Gadgetory

and we're live Huawei continues to face problems in the US market but to date no one's been sharing any evidence of security threats one plus six rumors are pointing to a higher price tag then many fans might be happy with and Verizon continues to push some buttons this time for iPhone users we've got a lot to talk about so make sure you're charged and ready for episode 297 of the pocket now weekly recorded March 23rd at noon pacific 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 I'm fond Carlos back now a contributing editor at pocketnow.com joined as always by plucky podcast producer mr. Jules Wong on the East Coast how's it going sir hello there it's going just fine for a Friday I'm feeling just as good about anything for the weekend and hopefully you are - yeah we're living for the weekend anytime the weekends happening is just it's just fine it's ok the weather's decent and and we can make the most of our short lives folks the weekend is fine by us we're fine with the weekend I know some really cool stories coming up this this podcast all the top news from pocketnow.com I'm gonna say let's jump straight into some of the housekeeping stuff that we need to get to if you'd like to join the conversation you can of course tweet at us during the live broadcast using the hashtag P and weekly that's the easiest way for us to catch your comments and add them to the discussion we love all the people in the live chat we do check in on the live chat but often it's hard for us to keep up with conversations that are happening there and of course if you're a fan of the the more traditional methods of digital online communications you can also hit us an email if you're listening to this show after the live broadcast and you can hit us up at podcast at pocketnow.com where we collect all of your questions and we use that as fodder for mailbag and listener take the wheel episodes we try and produce at the end of each month so Jules you've got the you've got a crazy list for our rundown this week I do jump into the top headlines from pocketnow.com indeed so for the week of March 1928 scene this is all the mobile tech news that is fit to podcast they are conflicting views to how many new model iPhones Apple will be of the cell from this September Taiwanese industry sources say that Apple has ordered at least 110 million OLED displays and 70 million LCD displays Korean sources say that only 50 million of OLED displays will be had and 150 million LCDs gotten it's believed that two OLED iPhone their parents will be priced well and above one LCD model meantime Apple Facebook and Google are all reported to be pursuing a buyout of image startup Lytro best known for its like filled cameras techCrunch reports that for Google's part it will pay between 25 and 40 million dollars for an asset acquisition as opposed to a corporal one the big reason why it's the favorite course to win google hardware SVP rick ostilow is on late roast board of directors we shall see what happens with this one corporate presentation slides supposedly died up from oneplus headquarters as detailed the one plus six to have top line specifications including up to 256 gigabytes of storage other specs since dug up include a 20 megapixel selfie camera the price for a meeting thing like this supposedly $749 surpassing the max spec 1 + 5 t of just a few months ago by nearly $200 we'll have to see what we can dig into on that one because there has been some reporting going on here more on that a little bit later Qualcomm's lead man on display tech sound and Syed spoke with tech radar about the likelihood of foldable smartphones coming soon the short answer is near zero and the reason display transistors still can't survive an expected lifetime of bending and stretching and that has plenty of manufacturers still working on the case at least for the years to come the my Verizon app has pushed out a notification urging people to buy the Galaxy S 9 through the carrier thing is I found an iPad customers got this message - and Apple doesn't seem to be well it just feels it doesn't need to do anything about this doesn't seem to be enforcing its own rules against direct marketing through proche notifications other apps like Aliexpress have exploited this lacks attitude and that has really dug into some developers some iOS app developers the wrong way one of instagrams recent improvements to its feed has been to incorporate more up-to-date posts at the top of every refresh there have been plenty of complaints about non chronological curation of posts on social media platforms so this measure may address some for loan and consumers and it's a good step hopefully that more of these platforms will take and finally LG has open sourced the code for its version of webOS it's the first time since HP did it after acquired Paul and well obviously LG acquired the rights to webOS in 2014 it has long been relegated to serving as the user interface for LG smart televisions but it has filed with a Korean regulator to explore new uses for webOS so I'm wondering with this last story here what would you believe would be a good use case for the webOS that we know right now obviously it's been used for smartwatches under LG's capacity in past and of course with tablets and smart a smart 102 for a palm did a few smart phones way back in the day I think I still have my my webOS tablet somewhere that I got from that fire sale way back when I'm kind of torn I the whole thing about having an operating system is about trying to build maintain and service an ecosystem and I think L G has a great argument to expand their lifestyle products there their kitchen products their washers and dryers I have an LG washer and dryer and it's got this sort of like how hard it sinking with my phone that can kind of tap your phone on it and you get the ability to sort of control things on the washer and dryer I think that could be LG's direct directly I think webOS could be LG's killer killer app if you will tying together the products that they already have kind of like the way that Samsung has Tizen as a way that they can fall back on in-house development to to build an ecosystem of products for their specific customers I think that makes the most sense I'm not entirely sure what we could or should hope for from webOS as an open source initiative I'm not sure who's who would stand to benefit from playing in an OS space that has a lot of potential but products don't really get sold by potential you kind of need to to put up or shut up and there's also just so many good ideas like I would love to see webOS is like an in-car unit you know instead of a proprietary in - unit which has terrible software like I hate using anything that has to do with the touchscreen on my Nissan that that I think could could go a long ways towards improving some of the conditions when we're interacting with technology in the car but I'm not sure who's really gonna take that ball and run with it given all of the different options and major competition from platforms like iOS and Android and ultimately it's going to be LG's with a sandbox that these developers will end up playing in now they get to maybe set up standards documentation and other little bug fixes and tweaks so that's kind of LG's way of deferring costs over to people with passion I guess you could say but we see little illustrations and drawings and of course the the floating out there at the notion that it could going back to smartwatches or to laptops or to refrigerator's just like as you said Kaizen its but why wasn't this done years ago when our just norm why wasn't there more thoughtful approach to weather less when it you know was just knew was fresher you know these hands and why hasn't it got on the think you AI kind of I I get what you're saying and especially given the success that Samsung has had in developing their own operating system or and actually operating systems the different flavors and variants of in-house development that power TVs versus what is a curator their smart assistant for their washer and dryers which is different than Bixby which is different than Tizen I I think one of the things that held LG back was the amount of time webOS spent in that weird holding pattern as HP was finally drowning it for the last possible time and so whatever outside developers support there could have been had to be completely separated from how server driven webOS was how many how many pieces of proprietary code and patented licensed tech the api's that were involved in webOS for it to be even the moderately successful the minorly successful smartphone operating system that it was and I think once LG got its hands on the core guts of this of this very different animal than when it was with HP and certainly than when it was with palm I think it took them time to sort of unravel what it was they could do with it and and also I I don't I don't mean this to sound as snarky as it's going to but I also don't have the most faith in LG software developers for consistently iterating being focused on tasks on projects having an end goal in mind in the same way that I think we've come to expect from an outlet like Samsung I'm especially once you start playing with the newest gear smartwatches Andrew Wallace sharing photos of his gear watch because he moved from Android wear over to Tizen on Twitter he hooked us up on the PM weekly hashtag we've come to have different expectations for these companies and what they can execute LG I think kind of floundered with this new property for a while before they kind of got the guts of it under control and started iterating for TVs outside of TVs what else can you do with it and I'm not sure they have a plan in mind for that that's why I think we're hearing no ly no more noise on this open source initiative I think kind of hoping to spur on some outside tinkerer or sort of part-time developer imagination you know if someone else can come in and do something disruptive or interesting or fun with it and it's open source and LG can borrow from from that experience then maybe they'll have more potential for a consumer facing product that they can make money off of in the next couple years I don't necessarily want to buy one but what I do want to get my hands on is LG watch urbane which was the first yeah modern SmartWatch back in 2015 with fellow PE of all things and it had the freaking webOS little thing I am the big it looked a little cute it was like it was a Mickey attempt at you know that the still burgeoning kind of a you know circular SmartWatch thing going on there as which in but you know I would like to know if he did you hold it so I actually not only did I get to play with that I did a survey where they did this whole sit-down interview and it took like two hours going through different UI elements and different button configurations and different dial configurations and LG had some phenomenal ideas that were really well ahead of the curve I mean stuff that we we see executed well on gear s2 and gear s3 smartwatches LG was arriving at some very similar conclusions for what a round-faced smart interface should resemble if we're gonna pack that thing with almost as much functionality as a phone and III really enjoyed that experience and unfortunately it kind of came to nothing and and I think they just got a little gun-shy they they they went with the easier path which I think was ultimately the wrong move for LG but going with Android where if they had stuck to an end goal even if they weren't necessarily you know first to market with it I think they could have made a better faith argument for why an LG watch with an LG phone could have been a great pairing and really selling the notion of ecosystem and from there you get to build off of everything with all of the Smart Home commentary that's going on right now and energy control and thermostats and smart speakers and assistants that plug in to your home network I just imagine like if we had kicked that off with a wearable and then they could have come out with a speaker and then they could have added a smart assistant to your laundry to say hey you know you're about to do laundry during peak electricity times if you wait you can you know not only minimize your impact on the grid but you can save a little cash off you know different rates for electricity in your area I mean those kinds of things could go really far for selling LG as that primary competitor for your entire lifestyle of products opposite Samsung it's just there's such a big company there's such a big ship getting those individual departments to focus on end goals and collaborating together just doesn't seem to be something that any company can can really properly execute execute over the long run and the right routes weren't placed at the right time just because you mentioned the HP palm kind of the clearing out the servers and that left some verticals inaccessible LG at the time and that was also like the freaking there was more pressure with the Android with Google but because that was a battement stagefright and Google wanted to say okay let's get some more security updates out there it was just general kind of inserting more standards into it because that the that it was at the time that there were talks about Samsung inquality going their own with Tizen and freakin what's the emu I that's right so like it was there were pressures there so ah oh and we still see flavors just you know whether or not you're looking at sort of a stock experience or like a like an outlet like tick watch you know tick watch having a very highly customized build of Android on their first watch just completely walking away from that kind of development for the their follow-up less expensive sport variant so I I just think LG got got caught during what was an exciting explosion of new potential and then never really finalized those last couple products that could have made it to market and and that's a shame but I'm hoping again its potential there are some really good ideas in webOS that if they can be brought to some other kind of product line there there is something for that software to accomplish but again we have those same conversations with every other sort of alt operating system out there from from the offshoots of like me go and sailfish and stuff like that - you know again kind of custom builds of Linux that still pop up every now and then a fire fish is bigger Russia yeah I'm not sure we're gonna see it a ton of traction on that you know if webOS could become part of the backbone of another service to motivate more wearables like that could be something really interesting it's just whether or not that faces you know like a renewed interest in a Fitbit you know Fitbit can make a bigger play for the consumer market immediately does LG have the fortitude to stick out webOS as a competitor against something like a Fitbit and I don't think they do I was expecting to talk this much about whether West but frankly this is a pretty been pretty fruitful so more this pretty easy thank you let's get into some potatoes they're a little bit boring but you know given the fact that Apple has been kind of the beacon of the mobile tech industry for the past 2x years and how it might be able to lead the way in terms of the markets for components of blah blah blah blah blah blah I can stuff let's talk about this report here there are these reports and some all right so I mean any given year we're talking about 200 million new model iPhones that are going to be get shipped and sold and whatnot and basically here we're talking about the splits between display technologies and therefore the price bracketing for these because we're dealing with three variants this year two sizes of OLED more expensive iPhones and one LCD which is supposedly going to be less but there's been also reporting that there's that the small OLED version of the iPhone will cost ultimately less in parts and labor then the LCD version which blows your minds or that you there's so much going on there but ultimately it's how many of these things that Apple can ship and the Koreans they're like the industry sources that we're talking about here the Koreans say that OLED will get what was this a three to one play so if 150 million to 50 million units from OLED to LC or LCD to OLED basically these guys are favoring OLED and Taiwan II sources are saying no I'm gonna give you as myself here all right hold on LCD will get 150 and OLED will get 50 and Taiwanese are saying 132 OLED and 72 LCD so the Taiwanese are favoring the whole inside here and now there are some sense to be made out of that because okay there you have more models and the iPhone 10 is a established thing now so now we're going to see more of these sales pop up more of that momentum go to OLED but on the other side they're saying hey look at how the iPhone 10 did it did it performed poorly in the market and apples been cutting back on parts orders for iPhone tens and it's not it did so there's a reason why we can't expect too many of these Alette iPhones to be sold next year so I'm wondering where you lay down the line on this like if you were to put you know go into Ladbrokes or something and place a bet on this so so here's my guess I Phone 10 represents a very expensive branding exercise from Apple if the iPhone 10 as $1,000 smartphone had grossly outperformed the iPhone 8 then I think we would have seen some continued branding language of an iPhone X I or an iPhone 11 or an iPhone x2 it would have become a new branding platform to discuss iPhones well we have no idea what these next iPhones I mean we have three of them first there's like naming paradigms my guess my guess is we're going to walk back some but not all of the extreme design language of the iPhone 10 probably you know still keeping face ID and removing the the touch ID the home button and all screen iPhone but maybe they do something where there's just a bit more forehead and chin bezel or they sort of normalized the design a little bit more and we arrive at something which I'm calling but probably won't be named the iPhone nines so we take the big little form factor of the iPhone 9 and of the iPhone 8 so you have a smaller one in a larger one probably differences on the cameras like there's gonna be a dual camera on the larger plus version and a single camera on the smaller one battery capacity etc and that's that's gonna be the iPhone moving forward so so the naming isn't really that important anyone who gets their knickers in a twist about what an iPhone is called it's just the next iPhone it's the iPhone 2018 and I'm assuming that we'll probably see Oh LEDs go into those devices again being able to command premium is the top options what is officially called the iPhone 10 will be sort of relegated as the one-off celebration of the 10 year anniversary of the iPhone and will move forward with a trio of devices big.little for premium options and then some kind of follow-up to the SE which can hopefully start to better satisfy LTE developing areas and replace the original iPhone se so my guess would be ol Ed's for the premium products commanding you know that lobster pot higher price tag especially considering the the sort of cost because we know the margins on iPhones are usually pretty solid III don't see ol Ed's necessarily disrupting the the amount of profit the profit margin that Apple can build into them if they can also bump up the price saying oh we learned so much from the iPhone 10 which was a specialty one-off iPhone and now all iPhones are gonna be built more like the 10 but we can also now that from what we've learned we can make them less expensive than the iPhone 10 but they're still more expensive than the iPhone 8 it's gonna feel like you're getting a really good deal even though it's sort of just the normal progression umm how phones are made and then the iPhone se will be the one that carries with some kind of LCD for the screen just that they can come in again with the branding the marketing and call it a lesser or a less expensive phone so that's my guess I think we'll see o LEDs for a big little iPhone 9 and then an LCD for an iPhone se - okay so just a little bit of admin here and I'm gonna have to make a marker in my mind to note this down but for our live audience I just had to find out that the our YouTube chat has not been on and so I had to fix that up for a quick second so if you were discouraged or if you want to tell anyone that's a lot chest back on centering you know first amendment take that we didn't mean to so apologies if you have a we do have a look oh go ahead okay go in now I just need a break no I was just gonna say we do have a couple comments here from Peter hatin using the PM Weekly hashtag do you think LCD versus OLED is such a huge deal given the way Apple does OLED there isn't a huge viewing difference plus I find LCD a little more color accurate so I guess this is more related to multimedia and usage of the camera but do you find saturated OLED a little more troublesome when dealing with specific tasks like photography alright so with a LED and you know photography I mean I don't I don't see because it's you know yet some photography in media viewing and you're you're mostly just applying all these you know software tuning and you know rec.709 and whatever that you can put onto a screen and that's kind of what you can do in terms of Ola and it's just the fact of the matter is that you can turn them off and therefore it'll be deeper blocks period and then oh yeah there's the you know they can show off 16 million million colors better because now the programming is more efficient and you can whatever but in terms of you know distorting what you see or when you take a picture or something something like I'm not sure where you're getting at here well I mean the there's there's different philosophies for o LEDs and there's nothing that prevents an OLED from being very color accurate I remember the galaxy s7 when you switched it out of the adaptive color in the adaptive brightness modes was actually one of the most color accurate displays that we had ever seen on a mobile device and I don't feel like we had that same experience with the SI and no eight generations of phones like I've I feel every single Samsung phone I've run into since has had a ready year display than what we had for the s7 and so given apples penchant towards this is a phone for creatives this is a phone that you come to really trust and expect apples flavor you know like the iPhone camera and assessing on the iPhone camera has not changed substantially the biggest change was the iPhone 7 to the iPhone 8 and even that was just very minor tweaks to contrast to brightness into saturation over the previous generation of Apple photos and I think in part because that actually does help an OLED pop a little bit more so apples not really pushing the boundaries in the Samsung territory with the way that they do sharpening in contrast but they wanted something that was gonna be a bit more crowd pleasing than just an OLED which might have felt felt like you wanted to be able to see it so if you held an iPhone 8 plus against an iPhone 10 you want the consumer to immediately recognize that there's some kind of difference I think actually apples been pretty reasonable about it we know that they're trying to make a crowd-pleasing move you know it's marketing and it's and it's an emotional product positioning but I think they've gone about it in a very reasonable way I I don't feel like you you you can't trust an iPhone camera on an OLED screen in the way that I very much do not trust the output from a Samsung camera when viewed on a Samsung display on that phone screen when that phone screen is in its most automatic color shifting crowd-pleasing color saturated mode once you once you disable that I feel you get a much better representation of what that photo is gonna look like on another display but I think Samsung is going out of their way to make the output from their camera look as lush as possible on their screen and that's not always reflective of what that photo really resembles so I mean especially opposite things like like when we saw the pixel some of the pixel controversies on OLED pio LED and LCD and people complaining that maybe it was a bit too plain I think that there was a better argument to be had that Google just didn't really focus on trying to impress at that emotional you know primate level of what's the prettiest juiciest lushest colour representation that we can deliver and that actually rubbed people the wrong way saw those apps and all of those mods to try and crank the the screens on pixel twos just shooting in RAW mode all the time everything's raw or me but I also mean like displaying that and there's there's a reason why you know you you don't you don't show a client a raw photo you always touch it up because you you can't expect anyone to have that little bit of imagination that the final output will be better than than the actual raw capture you just need all that info to do the editing we've got from da solder on Twitter we'll the other OEMs get left behind by the race 200 led by the big guys and also will LG ever catch up with Samsung with their OLED quality you know Apple is like we've been doing the reporting this week that Apple is like two years ahead of everyone else in terms of troop death and the the freaking the vertical oscillating whatever the heck kind of lasers lately in the parts that you need for a camera system such as true death death analysis and whatever that like that that's that's a big advantage that they have in terms of the supply chain in terms of R&D and just being able to you know make that happen in a reasonable space with OLED it's a little bit it's changing now we're in the early stages Samsung is still kind of the the market leader for this but even now because of the performance of the iPhone 10 and you know they're getting told that they have to cut orders they have to cut production there could be a little bit more room for other volumes to snatch in take a more stock over and if a manufacturing lines there's just yeah yeah yeah they're able to take up stock and you know just use it on their phones now at the last minute or something like that so yeah I mean it's possible it's possible and as for LG I mean I I have not suffered using a P OLED on the LG v 30 and and I know there have been examples of people that have had wildly inconsistent backlighting or some really bad banding on gradient colors I have not shared those concerns so when I look at LG from a manufacturing standpoint I really don't feel that it's the best example of an LG P OLED versus the samsung amoled is really that far behind I would say the quality of display is probably just above what we had on the galaxy s6 so they're about a generation and a half to two generations behind but I still find that those displays are eminently usable and they look fine the biggest issue I think facing LG is fulfilling demand while also making sure their QA is up to the strictest standards and I think that's a tough call for any company to iterate at scale from all the other like you know if Apple jumps into LG is a P OLED supplier you know you're gonna have a significant amount of demand that you have to fulfill and you can't be dumping a ton of displays out if they have minor defects and that's not a good place for LG to be it's getting those lines up to a quality and a consistency that consumers can rely on yeah simulator guys says on YouTube and I think you man speak the truth some people just don't understand what Samsung does and a couple of people talking about their picks on excel pixel to excel excuse me just their screens are okay so definitely a lot of greens going on and we'll look to have more of your feedback as we go on this show let's head over into one of our big stories this week which is white Rome speaking of the freaking face IDE true depth and whatever that that's just one of the possibilities that I floated out there that some other people flowed out there but we're talking about Google here which is expanding its own efforts into phone making but it also has a ton of other prize that it has its fingers in so it could be that you know there again this would be something like a lil novo and know a Motorola that's right that was the company that they bought where there was just a lot of assets showing a lot of you know taking up stone the IP here so it sounds like what we're going for is that with white row so I guess talk about what you have in terms of light your in terms of what you've been able to suss out with its products if you've ever interacted with them at all yes so my experiences with light show have been very very minimal I I did get to play with the very original sort of rectangular light row camera I've not played with any of their new work if you could show it back on the screen right here so I've spent literally minutes playing around with one of these and again there was a really exciting novelty to what they were trying to accomplish with this camera I you know focusing after the fact depth tracking and and being able to display photography in a digital space in a way that we'd never seen before really interesting ideas but also something that at that time was a was an idea that numerous other companies were also playing with so I mean if you remember we used to have apps on Lumia cameras that would allow a Lumia camera to take multiple exposures throughout the focusing range of the camera so that then you could refocus I think the actual name of the app was refocus is you could refocus your photo after you took it so you could say you know like I took this photo and it pulsed through all of it you just had to hold still for a second I'm kind of surprised that Google would be making such a strong play according to these these these rumors this insider info for a company like light rail where I kind of feel that a pixel camera is already demonstrating a number of the properties that would make a light row camera system successful where the pixel two cameras is very adept at taking extreme extreme number of exposures to help improve low-light clarity to help reduce noise to make sure that your exposures are really nice and crisp and contrast II Google's software approach to processing all of that information is already pretty formidable so I'd be curious to see what assets Google thinks it might need from a company like light troe I mean we'll never get the full scoop on that we'll never get the full answer but that's absolutely the fly-on-the-wall conversation that I'd like to hear because I kind of feel we're already well into software photo and video processing tech that could rival what the hardware on a light row could do I don't think that's any extreme hurdle to get over so what is it that we're lacking for some of these other fun features or refocusing features or depth tracking if Google's answer to dual camera systems was a single lens on the pixel that software could determine the depth between your subject and your background then what do we have left to figure out I kind of feel like that pies been baked we've solved that problem hmm well what was it one of the like satellite features of the original electro cameras the perspective shift like you could change it a little bit just by from the data it was able to acquire from the light vectors that was capture I don't I don't remember honestly for when I I mean I got to play with Elektra when this was brand spanking new and the big thing we were all flipping out about was this like one button press for refocusing and changing the the focus of your shot after the fact and so all of these like very limited website plugins that you could use to embed a light row photo so that people could interact with that photo and from there I didn't really keep up with what new developments or what new ideas they were trying to front it just never really seemed to me to be massima just sort of fall into that novelty but not something that I felt had it I didn't feel it was some burning problem that consumers were having that they could solve by buying this piece of hardware there's there's a part of me that you know gets a little snarky about if you're having issues with your photos not being in focus well get better taking photos and your photos will be in focus and they're easier to share than these sort of digital constructs that people sort of have to interact with it's a little like 360 video there aren't a lot of people who like interacting with 360 right now uh you know it's like just point the camera what you want to show me as opposed to giving the viewer the freedom to explore the whole frame is often seen as a burden not a perk and and I kind of how he's had that same feeling with Lytro what is it that you took a picture of why didn't you just take a picture of that and show me that picture why do I have to click around in your photo just for the novelty of refocusing on different parts of your frame and I guess that was part of the consumer detraction to that that made them or you know naturally directed by Troy into more of the cinematography feel the high-resolution theater the growth of the equipment itself but when we're talking about the basics of it all I mean it's just a few components that may or may not be able to circumvent the currents parts crunch that we're talking about for death tracking technologies such as face ID and why not so it ends in you know - what precision - watch what level of like micrometers that were able to you know be able to pick up on these things they don't you know there's lots of potential are lots of high precision stuff that we may be able to talk about in terms of depth tracking and augmented reality so who knows and even outside of the high precision stuff you we we can get as tech fans we can get up our own butts about how much we care about certain thresholds professional level thresholds scientific level thresholds but I look at a pixel and I I don't think Google is wrong in having a consumer-grade approach to solving some of these problems that's way more reliant on software than on high precision hardware I'll be very curious to see what the outcome of an acquisition especially an asset acquisition not a team acquisition they're not even pulling over members from what it sounds like not even like what HTC is going through and giving some of their top talent over to Google I I'll be very strong as if he has hardware to the freaking giveaway well yeah what they've got in the pipeline hasn't been the most inspiring from what we've seen so I'll be I'll be really interested to see because Google's conversation on the pixel to was we can do depth of field blurred as good or maybe even better than phones with dual camera systems that provide us some of this better binocular depth information and what consumer benefit would we have even from a security standpoint to utilizing more Hardware on the front face of your phone to do something like a face unlock uh uh I'm not saying that that's wrong I'm just saying I'll be curious to see does that really move the needle or change the conversation I think consumers are really well served right now and I don't see where something like that's gonna spark much imagination other than just to make people who own the pixel to feel like they got an inferior product that's not as secure you know that's a really delicate conversation to have which I think Apple has been stumbling with lately to is every new iPhone that comes out well your last iPhone is garbage now like that's that's not a good way to make your consumers feel good about investing in your product over time if you sold us on software processing being able to hang just as well with hardware and then the next pixel that comes out is all about oh look at how much better this hardware is I I don't feel good about the pixel Eagles ecosystem long-term if that's the kind of chat you're gonna have it's kind of like the headphone jack oh we have a headphone jack and now we don't what good was that text on that advertiser has been huh Yeah right well I mean we'll get to that when we do that I guess eventually things will have to come around but until then I am quickly trying to edit in a picture here that I apparently forgot to add on this post about the one plus six it's showing the the freakin leaks freaking slide thing whatever the hard thing in China yeah right a hot thing in China is that yo you gotta you gotta have a slide you have to have a blurry picture of the slide eternal corporate presentation we can well yeah but no I'm telling you to refresh now because it's there now there it is so yeah 16 20 megapixel things at the back quick charging whatever but the combination of a gigas of RAM and 256 gigs storage with the snapdragon 845 and it's somewhat of I don't know how to say if it's reasonable if it's priced at 7:49 now the thing is is that for context this is China we're talking about presumably because the iPhone 10 is listed here with a $1,500 price tag and the Galaxy S 9 plus is $1200 but that's because there are import taxes for and oneplus is a domestic manufacturer in China so they'd have to you know and the fact is is that the 1 + 5 t let's priced pretty much at parity in both China and the US so that leads me to believe that if this slide is holds true that we should really expect that one plus six max spec at what $190 above the max spec 1 + 5 t which is the biggest step yet in terms of modeling yeah this remodeling of oneplus into you know from a tech enthusiast budget for value kind of player into whatever the heck it expires to be well and I think we do know what it aspires to be I think the the more recent changes have been trying to get out of just being the limited sweetheart brand for Android enthusiasts and trying to find some kind of audience mass market and there are a lot of lessons that you can learn from other companies but I think there's been a general trend where these corporations likely don't see consumers taking their products here until we start climbing into price points that compete with the iPhone in the galaxy so in China if I mean again we're because we're talking about different dollar amounts based on conversion or exchange rates and they can make an argument for a oneplus that's half the price of an iPhone 10 after all of the the import taxes and fees and subsidies and stuff so I guess that kind of makes sense our phone is just as good and it's only half the price look at what a great comparison we have against a Galaxy S nine or an iPhone 10 local argument a fair local argument if that holds true where they don't alter the pricing significantly so again if oneplus arrives costing half of what an iPhone 10 costs then we're all gonna be fine you know we're still in that five to six hundred dollar price tag if it's if it's significantly more than that or or if they're only going after some sort of premium or high-end variant of the eye of the oneplus X I think they're gonna have a hard time with the echo-chamber of tech enthusiasts but I don't think they're gonna be wrong for general consumers just like Google with moving from the pixel moving from the Nexus to the pixel I think consumers started taking the pixel more seriously than the Nexus because Google got rid of the branding of other manufacturers and they would walk into a Verizon store and see a pixel from Google it's the Google iPhone and it costs the same as an iPhone so it must be just as good as an iPhone and it's Google's iPhone and I think that psychology goes a long way toward some of these decisions if a consumer out there wants something different and they see the oneplus brand and they see all of the goodwill that the oneplus brand is built with enthusiasts in the space up to this point and they see it costs the same as an iPhone and it's it's probably even better than an iPhone and it offers all this cool tech I think that's actually probably the right market position for oneplus to start making this transition at even if it's gonna frustrate a lot of the people who were earlier adopters of the oneplus brand and were fans of what oneplus offered from a bang for buck conversation so one plus still has a relatively limited retail footprint it relies he doesn't even rely on you know local regional retailers that much in India does do the Amazon flip cart thing but if the sells direct-to-consumer and you know that's part of building the relationship with the consumer but it's also more of the follies of you know you don't have as much weight to throw around you can't just go to google and you can't just go be google and good and verizon and say okay this is our phone and this is great and verizon takes a lot you know weight into that and goes and like goes and sells your phone for you you oneplus doesn't you can't do that yet it's and it doesn't have a few carrier deals around like ot or telefónica or something like that it does they're like a couple of those but it doesn't have them in the places that really are matter yet and not even in China I think with the but C one plus because one plus I think is is this arm of Oppo that is more focused on a Western mentality than an Eastern mentality it's a you know when we check out the difference between a 1 + 5 and then Opel our series but that's good that's only going to get you as far as Europe if like all crazy about Chinese cybersecurity isn't all crazy about Chinese brands the US government's are crazy about Chinese brands that have infrastructure deals not Chinese brands data because the China the American government did not get pissy with Lenovo and they didn't get pissy with oneplus when they went through some very serious data breaches those products are still fine but oneplus and Lenovo don't have designs on the backbone of 5g wireless connectivity in the United States so they've got issues so ZTE let's let's really hammer ZTE because we all know what a juggernaut they are in phone sales in the United States what what I could see is maybe a two to three year play for oneplus you start shifting the brand to represent more of a premium name in the market you along with that change because you're charging more for the product if you find traction with consumers at that price point at that higher price point through word-of-mouth advertising you have a better faith argument for local advertising in the United States and at that same time I think when the margins on the phone are higher you can make more of a push towards getting a relationship or a partnership with a carrier like t-mobile I think that could be a two or three generation phone plan from from one plus you find some traction you start heating up the market for a premium option we're one plus we used to totally make this argument about bang for buck but you know for the same price we can offer a lot more in your flagship you know then what you'll get from a Samsung or what you'll get from an apple and then you can court some kind of floor space opposite you know an LG or an HTC or Motorola that oneplus will look more exciting in a t-mobile store for what they have to offer in the conversation surrounding the brand it doesn't happen right away definitely doesn't happen with a $750 one plus six but by the time we get to a one plus eight I think you could sow the seeds for great carrier relationship and a more premium label for consumers to interact with I feel bad because one plus like I concerned that one plus one it was 2x to be like the freshman years and then from the 1 plus 3 onwards we had the unified the freaking design language of the phone and it just you know things were getting gone a little bit better and more and if you consider that if you take my premise here then we're already considered to be gen 3 of this sophomoric one plus going on here and it's like I'm wondering just wondering when it when that gets to evolve into something else and with the web that actually means something for them and now like I mean I could finish that thought but there's also like this far in my head where it's like yeah we also have to take the current political environment where and I hate to do this but slily president Donald Trump is calling for a trade worth China and the the ripple effects of all this could just run around 1 plus any ways or anyone else so this is especially a fractious kind of a time to be taught about one plus e-naught presence conversation is unique to one plus I mean when we see what what oneplus did with some of the manufacturing acumen of Oppo you're absolutely right so like the early days we were a ton of teething pains and I was not a fan of this company in the oneplus one in 1 + X era but that transition from the 3 to the 3 t I think we saw a company that had realized it had peaked at what it could offer in the original conversation it set out to have as being the flagship killer and shifting their marketing from flagship killing to never settling and the 1+5 I think represents the beginnings of that shift toward something a bit more mass-market Oppo also utilizing their frame for the 1 + 5 is a very I phone II clone whereas the 1 plus three I think borrowed more influence from HTC design classic HTC design so they're already they were already shifting what the public perception of their brand was going to try and offer and at the same time while we do see a lot of government pressure and a lot of influence from like the Trump administration over business sectors Broadcom Intel Qualcomm what we talked about last week and then other you know issues that we're seeing with law enforcement initiatives against CTE in hallway we're still hearing conversations about companies like Jaime trying to get into the United States - I this is my hypothesis this is my guess III don't feel that there's good evidence one way or the other when it comes to this administration as to what the rational plan might be between what companies get favored status and what companies get hammered but because a company like Xiaomi or accompanying like Oppo or oneplus isn't trying to make a play for sure I don't think they're gonna face nearly the kind of scrutiny that Huawei has I think they're gonna slip under the radar they can probably build up some kind of better relationship with retailers maybe 1 + fills up some of the space that we'll talk about later when we talk about fall way on store shelves at Best Buy or Target and then those companies get to sell products directly get the benefit of having some kind of carrier relationship deal because no one's afraid of oneplus also selling 5g cell towers and because of that I think they'll get to sneak in whereas ZTE is gonna get is gonna get punched in the face so that that's my guess is I think we'll actually see Xiaomi and oneplus over the next three years make more of a target for American consumers well they do say in Chinese that the word for crisis is the same as opportunity so looking into that from gas otter so is 1 plus aiming to be a premium brand parent company BBK is pushing brands like vivo or AAPIs or replacement for Memphis and I don't necessarily think so because 1 plus is their external thing going on for the rest of the world whereas Oppo vivo more of the age of sphere or even like vaguely into Europe and not that not played so I mean it says they have different branches I think they're using them to the optimal position that they can put them and David Bautista is desilva in Europe their chances one pluses chances will decrease as the price goes up specially when they've already been kicked to the curb by Nokia using a similar strategy they're going for cut price but high quality Hardware going on and the software's pre darn good and it's - David Benji stock might mean going up scale could be a smarter play if you can escape Nokia competition in Europe by making a product that is supposedly nicer than a majority of the Nokia phones that will be sold you get to avoid some of that comparison against one of the most beloved brand names of all time and at the same time you get to pad your margins better so if the company is making more money on fewer sapone sold then that's still a win for a a small little upstart I mean run out of the port you know great point here the quote-unquote we're just a small team excuse won't cut it any more they've been talking about how they've built up their customer support teams and it's like okay now at some point you have to admit that's you have a certain amount of clout you can't beat in at the kids table but you still can't be at like the banquets over no infrastructure sort of criticisms to leather yet a number of companies - you know when I phones have problems I think we're willing to forgive an initial batch of phones that have issues because we're pretty confident that Apple's gonna iterate or improve or at least try to work with consumers but that's not to say that iPhones don't have issues I mean almost every major generational shift of iPhone has had some kind of major problem which is then fixed by the S model of the phone which comes out a year later so if a oneplus is trying to make the same play or make the same argument it's not so much that I can't III can't accept that their phones won't occasionally have issues it's that I need to see that this team can iterate can improve can support and can replace product very aggressively and that's something that they've been hiding I think that one of the points they've been hiding behind there we're just a tiny little upstart team the most is some of the delay in fixing some of those issues and some of the messaging that they have when we have concerns over things like data privacy Oh was just a goof you know or oh just a mistake or oh this wasn't what we intended or just people didn't understand what this program was that that's the kind of stuff that I think could could potentially burn the brand you know and every time we have like a story like all oneplus is engaging in benchmark rigging it chips away at the image of a company and images everything when you're trying to make the emotional plea for why your phone costs almost eight hundred dollars that's not really the rational part of the consumer brain that you're trying to reach it's the emotional part consumer brain that you're trying to reach indeed indeed I think we're gonna take a break after this next story here just because there's a hole all right and like our sponsor and stuff yeah we should probably talk about them yeah virtually at some point you know we've been talking about some substantial things but let's get to Qualcomm and because we had a we had to play a bit of politics in the back end talking about their comments to TechRadar about foldable phones like we pataga but like Samsung is probably the highest profile name with its Galaxy X project we've you know talked about for a long time but essentially he's like putting that like Galaxy S x4 you know SEO purposes and Qualcomm says Oh conclusion about foldable phones is not a very hot thing and they're they're trying not to you know put water on a fire that everyone wants to see grow so just give you a few choice highlights from this interview with some say you do is product manager at Qualcomm of display technology and saying I write down so so manufacturers haven't really cracked the material science right now to produce electrodes that can repeatedly withstand bending and folding but one quote in regards to the ZTE axon M with its rigid screens falling on a hinge trying to fill the void between now and whenever the first foldable comes out he says that it looks a little ugly the use cases are pretty bad the second display does practically nothing but I think it's compelling and he kind of ties that up to the next quote here if you look at what Samsung and this is where we get ideas of X I got the X if you look at what Samsung has done with the snap targeting 35 as 8x7 with the Dex the desktop experience stations our chipset can power 2 3 4 displays at the same time so yeah we're underutilized right now in terms of silicon power to display capabilities we have the GPU horse power we have everything needed to fully power all of these extra pixels so big question here rigid multiple displays if you can fold them up and you know get them into a compact form factor that'd be a bonus but do you think that's the current that's the that would be a substitution right now for foldable displays art form or you know real estate I really hope it's a place that we don't live in for very long I really like some of the imagination and some of the execution on these experimental almost prototype style phone designs I just don't see what problems they currently solve and also I mean this is one of the things I'm hoping from Android P is that Android P is smart enough to better utilize differing screen resolutions for me I'm hoping that Android is better able to utilize different screen shapes and resolutions and shift between different screen resolutions not for foldable or flip-out screens but to connect other devices to my phone so the whole quote about you know we're totally under utilizing the power of our phones I don't think at any other time for general consumers have they been way over buying for their phones then over the last year I did a segment on Newegg yesterday talking about mobile video production and a very good reason for why you might want a high-end flagship phone the chipset that goes into that you're talking about you know not only shooting 4k video that's actually not that intensive anymore a Qualcomm 630 can easily handle a decent bitrate for capturing 4k video but on the back end being able to edit very quickly see a timeline with multiple tracks of 4k video and some of it from 100 megabyte video files from my Panasonic and then take that and render in a reasonable amount of time a new 4k video file of reasonably high bitrate quality that's actually starting to tax the hardware and we still have plenty of headroom on top of that so for a lot of consumers out there that just want the nicest fanciest phone and it's really expensive and it's really pretty and it's got a glass back and you know they kind of check their facebook and they kind of check their email they have grossly over purchased in terms of hardware and capabilities what it is that they're actually getting out of that it's like the joke that we used to make about IMAX being Facebook browsing machines you know you could get this beautiful really high-end powerful all-in-one gorgeous display iMac and then you're basically just using it for its web browser is kind of a shame you you you didn't need to do that but it felt good it was really emotionally satisfying and it's really pretty so that that's great but you didn't need to spend three grand to have that you know the actual practical experience from that hardware so I really hope we're not gonna spend a lot of time messing with increasingly more expensive and more fragile devices that probably have to make compromises for things like battery because you know how do you bend or fold or flip a phone in the same pocketable space that we currently have and include larger batteries cuz I think a lot of us would would like to have better battery technology attack and at the same time we could be better utilizing the chipsets that are in our phones a Qualcomm 845 connected to an external display that can not only mirror the display but extend the Android desktop would be phenomenal for people who really are starting to exercise and utilize the horsepower of that phone or a phone that could dual boot between Android and Windows 10 now that Windows 10 has better support for arm chipsets you know you can make much better good-faith arguments for leaving laptops at home and powering the stuff off of universal connectors USB ports external GPUs displays that can interact in more of a laptop style form factor or more of a touchscreen style form factor and not be stuck with a proprietary solution that's only gonna work for one phone generation so that's what I'm hoping to see is if Android P can recognize oh well your main phone screen is 2880 by 1440 but you just hooked me up to a 4k display do you want to use this 4k display as a mirror for your phone screen or do you want to use this 4k display as an extra space that you can put other apps on or you know watch video on and I'll you know I can make that choice as a consumer is way more useful to me than having the back of my phone also be a screen that sometimes I can use but most of the time I can couple more comments here dust or other we need experimental phones to exist just so that we can get a variation in design and stretch your minds of the hardware or indeed what different Qualcomm is saying it's a compelling you you pick up an ax on em and it's really compelling they're there I think it's the the the most beautiful design implementation or execution I should say the most beautiful design execution for what I don't think is a very good idea and I hate to phrase it that way because I'm a fan of ZTE and I desperately want to see an axon 7 follow up that to me do be a good design but you know when you're basing that off of a bad idea it's kind of what's the point Zack and and again an idea that's just ahead of its time in that Android is not smart enough to handle extra screen real estate you have to manually tell the phone that the the other display exists and I don't think that's a good place for a consumer to be and that hasta means that you had to make other compromises that hinge the extra display the the hardware which is beautifully machined it is a gorgeously piece together phone it meant that they had to make compromises on things like chipset so while we're out here talking about foldable displays with Qualcomm 835 and 845 s the axon M has to join the conversation and the end of 2017 with a Qualcomm 821 you know that's that's tough cuz you're paying for something so you're paying for this hinge which is beautifully engineered but not very well incorporated into the Android ecosystem and you then as a consumer have to sacrifice the horsepower that you would have hoped to have had from a modern 2017 end of 2017 phone at that price tag so that that's where I'm not sold on dual-screen rigid dual screen or foldable displays I don't think they solve enough consumer problems to warrant the extra compromises and the extra costs associated with making them durable enough for lifestyle abuse and one more comment here before we take a break and you did mention a few times about the over purchase of the power smart phones from Clinton Roche another meeting of over purchase I have spent about $1,800 on phones this year the si+ noting and the pixel to excel so congratulations are a big spender Club today for being able to remove that like a ribbon that we can send him like the best participation trophy congratulations from pocket now and the part that's that's kind of one of the things that I was touching on yesterday for Newegg too is we've got these insanely powerful pocket computers and I don't think we I mean we in the tech journalism industry but then also definitely more on the manufacturing side the the companies that actually make these products have done a very good job educating general consumers as to what some of the capabilities of these devices might be I know I've mentioned it before on this podcast but when my when my little sister graduated college with her PhD we went to the graduation ceremony we saw her walk and with at the time I had an LG g6 on lg g6 with a Qualcomm a21 I shot video recorded a choir singing their alma mater got decently zoomed in video footage of her walking across the stage panning through the audience you know family members crying in our little row of seats from her getting her diploma and before the rest of the graduation ceremony was done and before we were able to meet back up with my sister I had edited and rendered a new 4k video of the graduation ceremony all shot at the graduation ceremony all from a phone you know I I think there are numerous people out there above and beyond what like Apple can do with iMovie who would definitely benefit and appreciate some of these tools and the fact that they are substantially powerful mobile production tools even if they don't get the full use out of them I don't think they even realize they can do half as much as what you actually can from these phones instead we're just sort of more impressed by like oh you know I can open a Facebook app a fraction of a millisecond faster than I could last year so that's that's pretty nifty I don't really think that's moving the passion on incorporating this tech into our daily lives as much as it is just sort of again and there's an additional distraction for what's the most expensive phone what's the most popular phone what's the prettiest phone cool and then we just kind of get stuck there for future phone iterations because that's what sells what is the true value of a smart phone these days that's what we want to ask and keep asking those questions but we'll take it a few seconds here to talk about our sponsor yes and our sponsor this week is the Google cloud platform are you looking to move to the cloud do you not know where to begin check out the Google cloud platform weekly podcast where Google developer advocates Melanie Warwick and Mark Mandel answer questions get in the weeds and talk to the GCP team's customers and partners about best practices from security to machine learning and more hear from technologists all across Google about trends and cool things happening with our technology you can click to learn more and subscribe to the podcast at gqo slash GCP podcast and we thank them for supporting the PocketNow weekly and we are back with the more news more views more interesting things and there's a there's a conversation brewing over in our YouTube chat about one of our big stories for the back half here but I want to get back on the train here discuss something that Apple Apple seems to be always in the state of flux in software it feels like like it never seems to be like i also like today or actually last night I was rewatching the freaking what was it unlock I had four features the the girl using the iPhone tense face ID'd and then it was like she's walking throughout the school unlocking lockers staring at it's a cute spider I mean again I think Apple Apple makes a I I adore apples marketing for coming up with fun and novel ways to showcase one individual feature and it's nothing from that did nothing for me it's not for me you know what I mean like but I totally so so like I always point to the water resistance ad for the iPhone 7 you know ac/dc playing thunder as this bicyclist is about to go out in torrential downpour but he's okay because his iPhones now water resistant that was an ad for me that was a baller ad but this one the whole face unlock ad it doesn't do anything for me and also I'm just not personally that I'm 23 years old it doesn't do anything for me it's like it's nothing cool it's like oh that's not just shows flying beakers or whatnot and not like Facebook posts and and other things is I think that that ad is going to emotionally resonate with someone who will think that that's cool you know there is someone who's using maybe like an iPhone 6 and the idea of just holding up their phone to their face and watching it unlock is gonna be a fun feature for them to incorporate in the way that they use their phone and I think Apple does a very good job of tapping into the fields for the person who's likely to find an ad like that motivating consume that Apple ad as opposed to the what's the computer iPad ad which makes like because they're not even Millennials and like we're making fun of the generation coming after Millennials now before they even had a chance to name themselves and and and that is just the most reductive view of what future tech integration and communication is going to make everything about the concept of the ads and the actual execution of that themselves we've been it's the good kind of family but we eventually we could go on your the point you were trying to account the notification bug where it's like it's a van against something yeah like it shows the like the message notification text but you know it's like it's hidden and then once you unlock it it should expand to read out the contents by it it's like it doesn't properly do so like the text appears outside the bounding box for a second so that was in the first version of the ad guess what they had a second version of the ad all the same things but that one shot was replaced with something that had to be either computer-generated but it was like a different shot and it was like you featured the freaking notification box properly you know fading in the text without you know how to get appear outside the box which is kind of enough apples in its own fantasy world for a second year because that hasn't been fixed in the real world just yet but the one interesting thing I should note is that the YouTube video like they posted on YouTube it still has the original views it still has the original freakin publication date and whatnot and so yeah they just got their privilege you know don't believe that they have a beta version of iOS that fixes that problem that they were showing off on on camera that they fixed coming to all iPhones next week you don't think that that's what could have happened it's the magic of marketing man I don't know what you're talking about speaking of marketing Verizon it's doing its own marketing now I should say is it's not just about the Galaxy S nine showing up as an add-on as a push notification on iPhones it's just the whole attitude towards oh hey let us mark direct market you something via push notification when Apple clearly states that you should we shouldn't be direct marketing you anything through push notifications and we're just gonna do this anyways and apparently this behavior has been allowed for so long I mean at some point the ultimate kind of irony that ultimate slap in the face how to happen like really seriously well but you know it is I can appreciate where it's definitely got to be upsetting for iPhone owners though because these rules seem to be very inconsistently applied to certain brands over other brands and iOS the developers for God's sakes oh no exactly that's what I mean is like there are certain guidelines and rules that you have to participate to to use a walled garden app ecosystem and apples are pretty strict unless you're a major carrier like Verizon and then well will kind of turn a blind eye to that we we're gonna have difficulties I think over over the next couple years as we sort out you know sort of the impact of a near monopolistic approach to consumer information and how companies can leverage user data what they have access to and what they can also put in front of our faces on the products that we kind of own but don't completely own even though we bought them and this is definitely something that I think deserves some scrutiny or some ire from people who are tapped into that iOS ecosystem because Apple also makes a ton of messaging about how they don't I mean you're not buying a Google product so your information isn't being used for marketing and advertising where Apple we're better than that and we don't turn our users into beta testers we don't we don't turn our user info into marketing marketing analytic analytics data to be sold but here's an ad from Verizon right in your face hey that's that's that's a tough spot to have both ideas sort of running simultaneously through an iOS fan iOS fans mind and I'm sure that has to cause some disruption and this tweak from Nick corn whose isn't participating in our particular conversation but each waiting at the time in response to the original post that's showing off this low low oddity that he's tweeted Apple and Verizon about this multiple times they were quired notifications to use their data via widget which is such a BS practice Apple clearly doesn't care enough to enforce their rules for certain players but don't put a calculator in your widget or rejected well yeah I mean I think he's more more impassioned more emotionally making kind of the same argument that I was you know it's it's all well and good to have a mysterious black box of approvals it's a bunch of the concerns that I've had with Google on YouTube is a platform Apple with their App Store as a platform numerous other cases in instances far too many for us to go through in any sort of meaningful fashion by can't see the hands of the overlord that you're serving so yeah and and you also don't know when you've screwed up until afterwards and then you have to like beg for forgiveness there's no after action there's no good accounting there's no there's no way to sort of head off some of these concerns beforehand unless you're somehow a major force that Apple doesn't want to fight so really it's just you have to be too big to fail once you're too big to fail then Apple won't enforce any of their policy on you they'll they'll just spend all of their time and energy going after smaller developers and players maybe like for their ads where they show the carrier's logo for one second it's just like we're not going to put your logo everywhere again under ads I don't know yeah something like that all right that's a finish off here with Instagram one of the constant pet peeves of everyone that likes to see up-to-date posts and not host through like five days ago they're finally like and this is news coming off of other stuff happening at face but how particularly know what's going on is that I do but I for this the purposes of this podcast I'll just be willfully blissfully ignorant of it by half yeah well it's seen yeah but Instagram hey look at that it's this Facebook owned entity that's actually doing the right thing that people have been asking for us about time finally well I mean we should probably tell people what it is is you know cultivated yeah that's right going through algorithms what Facebook started doing was making it ever more painful to get to just a chronological view of your timeline and they started trying to really manufacture a how long can you keep viewers eyeballs on the screen so when you exhaust the most recent updates from your chronological view people will leave Facebook so what Facebook started doing was really manufacturing posts out of chronological order in a way that would try and keep people more engaged with the platform for longer and longer periods of time it's a really sort of insidious digital junkie mentality for for social media so with Instagram under the Facebook umbrella they started doing the same thing to the timeline for Instagram this metaphor doesn't work very well cultivating content in a way that Instagram algorithms thinks is going to engage more with people because of I think sort of the Twitter effect for how Instagram is used if you you post something to Instagram and it's fairly timely you want people to interact with it in a fairly narrow time frame and also it feels really creeper to go back through someone's timeline and start interacting with posts from a week or more ago so I think this is I think this is an acknowledgement that this plan probably did not have the desired effect at Instagram if people complained about it but we're using Instagram more Instagram wouldn't be changing to have Instagram be used less right no one no one says like oh hey people are using our service a ton more and we're seeing much better interaction with sponsored posts we're making more money oh but a few people are loudly complaining about not having chronology view so let's go back to that no no corporation would ever do that I do believe that this user backlash isn't just a vocal minority who are loudly complaining I think this had a negative impact on the usage of Instagram and now they're recovering to try and go back to something that's a bit more timely I know I'm looking over my own stats on what apps I use my usage of Instagram has curtailed significantly since these changes went into place and there was no conscious design on that it wasn't that they did this and I thought to myself well that does it I'm gonna stop using Instagram as much I've just naturally not been interested in what photos my friends have posted last week and if I don't have sort of a safe feeling that I'm interacting in the moment with people who are sharing content because I follow a lot of really great photographers but I want to see what they're doing right now I don't care about what they did three or four days ago they don't care about what I did three or four days ago we're just not interacting with each other we're talking past each other because of an algorithm that holds our content for a week so while it's great that they're gonna try and make this more timely I think instagrams best play would be go back to a chronological view or at least give us the option buried deep in the settings to go back to a chronological view because I think that's gonna be the best way to maximize the interactions on Instagram I posted this photo I'm actually still on the photo you drop me a comment in the time that I'm still on my photo we'll have a conversation if you drop me a comment on a photo that I posted like a week ago I don't know that I'm really gonna engage I don't know what I'm really gonna spend a lot of time on that conversation well it's it's a very complex formula of you know choosing your favorite subjects or subject matter and then applying the timeliness factor to it and you know that's what we prioritize every time you hit head on the freaking pack you think you think about how much work goes into all of that algorithm which is still gonna be inferior for for true interactions for a lot of people it's still gonna be inferior to just what's of the date and the time okay order it that way like all of this timeliness stuff and like manipulating our feed in any way is inferior to chronological view and is more difficult to execute and it's still gonna rub people the wrong way for how they want to interact and communicate with their favorite Instagram accounts it's a lose yeah here's this friend that you like you sorta get in contact with every so often and they just had a birthday party but you didn't know about it until three days after their birthday party congratulations Instagram you still feeling that love well at least they're gonna try and put in some brie gramming native we grabbing stuff into their app now so that's great right I I guess I you know again it's the Facebook landed to COO with Instagram in a platform that they could use to beg borrow and piecemeal out services that they couldn't acquire you know like using Instagram is the best leverage against snapchat for example was a genius move where it goes from there I I don't know and especially what some of the backlash in the ire that we've seen with Facebook recently I think they're gonna be putting more pressure on Instagram to perform because of the different splits of audiences that are starting to cool off on using Facebook as a main platform you can move them to another service you can kind of keep them in the Facebook ecosystem to some degree I I think that's probably why they're reacting the way they are if you're nervous about Facebook not having the same kind of brand engagement and then you're starting to see that the algorithm changes you made the Instagram are starting to chill some of the user base there I would be terrified after watching snapchat fall apart if if an Instagram like service started to fall apart that would be terrible yeah I would be backpedaling super fast to try and get people back into heavy use on Instagram like I used to be my Instagram used to be something that was almost always up on my phone screen just kind of patting through stuck in a grocery line store waiting to check out like it's kind of flipping through a couple Instagram posts and now I I don't touch it nearly as often I don't touch it nearly like I used yeah and finally lots of things going on here with this story and it has definitely sparked a conversation in brother with Huawei talking about Best Buy and or not well it's people talking about Best Buy ditching Huawei and far away saying that it's still friends with Best Buy so so I mean I'm getting a lot of comments here about talking about how other countries are starting to look into their concerns about kwame or Chinese manufacturers getting into their grids for 5g like Canada in the UK a lot of a Europe so you know that's the again that's the specter that we're going right here that China using you know it's commercial properties being able to influence what's going on with the telecoms grid for the countries then it does business with and that's apparently a big cyber security threat that's the that's the backdrop now in the foreground we have the front end companies like Huawei and ZTE that do both telecoms equipment and consumer smart phones and tablets and computers and whatnot they're not getting picked up by carriers they've been working for the past couple of years to be able to hope to reach carrier status ZTE did with the axon em they're getting sold by AT&T and literally at CES Kwame was like this close to getting into announcing that they were going to be also getting salt meat empro was gonna be sold by AT&T and also for Eisen at one point but um the you know they pulled back and there was a lot of DC like color blue about oats if this is a charity and we still have these ongoing investigations about them breaching sanctions by doing business in Iran which we don't approve of and you know that's why we should keep our eyes on them and there and then the FBI things like the freakin meaning of the six intelligence agencies took place they testified to Congress and said don't buy ZTE and don't buy huawei phones ever so this is this is also I think one of the things that's facing cuz I'm a fan I'm a fan of the Huawei brand and I'm a fan of ZTE these are two companies that I very much enjoy the products that they produce and I'm always looking forward to what they bring to the table because I think they do some really interesting things my personal bias out of the way the biggest problem I have with this story is I want to see evidence because if there are concerns it is partly our platform and partly our voices that need to help spread the word to not only our viewers and our followers of people who find our videos but then also our family and friends who we've recommended some of these products do I have a personal stake in this knowing that I have a few family family members on on our phones because on our phones are pretty badass especially if you're looking at that bang for buck ratio I want to be active in that conversation if there's our they're there if there's an actual issue that warrants our attention and and I find this to be phenomenally frustrating to hear advisories law enforcement advisories against these products but then not have any evidence and still to this day I don't believe we've seen any significant evidence from people that are very good you know like white hat style people who like to peek under the hood of gadgets and consumer electronics also not having found any significant potential for threat whereas we have faced significant threat from from bad actors in the software space on numerous products in the past I singled imagines because I remember them hitting hitting pretty hard but you know lenovo laptops that had included software before microsoft got really hardcore about the Signature Edition Windows Windows distros oneplus also major data breaches and major problems with how personally identifying information from your phone was being stored on cloud servers in China where were our security I you know where were our security bulletins from law enforcement for those companies so until I can see some kind so I feel every country if the United States law enforcement community is issuing advisories against these companies I totally believe every other company should also be examining the the retail footprint of a huawei or a ZTE - but if there are actual security threats and we don't detail what those threats are to consumers then I think law enforcement being negligent in their cybersecurity duties in properly informing the populace on how to protect themselves and if there aren't then this is gonna read like the United States government just being overly punitive against the corporate infrastructure sector of these businesses as opposed to the consumer facing electronics side of these industries just like we don't confuse LG displays with LG washers and dryers there are practically two different companies okay get you off your soapbox for just a second here but I want to get into like the specifics of Best Buy because like the way carriers basically faraway never had them so they weren't exactly gaining ground but they weren't losing it either and with this with the Best Buy they're losing retail they're losing a retail partner in this and yeah all this stuff about oh we're going to be stock in a few weeks and then we're not gonna order any more quality products from mate books to tablets to phones to whatnot that's a you know that's still we're still seeing quality products being sold right now it's gonna take a few weeks barring a pre-emptive announcement by Best Buy or hallway like indicating that this will be true now in the case of Best Buy and highway in specificity there could mean just a real one big reason why this particular relationship has fallen down and that was with that make 10 Pro we're going back to that though because as you may recall a couple of weeks ago hallway or actually like one a month ago hallway initiating a context for something like they were giving away a mate temper o to a beta testing group that was like software testing group or something like that that it was very confused that they themselves admitted admitted that there was a cop lady Barris that clear test furred leaving reviews on best one leaving reviews of the product on Best Buy while the phone was still in pre-release while the phone was still in pre-orders so you know going back on that and evaluating that as one of the more apparent kind of factors than the chips against Huawei it could be just a chart in front of the Chinese company trying to feel out these things and justly appreciate where that might have contributed because because I think that could go hand in hand with Best Buy having an expectation that the may 10 Pro was gonna end up at 18 T so Best Buy would have a phone that is also getting some back-end support from 18 T for branding and marketing and being an 18 t store shelves something that they don't have to do all the legwork for putting the mate empro up on its own in-store display taking up retail floor space and then they also get this this problem with Huawei on you know playing shenanigans with the product ranking situation at Best Buy now to be fair Best Buy also had some problems in that you could rate and review products that weren't available to be sold so you know they I feel like they asked to learn something too and how they're trying to position themselves as and as a resource for consumers to educate themselves but I would I would wonder if in the whole grand scheme of mobile market and tablets and laptops and what companies are delivering what brands if that would be enough if the if the rating contest that Huawei put up in and I don't think they put it up in good faith if that rating contest would be enough to completely sever Best Buy from one of the world's largest phone and laptop manufacturers and especially on the eve of the mate book coming the new may book coming out which I think could be a really exciting floor model for consumers to check out looking for an alternative to to a MacBook I wonder if that's not all wrapped up together with maybe pressure from law enforcement pressure from government on top of some of those shenanigans and best by feeling like they they weren't getting in the may 10 what they thought they were they thought they were getting a carrier supported phone then selling the phone in a Best Buy is way easier than just selling an unlocked phone in a Best Buy so I think you're right I think it is multifaceted and there are a lot of prongs going out it's not just this law enforcement advisory but I'd still want to see some reporting or some better communication as to what is triggering all of these reactions to Wall way as a brand and until I see that I I don't know that I feel super strongly about avoiding their products I'm gonna be very upset if there is a good reason to avoid their products and they went months without telling us but then we'll rejoin the conversation and we'll share what that when those findings are and why people should be concerned I don't feel people should be concerned now until there's a reason for them to be concerned in the meantime if you don't feel any particular loyalty if you don't have any programs that you know offer you discounts at Best Buy you do have your alternatives that Amazon B&H whatever the fact that you were offered it so there is that Andrew Wallace that producer on Twitter he talked to some Best Buy employees he was actually formerly Best Buy employee as well a couple of hours ago and they didn't even know about the far we just D stocking in that store until I mentioned it so there's that it could be that this is a directive that is being rolled upon hasn't left corporate yet like again this is a lot of CNET this is this is like we don't know where their point of entry is in terms of talking about this stuff so yeah it's it's good like this could not panned out at all so right but it's differently at the point we're at it's definitely something that we should be concerned about either for Huawei or for I don't know the our consumers so well and also I mean that that's that's kind of where I'm taking this from is I have concerns for consumers we want to see more competition I think Huawei may phenomenally competitive products and if there is a concern for consumers we want to be a resource for people to understand what the potential risks of using a product might be and it kind of feels like a lot of that information is being held from us or there isn't really a fire there's just a lot of smoke so that's that's why I mean we'll probably be covering this as it as it continues to unfold because it's frustrating speculating like we all want better information as to who we do business with yeah so definitely a lot to be talking about you can see full details on these stories and more you can hit pocketnow.com on social media as well and look for the podcast section to get the this episode's rundown and you can chat with us about what you have been reading up on as well with hashtag pn weekly and also be sure to check out Haile Rivera and the PocketNow daily on a YouTube channel definitely lots to be this was a chok chok full week if I can say so myself and a lot of really interesting news I mean not not not a heavy week for like hardware announcements but some some really good meaty stories to dig into and and something I'm gonna hopefully be following up on soon too which I mean we didn't talk about but hopefully we can cover when there is more to cover would be the potential partnership between IFTTT and IBM Watson so I might finally get my Watson phone courtesy of reason to spout Joy's like they're actually trying to do something with Watson for consumers I'm very interested in that conversation too but folks they're you know just do do my taxes of H&R Block that's all that it don't that's it right yeah IBM Watson do my taxes and you just walk away and everything's fine there you have it folks another episode the pocket net weekly come and gone this show is over but the conversation continues on Twitter where Jules is at point Jules and I'm humbly at some gadget guy pocket now around the web Twitter Instagram Facebook Google+ YouTube our home site pocketnow.com and if you speak Spanish check out es pocketnow.com now shows like this cannot exist with your support sharing the weekly with your friends who love mobile technology and dropping reviews anywhere you can leave a podcast review help us spread the word on chatting technology once again we want to thank this week's sponsor check out the Google cloud platform podcast they're helping us keep the lights on here but ultimately there wouldn't be a show without our listeners and subscribers who have kept us on the air since 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