to turn an icon if you don't like any of the stock icons for like the browser you can take a picture of whatever and with the phone's camera crop it and make that picture your launch icon that's cool I'm through but still still with your sisters with all of these and the in the buzz which led up to IFA waiting for the optimus G bln is just no I feel let down yeah yeah and how about the optimist view how about the eyes well I finally got my hands on this is if you don't remember your listeners to the their phablet the LG phablet that looks like a coaster or a roof shingle or something free aspect ratios screen yeah I felt exactly the same as you Tony when you shoot stony would tell us and he said this on the podcast before where he's like guys it's not as bad as it looks and I was like whatever man that thing looks ridiculous and then you hold it and it's yeah it's it's like a graham cracker but it's still it feels better in the hand than it looks like it would I would still never carry one but for somebody who wants a four point four by three aspect ratio at that size and you know there's no reason that the phablet market has to be dominated by this one form factor that Samsung is going to dictate now you know it's cool i'm glad LG is pushing it i just fighting the evil in me but it will come out i just hope we this this thing was announced at mwc yeah we saw it in barcelona we are seeing it now with up to spec specifications in IFA in berlin I just hope LG won't show it up again in February in 2015 and Barcelona i would probably I don't know I jelly bean and 2 gigs of ram and walk already but and I want to design the markets coming soon yeah it has to be on the market should have been a long time ago but this is really less trying to get there are rumors that that in the states at least verizon has partnered with LG to push this as their family actually there were even more recent rumors when they might have cancelled that alongside like just like t-mobile might have guests of the original note we don't know unless we something happens real quick it's it is too late it was launched to combat the first generation note and now the note is at second generation and the first generation competitor is not yet even on the market like when the touchpad launched to to compete with the second iPad yeah you can't do that well we'll see how that plays out it would be very sad if that never launched but there's a thank you for remembering that I didn't want to leave Algeria there is an item that we could not put in any other category so we kind of put it at the end of tablets category here this is the Samsung Galaxy camera what so we've been talking a lot about how point and shoots are kind of dying and you know I don't have any numbers on that that's not a factual statement it's just kind of this thing where it's like yeah camera digital cameras are probably going to go extinct outside of professionals yeah consumer ones it yeah and even the prosumer ones will stick around i think but yeah consumer grade point and shoots are probably going the way of the dodo and that's okay because phone cameras are getting really good but then Samsung is like you know what we're not doing anything I'm not doing anything except dominating the smartphone world let's do this hobby project and put it under the increasingly watered-down galaxy brand and call and they took their w-what 850w 850 whatever that cameras the ten ton hammer is called and slapped android a big-ass 4.6 4.8 inch yes just without just any Android jelly bean an internal jelly beans will only be one and there are cameras with jelly it's crazy so we were all up into the trade floor and I'm like it we're shouldn't hands-on it's likely tongue is like you want to go do that galaxy camera and I'm like all right that means you wanna fine and we go over there we find him a gentle one which is quit fast for some reason becoming our trademark yes and and I fire this thing up and you know what I should give a shout out to the IFA people again Samsung's promo people who were running the floor were amazing they were no that's all so friendly Julian if you ever listen to this euro you're awesome the guy who showed us a galaxy camera I don't remember his name but he was awesome too so he shows us all the features and you can hop on into a custom set a custom camera settings screen I think that's the you're talking about the things which conduct on the under lens yeah yes I think that's the that's as manual setting as it gets so what it is if you haven't seen it is our hands on is you can hop into the settings screen and then it's like an old it's like a camera's lens let with all of its setting rings like with the Rings for um for what if f style for focus aperture for zooming yes and you can like manually you know rotate these on the screen using touch movements and that you know that's really cool and it's it would be a gimmick if it didn't work so well and it does work well I think of the guys I'm gonna say something right now I reviewed the PureView 808 and I said that it's a camera with film functionality now this galaxy camera it comes with Wi-Fi only splash 3g and 4g functionality yeah so you snap a picture you can of course always transfer it via Wi-Fi direct to your tablet or your phone but you can upload it if you have a 3g radio to facebook to instagram do hbu twitter you name it right from the camera why didn't they put a speaker on that so that has phone functionality this might be not probably the preferred phone for people but no it was just and don't think it would have been so difficult to achieve it wouldn't have and you know so you listeners that this camera is huge if you watch our hands on it it's big to hold in the hand I mean it's it's not meant to be terribly portable it's meant to be it like a DSLR replacement even though the optics aren't as good as a DSLR I think it's like 12 megapixels 16-megapixel we can play something in there so it's big right and and but you're right they could have put an earpiece and a microphone on a speakerphone with my for a speakerphone and you know people have talked on weirder devices there's that Nokia taco phone right the 5800 or whatever that was I will gladly toggle 7-inch tablet so oh yeah Antonio talking on tablet like people will talk on stuff I would even talk in the galaxy camera if a minute could carry it around and take cool shots with it anyway yeah that's a dang against it it had but I think my takeaway from my time with the galaxy camera and I told this to to a samsung VP who asked me about it and I meant every word it's an item i came up to look at didn't expect to like it sort of expected to maybe my head make fun of it a little and within the two minutes at one me over i was like i can actually see myself carrying this I think you better prepare because next year that they will be doing hands-on videos with android-powered dishwashers it's a good point right right alongside the webos toaster yes um cool so I just to that's that's kind of the end of the products we wanted to talk about that unfortunately there was nothing from nothing really really high end in the tablet space from HTC do you have that slight bitter taste in your mouth induce a thing I mean it was a show it was a cliche it's one of those shows which are big and you have to attend if again but I was expecting more I was too I didn't you know I think I was surprised but I was pleasantly surprised when Samsung carted out some windows 8 stuff because i was expecting a galaxy note 2 but i didn't know what else to expect so there were some pleasant surprises but yeah I really something Austin is it let the real attends like a sous um wasn't even here really they had their the booth a tiny little if HTC's booth was small a sous had actually a sous Intel Intel did what Google does at mwc there was a huge intel booth and order partners had small micro islands within the sub sub duluth yeah yeah so as soon as was all that it was nine square meters free break free it's very small they had like to send books on display and I think on the other side to others and books on this place yeah there were no phones and we guys the rap ok this is this mold booth within the intel booth where's where's the hugest Sue's booth and there's not now there's not this is that ok ah god it was such a just book I wanted to lay my hands on a pad phone even though it's old I wanted to you know yes that's not get a sous dominated MVC tablets he had the Infinity bed this was the talk of the town yeah and then there just weren't here so you know whatever that's cool that's a tactical decision on their part i was just personally disappointed who do you think motorola had a blue leak was doing our company here so yeah so let's let's talk about that the winner we talked about this concept of this winning company like who that's right sorry is it sorry survive um auto traffic berlin we wouldn't movie value our automobiles here that's part of the fun um this concept of like kind of like who won the eva for in this is just a personal take there's no data to back this up for company and for device I think we should each give a response I think and in a company sense the clear clear winner of Eva was Samsung in that they were the most visible they had a lot of anticipation built up for this galaxy note 2 which they capitalized on delivered and then over delivered they were like and here's all this other stuff too which while it's maybe not the best I don't like the achieve too much whatever but it's still really really important and it's gonna sell really well probably so I think Samsung really brought the heat and they are they continue to be in it to win it I think they were the winner kind of company side you if and Barcelona I said that Microsoft was the big loser because there were no windows phones and no windows tablets I think that this year as a company Microsoft is a winner I mean I'm seeing this which could be interpreted in two ways they want all right because they had so much exposure on almost every company had a windows tablet yeah and I'm seeing this while my heart is shrinking and shrinking of fear that I just hope they will not flood the market with cheap B category products now we love it I don't think there was a company who matters and who didn't have a windows 8 on this play it's true yeah so I think yeah they had and if they do what we expect them to do two days from now with Windows Phone 8 the announcement with Nokia they could take away this quarter maybe they really could I mean it's particularly in the buzz in the buzz sense because you know I think maybe Samsung gave us seated a little bit of ground than that in that sense because they as a galaxy has three big big blast right but the note 2 is not going to resonate with them with regular consumers sure it's gonna you know and and of course there are millions of note users but a lot of a large portion of them are either really had hardcore users or they're geeks and then this is not that's not a you know an attack on note users by the way absolutely not I this is I I really like to note a lot but it's not a it's not a device for everyone and so the note 2 is not as buzz buzz worthy and none of their products whereas buzz worthy as they have been so Microsoft has an opportunity to jump in and steal the limelight I agree yeah even more so that the it is it's just that time Microsoft is always waiting for the end of the year and let's not forget we are waiting for the surface their tablet yeah which will be cheap I I predict this I don't know why did I predict this I hope you're right but I don't know it could be it should be the same way like Google's handling things here's my Nexus it's cheap Nexus 7 if you want something premium by little Sheba 8270 mmm this is what my perception this is my surface it's cheap if you want something pie around by the samsung smart pc that would be it would be interesting well seeing we'll see speaking of devices let's let's wrap this up with a with a winner selection I you want to go first you want me to belong in the device category you'll be longer I'll be longer okay I think or shorter in the same vein as the Microsoft argument I don't think Samsung was the was the winner of you know well I think they were the winner is a company I don't think they were the winner in the device category neither the note 2 nor the achieve devices is really going to capture a lot of imaginations and they don't really have the the opportunity they're all sequel devices except for the achieves but they're don't not really terribly remarkable so I think that HP has a really really big opportunity to help define a product category with the envy x2 I think it is well built enough to serve as a flagship type device that can really grab a lot of attention in an environment where they're working with a new platform in Windows 8 which is going to be Microsoft going to be so hungry too you know dominate with Windows 8 they have a huge user base is so installed already clean windows seven right and in addition though it's it's gonna be on the forefront on the leading edge of this wave crest of a new product category whether you call it a hybrid or a convertible or you know whatever this tablet with keyboard not keyboard accessory tablet with keyboard component that you know with with stock keyboard component it's the first such device that i think i would i would use personally and i think it I think if HP plays it right and I said this in the piece I wrote today they have the potential for a really big winner on their hands and they are desperate to get into the tablet space after the year they lost on the whole touchpad debacle so that is the that is the device winner for me for Aoife 2012 the HP Envy x2 almost purely based on speculation and potential Tony my favorite device I can't remember exactly the model number but was the intelligent vacuum cleaner which whatever it did a wall it returns and Esther the Rumba yes agreed yes to get serious guys know I don't have a clear device winner I mean the note 2 is buzz-worthy it's a great fast film but it's not for me and it's definitely not something wrong breaking as the note 1 was back in its day same goes for all the rest of the film's I mean HTC disappointed LG disappointed or maybe we expect it too much out of them then a sure with with their phones they disappointed so in terms of phones I know none and in terms of tablets and trying to think of one but I can't identify one with which I should resonate or which I'd say I I need to grab this end day one so as as hardware as far as hardware goes I'm leaving IFA without a dream next device MVC I always said that I'm gonna get the PureView 808 and I gotta get the PadFone I got the 808 I'm yet to get the bathroom but I will I'm leaving IFA and I'm looking forward to mwc because it can't see anything which is exciting at least not on the show floor that's a that's a sobering a sobering but realistic perspective and said one handset it is but don't don't miss read us listeners we've had an awesome time covering FIFA it has been a really great time hanging out with getting it to getting to know Tony likewise for real yeah not just talking over over Skype every day and we will have by the way we will have a great video coming up oh yeah the wrap up buddy wrap up video you should not miss that it will happen whenever somebody either Michael or me get back home earlier it's gonna be you Michael right I'll have to upload it and once I get the internet back maybe yeah make sure you watch that and the acid and what you know if you guys are if you're if you're bored if you want to watch a string of videos that are really fun from the trade floor to try an get a sense of what it was like and also to see these devices just search for our Aoife tag IFA tag on Puckett now and all of them are grouped under their pocketnow.com / tags / I fa fa and yeah it's awesome so there's a lot of there's a lot of cool devices and probably something that we missed but we are we're at time so sorry that this episode was a little late but that's going to do it for us for this special Aoife edition episode of the pocket na weekly from Berlin if you guys out there are social of course your social be sure but it's so follow on Twitter who wrote this crap no be sure and follow us on Twitter for real the official account is at pocket now tweets I'm Michael Fisher as you know i'm at captain two phones Tony over there is a tan Tandy Naja aunty o ND na gy you can also follow us on facebook and google+ you can just search pocketnow there and if you have a question or a topic suggestions sorry we didn't get to them on the special edition episode here but please email us that podcast at pocketnow.com we love hearing from you and finally if you like the podcast please help us spread the word throw us a thumbs up on YouTube leave a positive review on iTunes we'd really appreciate that all that aside thanks so much for listening and stay tuned for more next episode of pocket not weekly is coming to your ears next week till then this is michael fisher this has been an seventy night saying athlete is in i'll see juice no truth and goodbye thanks you
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