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The HTC Pixel 2 XL and the cutting-edge Razer Phone | #PNWeekly 277

2017-11-03
and we are live welcome to another episode of the PocketNow weekly this week talking you 11-plus in you 11 life t-mobile and Sprint prepping for a merger and Apple has some discussion over there touch ID face ID some of the controversies from videos that have been posted while we also have a hot sexy new phone from razor to talk about we've got a lot to talk about so make sure you're charged and ready for episode 2 7 7 of the pocket now weekly recorded November 3rd at 12:30 Pacific time this weekly podcast is where we dissect and discuss those gadgets that make our lives mobile smartphones tablets and wearables it's all the stuff you wished existed when you were a kid and a razor cell phone was a very different kind of cell phone as always i'm juan carlos bag now senior editor at pocketnow.com blasting the signal from sunny Southern California joined as always by plucky podcast producer mr. Jules Wong out on the East Coast how's it going buddy boy it was missing a letter - like you could yeah but in Seoul vowels that your will and what does it'll take that phone absolutely it was the L or a slab or a little thing of fortune whereas this is we'll talk about this in our rubber half of the podcast but it is a I hear it's a badass smooth thing and all I can see of it is just a black slab which is supposedly just smooth and and kind of Spartan in its design yeah call someone summed it up I can't remember I should've put this in my in my notes someone on a on high Mays first look video made that made a joke about this being like the next bit Robin going through its edgy emo face pretty fun that would be a sophomore decision I guess and terms right if you're going okay seriously yeah Scott Kroy was like yeah you know what I'm gonna make this my statement I'm gonna leave this a little bit and just head out razor I'm gonna go with flying flames all over the away that's true but we should out we should probably jump into some tech commentary before we get into those shenanigans mister Mr Wong how might people get in contact with us for this show oh yeah that's right I should probably turn up the Twitter page right now because it's hilarious that you just said that because if you can't hear I'm typing in the background as I - pull up the Twitter page hilariously and we actually do most of all of heart live interactions if you're watching live at 3:30 on the eastern time zone although sooner or later here Boston we may be moving into the Atlantic time zone but that's neither here nor there what we want you is to be here with the hashtag P and weekly so that we can see your comments can't do the YouTube live because even with slow mode it's still ridiculous how fast those things come along and yeah we appreciate voluntary that chatter is great but we can't produce a show and keep up with it at the same time hashtag P and weekly is the thing and we'll be able to see you there live and if you can't be here live if you still want to ask a question we do a mailbag episode every so often end of the month and we should do that this month as well yeah no I I like in front of the plan that we should do mailbag at the end of the month and I thought that was a great idea so now I'm wondering if that would be our Black Friday episode this month Oh what no I don't think so I think we'd have one more what I think so because it's it's the fourth Thursday then usually that's the last one but so our mailbag episode would be the 24th 20 yeah yeah maybe yeah maybe all right what about that I might be it might be broadcasting from an airport I will have to check in good idea we'll be doing a remote podcast I'll sound great a podcast at pocketnow.com to get to the point of things because that'd be an interesting one so definitely we want the echoes of the airport's blasting out all the answers to your questions for whenever you might be talking about things that are really it's a tech mobile tech we would appreciate that in the meantime Twitter hashtag P and weekly let's get out of the show let's talk about some lazy that that has been enriched that has been added to that has been plus in some as one might be inclined to discuss and of course we are talking about none other than the HTC you eleven plus like plus live to twelve this in the videos title I mean do you do you think that we might be looking at HTC's attempt at trying to build a pixel to excel so this was circulated about with the verge they were talking about this with one of their sources and this sort of extended the lore a bit because it did sound like that this was in the plans as the new eleven series that was planned for 2017 they were going to be three in the early part of the year and all them had Co names inside HTC that had to do with ocean ocean master ocean note ocean just ocean Ryan and he he ultimately only got the you ultra and the you eleven yeah basically and you play but no one talks about that you plays no okay so that's on me I keep forgetting about the you play but I just like this is this is just me saying oh I sort of I sort of like that little cute thing because he was between the time like before the U 11 was launched we sort of dropped off this ocean master device for a long and then there was the talk about the Google pixel two devices originally there was going to be a walleye which would be the regular pixel - and then there was timeand or no muskie muskie was first those were the only two - and to Excel and then there was this little timing thing that came up in which was even larger and or something and supposedly LG had something to do with that and between all that jostling around and we finally found out yeah LG is making screens for the pixel - EXO so that's interesting in oh they're also making the pixel - EXO itself so yeah that sort of made sense and that's when we start like a little bit after that was when we started picking up on the ocean mastery game like it was revived I don't think there were there was there was a sense of continuity but somewhere and that was starting to be talked about as what we see here today is the HTC you a lot from so pixel to excel and the you 11 plus there are definitely a lot of similarities a lot of sames a lot of the same specs going on it would just have to be the pixel you know internal design language and how the PCB would have to eat spread apart and also the supply chain those would be different aspects to that which would have to be a local so and so I mean when we're starting to dig into this dig into this story HTC wasn't responsible for assembling the pixel to excel I mean that that's all in-house LG correct intern yeah it would the assemblage would be LG yeah so I think I think it's kind of interesting like because we're watching these sort of timelines unfold and one of the things you were pointing to in that verge story is we know that a certain section of HTC manufacturing is just gonna go and live over at Google now and one of the reasons for that at least stated reasons is to try and help abbreviate the time and working with partners to building device incorporating new software developments into the hardware optimizing it all and so it's still been I think one of the curious aspects of this pixel launch is that they still worked with two different manufacturers when now the U 11 plus comes along to sort of illustrate that HTC has been involved in trying to manufacture you know sort of a more 2017 design language phone more a more current device than than what the U 11 represented and so I think it's just sort of that curiosity we'll never get the full inside scoop what these companies are going through internally the negotiations the partnerships the relationships but we we see this come out and you think it's I just think it's really interesting that HTC was already on this kind of design language they could have probably fulfilled the manufacturer of the of the pixel 2xl yeah and in time II goggle has really made a point of just saying this is our stuff this is our design and we made it well I mean to be honest it's it's the totally I mean I'm saying this as as if it's 2016 it's a totally different mission we're talking about this as a consumer oriented front and that it doesn't really matter who the odm is although we have since been painfully reminded that oh diems do matter or that supply chain does matter because the people are staring at the screens people are wondering what the heck is going on a Google itself I think I think the most troubling part is Google keyway because at the scene you know you can make the unit's HTC and LG but when you start shipping boxes with slip of paper and say that yeah when it didn't pass QA and they still ship the phone no see this is I think this is a fair criticism of where we're at with Google as a first party manufacturer now is they don't have the Nexus excuse to hide behind anymore you know like you don't have as made by Huawei or made by LG on the back of your Google phone this is a made by Google device and if you're gonna make that claim then you have to be responsible for the support for the QA and the buck stops with Google not with al not with HTC but I mean I kinda want to get back to the to the you 11 plus I I think this is this is a part of the conversation when we see HTC is still is still producing and releasing products this is a second half of the year flagship it's really late in the second half of the year but it's a second half of the year flagship just as we're gonna start getting ready for conversations and rumors about galaxy s 9s and LG G 7s and things like that um what do you was at the same time frame as with the bolts last year a Kade the pretty champion and also the one a9 which was kind of start of a new push for the fall flagship yeah and then and then also I think HTC's distribution on this is a little wonky too as to whether it's coming to what what regions this phone will eventually be dropped off in us is not gonna be North America which is a sham and I hate it and well I do like the U 11 life at least come into t-mobile because it's been rough times trying to get HTC into the carriers these days it's gonna be with the sense version I really would have liked to have seen what it would be like with Android 1 which is going to be around the world as opposed to just the US but I don't know but yeah so I mean just real quick I mean kind of like detailing what what this this phone what this phone is I mean we've been talking a lot about it we actually knew you just said what the phone is it's um a snapdragon 835 64 gigabytes of internal storage 4 gigabytes of RAM or an option for 6 gigs of RAM and 128 gigabytes of storage and it looks like the 12 megapixel ultra pixel sensor with an F 1.7 aperture is making its return and the the I mean the biggest change from HTC's current design language is incorporating the taller aspect ratio display and the three color options I think one is really techie cool in not just having a black and a silver you we also have sort of a dark translucent where you can see all of the guts of your phone when are we going to get over the Gameboy the Gameboy guy like no I'd say do it anything that helps a company stand out I mean this is I was hoping to see a you 11 in solar red as I thought that was one of the most aggressive visible design choices any company just look for a jingle brands quality stuff where you can get the light players of blue if you want your phone to be the cause of lens flare not just capturing photos with lens flare so I was hoping to see something like that and I think HTC is actually succeeded in a discussion piece your phone as a conversation piece the translucent you 11 I think I think achieves that at least in it's more interesting than a lot of the other glass back devices that we've been playing with recently so all in all this is again I think it's more evidence that HTC manufacturing can still turn out a good phone but not releasing in North America makes me nervous for the future of what's left at HTC and that all of the the talent on flagships may have been merged and migrated over to Google well the thing is with HTC they've always done the extra models going into it like the one m9 plus when a 10 player whatever the heck they had for like s that's right and these little weird things and they went out to your Airport to certain parts of Asia they were market specific and I don't think that what would do what we dealt with back then is the same as here because this is a secondary flagship with like a change at a leading transition of a feature that being the 2x1 display I don't think that is fair to the market or to whatever HTC there's so much there's so much manufacturing from the U 11 that the company has already sort of landed on you know the the this is a u 11 with a taller aspect ratio display so this is this is what I mean like the last sort of year of HTC devices cuz the U 11 was probably what a year and a half two years in development and so whatever was left from that time frame in two years will we see the brain drain moving people from HTC over to Google start to affect the manufacturing of devices in 2020 and and that's the oh that's that open-ended big click baby hype question is HTC you gonna be gone into year it's to see 2020 well I you know this is also where I'm kind of pointing to phones like the U 11 life you know HTC globally still has a reputation and find some success in making mid Rangers and entry-level devices they've been having difficulties in their flagship end especially for Western markets and in Europe so now this is where I'm concerned that HTC's the team of HTC employees that went over to Google might represent that flagship design team and this could be that slow process of pulling HTC IP over to Google without having to face the same kind of nitpicking or the same kind of criticism that Google faced when they bought out Motorola you know so this gives HTC plenty of time to figure out what to do with the vibe they'll exist as a mid-range er brand across the world and whatever flagship talent they have will now be dedicated towards pixel 3 in pixel 4 well I mean that that could be it but they're still gunning for five or six or seven flagship or whatever models smartphone models next year as well they're smart to keep on that schedule I'm not sure if even that is sustainable and and to be perfectly fair I am reading a lot into one smartphone release we do have a tweet from Ronda great using the p-n weekly hashtag you 11-plus not coming to the US is worrisome but people can import it and that's my plan so it looks like there's I know for a fact there are still some HTC friendly folks out there especially in our audience people who are watching our videos and watching and listening to our podcasts and so if you're considering is this does this help close the gap between HTC in the competition is this sort of up your alley a device it's gonna be the right fit for you drop us some comments shoot us some emails shoot us some tweets because I think also anyone launching a phone in in this quarter we're already facing those conversations of how does it how is it gonna stack up against next year's new phones probably landing sometime around March and that's that's already if you're talking about a seven eight hundred nine hundred dollar investment you know to turn around and know that in three months you're gonna see a ton of headlines about what's new and the next generation of hardware and Android Oreo 8.1 and what does that mean for the device that's currently in your pocket I think that they can't afford to keep up with this whole going with the numbers thing because we had the seven m7m eight and nine then it was like hey it's the 10 it's the perfect 10 and it was a great phone it was a perfect 10 it's no one no one bought it but still like what do we is there anything clever about going into the number 12 and because you know you want to make like you know for for HTC 13 you have like your baker's dozen but you were saying that you you kind of liked what you saw for the you 11 life making it to t-mobile what what is it what is it that you're seeing in that phone what what makes this stand out for you opposite every there's other like mid rangers just boring old specs i mean really it's one of the first with the new generation 600 series processors that is gonna be widely available in the US and less like the g we did the g5 s from moto have like the 629 well 630 or the 625 I can't remember now because I think you might I think it might be right but this this might be the first with the 632 have a proper North American release not just like that we could import another manufacturer yeah I'll have to look at I'm probably wrong sooner or later it says the apparently has the 4:30 in India at least so I'm assuming it's gonna have the 4:30 sorry India they never give guys the good chips that do they but this is going to be a little bit of a little litmus test in terms of how we expect things to go we love the 625 in many phone not just the BlackBerry key one so the Moto he's done other great 625 to so this is uh this is a 5.2 inch full HD 1080p display it's an LCD so you won't have to worry about any blue or red tint if you tilt the phone and you look at it off access these oh yeah ree gigabytes of ram and i don't have and a 16 megapixel camera so that's that's not embed that's not bad for not bad paper specs i mean and with the price at 300 at t-mobile and 3 yeah well yeah and 350 and for HTC with the android one maybe i'm not sure if that international markets north america it's gonna be cents yeah what in this oh go ahead sorry just i'm trying to think about how i feel that sense these days because it's during its if it we were talking about it getting a little older that's like long in the tooth right last year then you have to wonder okay with the skin if you can get your hands on the 630 series phone i would be very concerned about performance on a Qualcomm 400 series phone running a skin like sense I mean and I'm sure it's been optimized HTC has some great software developers I know it's not gonna be the same beast that we were left with with like the one m9 we wanted either we really need something like sense 5 where it's just you you took away all the ski morphism and you really just who did ever although I do miss what was it was a touch flow back on Windows Phone Windows Mobile back in the day where you would have like the analog flap why I had to install so through I finally got I don't even know where my phone is so I put Nova Launcher back on my V 30 I wanted something cleaner than LG's sort of front interface and when you do that you lose the LG clock widget so I go and I get my beautiful widgets and if anyone has a suggestion for a better weather clock widget please send it my way cuz I'm so out of touch with what's new there so I throw it on there and of course the first clock that beautiful widgets has up is that like old school 1970s flappy clock here just like we've so so far left that visual look it's so old it just brought me all the way back to like run yeah in like everyone was still doing that even up through 2015 they were just placing it there because they couldn't just deal with that just didn't know how to quit you 1970s flappy clock so pretty terrible but um no this is this what what I think is so critical about HTC with the you 11 life here ip67 water-resistant I don't know that we've seen many devices again with proper targeted North American launches that have included rated water resistance for under $400 that's kind of a big deal and in addition to that this this to me speaks of a company that is finally figuring out how to compete in North America with attractive phone design and reasonable mid-range specs and not just making an iPhone clone like they did with the one a9 at this rate design it's terrific and it gets its HTC design it's not because you know people will throw these things back and forth like oh well Apple Coppola copied HTC s antenna bands and I think that's true but when you look at an HTC m1 phone versus an HTC a one phone that a nine was as close as we'd ever seen an iPhone clone yet to looking like an iPhone and this this is an HTC design language its HTC DNA camera placement look polished glass on the back and incorporating important lifestyle features that flagship phone owners repairable and not doing it at five hundred dollars where the AAA the one a9 launched I would like to see this as a like replacing the desire like this prepaid absolutely and and and this was probably gonna be mu throw plastic back on this phone and more probably looking at a desire phone you know what I mean yeah so so this to me like if if we lose HTC flagships but HTC becomes a force in the mid-range where we can continue to expect high quality lifestyle grade devices you know this this to me looks like a phone that will do a very good job of not only covering the basics but giving you a little bit more than that people receive yeah yeah oh sorry this seems like the first phone in which HT has not just priced it above everything else it just it wasn't stubborn with that because they have been stay close Eve throughout their portfolio for just keeping it just a little bit but just scoring that premium on the design of things which to the credit was pretty nice but it did make sense with depreciation and with the specs and with everything else considering and so I just got this from random P mode ox4 is IP 68 water-resistant under $400 and has a headphone jack so yeah III forgot about the x4 but it's a we're still talking about a rarity in this market of having those kinds of forget about the x4 it's not project by well and then also I just like I love those conversations yeah and it has a headphone jack you're right no that's actually fairly I don't know how many headphone jack is because I haven't been impressed with Moto's audio Hardware of late but it does have the convenience of that jack being built in yeah yeah but I mean I got I got these I got these J bruh Jabra whatever the elite sports eats 25e which is launching over those we did um we had it published late we did like a little headphone review round up from not headphone review a headphone roundup from Aoife yeah and like we I was you know I was spraying some time with Bayer dynamic and I was walking over to Sennheiser and the time that I spent oh as for hit up aftershocks cuz I love aftershocks the time I spent going to three different booths to shoot footage hi Mei was playing with the elite twenty fives that whole time just Jabra Jabra Jabra Larry battery life has lived up to all expectations what did they what did they claim that the runtime 18 hours and like I haven't had enough continuous usage to really get a context on that but it seems like and you know if not 18 hours at least 16 because maybe there's a little thing going on between yeah you know when I sleep but in terms of like the fit on the ears is the best that I've ever had and that's because they have the elongated ear buds the tip I got to get back to some proper like neck bands for pies I I think I'm gonna go back to maybe my LG tone actives there's week round I spent some time with Trend labs they make these really inexpensive truly wireless earbuds and they work well they actually do but it is a lifestyle shock going to a a wireless audio solution that can barely last the length of a Joe Rogan podcast running on fumes after a couple hours you're like this is so cool it's so flexible I've got individual earbuds I can go to one earbud use both but I know they don't last very long so there's I guess there had to have been a reason for the air yeah for the air pod stems because oh yeah a little bit a little bit better battery capacity and that's also why I think the the companies that have been more successful in this space that your buds are bigger I you know I think Joe Burrus new current generation it's like they had the and this is coming from Jaime and they will do a better job of talking up Jabra than I but explain yeah we should just like can you just talk about Jabra for an hour and then he will um know that talking to their product rep about how their design was can we make truly wireless earbuds that above medium volume can last for an average competitors marathon and you're like okay that actually makes a lot of sense no one's gonna want to recharge earbuds in the middle of marathon and so that is a design philosophy actually I think makes a lot of sense cuz that that that carries over into just general lifestyle are you really going to have these things in your ears playing audio for more than four or five hours at a stretch probably not if you can hit that window great but then for some of the less expensive solutions where you know maybe a third that time maybe a quarter of that time so let's get into some other news stories on that GCU eleven plus in the you eleven life so you can definitely check that out on pocketnow.com and you are going to add Renata Laporte OMG beautiful widgets so 2010 some gadget guy another timeline I love it you're not I'm going to pull it up right now while we're doing this podcast downloading the address tech and we'll probably sever my connection to hangouts because my internet sucks as brought to you by spectrum cable and before we the dole talk to is a in winter do you think Android one is a better implementation of the to google play edition phones and personally I think there its equivalents like you didn't really understand the whole mission of Google Play edition phones and that they used flagship and alright so I don't know like but there was a whole mission thing and it was really much an awareness of it whereas this is it's a shame that we're talking about mid-range phones or what an entry level in mid-range yeah you know you know Jane I think it's interesting because we're looking at different philosophies Google Play edition was really trying to showcase like like Jules are saying that sort of flagship grade product but supported by Google and then it's really kind of sad that that experiment didn't resonate more but it was also at a time where Google really had no relationship directly to consumers buying hardware it was just very ill-timed what I think is is so is so positive about Android one the people who are out there not spending seven eight nine hundred thousand dollars on a phone are often the ones who were receiving far worse support from their manufacturers especially in terms of software and if Google can find a way to execute timely updates bug fixes security patches for people who can't afford the top of the top of the line I think that just speaks to a better culture and a better climate for everybody buying any kind of smartphone or computing device I would be far more inclined to recommend Android one to someone who's also looking to save some cash or they're on a budget their budget conscious then some sort of you know off-brand or sort of less well-known manufacturer in the same space maybe they can offer some better hardware maybe they can offer some cooler features but I really don't like the idea of someone spending two to three hundred dollars on a phone and then being left out in the cold for support and it's not enough at that price point to say oh well you could route your phone and install other roms like there really does need to be a culture of holding manufacturers up to higher standards the future of our economy the future of all of our services all comes down to data data-driven devices and if they can't expect good good security good support and we're kind of leaving a lot of people out in the cold yeah yeah and speaking of data and support and all that um do you want to edit it in let's hit the news block yeah let's do that for the week of October 9 2017 this is all the news that is fit to podcast t-mobile CEO John Legere is reported to have contacted Sprint CEO Marcello all right about a new offer to merge Sprint and Softbank chairman Masayoshi son had developed some reservations about a prior merger deal that would have left him out of control of one of his largest foreign assets no terms of this new deal have been put out just yet apparently the axon M is its own thing as the teehee USA has confirmed to friend of the show Andrew Wallace that sequel to the axon 7 is planned not sure it's gonna be called axon 8 but instead cherished in this new axon line you have someone to celebrate I guess Apple and it's ensuing antitrust legal battles with Qualcomm is said to be considering modems from other companies like Intel which has provided some of the modems for some of the iPhones this year and last year and even media attack yeah we're talking about those people from Taiwan from next year there is a growth of counter litigation to deal with between Apple and Qualcomm it doesn't look like there's a settlement in the cards for at least watch this space Dan Richie L Apple's SVP for hardware engineering has now twice insisted to TechCrunch and Mashable that touch ID was never part of the grand design for the iPhone x10 whatever you call it we have also wanted today that the original due date for the 10 was next year but through quote hard work determination it is now a 2017 phone nothing was really told of that been why finally Best Buy has stopped offering iPhone 10 buyers the option to pay a lump sum for their iPhone 10 and also have to pay a $100 surcharge for it as it is basically doing the carrier's bidding of selling the phones through their respective financing options it doesn't really make a turn unless Best Buy decides to I don't know activate their phones at the store so that's where the $100 kickback comes in and if the carrier is well they're lining that it's there they're fighting the calling it a kickback but well yeah that's true they are available they are a bill majeure in terms of that process and that they provide an alternative they want to be an alternative to Apple stores uh who have people lining up well actually let's let's jump in on that to discuss news do you I had not heard of any other retailers that would be supporting iPhone 10 I mean you know like back in the day we had Radio Shack's all over the place that basically just became mini stores for other carriers and stuff I hadn't heard of any other retail outlet trying to do the same thing like you're not gonna walk into a target activate an iPhone 10 and have to pay $100 premium on that and is that in part because like you know you just won't see iPhone 10 at Target or is it just this Best Buy relationship is singular to how they work with carriers do you think I'm I mean Apple talks with the carriers and then Apple sells its phones and whether or not the carriers take up so much stock they have control of their own stock and they decide hey let's send them over to Best Buy where we get them to we get them to work with us in terms of our financing deals our phones and it's a case by doesn't have accesed to the OEM because your best buy stock is actually filled by the carriers that's right that's why I'm saying here because if the you know if it were Motorola for Nokia that'd be great but Apple really touching down clutching at its I forgot about that correct and saying it's not a kickback because if the phones priced the same at a carrier as it's priced at a Best Buy then basically all you did was give all the money to the carrier because Best Buy had to buy that stock from the carrier that's okay so in the blog post sorry I've got to pulled up in front of me now finally my internet super slow as brought to you by spectrum cable so quoting from their article from forever cosponsor no not-not-not our sponsor but this prod cast is literally being broadcast I'm saying it's never gonna be a sponsor and never will be I actually well and listen they want to dump a ton of money in my lap I will kindly ask them just to give me a fiber solution this is from the Best Buy blog these unactivated phones were priced higher than those we sold with a contract to reflect the fact that the phone carriers only pay us when a phone we've sold has been activated on their network so yeah this this smells this this looks bad this doesn't sound great I can understand where retailers saying this phone is on our store shelves people want to buy the phone from us but we can't profit from that activity unless we just build in a premium unfortunately for Best Buy because the optics on this look terrible it's one of those is it like if you want to sell iPhones you better hope that you're gonna make your nut back by combining it with accessory purchases just like we do with like printers why for so long you would buy a printer and it wouldn't have a USB cable in the box it was because Best Buy couldn't make any money on the printer unless they sold you a $30.00 gold plated USB cable yeah exactly and I mean I understand to some point that Best Buy was trying to offer that options they wanted to be a secondary option and you know it had limited stock to offer and because of the nature of iPhones where they're basically some free they're not really tight in anyone unless you get insert a CDMA enabled than GSM whatever but it's it's it's tough and I don't think that they should have finagled something the situation because that was just that's kind of a good transition point cuz I do want to touch quickly and we don't have spent a lot of time on it cuz I'm sure this is gonna be a story developing more aspects of the story over time but um talking about Apple and Qualcomm you know we instantly saw this this generation of iPhones there were the stories coming out about the different variations whether or not you were really getting the same kind of LTE performance and people recommending if you were going to buy an iPhone buy the Verizon variant because then that had a Qualcomm modem in it because it had to support CDMA technology which also in turn even on a GSM carrier delivered faster LTE speeds I wonder how Apple will be able to build phones for North America without utilizing Qualcomm components I don't understand how they can support Sprint or Verizon over the next year or two until I guess we're all everyone's just you know LTE for everything without that kind of modem support yeah I mean the whole litigation started up throughout the course of this year and we've seen the suppliant chain I guess I have grind to a halt and this is where I can say kickbacks because that's what's being described in the antis right antitrust suits and the whole complicated site bill of how manufacturers parts manufacturers have to pay Qualcomm or ot and whatever so at this point we're we're looking at insel perhaps taking the whole of the of the kitten caboodle yeah or perhaps mediatek starting to mix into that and yeah i don't know i think intel probably makes the most sense as a main components supplier i i i'm unfortunately i'm not very familiar with mediatek chipsets in general which I just started able start to be able to produce CDMA parts yeah that's what we saw with the LG X charge on Sprint I did not know that was a media attack that's really interesting so I'm sure so you know what maybe one of the things about this story is the fact that if Apple is going to start pulling pulling suppliers to manufacture on mass and they're looking at a supplier like mediatek then it's probably just built into the contract that mediatek is the company that's licensed licensing Qualcomm's patents on CDMA connectivity and that then apples just doing business with media tech to supply the actual part that's coming in something like that I think could actually make a lot of sense I didn't know that there was another player out there who was outfitting CDMA compatible radios I thought Qualcomm still had the monopoly on that perhaps and you know monopoly is kind of the term that is being wielded around but still in disputes the ugly aspect of have even having C CDMA shouldn't exist it was a way like to kind of create the illusion of competition in the United States but it was never going to be the the world technology was never gonna play at the world stage so you know Qualcomm has this COO and I don't mean this to sound is flip or is dismisses of dismissive of quality he scored a coup and being the only company that was really building high quality radios and modems and that's why Brent went into y mx yeah Oh WiMAX what was it it was my was it my you know it was no wasn't the Evo was on the epic was the galaxy fest but it was the one with the keyboard was the only galaxy s with the slider keyboard and it had it had that WiMAX radio in it and I was I all felt like I was such tough stuff man I could I had like 10 megabit downloads in the middle of la who could even think of that data speed this is amazing days out of 2008 right well and at the same time also like I have tens of minutes of battery life when I use that CD that WiMAX exactly and that's what that's basically what wasted the evo 3d for me so that's my first actual phone from 2012 because I got that we've got a we've got a couple it's coming in here P and weekly from Renato Laporte these are actually pretty cool first of all he just mentioned Huawei they have really nice modems if only they would provide them for others while we make great connectivity gear but I do believe they have yet to support CDMA which is again why this is so sort of precious in North America as Verizon and Sprint combined make up a pretty sizable chunk of the US carrier market but this is a this is you sort of not breaking news but this is stupid this was posted up Broadcom on Bloomberg I am Bloomberg so broad comedy has the right chip maker Qualcomm this could be huge yeah apparently they're talking about $100 bid for Qualcomm 100 billion dollar hands not $100 bid that's $70 per share if you want to talk market but and this would be both the largest would this research yeah it would be topping EMC and whoever bought that Intel maybe I don't know in terms of all this because Broadcom was in the news this week also for having reincorporated from Singapore which they have been for a while back to the US and had they've been talking about tax reform and and how the u.s. is gonna try and do that make corporate tax reform I'm not sure in terms of the whole repatriation thing where foreign earnings have to be taxed again where they have to be brought back to the United States that's gonna be worked in to this legislation that's being crafted right now that's been talked about and is being bandied about so big impacts all around in broad common I think is one of the pushers of the dominoes and could also be one of the dominoes itself yeah in this whole scheme you know that's true yeah I mean but the numbers on this urn saying what current valuation Broadcom 111 billion Qualcomm 91 billion and they'd be seeking $100 a hundred billion dollar bid for Qualcomm this would be this would be enormous if that actually went through I wonder what kind of opposition governments would have against this kind of an acquisition well I mean there could be something with NXP because call comes has been trying to chase an XP for 47 billion dollars and they make a little sound parts to I think a lot of sound parts for phones so there there's just a whole Hungry Hungry Hippos at the very top end of the tech sector here in terms of valuation and they're all involved in making our phones work well yeah rightly the chips sorry prices of chips have been rising everyone's been citing that raw material costs are skyrocketing I mean we talked about a couple months ago when we were talking about battery tech to I mean like the materials that go into our phones are gonna be facing increased competition from IOT and cars and everything else imagine that coming from one source like one freakin source when you also combine the fact that you know like Broadcom radios are also in Apple products too so this would probably cloudy the waters on whatever kind of future deal the two companies would be able to execute let's uh let's just kind of shift gears here real quick I want to point this one out because I was super proud of our buddy Andrew Andrew Wallace he was a guest commentator on the podcast a couple weeks ago just on his own felt like reaching out the axon 7 was a fan favorite for people who like mid-range mid-range premium flagship mid-range phones whatever you want to call them there's a $400 phone it's in the middle of the market it's a mid-range phone value flagships okay well you you can you can preface however you want I'm saying it was probably one of the best phones of last year and it just happened to be priced halfway in the market of smart phones especially if you were into audio because this was definitely one of the audio champs of last year opposite the v20 so uh you know Andrew just on his own we saw the ax on em thought hey you know screen flipping school but you know the axon 7 was was a great phone I wonder if we'll get a follow up besides he's gonna go out tweet tweet ZTE and CT he replied to him ZTE doesn't reply to me asked about whether or not we'll have an axon II but he did get a reply from ZTE and apparently there is some notion of a follow up hopefully to the axon 7 I mean yeah yeah good good on Andrew I think timing also helped because this was after the there missed flagship corn unquote launch and where the states which was the Exxon and there and so that's the timing bit but also every so often and you know the just the straw that breaks the camel's back because there aren't whether they're on social media and they do get asked about all these sorts of stuff all the sorts all stuff my cut is my conjugation correct I don't know yeah close enough I get what you're saying what they get you know all these questions all the time it just you know one fan on this one particular moment goes and asks the same question as like yeah we're going to answer that question because now is the time that we can actually talk about this so yeah so I I mean if they can also the same philosophy for an axon 8 that they that we saw exhibited in on seven that could be really compelling device I mean you know we've been fans of phones like from oneplus and Huawei in this sort of mid pack market but there were few devices that I think ticked all the check boxes for multi media powerhouse like the axon 7 did so I you know I know a lot of people who would have said like just give me the exact same axon 7 but throwing that Qualcomm 835 and charge a little bit more for it and that would have been a 20-17 dream phone for a lot of people like the axon 7 was a 2016 dream phone for a lot of people so I'm very curious in what they might be able to deliver because I think it's it's nice to be seeing this kind of competition start filtering more aggressively into the unlocked market yes yeah well I was gonna say just wrap it up an axon 8 on Amazon you know as part of like Amazon's new push for unlocked phones would be really exciting I think ZTE is having a soft year this year I mean they've gone through the whole huh I mean to the what was it the Iran sanctions where they were training was Iran and back in 2012 and they had to pay like 800 billion million dollar excuse me fine to the International Trading Commission then there was the thing with CX a CSX which was the crowd's phone thing and that had to be retracted and reworked and you haven't heard anything on that French it was supposed to be talked about in September or October again we haven't heard anything on that and then there's this there's the axon M which was a great opportunity I think who shows something off on a major carrier 18 T mm-hmm it sort of had to be this kind of thing that is an anomaly to everything else that we've worked with so soft year well yeah it definitely has and and I think as emblematic by because I have not held I've not played with and I don't mean to speak ill of the dual-screen acts on em but I do find it to be a curious entry when they delivered such a great experience on the axon seven to not have a follow-up phone for that but what I hope what I really hope is that we'll see a traditional carrier like for example I think Amazon is sort of the juggernaut that a lot of other retail outlets should be looking at how can they compete against Amazon is a storefront and the the way you compete against Amazon isn't to sell your products on Amazon I like that that's not that's you you need to right now you currently need to do that if you want to exist you need to have a presence on on a market like Amazon but what what I would really hope to see and I think it makes the most sense in the grand scheme of things I think it makes the most sense for like say a t-mobile to start acting as an unlocked phone disrupter so you could go to amazon.com and look at pictures of unlocked phones and decide whether or not you want to try one buy one of those and you know potentially you know look at video reviews on sites like pocketnow.com who make phenomenal video reviews of smart phones tablets and wearables or what if you had a kiosk at a t-mobile store where you could go in and they aren't the official t-mobile launch phones but these are compatible with t-mobile right you go in and you can play with an axon seven you know the the person at the counter can say well this won't support our Wi-Fi calling but it supports everything else on our network and you'll still have your binge on and you'll still have your international travel works in all these different countries and it's guaranteed to work on our network it's just not supported like a galaxy phone with t-mobile branding on the back I think there could be something really compelling about having just one little corner just one little chunk of retail floor space dedicated in the back of a store where consumers can engage with other types of devices and other types of products and you would actually be able to go hands-on with that gadget in that store space and see what makes it different I think that could be a really compelling way to try and compete against amaz John's current and I'm sure they're going to be building into other devices too LG releasing a bunch of their phones including the g6 for this Amazon unlocked sort of experience a carrier to get into this I think could be a really interesting way to turn up the heat on retail competition I can't hear you Jules I don't know if it's me or did you unplug yourself we have make funny in here it's off it's now it's not I'm not recording anything you know what I want to take this opportunity to record the rest of your podcast from here pixel so everybody listening to this podcast you're about to hear a market quality difference in Jules's audio and we'll have to see hangouts audio in between now and then I'm trying to figure out where the hell I don't know that there is one on the pixel I so I ended up returning my pixel to I was gonna see if Murray wanted it but she she we were playing with it and it was unfortunate that um you know I decided I didn't want to keep it it really wasn't a phone for me and I reached out to Google and I asked like you know I bought this phone I don't like it my wife is really interested in it she thinks she thinks this is gonna be a good phone for her is there any way that we can not only transfer her account but also buy her protection plan since we're still within the two-week return window and they were super helpful in transferring the phone over to her account only to then say oh and adding a protection plan is impossible sorry and so it was really disappointing that there wasn't any way to try and make that happen I typically don't buy protection plans on my phones because I have way too many phones and it's highly unlikely that I'll have one phone and constant operation long enough for me to worry about really damaging it beyond being able to use it but my wife is a one phone throw it in her purse it's chucked around by our daughter she needs you know better support than just that and so they're only so Ellucian even though the phone wasn't damaged the phone was still within its two-week return window of you know full price you know a grace period was well you can return the phone and then buy a new phone and buy the protection plan with the new phone and my wife went well no I can just buy any phone then and we sent the pixel back I was really disappointing but I don't believe there was just a straight-up memo recorder on the pixel - and I can't hear you again Jules this is this is some some hot podcasting right now I love this this is summer this is some hot crap indeed I wouldn't record this hopefully with my b20 and this is gonna be okay the laptop Mike's gonna be okay for the live broadcast at least because life no I'm really great it's okay so you're moving to the v20 this will be the experiment when we go back and listen to this podcast after the fact how much did Jules is audio change going from a zoom h2 to an LG V 20 and I mean I'd want to like compare simultaneously that yeah unfortunately we won't be able to do that because your zoom h2 turned off but um we can wrap this up here real quick I did want to touch on very quickly Sprint t-mobile central merger for a while I brought six months seven months well I mean ever since what ever since sprint was bought out by was a soft Bank we've been talking about blink first and merging with Sprint or buying Sprint or you know acquiring Sprint and t-mobile seems to always kind of come up as being the right merger to compete against Verizon and AT&T I kind of hoped this wouldn't happen I rationalize everyone saw the writing on the wall for Sprint it was very likely this company would get optioned by another company or acquired by or another company but I really miss having more competition in this marketplace so I always held out hope that Sprint would find a way to build up its user base and become a bit more recive opposite t-mobile and especially opposite 18 t and Verizon but you know there are only so many so many resources for people to want to shop when looking at cell phone coverage so here's the point where I get into my argument with PC Mag Sascha Segan because he was cheering against the whole thing - cheering if the merger and heat width and he was about a week ago when Softbank was you know Masayoshi Shawn was son was trying to you know I wanted to get out of the deal because he wasn't he was about to lose control of one of his largest assets which I guess is understandable it's green it's part of the whole doing business kind of thing and he has a big personality too so again he wants to exert control and you know do something unique and whatever that's that's his prerogative purportedly I said this is kind of stupid because I really wished like we would have more competition and that would be through a new carrier that would pop up somehow or a new major player a new fourth-placed player where they would be able to act on whatever concessions go through reg a regulatory speaking because they would have to give up some spectrum they would have to give up some assets they would have to give so those away and that would bolster a great maybe a US Cellular even though I don't think that family is trying to expand or someone we've seen Canada make its own network outs and they had wind mobile for time back in 2008 it started up its own network and we're very hard so you try and work it out very expensive task I understand that but but suppose every market we would want to see some road where someone could walk into this market and compete and on four generally it seems like we're back into a very you know very few number of players that are controlling the mass of towers in spectrum and like the idea of like starting a carrier today like the inevitable isn't doesn't care if you live or die it's pretty it's pretty cutthroat like that so unfortunately that means in in a continuingly unregulated market it's just going to become easier and easier for companies to merge or acquire and that's where we find ourselves at today where you know US Cellular stands as I always go Tom Brokaw whenever I say cellular nuclear sorry I apologize to anyone Tom Brokaw if you're listening that was that was uncalled for it's it does a good job doesn't care yeah I'm sure he doesn't care about what I have to say about his gorgeous voice but it's a it's a troubling aspect of where we find ourselves now that for t-mobile and for Sprint to compete against AT&T and Verizon it really does make a lot of sense for them to merge and to unite their their user bases but that also means increasingly there are fewer places for consumers to turn to if you have a problem with you know Verizon service you can kind of go to 18 t but that means maybe having to buy a new phone or going to a t-mobile or a sprint and now that's increasingly becoming and so like with the only opportunity is for a company like Apple or Google to start selling their own service that's not necessarily addressing the problem of who actually controls the pipes and what service do you get from the person who controls the lines of access to the Internet and that is I find I find it to be somewhat worrying situation that we find ourselves in today if this if this deal goes through but I think it'll probably take a while to hammer out the specifics because you know for Sprint being the fourth place carrier they're still worth about half of what t-mobile's market cap now that's a big chunk of change to try and address if one company is looking to buy out the other indeed so that's something that we have to keep on the back burner which is still burning somehow but yes gonna keep burning until quietly smoldering I don't know that we have market fire there's the embers are still glowing yeah yeah and with that I would say that we haven't had to read but Jules where might someone find more information on these types of Technology stories if one were so inclined to look up you know really cool new sites and videos and stuff on the state of the mobile industry you can see full details on these stories on more hip pocket now that common look for the podcast section to get to this episode's rundown you can chat with us about what you have been reading yourself like Renata Laporte did yeah that was awesome didn't you I'm the hashtag PN weekly and also be sure to check out Jaime Rivera in the pocket Mel daily on our youtube channel terrific oh boy we do have to thank a sponsor this week the pocket net weekly is brought to you by app River I'm gonna go to the copy here now if you're a business owner you wear many hats and some of those hats are literal like the hats I wear and some of those hats are figurative or metaphorical you know and this is what I believe a prover is commenting on it may seem like you need an IT degree to keep your business safe from cyber attacks especially with all the vulnerabilities that come with having email systems networks and devices that allow you to access anything from anywhere so how do you stay on top of everything keep your data and network secure and still run your business pass that hat over to App River a leader in cloud-based security solutions for businesses with a prefers premium email and virus protection you can be sure that malware is not going to be your next headache take it even further with web protection that keeps your network safe from both external and 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like compensate for the dark background in which case I wish I had better lighting here I'm sorry for that I'm using really nervous people work lamp I'll send you one it's super gross but it seems we've got to talk about the razor phone you know we are our own I may be Vetta went and spent some time playing with the the fruits of the acquisition of next bit team under the razor umbrella and I think they've they've managed to release something which is is at least garnering a healthy amount of discussion people interested in another player in this market potential offering from a trusted brand in the world of gaming and this is striking up a bunch of questions like gaming phones is this now a market that people need to start taking more seriously or is gaming just one of those things that on a phone isn't going to appeal to a mass-market audience and so just to break down real quick the razor phone we're looking at a Snapdragon welcome snapdragon 835 the Adreno 540 GPU it's a 5.7 inch quad HD so it is 16 by 9 Gorilla Glass 3 on the front face with 8 gigabytes of RAM and 64 gigabytes of ufs storage they don't mention if it's you FS 2 or 2.1 hmm I was assuming it probably would be at this point right now a 12 megapixel rear camera 8 megapixel front shooter 1/4 dual camera come on man you can't bring it about that point yeah that's right that's right I apologize I missed the zoom sensor on this bullet point sheet here four thousand milliamp hour battery which is pretty great especially if you've been a fan of phones like Huawei's in the past that's an excellent number of milliamp hour milliamp hour capacity to have a quick charge for from Qualcomm they claim 85% charge in one hour and a machined aluminum body coming with Nova Launcher as the front skin with Android 7.1.1 nuga backing up the guts of the software a pretty compelling offering a very minimal machined hardware very low profile buttons not really marring or distracting from the design and front-facing stereo speakers which I think a lot of people are going to be happy about in terms of multimedia know how big so no head pointing if anyone is playing a lot of games you're using your battery more aggressively so having a headphones plugged in and not being able to charge at the same time might be a consideration for some folks but of course then you can just start dealing with the Bluetooth but the biggest flip side to that is with that bright XO LCD you have also the 128 Hertz the splash that you're playing around with which is fire and it's also titled an ultra motion because you've got a brand your brand your technology like that but it's about you know smooth and it's great hopefully all the games support that and well they've this is this is what was really compelling again you're bringing something new to the table this isn't just a powerful smartphone with a razer logo slapped on the back they are trying to make sure that their gaming DNA is incorporated in this phone so when the discussion reaches like the the frame rate of the screen scales to the actual frame rate of the app on the screen yeah all the way up to a hundred and twenty frames per second if this phone can drive a game at 120 FPS the screen will properly match that frame rate for the grey for the gameplay that is actually kind of a big deal if we're talking about a multimedia device yeah and certainly I mean we have a lot of multimedia to talk about here because as Weezer's wants they have a ton of partnerships that will help them or for a gaming phone because when you bring out the term gaming phone you kind of have to wonder well what games am I going to play on that that would totally make sense and they have run out Arina Fowler as one of them where there was a tabletop care things the beat'em ups no no I am a gamer so high no but it's illegally League of Legends kind of thing going there and there's also a pocket edition of Square Enix is Final Fantasy 15 so fans of that franchise have lots to look forward to of course you have all the new tender stuff but I would say that as a richly richly textured thing that I've only ever played like two hours of I think that's a pretty good I think that's pretty good you like the game or not but also it's what I think is really interesting is this is another phone that I've seen really fronting a partnership with honor of kings yeah that was Oppo had something to show off with one of their last phone releases talking about this and ten cent has been blowing that up especially in the Chinese market but it's become a very popular game elsewhere too so that they're also working a collaboration with DC for honor of Kings where you can play DC characters yes and seeing as how I'm like a massive nut and I was totally addicted to my Marvel future fight mentioning DC characters in a game like honor of kings like actually has me somewhat more interested in trying yeah so I might have to break that out and see you like if I can be Batman always be Batman that's kind of big i things that we do need to mention the no headphone jack but it does sound like they're following the google pixel model for their their headphone dongle so a little less terrible that it'll hopefully be a proper 24-bit portable DAC as opposed to you know like an HTC or motors have you seen the whole thing cuz it's actual debt yeah it's a chunky little thing right but what I'm hoping is is unlike a proprietary dongle like Motorola solution where the moto dongle only works on the moto it doesn't work on like a laptop hopefully that DAC will be compatible with any computer like the Google pixel dongle is because that could be kind of cool like if say your laptop has crappy headphone audio and you can just pop out from the USB C port you don't have to detach the dongle from your headphones you can plug it into your laptop and get much better audio that is I think the right way to do this moving forward I still think it's a bummer that it doesn't have a high quality headphone jack but this takes a little bit of the sting off it's also not gonna be water-resistant so I know some people who are concerned about an expensive phone not having some kind of IP rating that might be a bummer there but we are talking about US six hundred and ninety nine dollar phone and that sounds like a lot but that's still way less than I was about to say that sounds like a lot but no no it's not anymore yeah the iPhone 8 is $6.99 hello to you yeah and when you consider that if you took a one plus five and just I mean this is kind of a sense it makes sense a 700 bucks like already we're seeing the 1 + 5 t get little hints and little triggers going on and who knows what that might be priced but we're talking about the screen technology the audio I mean KJ X had which is whether subsidiaries had you that stereo speakers and just a bunch of other kind of back you know back flanking of franchises coming in to support this thing and so we ultimately have to arrive at a question though is gaining a killer app that has been missing from the smartphone market I think this is gonna be a really interesting first test case is if razor can start building a core user base to become evangelists really built around that idea of mobile gaming III think it's a it's a section of smartphone use which is often overlooked we talk about gaming in our reviews and stuff but I think for a lot of people out there you're gonna spend $700 on a phone gaming is one of those activities that kills phone batteries right you know you don't want to have your phone dead at yo before dinnertime because you still need your phone as a primary communications device when you know games eat through battery life a lot more aggressively now I think razor has done exactly the right play in talking about fast charging technologies and a larger battery thermal cooling system that they have to hopefully keep your phone running more efficiently and I can say I can get through a significant amount of Marvel future fight on my mate mate 9 because this battery is ginormous compared to a lot of other devices in its class especially a lot of other devices at its price point so III guess I'm I'll be really curious to see do you think people are gonna are going to latch on to this idea do you think we'll get enough people latch on to this idea that we can build a fan base around it because this isn't the same argument that like a one plan is making I don't have the answer for that right do you know that no you liquid future you get the future wrong you're gonna push this greatly and this is because they have some retail flex with this because they have their own razor stores of course which are farmed for you between but there's also the Microsoft Store for at least the North America I'm trying to still parse out the partnership but they have a lot PC periphery bills so maybe they felt like I saw that maybe they're trying to leverage that going on and they're also able to still use I still use the razor laptop so I'm very tied into their product line exactly and they're and they're also partnering in Europe at least for with three and they also work with three for design and hardware and they made an agreement like earlier this summer so there we go there's some movement on this phone whether or not the case gets made for it is is that well maybe up to Microsoft maybe it's up to the carriers and hopefully well the nice thing like it won't be for lack of trying I think these are all of the right plays like and I'll be shocked if this phone isn't available on Amazon on B&H on any other sort of web retailer I'll be very surprised so I think they've made pretty much every right move you can make in launching a new phone very very few leaks very few you know like you know spy pictures or blurry cam photos anything like that they controlled the narrative of its announcement they they arrived with pricing and availability information ahead of some other products that always seem to announce a phone and then not tell you how much it's gonna cost or when you can buy it and then knowing that it's gonna have some decent launch partners even if they aren't carriers is at least showing that there's been some relationship building going on behind the scenes for this phone we've got a bunch of tweets a bunch of questions on this let's go ahead and jump into those so that we can wrap this podcast up from from Andrew Wallace he's got a couple tweets here does anyone else wish that Razer had included better PC to mobile streaming solutions I want to be able to play sieve five civilization five on mobile and what strategy do you think Razer should use in order to sell the there 700 ollar phone if they aren't going through carriers actually we kind of talked about that but I do want to talk about game streaming because we've got Samsung has a big well and then also we've seen from traditional gaming platforms you know Microsoft has been working on sort of game mobility the Xbox stick PlayStation the same thing Nvidia and steam all working on how can you get a game from your PC to your living room and then you've got a you know a common a mainstay sort of I think the leader of mobile gaming Nintendo blurring the lines between console quality and mobile gaming quality with the switch I actually do kind of wish that I that we saw something that was you know like because Razer has a living room solution to that I think about it it would have been really compelling to have some kind of service that could offload a PC driven game just displayed on a phone screen it's just then also I think you would have had to have had the discussion about game controller or peripheral that could interact with a phone well enough to actually control the game that you were streaming from your PC yeah yeah and one of the odd bits that I noted while the event was going on was that they had the whole preamble about how they've become the number one in PC peripherals and and console peripherals and they also made an announcement about their streaming equipment that they have for PC and they said and if you're worried and we've been out of stock for a while talk soon and that was one of the few times during that preamble that people actually applauded that there was an actual strong applause that's funny I mean okay sorry I'm just I'm also going through our tweets at the same time here Joel I didn't mean to cut you off like that well no no no it's just that like when they say that there's my gamers I presume that when they have trying to fill their audience maybe maybe that was what they were asking for and yeah they're from Zayn winter hashtag peon weekly are you surprised Nvidia isn't making a shield phone or partnering with razor for theirs well first of all I seriously doubt Nvidia would be trying to partner with Razer as I think they would view them as more of a competitor in this space but you know III it's kind of interesting to see you know Nvidia had tried to enter the mobile space the chipset space with Tegra and when Tegra didn't become a primary chipset for manufacturers to compete against Qualcomm they seemed to lose interest in that space I don't know I I don't see them really trying to make any other mobile gear shield tablets or shield controller mobile gaming setups anymore so I just don't think there's enough interest in the space for them when they're more focused on streaming solutions and graphics cards so I mean the race is on they're not necessarily in the hole in terms of components in terms of serving up software to stream like that that's really the only vertical that they are competing in but just doing hardware and micro components I don't know how much how much of that means something to them in order for them to collaborate or go or not and then this is well I this is what I think is so interesting is like you're launching a phone in 2017 this is kind of becoming you know like the 2018 model year you know like just with cars yeah is the end of this year so it's technically next year's phone and you don't I mean anyone who's walking into the space knew first of all they just have to know that this phone isn't gonna sell like crazy for the first gen especially when it's priced at a you know the bottom end of the premium tier of the market but we've seen other players try and so I'd love to have a conversation with someone internally a razor and I know they'd never let us kind of do you know talk candidly and publicly about stuff but like what what about the timing now really made them feel that this was the right time to play especially when they aren't trying to make the same argument NVIDIA did with console or PC quality gaming on Android powered devices but lastly this is from Jonas and this made me laugh Jonas Timothy Kemal the razor phone isn't worth the price without chroma RGV [Laughter] look look they have the special edition they're gonna produce 1337 leet unit with snake the Tri snake force logo at the back in green cup row green is more than anything you'll ever have no jewels jewels what we need what we need is a rainbow ripple effect every time you touch the screen just like they have on my keyboard and that's that's what's gonna sell some phones there's no RGB come on I'm actually shopping our GB RAM in a separate window as we speak because I've got to rebuild this workstation and I want pretty colors on all the things but yeah let's go ahead and wrap this up here I think that's that's an amount to dinner yeah and I want to thank all the folks that were yo chatting and we saw that we saw a lot of chatter on this episode and then all the people sending us in tweets and stuff don't forget we're gonna be doing our mailbag viewer mailbag episodes at the end of each month so shoot us those emails if you're listening to this and the the recorded audio version of this podcast and I'm gonna pull up my script here to get us back out contract in the sack there you have it folks this episode of the PocketNow weekly is over the conversation continues though on Twitter where Jules is outpoint Jules and I'm humbly at some gadget guy pocket now is around the web on Twitter Instagram Facebook Google+ and our home site pocketnow.com for Spanish speakers check out yes pocketnow.com or basically everywhere now shows like this cannot exist without your support sharing the weekly with your friends who love mobile technology and dropping reviews on iTunes stitcher Google Play or wherever else podcasts can be reviewed once again we want to thank this week's sponsor app River they're helping us keep the lights on here with protecting your corporate information your corporate email but ultimately there wouldn't be a show if it weren't for our listeners and subscribers who have kept us on the air since 2012 the PocketNow weekly we'll be back next week with all kinds of delicious technology goodness so make sure you tune back 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