Gadgetory

from pocketnow.com this is PocketNow weekly hello and welcome to episode 01 0 or episode 10 of the pocket na weekly the once-a-week podcasts from pocketnow.com we discussed news and opinion from the world of mobile technology tablets convertibles hybrids smartphones lots and lots of smartphones I'm your host Michael Fisher senior editor at pocket now and I'm joined as usual by editor-in-chief Brandon minimun good morning to you hello there and our semi regular companion the man from the desert regions Jolie by the android guy good morning to you good morning um guys how are we doing today I'm tired I went first it's two hours earlier here so you don't have any excuse doesn't have the Sun is just coming up he's a wonderful working morning yeah that's right Joe is joining us from a from a different time zone as always and we're recording a little earlier than usual so Joe is definitely the the MVP of the of the morning hours how about you Brandon how are things down there and PA good and uh you guys were talking about being tired and I was going to say well oh I had my coffee and I promised myself growing up and hearing my parents say that every morning oh don't talk to me to know my coffee that I would never be that guy or one of those adults that says you know I need have my coffee before I can talk to you in the morning but I traumatic yeah miraculously turned into one of those people so I'm feeling energetic because I had my coffee isn't that incredible how that happens you just become the thing you said you never would yeah I didn't get the coffee bug until I was like good till I moved up to Boston actually I didn't I never drank coffee in college and now it's like it's just a necessity of all day long so as today's podcast gonna be all about coffee talk and coffee to our welcome to sell Quanah you guys are so funny we add know we had a ton of news this week and we have to get to it before we do though I there's even news that we didn't get to which I'll get to when we get to it LOL i got that stupid sentence ya know there's there's there's so much stuff that that happened that we need to talk about but before we do that Brandon you have a you have a window here to speak about what you will thank you for providing you through later wow so I wouldn't I want to do something involving all three of us and a little bit of role playing a role playing why was he got iOS 6 yesterday like the rest of the world and after installing iOS 6 is very anti-climactic if i said that right like i look at my phone says welcome to iOS 6 i'm like yes I've got iOS 6 this is great a new version of the operating system I swipe through some screens I sign into itunes or whatever iCloud and then I'm get I get back to my home screen and it looks exactly the same except this time this time there is a new icon for passbook which by the way doesn't even work it links to the to the apple store and nothing happens when you do that and and I think to myself what about all of those other people then stall iOS 6 maybe they're not upgrading to the iphone 5 don't they want something different maybe Apple should have added a new wallpaper to say hey something's new here or maybe tweak the dock a little bit to say hey we spent a long time on this we know that you were waiting for your yearly software update and here's what's new mm-hmm okay so the average user you know doesn't really see anything different and then they start using some of the apps they see maps a little bit different that the advanced more advanced users will see that settings have been updated with more settings there's do not disturb there's a 200 very little features and so inevitably this is gonna catch up with apple and they're going to have to do something big for maybe iOS 7 or maybe iOS 8 who knows and so I thought it would be fun if we do a little bit of role playing I will be Tim Cook Jojo you can be Phil Schiller and and Michael you can be Scott Forstall and we're going go into a conference room and we're going to talk about iOS 7 we're planning for iOS 7 where we're gonna release it in about a year and we we want to make sure that we do something different this time so that people like me and the average user doesn't get disappointed when they hit the hit the Update button for iOS 7 so this is this is exactly the cut the type of scenario I did not foresee when it went when giving Brandon the the floor this morning I am happy that you're keeping me on my toes this is great and I I don't I I don't want to do this kind of poking fun an apple I want to seriously have a discussion pretending that were these guys on what we can do to make iOS 7 different and and and iterative not not it iterative but something that's a true revolution so all right so just just to serve everybody knows what's going on Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple obviously Scott Forstall is the is the what here's the Mac os10 and iOS 5 he's just the I the iphone software guy is he okay all right yeah cuz I saw it like I don't watch the videos usually I just read the live blogs or sometimes we write the lab I was like okay okay cool and then um Phil Schiller of course is marketing head of marketing yes and those bits don't really matter i mean you know the marketing guy can talk about iOS software and but you know just for ya so i'm going to start off and I'm gonna say gentlemen the reviews are in of iOS 6 and people are tired of the same old stuff we need to do something big for iOS 7 what are your thoughts widgets we got to do wits finally after after seven revisions we got to do wits everyone loves widgets maybe gadgets we can't do widgets android is widgets where anti android we want android to be destroyed we're gonna sue every company until there's no android left and we can't go and do what they're doing so we just don't work they slow down the user experience unless we can do the difference well maybe there's a way to do them differently maybe we don't do widgets on the home screen the hood the springboard is something that people still like maybe we do widgets and we call them something different like enhanced apps or mini apps and we put them in that notification shade that we have been using all that all that well up to this point you know they're they're accessible on demand we can drag it down from the top at any point you can see glanceable information there and then when you're done you send the notification shade away and there's your there's your familiar springboard what do you think about that well by gadgets I gadgets oh yeah I gadgets nice write it down write it down the problem with putting them in the notification shade is that for those that don't clear out their notifications you'll get an infinitely scrolling notification list that's full of I I gadgets and a shortcut to tweet and to add a facebook status and then you get all your notification so it's just gonna get too long I don't think we can put a little guys we can put it there we just have to come up with a method that can automatically figure out which ones are relevant which one's the user wants and then we can patent that and then we'll sue everybody who tries to copy it I like that that's actually a pretty good night so give me an example uh Phil how would that work I have no idea I'm just the marketing guy oh well that falls to me and software there well i think you know algorithms you know we can we can write some algorithms i can use some fancy buzz words here and see how that goes no I'm not really a software guy III think that that is a solid idea though there are ways to list the things by order of priority Facebook does it all the time whether it does it well or not is up to you to to say but I mean you know I generally get news only from the people I care about once Facebook actually learned who I care about reading the news from I think it's similar thing to be done with the widgets in the notification tray so Phil a new a new API maybe where for example the New York Times could start to you could you could specify your preferences what kind of topics you like and when news hits you get a brief in the in the notification tray that shade or whatever we're calling it so that so that you know it's it's just like saya you know a new iphone remote that doesn't make sense well right whatever it is yet no I you know what but I think there's an even better way to do it I don't think there need you need to specify it I think we can say to people with the phone will know you like you know like Google does with their that cards thing that nobody uses and that just went down last night but you know it's still that's intuitive that tells you what you want to know even though you didn't tell it what you wanted to know because it takes all the information from your interaction with the phone and then extrapolates I think we can do that yeah we got to be careful though because the more the phone knows about you the more creepy it's gonna seem so we got we gotta watch that creepy FAQ and make a good point there Phil series not creepy at all so I understand where you're coming from well she sounds creepy but we meant for that oh right right right that was my first serie to ya ok gentlemen this look this is a great idea i like this notification thing but we have to figure out what to do about these icons and and the look and the feel of just the operating system when you when you just are on the main screen how can we differentiate here how can we do something more useful than what we have now make him round hey come around we did yes if you can get the ipod team in here they know how to do that we tried that but our uh you know fifth fingers aren't exactly ground there if they're slightly they've rounded edges that's why i'm trying listen triangles bid that's probably the worst interlocking hexagons has anybody done that before oh that that's awesome i bet the fingerprint fits into a hexagon perfectly and then it wouldn't be agreed anymore it would be something no one could find anything on it would be great thanks for products that Microsoft guys tried that with windows mobile 6.5 eggs we see what I see what happened with that Reich's eggs means we could do it better that's right to the opportunity we first were just be better it's fine no at all seriousness I have no idea what to do this home screen really I don't know I i I'm at a loss for how to change this sufficiently that it's more useful but not change it so much that people will be immediately lost because people value simplicity that's why we build this thing right that's why we sell that's why we sell two million pre-orders in like a week don't we sold two million pre-orders in like an hour yeah yeah yeah I was being modest Phil but you're right okay second instance here's what we're gonna do for ios7 we're gonna change the App Store icon to be a little bit more a little less shiny and the Safari icon instead of pointing to the northeast it will point to the southeast and the music icon wait wait wait I got something on that one let's make the Safari icon has nothing to do with navigation let's make that needle point the direction you're looking let's turn it into a real compass and and while we're talking about icon customization I just want to make sure we're all in the same page here boys we're not doing a damn thing with that weather icon right that that's staying at 73 degrees all the time 73 degrees and sunny it's that's we got ya good we got to do that just got you may be nervous they're all right good anyway uh anyway that was fun one thing I won't think I do want to say I once heard an idea I don't know where I read this but someone had this idea where each icon and the weather i gots perfect example should be live information kind of like Windows Phone 7 but so for example if you had a new facebook message your facebook icon would transform into like um some tau a mini preview or a symbol or something but the problem with that is if you have all those dynamic information on your home screen it becomes really busy really fast and it's very anti apple yeah I mean it's it is Windows Phone like you and that's great that's that parallel is tiff tough not to draw if you're thinking about making those icons literally animate meaning change all the time and that is probably the number one thing that drives me nuts about the windows phone interface if you can take an icon that represents weather and do that without putting on what you'd expect to be actual weather data great do that and keep it static but if you're gonna represent actual weather data 73 degrees and sunny you don't have to animate the icon you just have to have it get updates every however often you want it to be once an hour once every three hours whatever to reflect the actual information the calendar you only have to do the calendar icon once a day and have that represent the actual state but not animate not be flashy not be distracting just elegantly simple well I don't know if I mean course and it comes down to what you you know what your preferences are as far as whether you think windows phone is it does that an interacting way but I see I see what you mean what does that do to system load to I mean give you of all these icons animating all the time I feel like that's been apple's big excuse right where they're like we're not going to do that because it slows down performance and we really really need this thing to perform well you know is that like still a thing in this era of ridiculously souped up handset hardware well you can dynamically create an image relatively simple speaking as a programmer now that doesn't take much to do so creating an icon on the fly isn't going to take much resources especially if you're not doing it every minute you're doing it every hour and then you're just updating that icon and refreshing the screen that I can't see how that would add any more overhead especially not that some new fancy a6 processor is not going to be able to handle real easy for you r and you're not doing them all you're only doing the ones that are on the current screen now of course you can swipe to other screens full of grids of icons very easily but your first priority is the one that's on the screen that you're looking at right now and everything else can be background processes that happen whenever it's got time to happen it would be it would be very nice so either of you think we'll actually see this but that wouldn't win iOS 7 rolls around about a year from now I think we should patent it Brendan you've got a patent guy maybe um well I mean they have to do something because I like it's getting almost exhausting now um for I think even the most devout users and you know you look at the sum of the viet the iphone websites out there you know sites at all about the iphone and iOS and they're expressing fresh I mean they're their defense of the simplicity thing is becoming less and less effective as as you know Android jelly bean is extremely smooth extremely fast windows phone continues to get better and iOS kind of just standstill yeah yeah and that I've made that point like so many times in editorials that I've written particularly even one just just this morning that went up that like I'm just so tired of saying it and you know it would be nice just for Apple to actually do something to be revolutionary again I feel like it's a very complacent OS and you know I haven't updated yet I'm still running iOS 6 beta because I just don't you know I the other platforms that I run that helped me in my day-to-day life are more useful to me and that are more interesting because iOS has been so static for so long so I'm reminded of the the galaxy s3 commercial and I know we'll get to this a little bit later but we're the guys in line they're like wait a minute you were here last year you have a galaxy s3 why are you here oh I'm just holding with my place in line for oh hi mom and dad here you go Oh iOS sick bro s of your parents I have not actually watched that commercial yet so that sounds awesome now all that commercials hilarious they're fabulous flurries well let's uh I do want to Joe Levi the android guy we I want to talk android with you some more but let's get this stuff let's cover some stuff that you're not typically a not typically vocal about first because it's been a big week for Windows Phone you're going to be able to hit handle this one huge week yeah mess yesterday we saw HTC sort of rekindle their their relationship with Microsoft in a very public way by announcing the Windows Phone rights let's get this right the windows phone 8x and 8s which are its first Windows Phone 8 models and the devices are actually called the windows phone 8x and 8s not just the 8x and 8s that is a right that apparently HTC had to negotiate heavily with Microsoft to secure the right to use the platform name and the hardware I think it's pretty confusing and really not necessary yeah Brandon was there for the unveiling hey Michael you running that Windows Phone 8x or any of them are you running the Windows Phone 8 s the windows phone 8x well I run Windows Phone 8 what why is Windows Phone 8x better well it's got a better camera wait what the what you mean the platform is it has a better support for the camera what do you mean now does phone 8 I got 8 X and I got a better camera well how do I run a tax you gotta go buy it I gotta go bye but Duke i just downloaded ah see here's the problem it's it's I you know I was sitting next to Adam yesterday if he had the HTC press event I kept jabbing him every time that you know I winced when Steve Ballmer came on the stage it kind of became a little bit more serious and when Peter Chao was on the stage because you know no whoa hang on Steve Ballmer came out and it got more serious I know that stopped me too it was like what no I'm sorry I just had to stop for me to go ahead go ahead it was you know it was it was an all guns out at kind of event and it's kind of weird because we saw that with Nokia and um and to hear that that these HTC windows phones would be the signature windows phone devices what are they talking about what about nokia is Microsoft pulling a fast one over nokia are they are they being what's the word when you put it off yeah that yeah are they are they being that it's it sounds like nokia was surprised about this which is you know yeah because no nokia came out like not very long after the release and issued this for this statement of their own they're like yeah we're very happy to welcome a new member to the Windows Phone family right behind the Lumia line and it's like wow all right so yeah I think they were caught a little bit off-balance there and this that you bring up another interesting thing Brandon this kind of in addition to the windows phone 8 device branding there they're being called Windows Phone 8 signature devices what does that mean I mean we have signature windows devices on the desktop right what does that mean it does it actually mean anything I don't think it does it you know and here's here's a great point if you go to Windows Phone calm right now these signature devices are front and center and then they then and then the 900 the 920 isn't even on the front page and it's just so weird to me it's almost as if Microsoft took advantage of Nokia but but then again you know HDC is right when they say they've been partners with Microsoft for 12 years I mean that that doesn't really matter that was like almost in another life in a different world and and you know it I don't think that that counts for very much well as Bobby said it for loyalty them you know yeah but then you got you have samsung making some pretty good at making it pretty good windows phone 8 device and um and and what's what's also feels and smells really weird here is that HTC is what's the word they're they're putting their brand second or even kind of third behind the Windows Phone and Microsoft brands yeah yeah it's not the new it's it's a device by HTC like it's a windows phone there's first brand 8x there's a second one x HTC that's the third one and it makes HTC look very weak and it makes me wonder like you know HTC has followed on some tough times lately and are they getting that tough to where they're like yeah we'll just keep the HTC Brandon afterthought or or did they see it as sort of a strength uh you know I think I think it's a very complicated situation you're absolutely right HTC is not as healthy as they've ever been certainly I think they are really need to look at the marketplace and you know find ways where they can kind of stand out there having a hard time doing that in the Android space obviously the 1x kind of got its milkshake drunk by the galaxy s3 so you know we're looking at this is this new platform which which is still kind of a wild west frontier Windows Phone 8 is brand new the adoption rate for windows phone 7 wasn't very good so but you know there is still 40 something percent of users out there who are not on smartphones globally so I feel like HTC is maybe betting on the fact that Windows Phone is going to be successful in capturing some of that and they really want to stake and early claim in this Windows Phone 8 space and I do you think that this device is enough to do it Brandon you had your hands on it Joe of course leap in at any time but I mean Brandon you handled it in your hands on video what did it feel like well first what do you guys think about the hardware I'm just looking at the pictures I mean you you might have heard you might have heard that that uh that HTC really talked up this design they before showing it they refer to it as a new iconic design when you guys think of iconic designs can name some phones that are truly iconic the Lumia excuse me the m9 yeah 19 totally which is just like the you know 920 and uh you know different from the 820 but you know it's got that different kind of sliver design you know what else the iphone galaxy s3 would probably be iconic even the g1 or the the nexus one it's something that represents the entire family of of that phone mmm yeah not just you know not just HTC not just Android but all of that line you're not just iPhone but well that's probably a bad example not just windows phone but of all the others here is the one that when you think of this is where you immediately go okay so that's interesting so an iconic design carries sort of a message like this marks something that happened oh and the design is pretty cool and unique too yeah I mean yeah I think iconic is is a really um I mean what's what is the actual definition of the word iconic of relating to her having the character of an icon yeah thank you having a conventional formulaic style used of certain memorial statues and busts yeah so like yeah defining a category right yeah i agree i think joe joe said it best yeah and and you know and then they and then they talked about the they really ran a video and now it's on youtube about the painstaking design process of the 8x and 8s cool video too yeah i mean the very aspirational quality to it very you know tugging at the heartstrings of geeks everywhere i like their video it was a good video and you know I I think those videos are becoming less and less effective because every company comes out with a pretty corporate video with a moving sound song in the background right so so when they were talking about you know phones are looking the same they look but you know I'm like yeah they all look like slabs they veer pieces of the top cameras they have cameras on them but they all do look the same because always so many ways you can make got a phone and then they then they show this phone that looks exactly like all other phones they did do some cool stuff with it but i think the 8x and a little bit less so the 8's look a little bit generic to me well and and i think wait wait less so that's what i was going to say I think the 8x this is kind of a symptom of a larger problem that like small phones have become you know smaller phones have become kind of the ignored second-class citizens the world and manufacturers are afraid to take their big ass excuse me and take their big headlining phones and take a risk with them design-wise so they'll make the 8x which kind of looks generic next to the 8's which has this kind of cool color band and these inset alternating colors on the earpiece and the camera bezel and like the 8's just looks so much more unique to me than anything else I see especially the 8x it makes the 8x look almost fuddy-duddy you know by comparison what he does he I saw that saw that word in a review of the Richard Gere film unfaithful and I've been wanting to use it for 10 years you're welcome yeah yes yeah that's that's a really apt analysis I've been wanting to use that word since I saw it on the office guys a bunch of Dreams being realized on the Pocket not weekly this week's it's great yeah uh yeah but that's a good point they were more experimental with the aid s it's more they call it a font more fun phone and it is unfortunate that they downgraded the specs for that I mean yeah but you know what's interesting about the 8x is that the screen is not that big it's only 4.3 inches right right which is which is hilariously the new small right like 4.3 inches is now the low end that's amazing but still isn't all that small no it's historically okay so something I gotta get off my chest please um windows mobile way back in the days you even in Pocket PC and whatnot those were all relatively corporate devices if your enterprise was running an exchange server and you had Microsoft apps in house chances are you were going to be issued a Windows Phone device and it was very tightly integrated with exchange in your contacts and all that stuff for us end-users and I was an user who jumped on that bandwagon I didn't get all of those benefits of having an exchange server the devices were utilitarian they were professional looking they kind of carried forward with what you thought of Microsoft adds just this big corporate entity move forward to where that kind of became irrelevant you've got the iphone which comes in two colors and one form factor essentially you've got android which is all pretty much the same you can either get white or you can get black and the they're just kind of understated but they don't look out of place you know a boardroom table and then you've got windows phone and every Windows Phone that I can think of at least is brightly colored it's got bold designs the weather the bezel is is brightly colored or the the display itself is brightly colored you know themed in blues or reds or whatever it just doesn't seem corporate anymore yet this is what is supposed to fill in the gap at those you know those big corporate people if you will that they're going to be issuing to all of their employees and I'm sorry I love how they look I just don't expect to see these around the boardroom table or even at a meeting of executive officers or you know people on down the line they don't look professional they don't look like I'd expect to see someone who gets paid way too much money to have sitting on the table they look distracting in that circumstance I I envision this guy sitting at a lunch business lunch and he's like I was about to acquire your company but then you took out your purple Windows Phone and the deals awesome well you know and it's it's funny I haven't thought about this argument in a long time but you're right you're right Joe and this is something that people think about I would get so flummoxed in like message board conversations when people would bring this up you know and they'd say well how am I going to bring this phone this phone is fun whatever but how am I gonna bring this out in a boardroom nobody's going to take me seriously and it's been so long Reed never that I've been in like a corporate boardroom environment that I never think about this stuff but you're right if windows if Microsoft wants to position windows phone is this sort of yet yes consumer thing but also maybe this blackberry replacement thing which I think a lot of us maybe want microsoft to be trying to do but maybe they're actually not trying to do that then yeah then this kind of multicolored approach that HTC and nokia are taking is not really going to be the way to go but there i made the point yesterday one of my pieces that this color blast in Windows Phone is actually somewhat rare I mean the initial blast of Windows Phone 7 handsets were all black or grey they're boring it wasn't until nokia kind of came into the scene and we're like yeah hey check it out color and then HTC arguably came along and was like us to check it out you know what do you guys what do you guys think about color like do you want a black or white phone or do you want your favorite color in your in your phone ever since nokia dropped that cyan on the 800 or the n9 then the 800 and the 900 I've been in love with color I I used to value black phones when silver phones were hip and then I went the other way no I prefer color now what about you Joe I'm looking at your article right now and checking out the phone 8s and I'm seeing the black phone with a blue stripe on the bottom and the the kind of light grey phone with a yellow stripe on the bottom yeah I'm thinking hey this is great we've got what first responders and then we've gotten mad people and maybe the Red Cross yes and traffic cops there you go it actually looks like European cops not mention that but know what I think we need to do and and I like the colors personally i don't think i'd probably be as bold i recently pre-ordered a pebble watch yeah uh through kickstarter and i had the opportunity to pay an extra 15 bucks to get one of their fancy colors and i was tempted for a minute to get orange and then for a minute to get gray and i just said you know what it's a watch it give me a black rock that's all I won't yeah me too yeah so color i see is customization so let's go ahead and move technology forward to to full screen displays where we go all the way to the edge with the display and then we can customize our displays how over we want we can get our blast of color there and then let's have accessory back plates that are different colors different designs so that we can customize that and truly make it our own rather than just saying my phones the big bold red one sitting on the table over there is that a thing like do people still do the backplates thing because i know nokia is doing it with the 820 I mean do people still like buy back plates and do that thing like it's like it's you know 1999 or is that is that just something companies wish they did do we have any tighter I do it I don't know if I would do I never liked the back plate thing I mean it's it's really frustrating if you have to buy them i mean if the 820 came with four color black babes back plates that would be awesome you know I'm not much of a fashionista but I did you know I'd consider matching a badly to what I'm wearing her you know on a hot night a hot date with my wife um but uh I I think I love that idea of switching the back plate and the way that 820 does it it's not like a cheap way of changing the back but there's been some HTC phones where you could change like some color part of it but it wasn't really it was just like snapping a thing in place piece of plastic but 820 is like hey you can take off the entire back literally and put put a new one yeah I like that and you know if you could build an NFC chip or something into it to say hi I'm colored yellow right or I'm this special design and you could unlock a theme for the front of the phone oh now that would be awesome well an HTC tried to do some of that on the software side some of the stuff you're talking about Joe like I think they tried to match like windows excuse Microsoft gave them access to the colors in Windows Phone 8 and they tried to match their software colors to the casing colors as best I can so when you take like the yellow one out of the box like it's pre-loaded you know to display yellow yeah I don't know i mean i think that's cool i think that's one of those little things but they also differentiate it on some other some other things like brendan you heard the speakerphone be with the Beats Audio like there's a new amplifier Beats Audio I think always featured a hardware amplifier for the headphone jack but then there's a separate one which is either 2.2 volts or four volts I don't remember for the speakerphone and in the video you really can't hear at brenner but you said it was like the one of the louder speaker phones you'd heard it's it well it was the loudest speakerphone I've ever heard and I wrote in my editorial but it kind of sounded like the HTC surround but probably louder and better it was really impressive I mean it's a you know if you put an amplifier and a phone it's gonna it's gonna probably be the biggest use of battery power of any other phone function right um so you'll probably be able to get through three songs but it's cool i mean that's dad's dad's innovation that's something different and new that you don't see anywhere else are we ever gonna see a vacuum tube inside one of these phones just go over those audio files for those for those nights you just need the warm glow of the old-fashioned radio lulling you to sleep well high-end computer motherboards for audio files are coming with vacuum tubes on them for for better sounding audio god they think we'll ever get a vacuum tubes small enough that we could get that same rich quality in a phone be a sippy strong right yeah I figured that would that's gonna be like whoever virtue gets sold to that's gonna be there next differentiator it's like here's your ten thousand phone running android two dot one but it has a vacuum tube it's good with vacuum tube what else are they what else is HTC doing here just on the on the 8x and 8s they got the beats and there we don't know if it's the same exact camera module as on the One X but it is the same image sense chip or the image trip and the image sense kind of firmware on that that wasn't that was another time I I poked at him and I rolled my eyes when they said we've brought the acclaimed well received and highly regarded image sense technology from the 8x and we've put it in the eighth and the 8x and I'm like well ya know that would be great if that was actually a good thing that the thing they did that was actually cool with the camera is that the front facing camera is wide angle and that it really makes a difference and you know it's a typical scenario where you hold your front out and phone out in front of you and you take a picture of you and the people that you're with and this this tremendously improves the functionality the front-facing camera I was really impressed by it yeah I I was impressed not because I care about the front-facing camera because I never use it I almost always forget it's there but because someone a manufacturer looked at this thing that no one looks at that no but cares about and they were like yeah we're gonna do something different check it out here's not only a higher resolution and which is just a lazy way to go but here's a wide angle lens which makes sense because you as you demoed in your video Brendan you can get an entire like third or fourth person in the frame if you want to if you're the whole family wants to get together to talk to Grandma and Florida or whatever and that's great and and you know it's also cool because you know some of these some some camera software has a time a timer so you can prop up the phone somewhere which is very difficult to do and you can do like a family portrait thing but that's just that's first of all not not wise because someone could steal your phone if you're in the middle of a public area so like this capability to take pictures for what the front facing camera is very important to phones and they enhanced it you know they're you know the wide-angle things unique bumping the quality of the front-facing camera isn't unique apples doing it with the iphone 5 although this goes a step further it can record 1080p video from the front-facing lens and the the iphone 5 can do 720p um so so you know they really have thought this out quite well so I kind of I want to bring it bring it back to a broad sense here because I started just a little behind the scenes info for the listeners here maybe maybe an unauthorized leak from within pocket now I was going to write an editorial yesterday I've completely expected to write the editorial titled you know thanks HTC but I'm still buying a Lumia 920 like I expected to be able to write that and then when I saw what HTC offered and it took me like longer than usual to kind of reverse myself on this I was like no actually that is not certain anymore so what do you guys think in a general in a broad sense HTC definitely has a little kind of upset here an attempt to upset nokia on our tans do you think it's going to be successful because nokia still has some differentiating ability that HTC does not particularly in Windows Phone 8 software I feel like and in the optics on the camera what do you think that the what do you think is left for nokia to differentiate themselves on like what is Nokia's still winning on well yeah yesterday when I was feeling the feeling that's funny nine ways to when I was when I was feeling up the d8x that's even better yes yes I actually thought it felt a little bit cheap um they've got this wonderful soft touch plastic on the back I was telling Michael didja straight we were talking and it feels very solid in hand I will not saw it it feels like you know it's you've got a good grip on it that's what I'm trying to say but it doesn't feel as premium as and I haven't touched it yet the the 920 as it doesn't feel at it doesn't seem as premium as the 920 so if I had to choose between the 920 without seeing it and the 8x after having held it I would definitely go with the 920 because you know windows phone is is kind of like that cool you know techy operating system that deserves some like substantial you know different hardware and I I don't think that that is found with the 8x it's nice hardware but it feels you know it's and as we also mentioned the call it is quite a bit lighter than the Nokia Lumia 920 I mean almost everything is lighter than the 920 but it's almost as light as a galaxy s3 I thank the 8x so that might lend that might contribute some to that cheap feeling I'm just kind of riffing there yeah and that's true they're both running Windows Phone 8 they're both nice bold colors so I think the only differentiating factor to me it's gonna be how good is the camera and front facing camera aside you know if I can take a really really beautiful picture with that nice high resolution rear facing camera that's the tipping point for me so I have to say that Nokia probably wins out in in this match yes I'd say so you'd go PureView on that new PureView and plus i mean they're nokia once again can it's got that software package with Nokia drive with you know whatever nokia music and a bunch of stuff that i think would be considered bloat by a lot of people but is actually really useful which I kind of took for a test drive when I had the 900 for a couple weeks thanks to our friends at AT&T there and yeah I mean nokia still got some some stuff that can that really sets them apart so I don't know for me it's still up in the air I don't know I'm going to I'm going to buy one of them this is a personal thing this isn't like a review unit thing like I'm going to buy one of them and it's gonna be my daily driver I just don't know which yet but it so in that case I think I want to say to wrap this up sort of for me kudos to HTC for surprising me for coming to the market and and saying ya know we've actually got something of value here and we're gonna maybe change your mind yeah and and something I got to discover yesterday was windows phone 8 for the first time I've never actually used it until yesterday and you know I always kind of saw windows phone is somewhere in the middle we've got iphone on the right you know what you see is what you get you've got android on the left you can do whatever the heck you want with it you got windows phone in the middle you gotta get some live information but it's it's that symmetrical design and when I saw windows phone 8 at first and screenshots and videos I I was kind of upset that the symmetry had been lost I mean you can make your your Start screen looking pretty ugly and windows phone 8 if you really want to do so like you could you could stack it with if you use the little tiles you'd have like oh I don't even want to know how many like 25 little microscopic type tiles to show you nothing and um but you know but but I think that's a good thing and I think it's up to the user if they want to have you know 45 little tiles are like five big ones and 15 little ones and I think that Windows Phone 8 brings the platform a little bit closer to that left a little bit closer to that Android where I like to play because I like to change things and so I after after yesterday on I'm even more excited about Windows Phone II and I can't wait to use it Joe do you think do you think you'd if you were to get one of these devices I mean you know do you think you would actually I mean would you would you is windows phone 8 doing anything like Brandon just said to entice you further as a as user of another platform well just as far as Hardware goes both no key and HTC have definitely piqued my interest i would love to see that kind of stuff on the android platform as far as windows 8 over excuse me windows phone 8 over windows phone 7 I like the live tile console I like getting information right on the screen that's what I have my widgets for I'd love to use it I'd love to have just a week where I switched over entirely and sit down and and use it the thing that in every video that I see every person that I see that has a Windows Phone that home screen is constantly jumping all around doing all kinds of changes and every time I see something out of the corner of my eye I have to look at it it's just one of those things I have no control over i look at it and to me having that sitting on my desk dancing around would it would be the death of me I I would die from a DD overloaded Joe's kind of like a cat she sees some movement you chase after what was that squirrel Don there's another dog in that car um cool well it'll be nice too I can't wait until windows phone 8 launches we talked a little bit about iOS 6 trapping everyone's excited about that I'm very excited about Windows Phone 8 and I'm particularly excited because they didn't change a whole lot from seven Joe in contrast to Joe I what hold on a second I also have that attention issue where it's like oh yeah I have to look at this that's a new thing there's a new thing every five seconds but for me that's exciting i'm like you know because i live in a star trek world and I'm like gasps flashing buttons that is what I'm into keep moving you I so it's don't bastard yeah so the Romulans are out ahead of you there's another one that uncloaked and you've got this little thing on your console blinking that says oh the coolant is down two degrees in the mess hall who cares in the time it took you to look at that and see it wasn't important you just got quantum torpedoes fired up your naselle what I'm glad that quantum torpedoes fired at your nasal was said on this podcast and check that off my list I'm also fascinated that there's a world that exists where coolant is required in a mess hall let's move on to to Andrew how are you gonna keep the stuff cold line keep that soup cold enough to eat there's only borscht in the future I want to I want to kick off our Android coverage by leaping into something that I was supposed to cover yesterday and didn't I got very distracted by the windows phone stuff I just wanted to keep writing about the windows and then I wanted to restart the bird Leon his question corner with a question that's been very popular today about the iphone so I think not you just admitted that Windows Phone distracted you from doing your actual work on the podcast I don't want to get that down for the record it's those live tiles I just got owned you're entirely right it did and I take full responsibility but it would the problem is this left a hole in our coverage and this was my fault and it that the LG optimus G dropped yesterday or it kinda nounced yesterday re announced I guess in the United States Joe or Brandon if you were dying to talk about it because I I would just somebody talk about this thing because I can someone tell me why I need to be excited about this because I'm even if I had covered it i think i probably would have fallen asleep in the middle of writing a piece about it i'm not you know i don't mean to be too harsh but really why do I care Snapdragon s4 pro okay so it so it is the is the cpu story that is the the most significant element of the optimus G and you just wrote a piece on the s4 family yes yes I did there's there's four processors one that's really lame and sucky and will never mention again and then the other three that are all just completely amazing and 23 nanometers and to their manufacture on 23 nanometer process when most things today are 28 to 32 to what 40 somewhat each five yeah 45 is still a common one out there right so what are the others there's pro there's what's the crappy one call I think that one's to play and you play and then there's what media and something else yes yeah I would have to go back to my article and get the the chart on that it's not important what we'll talk about the pro that the most beastly of them I think you mentioned in your article at some point that theoretically a pro could play to 1080p videos simultaneously if you wanted it to the exact quotes are a number of so number that could be one or it could be 30 I'm dream it's some of the some of the numbers that I've been seeing have said that they can play for full 1080p 30 frame per second video streams at the same time without a hiccup now no one would ever ever do that except one of us to say that we could but it's the fact that it's got that much not only video processing power but also decoding ability to be able to handle I mean that's just a huge number of pixels that it's got to figure out from a file someplace and decide how it's gonna look on the screen and pop that on to the screen 30 times a second it's just amazing you know what's gonna do that but think about how much faster that's going to make everything else on the phone if it can do that open up your gmail scrolling around on the map multiple tabs in a web browser I mean that's just that's nothing it can do that in its sleep yeah and you mentioned you made a good mention also in your in your piece about like yeah of course we'd never watch for 1080p videos at once or I think you use the example of gaming it's like why should why should non-gamers care about this performance because I frequently have to ask myself this when when we get into like really in-depth talk about chipsets and stuff and I'm like I god I never I don't play call of duty 18 you know so it's like I don't really care but no like wouldn't because high performance stuff that requires high performance helps push the industry forward because chip makers have to build stuff to accommodate that those who do that stuff and as a result we all benefit so that makes a lot of sense I actually liked your point there okay so I'm gonna geek out on you just for a minute here I wish you would move over to desktop computers so this is now desktop now when you've got regular desktop computers you can play games on them in fact I'm a computer gamer over a console gamer hands down you always want to have a high-end graphics card and those graphics cards are optimized for 3d where you have perspective where you have lighting where you've got all this stuff and your operating system itself up until recently has been to D so it hasn't taken advantage of all of that extra processing power that you can do with that GPU in fact up until very recently the the entire interface was not optimized for for running through the GPU it ran through the CPU so all of that hey my game runs really fast didn't translate into i can write a letter to Mom really quickly in word or surf the web really fast right so what does this have to do with pocket now these mobile operating systems kind of got the clue in Windows we now have GPU accelerated we now have 3d it great windows seven does that Windows 8 I I guess does it I fed up with windows 8 but Android speaking just of Android they now do that GPU acceleration in the core OS so your home screen your core apps those are all GPU accelerated so they're taking advantage of all the stuff that that processor can do in games and giving that to you in everything which is not it which is something that I think everybody was always was complaining about with OSS for a while there I think in the webos community we were annoyed that the GPU that was present in the original pre wasn't even being used to run the OS it was all running through the CPU and that as a result we had these crappy animations and I think android people were complaining about that for version after version right yeah absolutely yeah so it's so that all makes a degree of sense i mean the in its implementation in the LG the optimus G I mean once again this is an LG first right because no one else has used this processor yet in a handset as far as I can tell this is the the first implementation of the s4 it at least the s4 pro but i believe the s4 in general ok and yeah i don't know what do you guys think is this gonna be is this going to be another case of LG saying hey we're first and then everyone else saying hey that's awesome and then kind of shrugging and going back to buying what they were going to buy originally because that's happened with LG in 3d and that's happened with LG and what's the other thing that i mentioned on monday what else were they first two quad-core that's right so yeah yeah yeah LG they look for these marketing off opportunities to get a little bump but then at the end of the day it's still LG and unfortunately LG has a long way to go um it let me give you a couple of examples this LG intuition that I've received for review I might actually send back early and not review it because I would probably give it a one out of 10 is the optimist view for verizon listeners yeah and it is just it has no reason for being it is the worst device I've ever used it doesn't make phone calls well it doesn't browse the web well doesn't fit in your pocket well it does nothing well it comes with a pen that doesn't do very much and you have to carry it with you wherever you go and yesterday I brought the I brought the optimist view with me thinking that you know if I had more time with the 8x I might take it out and compared to know such brought along in the gadget back and I found myself taking it out as I was meeting various people to say I I would take it out and say you want to see the the worst thing that has ever been released in the world and I take it out and people would put it in their hand this wide massive device that is just so horrible and they would scoff at they would they would agree with me even if I didn't preface it by saying want to see the worst thing that has ever been released the reason the reason that intuition is so horrible besides the things I just said it's not good at anything is because the software is poor the hardware's got some issues there are spelling mistakes in the sava it looks like an experiment and you know it so I have very little respect your LG products and I don't like their interface and they have a lot to prove to be a first first-rate contender I mean right now they're what if they what their fourth right behind motorola um after samsung and HTC and yeah there's something like that and you know this Optimus G is just like it reminds me of the optimus 2x right Oh first dual core phone grade well huh was that was that a good phone I mean it would it was I guess okay but it was just nothing special anyway I I'm not excited about the optimus G i think i think the s4 pro looks awesome I can't wait to see it you know in the next samsung or HTC or motorola phone but i just-i can't-- get excited by the LG sorry LG if that isn't it frustrating like when it when a company whether this is actually ultimately true or not I feel like it is when a company comes out and they're like hey we're first and they do this all the time and sprint does this the united states where they were first to 4g sort of by a government mandate but they did it with with my max and of course that didn't really work out and you know their first to a bunch of other stuff and it's like it and that you people do exactly what you just said rent and they looking like oh you're first awesome yeah that thing that you're like demoing right now being first on i can't wait until a more competent company takes it over and does it better you know like that's in that's sad because LG used to make awesome stuff as i said in the my piece on monday LG used to be really cool in the in the days of the dumb phone they brought out some really really awesome stuff for for verizon in particular so yeah it'd be nice to see him get back on their feet but I so yeah is there anything else about the Optimus G can we I mean what's up I I think I you know I think you know I don't have benchmarks by the way sorry Brandon oh yeah absolutely kill the benchmark yeah 7070 200 in Quadrant yeah so if you buy based on benchmarks you know this is a no this is not a bad device to like look at for a second then another benchmarks it completely gets destroyed by everything else like in a browser mark and sunspider it's just like a nasty stupid bad thing a lot of that's the browser that you're using foot yang will stop soon we'll talk a little bit about that when we get to razor I in a minute and which but yeah we're about to sizzle be in before we segue into that I'm gonna be the dissenting voice and I'm gonna come to the defense of LG nice odd pleased LG the company makes fabulous products they make consumer electronics that I would not hesitate by and hang on my wall to buy and use around the house I've got some LG stuff inside the computer that i'm using right now I mean they make good stuff they made good feature phones chocolate now when we're talking about you know smart phones they're not really new to the game which is kind of sad but given their their history of really good consumer electronics pieces it's just a matter of time before they get the equation right and we see a really really amazing device from LG so you think it's just a matter of time you think that they're they're getting their their ducks in a row still and they're sitting on a pile of money because their LG and they're a huge company so they they kind of have time to burn here and we're going to see something awesome from them well time is against them and and they're they're fumbling right now we've seen that the last few things hopefully this is the phone where they've turned it around I haven't played with it in hand so I can't give you a definitive yes or no this is or isn't it but inevitably they are going to make a phone that is going to be every bit as good as everybody else and very possibly even better and there may soon be a day where we have LG setting the bar for samsung I know that that's going to be a Hail Mary but I'm not going to put that out of the realm of possibility they have the ability inside that company to do something truly amazing a vote of confidence on LG's behalf from Joel Eva I like it thank you for being thank you for keeping us balanced I hope you're right you I do too because I don't yeah I don't have anything against him certainly I just want to be impressed I hope I'm right too because if not I'm gonna look really silly if someone listens to this and yes a man that Julie like I didn't know what he was talking about well that's that's we're on episode 10 there's a there's you know 15 hours of at least of all of us saying something stupid at least 40 times the speaking of processors let's let's segue into the razor I hear and I don't want to spend too long on this but it is a very interesting product motorola announced the razor I the other day it is essentially a razr m with an Intel processor which is not a first necessarily for smartphones or for android smartphone but it is a first for motorola android smartphones powered by an intel atom what a midfield process material yeah and it runs it's a single core but it runs a two gigahertz which is also a first for mobile devices for I don't know Joad you start talking over the minute I start saying definitely some comments or come as long as like you're an idiot and I get right I mean I shouldn't be talking about chips and sorry well the interesting thing about Adam is it was never really designed for phones it was never designed really for for tablets I mean that was kind of their target but it's been more your integrated components um some people thought hey this is this is the next pentium i'm going to buy this processor i'm going to put it in my motherboard and i'm going to be able to cut the power consumption of my computer down by at least half probably more and believe it or not there are some adapters that you can use that you can plug an atom processor into and then plug that into your motherboard and there you go and 20 minutes later you might be booted up into windows so it's just really sad when you get to integrated stuff like an ass box or like a router or or anything that you could plug in that just kind of sits there and does its thing and you don't care about it it just works that's where Adam is fabulous so now moving this stuff over into tablets solid-state tablets that's a logical progression moving it over into smartphones okay sure you know smartphones are just small tablets but let's go ahead and do that the thing that makes this unusual is its x86 it's not 64 bit but then again nothing right now really is in the mobile arena but it's x86 so all the instruction sets for x86 stuff carry over so what does that mean for an end user like you know who's gonna buy this thing and you know what what what can you do with this that you can't do with say the Rays RM absolutely nothing haha is that true yeah that's exactly true and the reason is they came out with this on and and platform mm-hmm now if I say hey it's x86 so now I know how to write programs for x86 architecture great I can now write for this phone sorry guys this is Android go over to Android power user watch the last couple episodes where we've talked about the JIT compiler and the dalvik VM and dalvik cache all you've got to do is write your stuff in Java and deploy it and it will work on any platform whether that's x86 whether that's so your snapdragons right whether that's some new processes that we haven't even heard of that runs a completely different instruction set as long as that operating system and the vm are poured it over to run on that particular instruction set everything else is just going to run it doesn't matter what's humming along underneath it doesn't matter what doesn't matter at all so you have no advantage at all that it's x86 so all right so yeah so Motorola and an Intel have made a big deal about this of course obviously from a corporate standpoint it's their first partnership and you know whatever but so that that kind of plays into some of the questions we were asking earlier in the weeks like why did Motorola choose or water Motorola and Intel choose this kind of unremarkable device to launch this partnership on and I kind of just theorized that it's because they kind of wanted to soft launch their partnership on a not very blockbuster a device they're not they're obviously not trying to move millions of these units no way you know so I just don't get why it's why this is significant it except in the in the sense that formoterol and Intel for Intel especially this is a nice foothold to have in the mobile world that they've been sort of absent in right yeah they're being modest and I think they should be I mean as as Joe just described it doesn't seem like as a power user or someone who likes things to be fast I I would want to choose an Intel processor on my phone over a Qualcomm or or nvidia chip um but and that that is so surprising to me because it's 2012 now and we've been hearing about for mobile for like what four years now that leads to and it finally comes out and and there's just Intel does one thing very well makes really great power friendly processors that are fast and like it would be cool if the razr m the razor I had like 45 hours of battery life because of this processor or it obliterated every benchmarking and and first indications were that in every application and Android the whole experience is just remarkably faster that would be an intel mobile chip debut but instead that is not the case so they kind of did this soft modest launch with the razor i and maybe they're working on something that does all those things i just said but i'm kind of i'm kind of surprised by that yeah I'm mirror Brandon's thoughts exactly this is not a remarkable device it's not something groundbreaking it's not something that's gonna smash every benchmark so they don't have to be looked at as saying well the reason it didn't do that was because of the processor they don't have to get that black eye but they do get their feet wet they get their processor out there they get it into devices and really I think this is going to be a good a good chip like I kind of alluded to earlier there's only one problem that we've seen so far and that's unfortunately with web browsing the chrome browser doesn't work on this processor so that kind of breaks everything I just said about it just works everywhere so consider that with a big fat asterisk after it that's because of I believe and I haven't seen anyone who can contradict this so if you can please comments down below let us know but it looks like Google put some native code into the Chrome browser for whatever reason to make it faster to tie tighter into the operating system I don't know but it looks like there's native code in there and obviously sisk code is not going to run on a risc processor or in this case vice versa so they have to have a new version of chrome to run on this or they have to do what they've been telling everybody all along and that's just just write it using the normal tools and publish it so that it runs in the dalvik VM just like everything else and then it'll run just fine anywhere but it's ironic that that's the only problem that we've seen is something that Google themselves wrote yeah I think this is a this is this is chip talk that actually I want to continue having but on a different device can I can I just kind of segue this into the to the to another cpu absolutely yeah we have I didn't expect it to be such a big like chip Newsweek or like hardware Newsweek but it is samsung has announced that the galaxy note 2 which is coming the United States obviously is going to be packing the the X and O's for quad oh my god yeah so like previously when Samsung bring stuff to us shores because of the u.s. is like comparatively large LTE build out the only I think this has been the the obstacle that the only lte-compatible chips have basically been live Qualcomm s4 you know running the dual core chipset but now the X notes for quad has both LTE capability and a quad core processor so and two gigabytes of RAM and backed up by two gigs of RAM well and it's gonna be just like the galaxy s3 that's on us shores right now so like what so you guys jazzed about this I myself have found the performance of the Qualcomm Snapdragon s4 to be really awesome on any device I've almost any device I've tested it on and I don't really need need quad-core and that's unless it runs cooler which it probably does because the s4 gets really hot it is a 32 nanometer which means that it is going to be cooler than stuff that's bigger than that theoretically isn't the s4 like 0 32 or 28 as well the s4 pro and really the s4 Prime and the s4 other one those are all 23 so they're smaller everything else nowadays is yeah it's this is a 23 or 28 crap now I've lost my chart that's uh so 32 that's still really small and it's really good so it should be better for bad life it should be better for for putting off heat which the hot or something gets the faster it sucks down battery mm-hmm results should be a lot better previous generation of X and O's was 45 nanometer so X and O's 2 X and O's this should be quite a bit better and I do i do hope so branna DJ you jazzed about it I'm jazzed the the fastest android experience I still have ever had was cyanogenmod 10 running on the quad core galaxy s3 and it's just it's just it's disgustingly fast it's just so it's such a good experience and even you know even running a touch wiz on touch with jelly bean on the quad core galaxy s3 is pretty darn good so this is gonna be an awesome device is gonna be a an awesome device for power users I i wish the development community would do some more cool stuff with the S Pen because as soon as you root the you know the Galaxy Note at least in the first one the gas spin functionality didn't work and you know with 1024 levels of pressure on the Galaxy Note 2 and a better tactile feel and all that I just I hope that some cool stuff happens with the with the Galaxy Note 2 me too and yeah and especially with the note 10 dot one with this kind of side by side simultaneous app running stuff I feel like that that kind of application is just begging for a for a quad-core processor right am I am I completely off base there no you're not the unfortunate thing that they really gotta cross that hurdle is you can't just have four devices excuse me for apps that run on that you oh yeah you've got to be able to launch anything else that that's gonna kill it before anything but that part right there yes you're absolutely right the more the more cores you have the better because you're going to be devoting CPU cycles to each one of them and you don't want either one to lag right um well that's I kind of wanted we do have a hard stop today everyone so I kind of want to keep us moving here not to be the I really love to stay and talk about a lot of this stuff but if we can segue really clay into away from chips a little bit but into another phablet we have this sort of press render that we posted three days ago of this HTC five incher supposedly say the name okay the 1x5 know what save the cocina code name um I would love to tell you the code name unfortunately my ears are blasting me with a commercial red now and I don't know which one of my tabs it's coming from I'm getting a trance American commercial in my head I don't know why that is this episode of pocket now faraci but yeah um sorry so what is the code name I was really thrown by that um I'm being a second grader here sorry tennis oh is it oh is it the the HTC dicks is that correct yes it is the HTC takes its di X for short for Dixon hill obviously that's hilarious yeah this is the HTC dicks / HTC possibly 1x5 HTC may be trying to make a phablet like device would you I'm looking at the press render here if you guys listeners want to look it up is from this is a story from the 17th it doesn't look like it's been debunked I I don't know would you guys buy an HTC phablet I would have said no right off the bat up until yesterday but what they brought with the 8x and 8s excited me enough that I'm kind of a little semi amped on HP again what do you guys think the the the phablet market is is wide open uh you know Samsung right now has the has the upper hand because they were first and no one's really followed behind them and you know I can't wait to see what HTC does with a phablet form factor we already saw what LG did with it they messed up motorola I'm sure will come out with if everyone can come out with a phablet because if something sells millions and millions of units then then the next step is that the competition comes in right Jeff so so I'm looking at this and this is just a press render like you said we don't have tight specifications on it yet but I'm noticing that bezel around the edges getting smaller and smaller so although we may be calling this a phablet just kind of looking at it it looks like that device may not be much wider than some of the devices that were carrying around with us right now which taking advantage of more of that bezel space to give you a bigger screen experience I think is the the perfect way to go to get larger screens into our hands without necessarily increasing the size of the device itself it does look a bit taller than than some of the others and I have no idea why you'd still have capacitive buttons on the bottom of a screen that tall what yeah you know it looks like something yeah I definitely be interested in in trying out HTC I've always always loved HTC devices going way back into my pocket pc days yeah so i always like seeing what they have what they're doing I like the chiseled edge is the bevels it's very one Esk and it's something that I think would be really really great especially in a phablet form factor and we didn't see it announced at the the event the other day which obviously is you know it's just for windows phone so it is there any speculation on when when they might try and push this I mean I feel like this this if there's a press render and if this is real then we would be seeing this before the holidays i would i would hope yep back to school it's got to be back to school and is Collins we're back to school now though you know what I mean like back to school has already happened Cecily this will be a holiday device yeah i mean with it with it I mean I I really hope for HTC sake that they're doing what Samsung is doing and they're gonna have a release on all four carriers I mean stick and by the way that's a really amazing thing to note that Samsung's doing again yes you know it's simultaneous drop on all four carriers yeah and the unbranded device the same device over every carrier they have the carriers by the balls at this point and that's exactly finally yeah yeah that's exactly where Samsung want it to be and it's it's it's it's to the advantage of the consumer because the carriers can't say okay at a keyboard you you know do all this other stuff but I fortunately the HTC releases this device is probably be one or two carrier device and it's it's good right off the bat it's gonna be disadvantaged but maybe maybe you don't have some features he has a 1080p screen that'll be one thing to see how crushed in know if anybody can see it can see the difference rather um okay I want to jump the thing is I there is a one piece of listener me I want to get to suit so we kind of already dealt with iOS at the top of the podcast here but we didn't I don't want to do a couple days but I do want to touch on the iPad many real quickly we're kind of graduating from phablets into smaller tablets is there any doubt now that that this iPad Mini is happening i mean the leaks are just coming so so frequently and they're so consistent and the thing looks on the bottom looks as ugly in my opinion as the bottom of the iphone 5 with the same connector I mean we're pretty sure this is coming out yeah it's yeah and it's scary that we're seeing the exact same period of time and types of leaks that we saw with the iphone 5 which unfortunately means that there's a big problem of apples secrecy yeah and which unfortunately means that we're gonna see the device that we're seeing in weeks and you know that might be a good thing might be a bad thing it's just it's a little disappointing and it's gonna kind of soften the message when Apple has a keynote event and says hey we've got this new office of product everyone's already seen it and it happened again happen with the iphone 5 i've read some very interesting speculation on that that that says that very interesting to me that says that this you know might be something that Apple is doing intentionally to kind of temper the media backlash from from events like this were like you know the press is like oh yeah thanks for holding this big event for like the 4s we're not impressed and here's why and then there's a week of this kind of negativity and it so the conspiracy theory goes that if Apple can leak enough of the stuff intentionally early then it like you know moderates everybody's feelings and like oh well we know what's coming and so maybe that gets reduced I don't know if there's any really crazy isn't that crazy but it seems like the kind of thing that just might be stupid enough to be true I danced before I'm glad I wasn't the only one who went there Michael because yeah Here I am I'm thinking what was new about the iphone 5 it was a step up in the specs and that was it there really wasn't anything super special about it taller faster thinner Newport it just wasn't exciting so somebody at Apple is going guys this isn't all that exciting we're going to take this we're going to present it and we're going to be booed off the stage then of course that wouldn't happen but you've got this this buildup you know people are expecting Apple to come out with something new and fabulous and great and just blow our socks off and I'm sorry ipad mini it ain't it no i phone 5 no so this is army well you just I disagree about the the notion that the I mean just by virtue of being a smaller iPad it could be made out of garbage cans and it would be interesting because the iPhone the iPad is a life changing device tablets are life changing device they are and to take something that's really life-changing and make it more portable so you can fit it in a way you know you could keep carried around so much eat that that's that's amazing so even if this the leaks are true that the the implications of having a smaller iPad are huge and and it's gonna sell more than the original iPad i think i think that i would agree that that is probably a very safe bet to make i think it would be something different if you were talking about say the motorola xoom which is like hey it's been this 10-inch thing that some of you liked and here's the zoom 7 yeah you know like that would be one thing would be like oh stop it but it's apple and it's the ipad it is the category defining instrument you know it people who took a pass on the Nexus 7 and the kindle fire because they love iOS because they're not gonna buy an apple product you know some part of them at least half of them maybe some part of their brain was like yeah but it would be nice to have a little more portable device if only it ran iOS so just assessing 7 catch bugs yeah 7-inch tablets that that's where it's at I've completely agree packed around tens they're just too big seven yeah seven is perfect and and this is a perfect year for an ipad mini not last year not next year because this year the world met the ipad 3 which is a heavier clunkier unwieldy device and and people are singing they don't know yet they're singing for a lighter version of that 2012 is a good year for the ipad mini yeah um that's uh manoa we did it first yeah and yeah and I care around the nexus 7 like all the time now and it's not necessarily because I'm in love with jellybean it's because i love the form factor and i'd like that the hardware so i do also love jelly bean but anyway we're gonna get to some miscellaneous news on the next podcast i want to talk once blackberry becomes interesting it's starting to pretend to become interesting and maybe they can become interesting before they're bought but we'll talk about it next I want to get to a piece of listener of listener mail that actually is like two weeks old but it's perfect right now because Joe is on the podcast and I think this is a question uniquely suited to both you and Brandon Joe so this is from Christian from Germany who thanks us for the podcast I'd love to listen to it thank you Christian for listening and for waiting for this answer now christian says krishna asks how difficult is it for the manufacturers to build an update from let's say ice cream sandwich to jelly bean for their phones and how much real programming stuff has to be done by them on top of the stuff from google itself I was wondering because being quite active in the XDA community I was impressed by essentially he says he was impressed by how quickly people cook custom roms there and why does it take the companies so long to develop to deliver an update even when they have all their device IDs drivers proprietary things etc already around and don't need to figure out how to bypass the bootloader for example how much do they have to do greetings Christian that is an awesome question I think it's one we've all asked time and time again what is why don't we let Joe take a stab at this first well first of all Christian my wife was born in Germany so we've already got a brotherhood there uh on to the question on the question between ice cream sandwich and gel bean probably isn't going to be as ground chattering as you might hope so let's take a step back to do gingerbread honeycomb to jelly bean and we'll just kind of skip honeycomb because nobody likes that that was a major major jump in in the way the hardware was set up in the way that rather the drivers that talk to the hard room to set up permissions we had new stuff we had new substructures that everything talked to without getting too techno mumbo jumbo here there was a lot of stuff that had to change and most of those were in drivers when we're going from ice cream sandwich to jelly bean we've already got that good foundation there aren't a ton of changes as far as back end stuff that has to be done differently to make stuff work from ice cream sandwich to jelly bean so that's why we've seen for example getting out cm9 just took forever it took forever for an ice cream sandwich cyanogenmod to come out but as soon as we got source code cm10 is I'm running Knightley's right now and they're super super stable and it's been very very fast has been that hard so that's the first part of your question you know going up to the jelly bean is a lot faster from Ice Cream Sandwich than any time in in the history another point in your question why does it take so long for for OEMs to come out with these updates this is what I'm interested in very much and he brings up a really good point here they've already got the drivers they've got the source code to the drivers they can just look at it make any tweaks that they need to plug it in and go one of the major holdbacks for custom rom errs aside from unlocking the bootloader which sometimes is a very formidable task is the camera believe it or not the camera drivers are all very very proprietary and they're usually cooked into that camera app so unless you can get into that they don't like releasing that stuff which means now you great your phone your tablet whatever works except for the camera I'm sorry have a nice day so Google is trying to expose api's to make that a little bit better the cyanogenmod team is working on their own api's so that someday in the future we might not need a superuser permission to run cyanogenmod just to install it the more API is that we can get the less proprietary driver support we need to have and we can go quite a bit faster so they should be able to do a quick earthy oems that brings us to the next point if you have one development team and they're sitting down and they are writing firmware their writing drivers they are writing OS they're updating TouchWiz or or since you I or whatever that fancy layer that doesn't even have to be there is they've got these projects all slated out usually a year in advance on what they're gonna do the timelines they've got charts up there to tell you who's on time what the in dependencies are what the milestones are they're going gung-ho working on the next version of that for the next device which they have to meet by the next launch window so they can get it out for Christmas and actually sell these things and now you say well look jellybean just came out and we just released this device a couple months ago now we have to pull people off of those already tight scheduled teams where they probably like me and I'm not operating with enough manpower as is now we have to go back open up another project shoehorn that into place and go through a huge round of a quality-control usability testing make sure that this is all nice and stable and sound and then you think and then release it and then the carriers have to get their hands on and then the same thing happens all over you exactly right and that's not just the OEM a sling and barrier to account if you're like building it for a specific network like like Verizon Wireless your sprint the united states which have not only the LTE stuff but also the CDMA codex which are so much more proprietary than anything else i mean there's like secret encryption and like that and then and then they call up the can you hear me now guy who's actually been fired probably and says hey we want you to travel every state in this country make sure the software works because we don't want verizon customers calling our customer support lines and clogging them up and custom has millions of dollars we have to make sure the software works we're gonna test it for two months get it right thoroughly and then we're going to put all of our apps on top of it and we're gonna test it again I make sure when it says to make sure the bloatware doesn't break anything other than just make everybody's lives miserable young mr. toilet waste bloaty by the time all of that is all done that new product is not only been released but it's probably also come down in price and why don't you just go ahead and get that one because that makes the OEMs happy because they've been working for that and that makes the carrier's happy you know the OEM gets to sell another device which is good the carrier now gets to rope you in for another two-year contract which they think is good so the the deck is stacked against the end-user for getting timely updates or getting updates at all the OEMs don't necessarily want to do it unless it's going to cause a media backlash because their two month old device isn't going to get the the brand new OS and the carrier's really they could not care less they yeah they nurtured sell you mine in and to help anyone yeah well then that's why cyanogenmod exists that's why k okay p exists that's why all of these custom roaming communities exist so that you can take your old device and give it new life and make it last and last and last as long as you can that's well said we got that doesn't man yeah I was gonna say we need to put print that on a t-shirt or not a banner that's Christian I hope that answers your question there we were kind of letting up against a hard stop here Joe there was an awesome awesome answer I want to use our final piece of listener mail to kind of play us out or effort will do it live LOL but but before I do that Brandon Joe do you have some closing comments I'll go first please um it's a fabulous time to be alive looking at the previous course of history I mean look at what we've got today look at pocket now when we started way back when versus where we are now I mean we're we're debating which is better a grid full of icons a grid full of moving icons or Android that you can do anything with it's the full spectrum we can do anything we want regardless of what your style or preference is there is something for you it's there it's now it's today you don't have any excuses come and join the party it's over a pocket now that's nice that's well said sir I like that me too Oh Brandon we're gonna looking a little go out on that one I don't have any closing remark that's terrific that's awesome I like that too great well our final piece of listener mail very brief from collied hello I absolutely love your website and your podcast wants to know if there's any other way to get our podcast on on mobile by a nap he says he uses doubletwist and can't find our podcast yes there is kalid we are on stitcher podcast radio which is probably not available outside the US now that I think of it will send you in a personalized email but we're all aware of course on iTunes the zune marketplace and a bunch of other places you can check out the post listing at pocket now for all the places you can get us including a direct download and streaming and we will endeavor to get on more apps the colleague clarifies he is a listener from Kuwait a small rich country in the Middle East will send you gas if you want it costs less than bottled mineral water wow that's that's a good offer actually we should wait I'm kind of back just gonna save for the guys on the team with cars that's an awesome thing everyone that is gonna do it thank you for writing in accolade end christian and thank you listeners for listening that's going to do it for us please be sure to find the pocket now weekly and pocket now on twitter all over the place where at pocket now tweets is the official account i'm michael fisher i'm at captain two phones its captain the number two phones follow me for absurdity and nonsense brandon minimun is at Brendan minimun and Joe Levi is at Joe Levi you can also find pocket now on facebook and google+ and if you like the podcast please give us a positive review on iTunes that helped us helps us kind of rise of the others and become more visible and that's important to us and to you if you want us to keep talking so if you want to shoot us an email for us to answer on the air we love doing that when we have the time please do so the email address is podcast at pocketnow.com once again as always thank you for listening we'll see you next time have a fabulous day