Gadgetory

microsoft takes the wraps off the surface many that I mean the surface pro 3 and we snag a demo device the LG g3 makes the most of its last week in the shadows by leaking even more of itself to a hungry public and musician Ali Spagnola drops by to tell us what it's like to compose a ringtone and a lot more all that and much more ahead on episode 097 of the pocket now weekly the once-a-week audio podcast where we discuss smartphones tablets wearables and other gadgets you dreamed of owning when you were a kid from boston massachusetts I'm your host Michael Fisher and sitting in the copilot's seat somewhere west of Kitty Hawk today's co-host Taylor Martin and welcome back to the show sir how do you know I'm not in Kitty Hawk I know that you know you're never and no one's in Kitty Hawk there's a museum there in some Hills that's all I've been there it's actually really nice I would like to go some day actually I'm actually used it in aviation I'm just gonna throw this out there i'm actually about two months from probably moving to the coast Wow living in wilmington man well that'll be eyes you will you two will come to know the smell of the sea and its bountiful riches and I'm my gonna tan I doubt that will happen requires like I said and that's pretty much impossible for me so well Taylor hasn't been on the show in a while but that's not the big news the big news of the day of course is that for the first time in history and I didn't know this until immediately before the show we have Microsoft maven and senior editor and most senior pocketnow member in terms of in terms of time in grade Adams elane Adam welcome to the weekly brother hello there I'm really glad that you're joining us it's going well Adam joining us from a from a car outside of it somewhere in somewhere in new york i'm taking a Quester and watch the westchester new york calling in from a Lumia 1020 because why how else would Adam Lane me joining us I love this and Adam is here primarily to talk for the first part of the show to talk about the surface pro 3 Adam do you have the surface pro 3 with you right now the review device not right now it's on my desk okay that's all right you're gonna work from memory that's all right I trust you to do that Taylor did you watch any portion of the live announcement or were you busy I did some live blogging I didn't do it I read some live blogging and actually during the live blog i was talking with a microsoft employee who was also sitting across from me in the coffee shop Oh kind of sort of ignoring me because I don't think he wanted to talk about it so it's more like me talking to him asking questions and he's like looking up at me every so often like kind of sort of nodding his head so I'll shut up you know maybe he might have been on the surface mini team it might be waiting bent out of shape about that it was very upset so we should talk about that last week on the show if you missed it we SAT here and we talked about what we were expecting for the microsoft event which happened on on tuesday and i SAT here and i said something like you know like we had run a story i think i'm i wrote it a news stories like surface pro 3 to launch on Tuesday at tuesday's event and we're all sitting here on there just going basically like no that's crap that of course that's not going to happen like the surface pro 2 has only been out for six months why would they do that no it's just going to be the mini what is everyone smoking and so of course today I'm eating my hat because what we saw at the event was the surface pro 3 not at all the surface mini it looks like those surface many rumors were pretty much spot on and the only reason we didn't see one was due to a directive from management to halt the the announcement to put that on the back burner and to save it for another day Adam are you a her with us I heard a rumor that they halted it so that they could wait for the touch version of office to be available right which would make sense and if it's a RT device so it would be similar to the ipad version of office which is actually very very nice the ipad version volunteers yeah i did a video on it yeah and i used all three so it's Word Excel and PowerPoint and all three of them PowerPoint is kind of obviously the the it's there they did it just to say they did it i think i still want any cell in work i really want to meet the person who like builds powerpoint president patience on his tablet like Adam I know you've probably got about you you would do it on the surface pro or something like that but you know yeah I don't know I can't see building a PowerPoint presentation on an iPad but I don't want to get too far away from this because I mean what's interesting to me most interesting about the mini is that neo when did some really fine reporting on this and have kind of gathered everything together into one post and from what they can tell the surface many went through a first production run so there's like 15 or 20 thousand units sitting in a warehouse somewhere waiting to launch which would make sense if they were ready to announce it today right or excuse me and that's it this week but this thing apparently started life as this rumored Xbox many xbox tablet xbox pad or whatever I don't know what they were going to exhale surface and then when they decided a gaming tablet really didn't make much sense in that context it kind of rebranded and stuff so it's a very interesting story we have it in the rundown and linking to that to that source but that'll be an interesting thing to see there's some great new features in the surface pro 3 that i think would translate really well to the mini for example that what that new pen where you click it and it goes straight into OneNote and then you can start running you know writing your notes right away that would be really nice out of mini yeah because a mini is something you're more likely to be carrying with you at any gat time yeah in a pocket at jacket pocket Adam you were there what is your what is your like your favorite part of the surface pro 3 before I start peppering you with questions you've had the device for like two days yeah my favorite part is definitely the screen the 12 inch screen previous to the surface pro I used to use other tablets from like HP or whatnot and isles had a nice 12 inch screen so this new 12 inch screen is you know it feels really perfect to me and the aspect ratio I like a lot yeah that's an interesting thing is that it's 322 right yeah yep so I don't know I can't remember really seeing that aspect ratio on a lot of tablets as you go up till now but it certainly looks like it makes a lot of sense I think they were comparing it to a legal pad at the unveiling right yeah it feels a lot like a you know a thick magazine with the width on Iran or no oh well depending on what kind of magazine you got ya actually let me tell you last night I compared it to the surface 2 and if you've tried one of those it is extremely similar like I put it down on a table in macro close-up look at the thickness the surface pro 3 is a hair thicker I thought that they had proper cpu and fans yeah so it's I know it's not add what about is light and in terms of weight yeah it's 800 grams which honestly I've sitting here watching and not having handled the device i was a little bit let down when I compared the weight because you know I've got the ipad the fourth-generation ipad sitting here and I've always complained that that's way too heavy and the Lumia 2520 is about 600 15 grams and that's that's a pretty beefy tablet so 800 grams I wasn't that wasn't the that didn't make me the happiest but considering that they've blown up the screen to 12 inches i can I I respect the hardware accomplishment I just sort of editing possible or I seven and eight gigs of ram and yeah 512 gigs of SSD run right now it's a monster we actually have a thought thread here that I sort of want to sound the chime on and and do because Christopher drummer wrote in to ask us hello pocket no team my question is quick and simple would any of you be willing to switch your MacBooks or heirs for the surface pro 3 and I want to dive into this a little bit deeper in a minute but assuming I was going to do this okay say I was going to give up the macbook air I use every day which is a 2012 model that's pretty pretty spec packed for the surface pro 3 which one could should I invest in what is the difference here between i3 i5 and i7 for someone who does not necessarily follow processor architecture very closely I'm not sure if I can really answer that to accurately you know the i7 is the most powerful one so you'll have the most cpu usage there but i'm pretty happy with the i5 I've been running Premiere Pro and photoshop and all sorts of high-end programs and they're running extremely smoothly and this one has eight gigs of RAM as well and 256 gig SSD so I think it's kind of a middle-range model and tailors just have dropped off some specs in the thread here what are you looking at there these are this is the price list yeah so it take us through that Taylor what are the actual prices on this thing for entry mid and high end okay so the the base model is the core i3 with four gigs of ram and 64 gigs of storage and that's eight hundred dollars for 799 so if you pair the 130 dollar keyboard with that you're a 929 for a base model yeah yeah and then that goes all the way up so if you go to the i5 the base I five is going to be 999 that's 128 gigs of storage still four gigs of RAM if you double the RAM in the storage that goes up to thirteen hundred dollars and the base I seven it's eight gigs of ram 250 gigs of storage that one is 1550 basically damn and then the top end model that's maxed out fully maxed out with everything without a keyboard that's I seven eight gigs of RAM five or so half a terabyte of storage and that one is 1950 throw in a keyboard you're looking at 21 80 plus tax and yeah and 28 the justification that Microsoft is using to justify them is to say that the surface pro 3 is finally the device you can buy if you don't want to sacrifice if you don't want to compromise if you want to get a tablet laptop hybrid that is actually going to do the job of each equally well then this is finally the device for you finally like that's that was the impression I got through the entire hour of the presentation that I watched yeah from a hardware perspective Adam and I mean build when you're when you have the thing on your lap and oh that's been the biggest frustration for me with the surface with the 2520 and its power keyboard with pretty much any tablet and it's going a keyboard case it doesn't work as well you know with a laptop I can get the hinge down around my knees and like extend the you know fold the screen all the way back and then it's it's well balanced it's not going to fall over but with something with a with a deployable kickstand around back that's tougher to do and you feel like you're kind of cramped the screen is too close to your stomach when you're sitting how is it but yeah for you what's what's the story on that is this friction kickstand solve that problem or or we sell having trouble when I'm using it on my lap I hold it like a tablet so I don't even use a keyboard I put the full the keyboard back and then you know you're holding it right hang up and you use the stylus to do all the input okay so you want that give this one a dream look comfortable sure that's definitely it's always comfortable but if you want to like yeah if you want to really hammer out some stuff you're sitting on a bus or a plane and the stupid tray in front of you is broken or it's not big enough as often happens to me yeah and we want to put it at lab can you type on it comfortably like the point you made you do have to have a little more area on your knees for that kickstand to sit on something there yeah so the keyboard does get closer to your stomach there so yes that is an issue right and that's just a it's not a defect I mean it's just part of the design of how the surface is and most tablets with with kickstands are built which yeah is still frustrating you know to me that's still an innate compromise that you have to make with something like this for its this the weight distribution because if you have a laptop all of your components and everything are in the bottom and all your weight is in the bottom everything like your display is just there it's like a fraction of what the base of the computer ways this all of your weight is in the top now i'm just--my board so that was something i realized when i tried my first ipad keyboard because it was a i can't remember exactly what it was but i would sit with the ipad on my lap in the keyboard and it would just fall off the back my needs all the time to know it wasn't an ipad it was the transformer yeah from a sous so i would put it on my lap and i'd be typing and like the keyboard would lift and bounce when i would type yes certainly that happens on pretty much every keyboard accessory for a tablet i've ever used as well but Adam there's a different there's a strip here right there's a magnetic strip on the yeah on the type cover that locks into the bottom part of the service which certainly looks like it rigid eise's the thing a little bit it does it makes it the screen is more stable like if don't have that strip and you touch screen the it kind of wobbles against your knees with the kickstand uh-huh but when you attach that little magnet it it becomes much more stable so you can touch the screen and it doesn't move see that's interesting and I wouldn't have expected a result that you profound just as a result of changing the mounting point of the keyboard from the port on the bottom to like you know changing the load-bearing joint as it were yeah that's interesting to hear it doesn't solve that problem that Taylor that you bring up which is the weight distribution issue but it does at least rigid eyes the whole thing and I imagine makes it a bit more comfortable what about the trackpad which has been miserable on every single surface oh yes it's much much better it's actually clickable now so there's a click if you press it hard enough there's a mechanical click on the yeah yeah okay but you can also do the tapping just for a single click and is it larger so you don't need to have like dainty little fingers to fit us hmm i believe they said sixty-eight percent larger so it's more like a normal laptop as opposed to a tiny netbook respect that I've been looking through just some random tablets and and I was trying to get a feel for weight because 800 grams doesn't mean anything to me um if you look at a tablet we looked at at CES samsung galaxy tab pro 12 22 yeah that it's 740 grams so this is a snapdragon SOC three gigs of ram and more tablet esque specifications and it weighs almost the same and it's a very similar size that's a solid point yet has nowhere near the powder processing by aura of even the well i'm not actually prepared to say that i was about to say even the i3 but i have no idea frankly how the snapdragon 800 matches up against it as well but uh so i want to talk about how you cool those processors Adam have you heard the fan of the surface pro 3 yet because certainly we spent at the time of their you have yeah no I understand that that was supposed to be you know really heavily diminished did you have to really ramp up the horsepower on the thing too yeah yeah running how'd you stress test it Premiere Pro Photo Shop No without being big files and adobe of course was a big a big presence on stage at this thing how have you found the the premier sweet and stuff how does it how well does it run oh very well yeah there's no rendering time between you know adding dissolves or effects or edits it just press plane it's like it's already done Wow well that is impressive the I understand the fan bridge is still there from what I see and you say that the hardware is very very similar to what's gone before but would you say I don't mean to dwell on this fan thing but you know even Panos Panay said it on stages like yeah you know it's hip to not have a fan we had to have a fan but we made it invisible basically so I gay it's very quiet it's kind of like a very subtle hiss okay we and that's only when it's under load right yeah okay tell me Adam this just popped to mind does the for those who are thinking of picking this up but in addition to the desktop power they want some really well honed to tablet apps obviously Windows 8 has some really not a lot what is the story with that emulator that you told me about about a year ago the ANFO bluestacks what's that called bluestacks yeah yeah I haven't tried that recently I should install that yeah I knew I'd like to see that when it cuz your review is gonna land what next week probably yeah see how quickly I can make that happen I would love to see that to see that covered because you know I think a lot of people when i'm sitting here and I'm looking at the the Microsoft offerings or I'm walking by the Microsoft Store and I'm like wow which one would i would I actually get you know I really liked the 2520 except i can't stand windows RT because it teases me with with ability and then it hits me in the face and tells me no but so i would get if i were investing i would i would get a full-featured windows 8 device but only if it could also match my need for for tablet-optimized stuff no I guess I don't have that big in the util I mean save the pen yeah the pen saves you from a lot of that yeah I don't know if it does matter let's talk about it yeah that because the pen has been designed to like a Bic pen right it's it's comfortable to hold I take it right yeah it's a aluminum metal no it's it's a little thicker than the previous one also feels much more substantial does ever better in it yes as three batteries a quad quad a battery and then two small watch batteries oh all right come on wait a second ago batteries there's one type of one better in two types of another yes get out of my face okay how long does the battery out how long is the battery life on the pin I'm not sure yet but it's work it's been working fine so far so at least that far it's not better than the dell venue pro battery which is a really horrible okay all right that stylus so in exchange for this battery that requires three three birds this pan that requires three batteries does the pen come with the device by the way I am pretty sure it must yeah I don't know i mean the type cover doesn't call yeah it was in the box it was underneath the device in the box sorry yeah but a replacement one is 50 bucks okay well that's fine just don't lose it that's fine yeah uh but all right so what do you get in exchange for this for this large pen that doesn't have a silo can you stick it in the type cover sleeve is there a port yeah that's right our type cover has kind of like a little loop or fabric loop stretchy fabric okay so you can stick it in there and it stays there pretty pretty securely I'm gonna go a good aspects of this pen in a second Adam but I just got to say like isn't it isn't it annoying that there's not and I know they had a big miniaturization challenge with this device but isn't it a little irritating that they couldn't find a way to integrate the panas as a as a siloed component because every time I see ya but with it just bolted on I'm like ah that's so cumbersome that ruins the lines you know yeah but it's the tablet is thinner than the pen that's a good fella put it inside there you're right and they didn't want to go super thin with the stylist because they wanted to make it a natural fit for the hand like a yeah okay reminds me of the I think it's called Kozma up I had it my roommate stole it it's a stylist for it's a capacitive stylus but it's shaped or made to be like an expo marker or like a whiteboard marker Oh interesting and it feels it feels really natural to use except for there's a little air gap between the outer coating and like the inside and it doesn't register unless the tip touches the inside so you have to press and that's why I stopped using it but it was really really nice to use and hold it just wasn't very accurate which i guess is really a high point of the surface pro 3 is pin yeah is that if they it's supposedly very very accurate and that's been one of my big frustrations with pretty much every stylist up to and including the ones on the note line you know Samsung sort of owns the market on this where it's like yeah this would this digitizer registers 10,000 levels of pressure sensitivity that's great but when I'm writing a note the input still lags behind the pen tip by like a few millimeters in a few nanoseconds and it's or sometimes it's enough sometimes it's a few pixels off where you're trying to touch exactly right and that's nothing more annoying than that and on stage microsoft called this sort of the parallax effect Adam they say they've solved it what is the story is it does it really feel like writing on a piece of paper with a pen or is that over blind it's looking pretty good I think you could slow it down if you put a lot of load with other open programs and other stuff going on at the same time mm-hmm but it's been working really nicely one thing about this new pen is it's kind of a downgrade from the surface pro 2 in the levels of pressure sensitivity that it supports this one only does 256 levels whereas the surface pro and surface pro 2 had 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity now why is that so explain that don't they they went to a completely different technology the previous surface pro used Wacom which doesn't require a battery in the pen but this one has a n-trig digitizer so it's a completely different tech huh but the other the other advantage a new advantage of the pen with batteries in it is the clicky button at the end you know with that you can do different controls like launching the camera or watching OneNote and so that's that's kind of a cool trade-off I'm not sure if it's worth the loss and pressure sensitivity but well you know I I guess if they change the focus than it is right because this is not there certainly Microsoft is not pitching the surface pro 3 as a as a high-end artists yeah like as a creative thing you know I went when Panos Panay was using the pen and some scenarios he was editing a screenplay you know his brothers screenplay so it's like oh okay yeah this is good for taking memos and it's yes it's good for using OneNote they didn't and yeah they trumped out the the adobe stuff for a little bit but it wasn't like like a samsung galaxy note presentation where he had people making huge oil paintings on their tablet or in like that and you know it I think if they can position it properly it'll be fine because 256 levels of pressure sensitivity would be fine for me to take a note I don't know about you guys yeah and I'd make that sacrifice if it meant that writing on the thing was a lag less experience with none of that parallax effect I just don't know if I would carry the pen around all the time what I usually do when I'm using it the surface pro 3 also has magnets on the edges so instead of you know slugging it somewhere you can actually just stick to the side and it'll hold it there but if you're gonna put in your bag it's obviously you know it's gonna fall off right of the magnet so you got to put in the loop if you're gonna store it on your backpack you know being a gospel some of those like state switchable magnets that they're talking about for project ara where you slap the thing on there and you hit like a fix or whatever and it changes the you know the polarity of the things that just locks it in place and you have to arrest a button to unlock it i think that would be pretty sweet but even in its current form magnets to hold a pen on there is pretty cool so Taylor I sort of know your answer but what about the thought thread what about Christopher drummers question is there anything about the pro 3 assuming cost is not a factor that would make it i mean i want to take the surface pro 3 over a macbook hosts were not a factor well I don't have a macbook air i have macbook pro okay and i missed my macbook air because it's of the weight penalty of the program okay yeah so that's one thing that would make me say i would for service maybe if I had a maxed out one maybe i5 or i7 I probably would not go I three that's just my experience with I three mm-hmm it's been a while since I've had anything other than a macbook though so windows for me is just something that I've never really wanted to go back after i used ubuntu and various different builds of linux and OS 10 I really haven't ever wanted to go back to Windows I've used windows 8 haven't used Windows 8.1 but I don't know it's that's a really tough question I'd like to use one for a while I've never actually used a surface tablet or Windows 8 tablet period that's Windows 8/rt that's no windows 8 tablet ever hmm so that's a very difficult question for me to answer if you factor in cost i'd get a macbook air over at any day that's why i think this is a good question though because this is the question that people are going to be asking themselves at least in certain markets because I'll tell you when I walk around Boston I every single coffee shop it's it's hilarious I mean I'm sure there have been many comedies written about it you want a coffee shop and the windows are completely dominated by Apple logos every single young professional has a macbook air a macbook pro or a macbook and it's like it's it's it's absurd so you have this kind of saturation in in markets where I don't think people are necessarily jumping from one platform to another just have fun but there are going to be people who are like tired of the mac experience or maybe they don't like it for one reason or another they want to do this thing that Microsoft assumes people want to do which is converged the tablet and the laptop and they don't want to buy two devices they want to buy one so but I think that it's a massive ecosystem leap first of all because I'm the same way yes i would like to carry a tablet around it's the surface pro 3 looks like beautiful hardware I'd love to try it out the type cover I'm certain I could get used to if I can get used to the nokia power keyboard but there's i would have to learn an entire new video editing program I my workflow change completely you know I mean like and see for me i wanna try a surface tablet and of all the surface tablets to date the service pros seems the most logical to try no question yeah i mean that's that's pretty obviously but I I don't know like I want one I really really contemplated buying a surface pro 2 so I might buy a surface pro 3 eventually but the price is just for me the price is really difficult to swallow it I think the price argument is contingent on Microsoft on that bet that Microsoft is making that people want to go out and buy one device because if you add the cost of a macbook air and the cost of an ipad air well then you're starting to get in the neighborhood of this convergence device this surface pro 3 right yeah and one thing they didn't mention is you could also plug in a TV tuner and a 4k display and replace your TV to wait hold up but I don't I don't get a hold on a second you play a 4k display and replace your tia a TV tuner USB okay so that goes to the cable box Oh ed center installed on tablet you got a ten-foot interface yeah like but no yeah the capability is there sure of it like your docking station yeah I don't know popped on a docking station now it's got a DVR so much utility too right yeah these media center still around is that still a thing yeah yes awesome you know actually media center sort of blew me away back in two thousand six when I got a I got a big beefy HP pavilion like the top of line everything with a commercial money from shooting a commercial and I was like this is Media Center's awesome i'm using my remote on my laptop from across the room and that's cool but then it kind of didn't really go anywhere like I thought it got folded into xbox and sort of forgotten about but it is kind of forgotten about it but it's still there and it still works interesting honest isn't it I would still use it too if I were running on primarily on window stuff I'm sure I would still use media center because I actually liked it quite a bit one last question that i have i'm going to make sure Taylor gets a chance to ask his final question but how's that side windows key man like i like that they moved it because it gives you the impression that you should use the surface portrait as much as you do in landscape and it actually looks pretty good but how is it on a day to day functionality basis I do not like it you prefer it does in the on the long side yeah if you're using the pen and you're using the tablet in like landscape mode getting you rub your hand over to the right side of the edge that button is not rejected when your pen is near the screen like everything else on the screen so no I have been accidentally opening the Start menu when my hand goes over there because my hand is resting on the screen and if it slides way over there too much yeah it might it might activate the Start screen oh that's rough maybe they can fix that in a firmware update because that's it seems like a very like large oversight that seems like something that would pop up very often in a test case yeah it seems like it should be fixable yeah Wow because I mean that's what happens with say the Galaxy Note 3 or any of the galaxy notes because they have capacitive input and then they have inductive input with the stylus so when inductive input is near the screen all capacitive input is turned off completely oh really yeah it'll tend to like the palm rejection thing I don't know it's been a while yes denote yeah yeah so when they they're digitizers or Wacom digitizer 'he's which or inductive and when the stylus gets near the display all capacitive input is turned off period huh yeah so I don't know yeah like this uses what sort of digitizer I haven't even looked into it I don't know adam said it before what it is inductive if it's inductive so yeah why not just go for all capacitive input yeah even to harper buttons Wow yep oh well I probably knew that once but I forgot it yeah hmm I had to replace it with more relevant information right yeah well thank you for the for the for the primer on that Adam I know you got to go get lunch but one last question before you go what's the what is your feeling on the battery life so far on the on the pro3 pentose but I said it has a year's worth of standby time which is hilarious oh I don't know about that but it's it's been very good it's about the same as the surface pro 2 you know all day don't I don't carry charger around so it's been pretty good oh and it has connected standby now so that's a really good addition give us a refresher on that what's connected sama the previous surface Pro's when they went to sleep they didn't get skype instant messages or emails okay so it's just now either sleep now that it'll snap but it'll still listen for notifications and will it be a little time if you get something yep that's very nice so I do have one final question and it's about the cover the type cover are the keys loose on that because in the picture for your hands on video the keys all look like they're at a different level yeah I never use one of these like that yeah are they actually like way off like they look really loose in that picture no they don't seem loose too much it seems about the same as the previous type cover you know when typing on it oh I see what you're talking about yeah yeah it looks like if you'd like took it and shook it around a little bit they'd like yeah I know if it's like that again yeah it's like you look at anything interesting there yeah yeah look at shingles shingles on the side of a house yeah yeah would sleep that's really cool that I mean it just it looks like there's a fair amount of travel and as is that the case Adam oh you can definitely feel when they're pressing down so yeah it's very good that way the first gen touch cover was actually a type cover was actually pretty good too did they make a touch cover for this thing I don't think so no haven't heard anything about that it's probably best I really adored the touch covers looks but functionally I couldn't get it to work too well for me yeah I think this is the most exciting surface and it is certainly in history I don't know if Taylor once wants to do the review rebuttal on this but ice yes like to do it too yeah I do because I've never used a surface tablet that's nice alright anyway Adam I we all cannot wait to hear what what the story is on this thing what you're gonna compare it to the surface pro 2 correct yeah and probably the surface to these surfaces well you have a surface 2 um I borrowed one last night and got some time with that hold on it we went to the Microsoft Store and then we went to the apple store where our surfaces it's that wait hold up is that the one you were talking about before when you were talking about the thickness test to reach I'm with the surface pro 2 surface to the arc t1 oh good yeah because yeah but the surface pro 2 is legitimately thicker right yes yeah that's why i was confused before it's like what are you talking about dinner ok ok i see awesome all right good so you remember the original surface the surface pro 3 is about that thickness and add weight which is awesome yeah Adam doubt as our has our house surface RT and man that thing was was super futuristic in the way it was then do you miss the clack of the kickstand I'm done with questions after this I promise but it still flex up in the way it works is the first you know little bit you know kind of like the similar to the original surface that part moves very quickly oh and that starts and then it gives a bunch of friction so when you want to change the angle it's it's much more stiff right no I get the friction brought I just thought it was from from the start it started doing like fruit but it actually flips out and is spring-loaded to a certain degree let degree setting yeah yep oh well good then they guy still do fun choreographed dance commercials which I don't do this is great Adam would you buy one I mean knowing what you know now I know your review isn't done I'm just kind of trying to get a sneak preview I really prefer the wacom stylus with much more pressure sensitivity so I'm not sure if I would you know I really like the 12 inch screen though and the much thinner body and much lighter so it's it's hard to decide understood well I will ask you again once your full review got up and I read it will be talking about this device more on the show and I'm looking forward to Taylor getting some hands-on time with it as well so we can get a different perspective from someone who has been criminally negligent about his exposure to windows I have not been negligent and just been deprived of them depend approved and neglected from you guys he collected in my book you don't have parallels yeah well no I do i do I tried windows 8 I just I needed i want to try it on a surface on a prior device that makes sense yeah I want to take crack out because I want to run dosbox and run my old games on the surface and now all that will make me run a surface pro 3 do you guys mind if i put linux on it yes ya can't mind a lot I I appreciate you coming by Adam thank you for for carving out the time in your day to college from your phone and let's say talk again soon I'm really glad you made it to the weekly let's not make it the last time alright cool make you talk to you like you later I didn't realize that was the first time that Adam Lane had come on the weekly we've been trying to get him on forever but I thought it was on but i was i was actually realized afterwards that I was actually thinking about the editorial round table for the young HTC One m8 yeah yeah well he was on that one and he was on the next one yeah that's right says crit yeah he was that's what it was that's where my confusion sprung anyway it's good to have them on the weekly we need to close out windows move into Android and then we have the feature segment later with Ali spagnola which amex very excited about but let's close out windows here we have a lenovo windows phone coming late this year is the report actually this one comes right from lenovo i believe this is from Lu Jun whose name I can't pronounce yet the chief of lenovo's mobile division there were previous rumors that have been talking about lenovo windows phones for a while to at the end of the summer because lenovo is one of that massive cloud of new OEMs that Microsoft spat out but that this has been postponed / reworded rights aunt and a nudge to indicate a more vague time frame I mean maybe they're postponing it to make it a motorola device the thing yeah i don't say it's bad news in the sense that like it i just i just wanted to see it I ideally I want just like we've seen the lenovo android phones i want to see the pre motorola acquisition lenovo sweet and then the post motorola acquisition sweet were you about to say you want a motorola windows phone no I was gonna say that I'd much rather see it as a motorola incarnation than a lenovo foam because I've never has lenovo Lenovo's made phones before correct yeah lenovo has a whole line of actually writer sweet-looking android phones right but they're just not really all that compelling well yeah and they also have been around that long I don't think they're priced right they're not offered in ever in a lot of markets like it's their mobile offering was really half-hearted until the equatorial acquisition they don't have the clout Motorola has as a smartphone maker where is the reason they bought them Yeah right and why not put that purchase to good use I'm saying I and I have just been thinking of we're getting x + 1 rumours not that kind of stuff but man wouldn't it be great to see a motorola windows phone after the lenovo acquisition because that would seem to be a really good way to leverage the acquisition of motorola and it would also be a really great way to fulfill Lenovo's obligations to microsoft as a vendor I'm just envisioning like a Windows ified Moto X with touchless control plugged into Cortana which I think would be amazingly cool I also admittedly have never used Cortana or Windows Phone 8.1 yeah because your icon is still running the official build 48 which is what you use for that comparison yes yes which is a perfect segue into man or it was until you called it out oh no it's still perfect so this comparison is a pretty good comparison I thought I watched it shortly before coming on the air I did jump around a little bit it was pressed for time but your camera shots were plentiful we got to see the meat of this comparison the Xperia z2 versus the Lumia icon the phone I called the best camera phone for android right now up against one of the best camera phones for windows phone yeah and sure what was your takeaway go ahead well the one reason that I say it's a perfect segue ever was a perfect segue is because every one who is just I guess fighting or pulling for the Lumia icon mm-hmm was mmm I just terribly upset that I did not take into consideration windows phone 8.1 and I did I noted it in the software section i said if this were running 8.1 it would be a totally different story and i would have a much more difficult time choosing which phone one the computer so in order to recommend choosing which one to recommend i did in a consideration Windows Phone 8.1 but it's not officially official it's official but it's not available to consumers it's a developer preview exactly and even though it's been updated recently it's still not final at the only final versions are the ones that are shipping on the 630 and 635 we talked about last week yeah and we can't we don't compare unofficial versions of software so a developer preview is not really an official version of software yeah which is out of consumers confused I get it that it can be confusing because we do review the developer we reviewed the developer my view of a time one so I mean I get and and my takeaway was the only reason that I really recommended the easy to over the icon was the fact that it's not running Windows Phone 8.1 because when this 18 feels very stale and Windows Phone 8.1 although I haven't actually used it myself add some much-needed spice too and otherwise aging oh yeah build of windows home yeah it wanted something I'd rather enjoy it right so that was my only takeaway and everyone took that for whatever reason as it happens yeah that's fine internet comments and such lob lob it was a good comparison I mean I it was the photos were most interesting to me and I I want to know what your your thoughts are I mean I know you said you would prefer the icon but it was a real edge case this was a situation where these were very well-matched cameras part of the problem was that I didn't get a lot of time with the z2 so it wasn't that I'd like had half-hearted thoughts throughout this script or anything it was just that I wanted more time to test the phones yeah beside one another so I didn't get that full effect but I did you know test the cameras in different scenarios and in a few at least it was surprising because I expected the Lumia icon with optical image stabilization to just below the Z 2 out of the water in low light and that wasn't the case aussie to is it surprisingly capable in low light yeah actually yeah it is and well it kind of varied because if you were in really low light the z2 just fell apart because i took a picture in an elevator and this I included this in the videos of it the Z tues picture in the elevator I took them side by side at the exact same time held in both steady and the z2 is turned out like this horrible blurry no detail mess and the icons was actually a really good picture oh and then but probably because of hand movements though because the OAS kicked him then maybe yeah maybe cuz i don't know use the z2 and low-light like I'm talking about pitch dark like 11 at night shooting a photo of the Starship Enterprise on my porch with no flash and that thing came out like in stark relief against the night sky this white like it auntie shadowed it was amazing I was like I can't believe this said well maybe an hour before that I was eating lunch in a very very dimly lit restaurant and I took a picture with both of them and the z2 is just blew the icon out of the water it looked the z2 looked as if exactly true to life it looked exactly how the food looked on my plate and the icons was blurry and not that detailed and it was cold a lot of the icons pictures are very cool and that doesn't bother me because I always edit my pictures afterwards so I don't really take into consideration or heavily into consideration like the temperature of pictures that you take with a phone camera but still with the optical image stabilization the hardware shutter key which I much prefer on the icon those II tues I didn't really like that much has a much more limited range of motion and it's smaller and it's harder to find and yeah the icons beated and and the consistency of the camera speed so the shutter speed and how quickly it takes pictures I would choose the icon I couldn't cram all of that information into the script because it was already ten minutes long but yeah that's cuz you had to interest but yeah oh yeah i was watching i was like wow you could have shaved off like a minute if you just did that second intro instead of the first one I know but then I can't show my face and and I'm really working through some audio issues from my intros see that yeah yeah that that will be fixed in my next video I got a lot of comments about that in the last week so well as you know i'm working on it i'm just testing some things and they didn't work out some lipstick and plastics made it yeah it's good to have that have a lot of people are asking for it I almost jumped off a bridge three times while making that video so glad you didn't what say we sound the time since we're already talking about an android phone let's say we move on to the android section where we have a ton of quite exciting news would you would you second that motion ah I suppose but I'm back then it's done I have a question Taylor uh-huh do you ever use the speakers on your smartphone every damn day now why you you have earbuds Taylor I know and I have tooth speakers and an expensive headphones and expense it yeah why would you ever use the speaker on your smartphone that doesn't make any sense I know apparently I'm an idiot apparently and the only person in the world that does according to this is some people one of my favorite editorials to pitch and it's the headline that town and I eventually come up with was think smartphone speakers don't matter think again and this is this came to us I think probably about the same time because we've had a lot of blowback every time we put an HTC One up against another device and this is actually been happening since last year people will immediately dismiss boom sound as a differentiator and they'll say only jerks who listen to music on the bus yeah out loud care about this stuff and you guys are idiots for thinking the you know HTC has fooled everybody into thinking that that speaker quality matters and as no longer can find HTC now we have sony with the front firing speakers on the z2 even though they're not very loud they're still there there they sound I want to make that very clear the z2 speakers sound great but they are so quiet they're just Wyatt yeah yeah and people look it's because they're waterproof no it's because they're tiny slits and they don't have any sort of resonating chamber or anything they're just tiny little itty bitty speakers that sound great no oh no and z2 had to do they had to do that in the sea too because water yes it is waterproofing but also it's freaking wafer-thin device I mean it's yeah you can't you know you need to if you're if you're going to do it right it needs to be a big device which is why all of HTC's phones are taller than the competition but anyway and even rear firing speakers the icons is really loud but its rear from the Moto X really loud and really x but rear firing so anyway it's not an HTC thing it's it's a speaker phones are excellent thing and here's why because you know not everyone is a shut-in which is my immediate respondent counter-argument to this thing of like why would you ever not use earbuds to watch a movie well first of all it's not always freaking convenient to have earbuds in even when I'm by myself but if I'm watching it with someone else Mike hey let me show you this youtube video real quick we want to share headphones like it's 1991 and you have a Walkman with this duel headphone jack attraction pretty cool but f it you know yeah that comes up every day that that happens to me if not every day probably every other day yeah I mean all the time and it literally it happens exactly the way I explained it in the article somebody wants to show a video on youtube and the speakers aren't loud enough on their phone so they're like hey Taylor your phone speakers are really loud you play the video that happens all the time and if this isn't something where it's a thing like like the leader of your local popularity chapter like you need literally to know one other human being with whom you occasionally like to share media okay that's all you need to realize the value of this thing and like it's it sucks if you don't have that but also shut up because it's worthwhile and it's not a counter-argument to say like well that never happens for me this is gonna sound lame so lame but my friend and I back home before I moved Charlotte he and I would sit at a Waffle House um pretty often he was he goes there seven days a week and since four hours and drink coffee but that's pretty cool life I dig that yeah but there's nothing to do in that town like literally nothing there's ever wondered horrible i was in town that's that's the case yeah there's one bar it's called the country corral and you just don't want to walk through those doors you will you will come out of that place a changed person just don't go um so he goes and sits at the Waffle House and everybody knows us but we'll sit there and people will just join our table and just hang out and sometimes we'd play videos we play youtube videos I did it on my iphone for a few hours one time and it was just like we huddle Brown really closely I mean a lot of background noise but huddle around the speaker nobody could hear anything so we'd go outside and listen or watch this video and every time I come with a new phone we try it out just to see how the speaker was and the only phone that I ever brought up there that was actually good enough was the first the one in seven I have a min baggage but the one m7 was great and eventually I just stopped caring and bring bring a Bluetooth speaker with me just because that's the only way that we can do that now yeah and that's not convenient my bluetooth speaker is literally it's the shape and size of a an energy drink and one of the giant like monster energy rockstar give it to have a beats pill no no no it's a bigger and it's better than a beats pill it's the ultimate yours boom if you want a bluetooth speaker that is the one to buy hands down no question about it I don't know official word on Apple beats by the way if anybody wants to know if I'm gonna leverage that Segway I'm not yeah all right all right right so the point is there is a cogent assembly of arguments in favor of speaker phones and why they are not irrelevant and they are linked in the rundown I just basically put it in here because it's such a I agree so vehemently with this editorial that it needed to be said it needed to be talked about and if you have a counter-argument listeners I know my tone suggests that the next words out of my mouth are gonna be shut up that is not the case I want to hear from you if you have an argument shoot it at us I'm a podcaster pocketnow.com is that is the email address really oh cuz it's an interesting dialogue to have I can't think of a counter argument that all right ray with but I'd like to you yeah like alarm clock I'm playing music ringtones beaker phone call there's so many things and people will be talking about yeah and people like no I never use my smartphone speaker I guarantee you that is a lie yeah that is a lie uh what and I want to read just one more line then we're done yeah one more then that's good it's it's the end of it if you disagree you're either lying to yourself basing your conclusion of never having used a phone with a great audio experience or you're one of those weirdos who runs around literally everywhere with LG tones around their neck then I wanted to read that on air i wanted to because i have a group of friends that there are four or five of them they wear LG tones on their neck everywhere they go we go to bars is that a bluetooth headset it's this bluetooth headset that like has this band it's like a rubber neck band that's like it hangs around your neck and then it has magnetic it has ear buds that are connected to it I'll Grande's the earbuds are connected via wires to the thing that goes around your neck yeah hate those know people who wear glass should not be punched in the face people who wear that those weird contraptions Jude well should also not be punch that nobody should be punch to the face but people should get grief for wearing LG tones I think that I I think so too and I had to throw that in there I had to say it on air because I mean as much as people love these things like everybody I know who's ever tried LG tone just love them Hey look ridiculous looks and all of my friends wear them everywhere now we go to a bar we go anywhere my friends are wearing these around their neck and it is so dumb I am no one to tell other people they can wear I but up until like two minutes before the pod get started I was literally wearing a Star Trek comm badge on my chest but you know hey do what you want all I'm saying is those things look too but yeah all right uh I want to ask you Taylor Martin if cases excite you are you the kind of guy who gets jazzed about flip flip cases on smartphones not really i'm actually the kind of person who rarely ever gives us a case on my phone however the m8 has changed me I'm with you and it why has the m8 changed you because it's brushed metal and I don't want it to get damaged alright alright alright I feel so chilly what case do you use I have to speaking cases that I use now Wow wack sauce you the only answer the only right answer that question is the dot view case because they know it's not a bad ass mfn thing ever it looks cool and it's awesome when it's closed but I want to use your phone a period that's the worst case evidence of what it's one of those for me it's one of those trade-offs that I will make I use minimum as my keyboard and so gross yes yes i love menuhin but i can't use menu with the dot view cage because the keyboard like when you're typing it bounces around system yeah it's like we're just gonna be nuts these inflatable houses that you jump around in your kid the one that flew 50 feet see there the other day yeah I heard it's your three kids that's not the one I'm talking about that was in particular is not now not so anyway the the dot view case I too was like you Taylor I don't I like my phone's naked I do not like cases on my devices but a while back some cases started to change my view there the galaxy s4 is the one I'm thinking of with the S view cover I think they called it which was the first time that I had encountered a phone where when you close the flip cover it had a window in it and the screen would adapt to it and display content only in that window in a really cool way so did we did a short video and it was like wow this actually makes me want to use the s4 a lot more often than i do and plus that window is not just a hole in the case it's got a layer of plastic so it protects the screen the whole thing is protected i could still use it that's awesome and then the dot view case which we've already talked about LG has made official it's before the g3 even launches they've released the teaser for their quick circle case Taylor look at this for two seconds and tell me you don't want one this is I don't looking that is crazy why don't you you're a nutso person well okay so the appeal is that what you just said you can use your phone with it's still being completely one hundred percent protected and this looks really cool because it makes me think moto 360 because it's the circular display no people what it is um it's it's like the you just said it'll cover it SVU case or yes you case over yet yeah somebody else put the flip cover but yeah all right I don't know but it's like that but it has a circular cut out to interact with the display and it's not just like for notifications or music you can actually use the phone because it actually should chose you'd like a back navigation button so you can swipe and you can open up various applications I don't know if those are limited to just a few or if you can customize that doesn't show that but you can um go into settings and do different things and control your phone yeah and then you still have a back button so you can actually use it a little more than you can with Samsung S view case or whatever yeah it looks pretty cool but it looks really cool like it's the interface is circular so it's like a rotary interface you've got all these circles that line the perimeter of the thing yes you can do the camera if you watch the whole video which I'm sort of trying to do now without it yelling in my ear I just me to this really really low yeah you can make and take calls you can see the time and date you can play music you can looks like activates some sort of health feature that probably talks to that LG health band that I'm probably not going to buy there's other stuff going on here but it looks and there's a lot of utility to it without even having to open the thing but like you say you know we can do some of this on the S view cover already the note 3 has that big ol window and at the LG what the g2 has one like this but it's not that it's like the g pro 2i think has a case like this where you can do about with the weather thing glows but this is special because it's circular and I think you said it right it looks like a moto 360 bolted onto the front of a smartphone I bought those icons are just hideous the software software it's probably not gonna look for you it's offer is hideous yeah and I can't get behind that yeah yeah uh have to wait and see on the supper but you know it's funny you mention that because when i was looking at this thing you know what that circular thing would be perfect for the knowing the google now cards view microphone google voice search thing that should be a center of that thing all the time you should just be able to press it and interact with the phone vocally with via that circular window and an outer layer built for it now that would be exciting yeah if that was the case then maybe if that were the kid but it looked off its like L see L here but I wear layer there Optimus UI and yeah I'm fine to that stuff I can't get behind it now if that's something like that for the one a mate were to happen I might change my mind but I don't know whatever it doesn't need this mess don't use like useless very limited functionality that's a dismissed notifications and that's about it and you can have it calls oh yes see the weather but like and that's a ya know so this offers a lot of utility and I really hope that it's I echo your hope that it's customizable and that LG does not exert a vice grip on this thing to prevent you from using it with apps that are not LG created you know and I mean I hope you can throw in like it would be so cool to if somebody built a circular twitter app for the thing like i would use all the time they'll probably include what their to slide apps oh we both just yeah i think i think we're gonna have to go i'm sick now let's let's move on before because we're gonna you know we're gonna be talking by the g3 a whole lot next week and we are along with another device that i just learned that we're going to be talking about next week and another device we can't talk about that we're going to be talking about next week next week's gonna be a busy busy show before my yet so good because we're because we I have to be I know yeah um additional galaxy has five hands on videos reveal more and more of upcoming phone it's an interesting title choice you made Steven I think he basically didn't want to say gs5 active because we're not sure this is the galaxy s5 active but it sure does look like it this is coming to us from TK tech news AKA prepaid nerds on twitter who has been dropping science on us ever since he got ahold of what he called a galaxy s 5 prime which turned out to be the distinctive physical characteristic of it was a case that you can get on ebay for like ten bucks but it was indeed a different hurt so basically a bunch of people called him out and said it was a faker and then he dropped like 10 videos showing this galaxy s5 active which is I do not think is a fake it looks like something Samsung would build I don't know if that's a compliment it reminds me of the does AT&T push to talk phones whether they call the rugby yeah yeah reminds me of like what a rugby for would look like or something it's it's beefy I don't think it looks very good but the point is it is a hands-on video there are many hands-on videos and he's not done yet what I understand he's got like a backlog of unreleased devices that he's going to reveal to the world so we're gonna keep reporting on these it's interesting it's definite us reminds me I haven't actually have not looked at these videos you should they're there i'm looking right now yeah the side of this so-called galaxy s5 active yeah looks a lot like an iphone case that I had back in the day that the slanted grooves yeah it listeners it's like it's like diamond plate except it's just parallel lines going in the diagonal across the thing and yeah it looks like a galaxy s5 that you put a huge bumper case on excited not because the button the hardware buttons are different we have the hardware keys below the screen as we didn't ask for active and it basically it looks to be answering the question of why do you need a galaxy s5 if the galaxy s5 active if the s5 is already waterproof and basically it's probably going to have meals back well well not mil-spec but does he talk about specifications at all I actually do not know he's in the settings menu right now as I watch it it's the g8 70a is the model number SMG 870 a android is two for two for two is nothing really special about the software build on here but I think it does have some recognization i agree i don't know that it's not clear that it's mil-spec i mean certainly not it just looks like a bunch of rubber but oh man if you're gonna call if you're going to release your flagship phone is a waterproof phone and you are still going to do the active thing then you have to make it rugged you have to make it abble to withstand some abuse because we know the s5 he's not necessarily a fragile phone but it's not you can't like really throw it around without effing it up a little bit you know he was banging it on the table said it was military-grade something well he was shaken it before like one of his first videos of it was and I love I'm not making fun of my like I like TK a lot but he was shaken ages like guys optical image stabilization any kind of like shakes the thing around for 10 seconds so you can hear a rattle inside I don't know that that means optical image stabilization tinley sometimes it does so I've on Twitter I'm like cool scientific test there bro and he's like yeah straight out of MIT um if you just scroll down to the comment section though going in the comments on these because after the the absolute beating that TK tech news got four running his first first videos like you're a fake this is a large garbage why are you wasting our time I I just like watching this avalanche of confirmations like if these are fakes get these aren't fixed like do you agree Taylor like yeah that looks legit is absolutely legit and it looks like Samsung is not the only one the only OEM that is going to be dropping stuff from do want to know what these little dots around the buttons or the brown the the back and menu or task switcher button there are dots what are what are the dots I don't know oh yes yes those maybe just test markings for a pre production unit or styler stylistic elements not really sure but the buttons the physical buttons look lifted right from the s4 I don't think they've change those at all except to make the leftmost one of multitasking button probably know anyway uh yeah if you're interested the s5 seems legit stay tuned for more on that certainly does seem legit get into the end of the android section two more stores before we go one other leak this one from more commonly known of leaks the HTC One m8 prime so called with the strangest render I have seen for an LG product this is a rough render LG product at a LG HTC sorry this is a rough render if it is an official one it's an early one because it just it looks like a desire 816 that somebody bolted a big ol red rim to camera onto the back of what do you think about this like like when you say bolton you mean bolton you don't mean just like somebody put it on there it looks like it was physically just someone actually screwed this onto the bass somebody got some 3m tape and just stuck a circle the back of the thing and put a dual camera lens above it but that's the thing that's what we you know that's why we know this isn't a desire right because it's the this big protruding red-rimmed camera lens but above it is the duo sensor to the left the distinctive dual flash as well so ass looks flagship great even though the render is ugly as sin but you don't agree you think it looks good yeah and mainly that's because I'm a little biased towards grey and orange Oh OMG you're so bias well not know what I'm saying what you're saying is i love the gult the grey and orange and grey and green color combinations obviously but i haven't made that clear right now right I love those color combinations and that's this is right up my alley this is that these are the same colors that I chose for my original moto x so it reminds me of the evo it reminds me of some of the incredible lines verizon back in 2011 this is this looks like if somebody back in 2010 wanted to theorize what the future of HTC looked like this this looks like it I just don't buy this render render but then again we said the same thing about the renders for the one ma then whatever yeah and and this is actually fuel for an editorial you said you wanted to talk about that I'm writing right now so it's not done but this was fuel for that because I love the MA I carry it that is my daily driver right now and when i mate yeah yeah the 1i mate so not the PM a prime but i'm using the one of eight right now and i love the size of it and this is rumored to be bigger I don't remember how much bigger but I read somewhere I can't remember where but it's rumored to be even bigger like five point five maybe six I don't know so do we think this is the new one max the one probably not the one max the woman expects sucked they didn't suck hold on a second the one Max's specs didn't suck they just know they just matched the ones specs from last year right right it was a no they didn't you yeah was it Snapdragon 600 so then suck they just ported the same specs to a bigger chassis basically and took half Oh is and that was the difference yeah that was it yeah and it was built like crap comparatively yeah really was I'd really did like the max at all so maybe maybe it is I don't know either way that that's kind of what fueled this editorial idea for me because I had to come up with one really quickly but it's what your next phone be bigger or smaller and I write this because I've tried practically every smartphone size ever I mean I reviewed the Z ultra which was the full made me a cynic and then I've used everything from the HPV r and the HTC aria if you remember that phones yeah yeah 3.2 inch display that phone was literally the size of my was so tiny i really liked that thing as a yeah it was it was super tiny i love the color scheme of this phone because it was gray on the outside but if you took the battery door off this was when HTC would give me these like tiny little touches when you took the battery door off this thing was like Ferrari yellow yes and they did it with the first draft incredible they did that you pulled off the battery door and it was bright red on the inside whoa that's awesome yeah and the evo i think was like way too so yeah but this film was so tiny like literally palm-sized so i've used all of these and i've gone back and forth back and forth wanting a big phone wanting a little phone and I'm just kind of done with it hmm so yeah I'm totally cool with with the size of the Nexus 5 what I made five inches is like my absolute sweet spot having tried everything and I just want to stress that because you get the one a mate and say this m8 Prime comes with exactly what we wanted out of the one I made which is say a 16 megapixel camera or a much higher resolution camera which is what everyone said the one inmate mrs. or is not yeah that's some now I'm not the right person to talk to you about this area I'm not gay I'm not gonna give this because right now I cuz I can't really talk but it it is a load of crap that when people go to the look at the m8 and they say that all the all this thing needs is a higher resolution camera and they make a lot of specific comparisons to a specific device and they're like gee this is all the m8 needs you just come from this you put it in this no that's not what you do in fact that's crap so right Don and that's not what I'm saying I'm saying that is the one thing about the phone that just kind of irks me even though I take great pictures with it every day it's just that is the low point of the phone and say they they put a higher resolution camera or a better camera not a high resolution camera a better camera in this phone but they make it bigger you can never get the best of both worlds never like but I just neck success this render though I think this is really ugly looking fun but that that's the thing this render looks really really Elementary so I'm going to wait for two or three passes of the same thing like we're doing for the four LG's software yeah the g3's first software they like a month ago Mike let's wait and see hold on let's just let's just see what it is now like wow this is really gross looking all right yeah it's always it's always nice to wait for the release day so that's what we will do is keep reporting on that finally in the wearable news moto 360 everyone's favorite new SmartWatch Motorola has opened up a contest to design your own watch face for it which is pretty cool looks like a pretty simple engine you throw in whatever image you want it pastes it on a render of the watch and it looks pretty good even if you don't put too much effort into it anyway the contest one of the prizes you can win a 360 yourself which is pretty sweet but that's not the thread of this story that we focused on in this news report from Steven shank from a couple days ago instead it looks like there was some hidden hidden information in here Motorola has made reference to the same price that was rumored before two hundred fifty dollars it looks like a the contest terms and conditions call out a value of the wearable that is the grand prize as 249 so do you think that's a realistic price for the motorola 360 Taylor you're the only one on the team who has a pebble steel at the moment which is was sitting on the same price range for a while yeah um what do you mean for a while is it still 250 yeah okay I was just covering my butt in case I was wrong i'm pretty sure it's right um i don't think it's changed but yeah I paid two hundred and fifty dollars willingly for the pebble steel I actually only ended up paying 225 because I did that little thing we would have paid 250 if you pay the regular price yeah I bought it at 250 and they gave me 25 dollars back so is the Moto 360 from what you know of it so far mean are you surprised by this pricing is this right on the nose with what you expected um it is exactly what I expected really maybe a little lower I would have expected around 300 just because this is a circular display it's a color display and it has seemingly more functionality than pebble voice and pebble yeah pal and and the gear watches are really the only frame of reference we have for smartwatches anymore so I figured you know 250 to 300 bucks this is on the lower end of that I'm happy I'll buy 1 i'll buy one and i want to compare it with the pebble and then i'll choose which 1i keep certainly I'm and I'm happy as well with if this price does in fact turn out to be accurate but I'm also surprised I have to say I thought they would try and move the Moto 360 a little at a slightly higher price point but at the same time that does not factor in I'm disagree with myself right now because it doesn't jive with what we know of Motorola what the company has always tried to do or has recently tried to do since it got acquired by google is to push the entry barrier down on stuff that we're seeing that with the Moto e with the Moto G eventually with the Moto X when it didn't sell well its original price point yeah and it's and it's funny to think this is actually only one hundred dollars cheaper than Motorola's flagship smartphone right now right yeah so you can actually get a moto 360 or will theoretically be able to get a moto 360 and a moto x for the same price as say an HTC One m8 well I think about that yeah yeah that's while so it actually doesn't surprise me given that context but maybe I've just been so blinded with the possibilities of what the Moto 360 could be from an appeal standpoint because I think it is the most appealing smart watch out there I don't think I'm alone on that definitely the most appeals oh yeah konjac thing much anyway the only thing that it will need is some sort of high IP rating because yeah alright yeah that's the only thing that that it's not really has a pink um I'd what I think the other thing is I'm really concerned about battery life I do not think it's going to be haven't well really if it's the doc that they showed word that I've seen somewhere where like you saw the click the blue tint around back so that tells me that it's a wireless charging some maybe hopefully you because wireless charging always requires a blue tent on the bay no no no it just there's no port around the outside of any of the renders oh I Syrian oh yeah so that would be the only thing that would kind of sort of make sense as some sort of charging mechanism so if it's that and it comes with a stand and you drop it on the stand and it charges every night then I don't care absolutely i mean it is still inconvenient if you travel all the time but yeah like my pebble steel lately when it's paired to the one I made it dies every other day so I went from having nine days of battery life 22 when I got the win a mate and hmm wait and it's just you're one of me destroyed your pebbles battery life yeah it's a common issue with newer phones like the galaxy s5 the m8 and a couple other new phones me but I thought it was because I was running like the pedometer or sleep as Android or something nope Wow my phone gave me I turned off notifications I connected it to the m8 and let it sit for day and it died the next day wow so it's it's the the firmware if you update I think the pebble app maybe oh and yeah I think it'll fix it I didn't mean to get off the F track here because i was i was looking for motorola devices that exists that have wireless charging cuz i was about to say is the Moto 360 going to be the first moto device to support Chi out of the box but it looks like verizon's advertising the droid maxx as she compliant but i don't know if that's with a case or what I don't remember and remember either but it is the toys max need I skipped on that one yeah I guess it's the droid ultra yo yeah that's right I guess it didn't really doesn't really matter because whatever if it has Chi that's gonna be amazing but still on even if it has Chi and you know how much I love that wireless charging standard I'm gonna be annoyed if I charge that thing every day I just I have to say if it's a two or three-day better in life I'll be happy if it if it matches the galaxy gear after the update then I will be happy which i think i was getting about three days or four days something like that but I'll be happy but I won't be upset if I have to charge it every night as long as the charging solution is ok if it's not some obtrusive like cuz you gotta take this thing off and do this put this together and put the screw in and close the door and put it in the microwave yeah and stand on one foot hop ok well that is the news in windows phone and android not much compelling from iOS except for some iphone 6 rumors we're not going to cover Taylor we're not going to cover them because we have some important stuff to do we gotta go talk to Ellie spagnola what do you say we do that Oh folks our transition track is called radiation and when we use it on the air I usually say something like this you may recognize it as one of the ringtones on your nexus 4nexus s4 galaxy nexus and it's also a full-length song by a musician called le spagnola an artist with millions of fans and a lot of fun to her live shows and concerts ali also has a bunch of very fun videos at our youtube channel and at le Spagnola com both of them linked in the description below like I say I usually say this and it's always true but I don't usually follow it up by saying we have Ali Spagnola right here with us Ali it is a pleasure to have you thank you so much for joining us the pleasure to be here thanks for having me I'm really really glad to have you out I once again I on the air I should Express Taylor Martin's sadness that he can't be here listeners Taylor got hung up writing an editorial so I lied the last time we were on the air he's not coming back but that's okay because we have plenty to talk about if you are not familiar with Ali some stats if you're not familiar she is an internet personality a pop culture vlogger a visual artist a performance artist and expert at drinking with the helmet but most importantly a musician of uncommon range from ukulele folk to rap Ali what do you call yourself if someone asks you to encapsulate yourself in are like one sentence I can always love a drinking composer with a music problem that's an awesome tagline I want to hear a little bit about that particular element later on but if you okay with you I want to kick off by starting by talking about your youtube channel yeah absolutely it's I've spent the last probably 40 minutes 45 minutes watching binge watching Ali Spagnola video and the channel is kind of this monument to to absurdity to awesome absurdity you've got everything from made up lyrics to the jay-z solange thing to commentary and Michael Bay's CES meltdown our listeners would remember that to a story about how you got banned in michigan so it is all the latest yet but but it also it's also like really genuine though I mean it's it's entertaining yes but your presence on the channel is is intimate and it's very real and it's in contrast to some of your album work where you're presented you know much more conventionally is like here on the artist and this is this is the music is your YouTube personality how close is that to the real you is my question yeah that's me I just make a mess once a week and put out a video so you're seeing like you're hanging out in your part in my apartment with me that's that's honest and is it really just once a week that you do videos cuz I mean there's there's so much content there it just it seems like it comes out more often but it's just once a week yeah unless something comes up but mostly it's once a week or if I'm traveling it's less than so oh yeah true um we have a YouTube is a giant part of what we do here at pagano so it's always it's sort of fun to hear what kind of vision other people have for their own video channels what do you see the future of that part of your life being relative to touring and such like that because you know you seem very at home in front of that particular set of cameras so do you see that expanding in the future or do will strike this balance yeah I'm still sort of figuring that out I mean those like weird transition period where I'm making a new album and I would call it my sophomore album even though it'll be my fifth one because it's the most recent one that I had put out is the one I'm known for and so now sort of like I got to follow that up and really you know knock it out of the park to to follow up the one that got me so much attention and I'm yeah I figure out how I can work that in with my youtube channel but I mean it's like the reason it's so real is that it's just like a fun experience experiment for me right now and I'm saying they go along well it's it's definitely mean that that rawness comes through but not in a you know amateurish way it's all done really well it's all day it's really cool thanks with your most recent album you're talking about is that the ego or is that free of style which one is the more recent one the most recent one actually is the power hour one so that's the one that sort of got me all the attention and now I'm gonna Luke step away from that and even though I gave you my short bio that's funny it is very pin holy or I'm stuck being a drinker and I'm gonna move towards the musician yes so is that is that like your sense that that most people perceive you is like oh yeah okay Alice Pagano she's the one that like drinks all the time and like does the drinking music is that what it is or yeah I'm pretty sure that's how I'm known oh yeah on Twitter just being like the drunk comedian kind of thing well alright then then that bleeds perfectly in my next question tell us tell us about how you were banned in michigan please can you can you wrap that up for us in a in a nice little bow yeah it's pretty complicated but basically i was going to play a show at a school that i call tech they also call themselves tech actually and um everything was booked and great and ready to go and then like it the day before my drummer was already driving out there and the venue cancelled on me mysteriously and so i rescheduled and that venue cancelled mysteriously and then i rescheduled and kissed hanselman seriously and this whole time all the students are helping me to try and reschedule and would just don't realize like understand what's going wrong and it turns out that there was someone out to get me in Michigan that had the cops involved and the State Liquor Control Board and they they basically said I cannot perform in Michigan just one person out to get you well it seemed to be one person that was sort of spearheading at all and then he got like everyone else on board to kick me out of the state they it got to the point where i was driving there and the students were just setting up a meet and greet where we weren't even gonna play my show that's may or may not be illegal in michigan it was just gonna be like hanging out and the cop said no ali spagnola cannot hold an event in michigan wow yeah in altum so i actually didn't get to the end of your so that happened like that was a that was a cancellation you did not have any kind of event in Michigan ultimately exactly I just went and hung out in a bar and there happened to be other students there at the time but there we were not allowed to hold an event Wow yeah this is this has to do with something that we should probably explain we this is a result of the nature of your show right this is because of of the power our concept can you explain that really quickly yeah so my live show doubles as a drinking game and when I'm performing the audience is playing along and so it's like an interactive party and also something that apparently terrifies the whole state of michigan and it so you people as i understand it take a shot of beer every time you start a new song and one of these could have concerts right yes every song is a minute long so every time I change the music everybody cheers together and drinks that sounds awesome unless you live in Michigan in which case it sounds awful apparently the one person who has great sway over everyone else yeah that's unfortunate i'm sorry to hear that that happened i review how far have you traveled i mean it is it a nationwide kind of tour or you I forgot what you said earlier I know you're working on another album right now we're on tour right now well at the end of last year I finished up my biggest tour so far which was my freedom victory tour and I went to 20 cities across the u.s. so yeah the whole nationwide thing which was really cool and so now yeah but working on new music awesome now how did you this is such a lame question but I am very interested in how you started with with your musical career because it is so far ranging and at one point you in 2008 wikipedia says you were doing custom artwork for like things like visual artwork yeah in 2008 I don't know Wikipedia is not trustworthy I'm still doing that project I've been doing it for seven years really yeah this was called at one point is still called fritters for president no it is not that is also wrong no no no the project is called remaining oh jeez that's much more straightforward I don't understand why thanks a lot more sense than printers for president I think it's whatever my mom my power our league of fans likes to mess with me apparently that's why that's on there I don't know just when we thought we could trust Wikipedia I thought I was done hearing about how wasn't a trustworthy primary source but okay well that's that is awesome I I'm sure that your origin story extends four layers and layers beyond that I want to talk a little bit about the the context with which you you you and pocket now became accidentally intertwined listeners you may remember this from I don't know how long ago this was now but it was probably about 10 or 10 or 15 episodes ago so we introduced a segment a feature segment using radiation which is a trek we're going to talk about in a second but it's a tract of alleys and le you know what it's like to be too busy right indeed I do yeah so your brain doesn't work right and I had put together this episode I forgot even who our guest was but we we led into the feature segment with radiation it worked perfectly I was like this is great and then I put the music credit in the thing and I'm like wow I got that track because it was sitting on a folder on my desktop if full of ringtones because I have a lot of ringtones from many devices cuz we use them for various things and I'm like you know this sounds really you know this isn't a notification tone this isn't something that I can just kind of like take and not think about this is a song let me see if I can find this on the internet and then of course i did and i came to le spectre nola.com like oh it seems there was a musician behind this song and then I reached out daily on Twitter thought better of it and reached out to her privately and was like hey we lists we used your music and I think probably we should not have because now i realize that crap this is say we should strike a deal and listeners rather than you know sue us into oblivion le very very nicely struck a deal with us and that's why we're able to use radiation on on all the show so while we have you on the air thank you very much frizzle thank you too for being honest I mean you could have just kept kept using it and I would have been on the wiser well actually I would have been wiser so you this is funny before you even contacted me I knew you were using it because I have pingbacks from my wordpress site and you did link directly to me and so I got an alert that was like someone's talking about you and I just check it out like oh cool they use my music whatever so I wasn't it so I was aware so I appreciate you you coming to me and being honest oh absolutely yeah no it's my background is as an artist of a sort and I really don't like when people use my work without permission or attribution or anything like that so I'm very glad and and you know the benefit to all this and despite the fact that we get a really cool track to use on our show is that we I never thought about where ringtones come from before like at all in any sense night I don't know if a lot of our listeners have thought about this but all but these things have to be created and they're not just made out of whole cloth there are some firms have in-house orchestras and they do their own things and stuff you know we see this kind of stuff from from LG in particular where they get the Vienna Boys Choir to do some special stuff for them though you know contract out but radiation is special because it actually is it is made from the the sound pattern of radiation interfering with a with a set of speakers can you talk about how this track came together I mean what's what's the story with this I well I had always been interested in that sort of sound and the rhythms that that interference makes and so I initially wrote the track for free of style which you had mentioned earlier that was an album that I was commissioned to do for a dance convention that was going on in Pittsburgh so it was supposed to be like break dancing music that people would be you know busting a move to and it went on that album and then it caught the ear of some people like at Android and that the rest is history so then they decided to build it into yeah the phones elicit before the Galaxy Nexus Nexus 4 in the Nexus S & but that wasn't the that wasn't the only one so Palma before we move on from radiation because I'll get ahead of myself here can you talk about how you actually captured it I mean we all know that sound we know what happens we have an incoming call and you're listening to music or something you get that interference pattern but what kind of I mean did you arrange the did you know the beads that the composition stuff was this uh like a like a team effort or was this entirely or your baby this particular track my baby so it was me in my studio led close to my speakers callin my mother and a recording directly the feedback that I got from those speakers and then I chopped that up into samples and I actually like um made a whole keyboard set sweet so like I pitched it up you know half step for each note and I can actually just play like i have now my keyboard is radiation sound so i can just play like a regular piano but have it sound like radiation ferris bueller's day off when it's doing the six hands yes exactly yes exactly like that okay to get super nerdy with you because I know people will want to know what kind of phone was that do you remember oh yeah I was probably like a flip phone it had to have been a while ago right cuz that sound doesn't happen anymore with the g4 or 4G or whatever yeah with LTE it's a different you can get it to make it sound but it's a different interference pattern entirely it's nowhere doesn't have nearly the character of the old gsm sling and that's another thing it probably wasn't verizon or sprint i'm gonna guess it was probably AT&T or t-mobile right yes sir late in t nice sweet well done nerd cred is intact but amazing well that's that is awesome and then so radiation goes out it becomes this this ringtone and then there's interest in in whatever Google department is in charge of the ringtone situation in another track right yeah robots for everyone yeah and old circuits and smiles all right so I listen to this for the first time just a couple minutes ago before we got in the air because I radiation I'm obsessed with and I love it but this one I hadn't really heard him and I just found it on your website and I'm listening to it and I'm like okay it's obviously you because it's quirky and it's light and it's fun but it's got lyrics which is unusual for a ringtone so weird it's surrounded by all this electronic stuff it's the one would like some random strumming guitar white girl singing I just don't get it it's it does it's sung in a much lower key it's got lower energy you know how did this happen I mean I'm not gonna say that you sound unhappy you're doing good but you're definitely like it's so it is the lowest energy i've ever heard from any bit of your performance so like what was it like to record that was that just like a one-off contract kind of thing or is that something you came up with her yeah so that yeah it is super chill and very different like you're saying from all my other stuff that was from awhile ago that I did that as a part of my senior project as I was an art major and so I did an animation of these robots as a band and I wrote that track to be the robot band yeah it's more like little nuts and bolts dancing on the keys and stuff it's yes you did she was well mm-hmm yes okay and then they like at Google they were familiar with my music and they liked this one too so they added that in Wow and that was on the same batch of handsets and that that when I was now that one I had not heard before and that's wild so between Rick yeah and then there were some that were remixed for the t-mobile some t-mobile branded handsets the mytouch 4G and stuff uh-huh Jeffers like the funny thing about that the robot 12 is that like if you notice the lyrics are nuts and bolts circuits and wires right yeah but there's like a pause after the first word so I sing not and like there's enough time to answer your phone so basically it's just like the nuts ringtone and like the majority of the world has just heard me say the word nut nuts actually I'm gonna grab that now and that's gonna be my ringtone for a minute I just want to see how quickly i can pick up the phone no so all right you've got these things that you've got the remixed ones on the t mobile phones you've got it on android phones all around the world at some point you had to stop and realize that millions of people were picking up their phone because a piece of your art is commanding them to how is that it was that was that weird do you remember that moment we were like wow how about that it's so freaking awesome and it happened right now again like every time I think about it I'm like I can't believe this it's too cool I'm wondering like you know Michael Jackson's probably up there in terms of like most played artists right but like you got to think about like text messages and and rings and whatever like maybe I'm catching up to him god yes and just like total gross plays right exactly yeah and then you got to think about like what phones at it cuz you know we know what phones it's on but then you can port it to other one so now I'm thinking I'm like we've they're all these phones that have superior hardware like man I'd like to play this on like it HTC One with those crazy boomsound speakers & lubes it's sweet and then some plays are worth more than others it's like oh great I we've been talking about these older phones though I mean other plans for for more tones can you talk about that at all because you know it's been a couple generations since the last the last built-in round of Ali Spagnuolo ringtones yeah it has been a while but I mean I don't have any news about on that front I will still love Google would love to work with them but sorry I got nothing to report you heard it here goober give ali another call because these are pretty cool tones can we throw in i'll ask you i'll ask you again out there but if we can throw in robots under the show would be cool well i might have to because it's hip it's cool but it's also it's just so weird I can't after watching your videos for so long and then to hear robust my god before we we sort of wrap it up here I want to know when you when are you touring next if people are listening you from the United States we do have a fairly large American audience on the show where can they see you next well semenax on the internet I do a live stream show so I don't even have to come to you or vice versa yeah what would let that story on that well it's called the no-pants power hour because you don't have to put pants on to come out and party with me just hang out in your own place your own place that's exactly right that's a beauty of working from home too but yeah and we do a live stream show and a live chat room where I'm talking with everyone and in the audience I don't know it's it's a good time think like a late night variety show Plus drinking game plus music it's it's fun how often does that happen once a month and is that on your YouTube channel or on the web yep that'll be on YouTube and like follow me on you know Facebook and Twitter and you can get updates about when that's gonna happen but the next one coming is the this saturday for the holiday weekend are sorry sunday that is outrageous I'm taking this weekend off for the first time in a while so i may i may join you from mobile that would be right huh I have just one more question for you before I let you go we did did dan Bilzerian ever get back to you hahaha I with all that work earned an entire tweet from him so awesome really yeah that's all I got he just like sort of retweet didn't we tweeted me and said LOL that is awesome i think that that's a wonderful indeed well Ally's mignola is is a real treat and she can be found at le spagnola com on twitter at le spagnola and on youtube at youtube.com slash at least bags Ali seriously thank you so much for joining us it has been a great time thank you it was great talking to you folks that's going to do it for this episode of the pocket now weekly thank you for joining us everyone and again thank you for all your listener mail every week we love it and even if it doesn't make it to the airwaves we do read every piece send to us at podcast at pocketnow.com also be sure to find us on twitter adam is at adams e ad am ze a tailor's at casper tech CA sper tek and IM at captain two phones that's captain the number two phones and thanks again to our special guest Ali Spagnola who is one more time at Ali spagnola on Twitter and Elise peg nola.com you can also follow pocket now officially at pocket now on twitter instagram facebook and google+ and if you enjoy the podcast we sure hope you do please leave us a review on iTunes Xbox music stitcher and wherever else podcasts are heard as always we thank you so much for listening and we'll be back with more mobile tech talk next week nuts