Gadgetory

introducing huawei mate book X Pro winner of 27 global awards that now comes with Windows hello unlock your huawei mate book X Pro with a touch of your fingerprint secure fast and no password to remember for a limited time get a free $300 gift card with purchase visit a Microsoft store near you today all right and we are live okay pocket now weekly the note 9 might be delayed because Samsung thinks you need a thinner phone Google is going straight to Foxconn for manufacturing the next pixel LG and Motorola phones are headed to project Phi and Qualcomm is betting big on chipsets for tablets and PCs we've got a lot to talk about so make sure you're charged and ready for episode 3:07 of the pocket now weekly record a June 1st at 10:00 a.m. 10:00 a.m. 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 Juan Carlos bag now contributing editor pocketnow.com joined as always by plucky podcast producer mr. jules wang on location again because i think you're you're probably apt soon to be getting some some fun info on a future handset that we can't quite talk about just yet yeah I'll be helping out with that operation Jaime Rivera just outside the door over here are we work location for now and then we'll be moving very very fast to I get things done it's been a long day well it's been a long weekend a long day for a long week and you know what we're busy and I prefer that to the alternative of having nothing to do joining us this week to also talk about all of the tech shenanigans in the news we are again joined by mr. Nick gray thank you for joining us on the show this week my pleasure as always and you're still in the midst of your of your travel experiment so where might you be hailing from from this week this week I'm hailing from just south of Boston about an hour south and probably get close to two weeks now here we we head back to the road Monday and next week we cross into Canada which is exciting we're gonna be in Toronto for a little bit I definitely want to pick your brain about the state of the experiment for you so far you know traveling with your family like this especially for our mission statement of pocket now you know mobility technology you and your family have been relying on some of this stuff so especially after we're through the news I'd love for you to share some of your thoughts on what's been working for you and what hasn't been but before we kick that off Jules we do have a lot of headlines to get through if someone were we're interested or curious about joining this conversation with us how might they be involved in communicating during the live broadcast or maybe afterwards listening to the audio version oh no oh wait I do now and that's through Twitter you want to take whatever comments or question or thoughts that you have and then add the hashtag P and legally so that we see it and that were able to respond to it as this show goes on today at well it's not 10:00 a.m. Pacific I don't you know what time it is anymore but hey I mean that's a that's it's amazing the live streaming possibilities hashtag P and weekly on Twitter if you want to get us on the emails too because we still do emails and you can do that through podcast at pocketnow.com alright we will be monitoring that that Twitter feed I have the live chat up from the youtubes but yeah I think we need to jump into some headlines Jules what are talk us through these are the top stories that were posted this week to pocketnow.com and we've got some some media stories to dig into yeah so let's start off with just the first one and go from there the snapdragon 1000 is apparently what's on cue for now and i'm not sure if i'm able to reach the story here on our rundown but in any case win future reports that there is a snapdragon 850 as kind of the iteration sort of the upgrade to the 845 and this is all this is for Windows 10 on arm giving more performance adjusting their thermal throttling as well as being able to the the behaviors as well because it's just a different form factor to file so that's what the 850 will be to the 8:45 and supposedly we see new products or iterations of products existing coming out over the course of the summer now if we scroll down and see what happens maybe fall maybe in the holiday season well we're talking about Snapdragon 1000 we've seen a couple of job listings pertaining to that number and one feature also tells us that we might be able to see a thermal design power basically the output that it would produce somewhere close to 6.5 Watts now for comparison these convertibles these existing intel core y series I think dual core good for tablets they're at seven point five watts at this point and they're on and better not you know mobile architecture so this is going to be something that's worth watching out for over the next couple of well seasons well and especially what with the issues Intel's been having with their die shrinks getting beyond the 40 nanometer and 12 nanometer process welcome does seem to be a little electricity popping have no idea where that's coming from that's okay but but Nick I mean have you been keeping mobility experiment like do you think that they can make a dent in a in a chipset race between AMD and Intel honestly I think I do I mean we've been looking at Intel kind of stagnating with the PC and laptop chip market for years I mean they've kind of gotten into their rhythm there really hasn't been a lot of competition there and if all calm can step in with something that's a little bit different that's gonna change the game I mean with their chips they're promising you know unlimited connectivity all-day battery life has in 20 hours with some of their chips and you know somewhat B for your batteries in there I think they can change things up a little bit especially if Microsoft is looking to you know have their future devices be connected all the time if if if Qualcomm can land a version of a surface device running a Qualcomm chip that's kind of like a slam-dunk and we'll see more more laptop manufacturers fall in line with that going forward yeah earlier this week we were talking about arm they had a whole bunch of new designs an arm is the core designer for the reference design people who I guess they're owned by Softbank but it's what Qualcomm mediatek all those ships that manufacturers use and in terms of intellectual property to do their thing and that customer has been well so they announced a new the cortex 876 CPUs as well as new VPM GPUs for gaming and for passive video experiences and it seems like they're getting into the 8k space not sure if yeah no seriously 8k 60 frames per second that was their kind of a push for that when I was at their briefing so yeah it's basically up to Microsoft to see if these advanced ones get into the future question we're seeing arm we're seeing Qualcomm we're seeing companies starting to push into this territory of more mainstream traditional computing on arm chipsets but does this maybe hinge a little too much on Windows you know Windows hasn't necessarily shown us the the best follow through Microsoft hasn't shown us the best follow through mobility products they're great for tablets and all-in-one multimode pcs but you know they sort of biffed it on more tablet II tablets and phones should we be nervous about this kind of push with Windows 10 I don't think so I mean if you look at computers and where they've gone and you know if look back five to ten years and to see what Microsoft wanted to do with laptops and tablets and where we are now I mean honestly the only tablets that are really worth buying our Apple tablets and their sales are tanking every year they're shrinking and shrinking it's not a growing market it's kind of like hey this was a cool idea they're not really that practical if I want to get work done I would never consider getting a tablet to get work done so a laptop is a laptop and it's going to be there for a long time and you know it's they're not growing their market share any but that doesn't mean there's not a lot of money to be made I mean you know you call it Rosa Rosa Rose but I mean attachable keyboard style I all these other features that kind of spice up the laptop experience I think does create so I'm sort of a you know more of a case for laptops these days especially as when we've seen the militarization of laptops from like this huge clamshell or like suitcase sizes at Downton like imaginable things where I don't know maybe this is the next evolution that people think I'm also really curious again I mean this is just like outright speculation for maybe a another conversation if if qualcomm is pushing a snapdragon 1000 would that maybe encourage google to start moving forward with plans for their next generation operating system you know whatever we might find that could potentially bridge Chrome OS and Android better support for apps but a more desktop like browsing experience that would definitely be something I would hope to see moving forward if companies like Google and Apple have the hardware to utilize more powerful well daring arms briefing it mate they made it sound like Microsoft was seeing positive signs they weren't giving specific numbers but there was the sense that they were on the right track so again lots of grow lots to see over again the next few months so yeah we are getting some requests in the live chat to start talking about the note so we probably one of the bigger stories we had this week yeah that's that's true that's true although I mean I couldn't resist the number okay I wanted to get to over a thousand but let's talk about the doubts nine apparently it's going to be delayed two weeks from it's rumored late July release so that the well basically it all comes down to the vice president of Samsung having recently taken a trip to China for some research and found that from from Oppo from Germany from Huawei they're all thinner than what was supposed to be something like my meters or something like that and he decided after seeing the phones that were on display that's perhaps he should go back to the drawing board for a second and make the phones half a millimeter thinner this is all you know going we're talking about a freaking glass industrial design so that's already bad enough news when it's thick I mean it's just it's brittle glass but there I mean you know you at one point do you start cutting into you know muscle instead of fat and also are you really going to be able to enhance the experience just by you know how are you fit just a tiny little butter into the pocket I mean we have heard on and off that there's gonna be in display fingerprint sensing technology I mean it's gonna be more definite for the s10 that's coming out next year but it's again it's been on and off and I don't think we'll be able to see that on the note 9 at least so it's just you know we're coming down the homestretch here well Nick I mean I I don't know about you but I constantly hear from power-user know fans that what they really want out of the device is a diminishing profile make it super thin and sleek less durable probably less room for a bigger battery in there you know less runtime for their super hardcore note productivity focus device I hear that all the time that's that really seems to me like what no fans are after is a is a more brittle less functional version of their favorite phone yes and no I mean my mother's being completely diseases why why would you want a note that goes more for style and you know pocket ability when the whole concept of the note is the biggest baddest phone out there with the best battery life I mean last year we saw a significant drop in battery life because of the whole battery fiasco from the previous year and that kind of diminished the whole value proposition of the note I mean it's still one of the best-selling devices for Android out there but it's not as superior to the competition as what it used to be especially with the s9 plus being practically the same size as the note and also having the dual camera on the back I mean there's no real reason as of right now unless you really really need that stylus there's no reason to buy a note anymore I don't think and I'm I'm just curious you know have they made their own large device obsolete with the s9 plus I mean after using some phones to like getting a four thousand milliamp hour battery in a mate that's been really nice I like coming back to the mate and I I don't know that I feel like that fraction of a millimeter of girth has impacted my ability to put the phone in my pocket especially all of these well and especially when all of these devices we've linked to the Galaxy S nine in our coverage on the note we linked to the Galaxy S 9 d'oeuvre test from one of those insurance companies I forgot who I can't click on the web browser or I'll work my hangouts connection but but when you have to factor in like we made the device a half a millimeter thinner so that you have to add an extra half a millimeter of protection to a bumper case it to me makes this feel even less complete out of the box and I'd much rather you make that extra space and give me an extra battery for it we keep complaining about this in the tech enthusiast space but it seems like this is yet another one of those decisions that's gonna be taken out of our hands like I'm not gonna have the ability to really vote with my wallet here yeah and it really doesn't make sense for people to be looking at you know phones with styluses that cost so much when in fact well maybe LG might have something down line we'll talk about that in just a few moments with whatever that thing is the stylus but use seven stylus in the mean time we'll transition over for now to show me with a trio of new devices this week of course Nokia had its updates to its new Q 2 3 & 5 but here we're talking about something a little stronger we're talking about the me 8 and that comes in three flavors the the eights just generally v8s II which is the kind of lighter version and then there's the me eight Explorer edition and that's there's some sort of this traffic ation going on here so the me eights and the v8 Explorer have the infrared face of lock technology that's of course who else would you think would copy apple's implementation well i mean it only has infrared they don't have a the grid the shoot of the light grid that Apple has in terms of sensors for that true def camera but that's one of the big amazing features that they've been able to bring out and also in addition to that on the Explorer edition we have that in display fingerprint sensor that's been some of a very hot conversation and for the me 8se there is a the fact that it is debuting with the snapdragon 710 a new class of qualcomm silicon for them and well it's yet to be tested at public but it's certainly getting closer and closer to that line where it just blurs between mid-range and premium flagship tier specifications so definitely a lot to be looking forward to from the china especially as as shabby grows aims to grab with that IPL coming out and it's just for them this is gonna be one of the more important pushes the first pushes towards that's brand recognition yeah I think the company overall has matured a lot in the last two to three years and they're they're finally ready for that global push and these devices pretty much show that I don't know if you guys saw the pictures of the one with the clear back on it showing off the internals I mean I was I was I talked that like late last night right before I went to bed and you know I was just ready to roll over in bed and saw that and I'm like oh my gosh I need to read this right now and it looks absolutely gorgeous I mean for me you know I might be writing this up later this week well it's late in the week already but I might be writing this up I mean there's there's so many smartphones with glass backs and what's the point of glass right the reason why it was invented is to give us a clear surface so that you can see what's on the other side and HTC and me it looks like they're the only ones who actually caught on to that you know we have a glass back let's actually show the inside of these devices and you know what makes them as good as they are yeah it's still unclear if everything that Xiaomi is showing is actual functioning on the back I read a couple articles saying that if they kind of engineered it to look like it was cooler than it actually is but you know props to them for going you know above and beyond rather than just slapping you know a case on it and saying calling it a day they did a little bit of extra work to do that I'm excited to get my hands on one yeah I'm really excited again it's sort of another fun that's adding to this conversation about what a premium mid-range device should resemble so when we're talking about a top-of-the-line me eight somewhere around just under a $600 price point after accounting for converting currencies like that that's a that's a smart place to join to join a1 plus or an honor view that's that's a it's an interesting price point to reach for some of the specs that we're talking about yeah indeed and well let's see if those prices say stayed the same as we head out of the country of course international pricing will definitely be key but I would not be surprised to see an explorer edition at five ninety-nine like I think that that makes a lot of sense for where they're trying to position themselves its bold I mean they have that target of limiting that profit margin well still being able to produce a lot off of their services there's relieves the question of whether shall we use Internet services and ads will be able to translate outside of China so there is you know that that's a waterfall that they'll have to climb up a guess hmm all right moving right along we should probably you know in Maine you at the story about Google go into Foxconn how do we this first of all how do we feel about Foxconn these days are we concerned about them as a main facture have they been cleaning up their image what where where are we with that right now China's China I mean if there are a whole bunch of Lux regulations in terms of email labor and every company that is there will take advantage of it in one way or another I don't blame the I don't know see like labor issues as necessarily a Foxconn issue even though they you do have a responsibility because you know the they're committing those acts but when it comes to stemming the problem it has to really come from external forces the government so yeah it's a definitely tough question but I mean in terms of what they've done and the substantive work for Apple and for Nokia especially with the Nokia of HIV global I think they've done a pretty good job of their apples kind of because it's more diverse they have all these uh you know part sources because of you know to save money I'm not sure how Google is going to be approaching this alone this is not HTC this is not LG getting the designs and working with the contract suppliers this is Google itself we don't have much of a history and seeing what Google does in the space so so Nick I mean to that point you know we we don't necessarily have a lot of evidence for for Google fulfilling manufacturing super great in the past with few issues on the pixels do you think that this will help iron out some of those early teething pains for a pixel three honestly I don't think it will moving the Foxconn doesn't solve those issues I think the issues that we've seen from Google and their pixel devices in the past has been they have underestimated the demand for their devices and that's we've run into bottlenecks there and then last year with the display issue with LG that was kind of something they weren't completely expecting I had imagined there was people who were extremely pissed off at Google and LG you know with that whole fiasco but honestly like I was kind of surprised that they would you know because they just purchased all these engineer through these engineers from HTC those engineers are still technically working for Google inside HCC's headquarters they simply moved them to the other side of the building I was expecting maybe a renewed partnership with HTC to build the phones I mean HTC has a ton of building capacity that's just going to waste because they're not selling that many phones anymore I mean they have enough capacity to produce about five million phones per month and they're not doing that they have you know just lines and lines of manufacturing that are just sit closed so the fact that they couldn't work something out with HTC and move to Foxconn instead shows that you know maybe they weren't completely satisfied with the build quality that they got from the original pixel and the pixel - I mean they weren't those devices weren't perfect by any means but we know HTC has a good track record there so I'm wondering if there's something else that's underlying maybe Foxconn just gave them an amazing deal who knows yeah I was gonna say like I think I think definitely when we're talking about manufacturing scale Foxconn could probably throw some attractive numbers around but I'm wondering if this means that we're still gonna be seeing diverting designs LG being responsible for some of the design implementation of the larger pixel HTC contributing more to the design of the smaller pixel if maybe just pointing the final end products to Foxconn is a way to maybe rein in some of the manufacturing disparity between the two lines of phones that will likely receive it could be I mean we there was some design disparity last year because of you know the 18 by 9 aspect ratio display versus the regular 16 by 9 but that being said they didn't have to I mean they could have shored up those differences pretty easily but they chose not to and I think it was one of the decisions that was kind of last minute to go with LG for the larger pixel to rather than keeping it inside with HTC because if they would have kept it with HTC I can guarantee you that those devices probably would have looked identical and as they did the previous so I mean it's it's one of those things you you never know what the internal politics is you don't know when these decisions are being made I mean HTC has given Google they're the engineering team or design engineering team what three months ago now but I mean the at team would have been working on these pixel three devices even before that final you know purchase agreement signed on the dotted line everything was taken care of so I think the design of these two phones has been worked out months ago moving to Foxconn I don't think it's going to change that but going forward we could see something different where you know there might be less influence from LG itself and less influence from HTC itself and this new engineering team that's under Google is going to take full control of that and run with something that Google actually wants well Google if Google wants that then that's fine I mean again we're seeing the same kind of a step-up differences between the three and three XL as we did the two and two XL we're talking about dual cameras on the front on the three XL and just a whole bunch of other features that are cracking up here so yeah definitely something to look forward to as we head into October let's move into a month earlier let's go back a month actually and talk about well actually I don't know what timeline this is no this is 2019 that we're talking about so I my calendars all screwed up anyways for thousands yeah that was two hours of sleep so sorry let's talk about triple cameras on the next of the 2019 iPhone because yeah that's something that we want to see more competition with Huawei I guess with that p20 Pro triple cameras over there also a new type of flight sensor that basically it's a light sensor more accurate in terms of AR in terms of determining distance so there's the advantage that's that sensor would be able to give and yeah there's a whole bunch of things that we could see to enhance the augmented reality experience from just Apple itself but again there's a been kind of a slow roll going on here air kits were expected to see multiplayer aspects in turn into apps and games so that's going to be coming up in that would do DC apparently and yeah they're trying to build that up but well after the wait another year to see if we'll be able to take full advantage and see full like reasonable purposes for augmented reality in our lives Apple well I you know Apple was was a little early to the conversation trying to try to work with dual camera sensors and then also with a our services have any of those things move the needle for you Nick and you're through questing no I kind of I kind of felt like I knew what the answer to that I could honestly care less I mean when years ago when Android first came out and there was the first you know augmented reality overlays on top of your camera and you couldn't you know pop something up and look at a map and see some points of interest on overlaid on your camera that was cool did I ever use them no have I used any augmented reality stuff in the last two to three years on my smartphone no you know those AR stickers that you get for cameras and stuff those are fun to play with for about five minutes but then you move on I still haven't seen a pending application that uses any of that on a regular basis that you would actually want to use more than just testing it out one to two times so I'm because I'm a it's nothing I was I was a very early proponent a very early advocate for a our services I think a our will be the future of communicating of Technology but so far I think the only killer app I found something that I will turn to more consistently would be the translation when I'm traveling in a foreign country I don't speak the language I can hold my phone up to a sign those things have been significant benefits from my ability to get around to navigate and I would like to see maybe a are better improve things like whopping oil walking directions for maps but I've been less than impressed with the current fad or trends towards things like an emojis and a are stickers I don't think that really properly communicates to consumers what what you can do I give could be maybe moving more towards like terminator vision for good in the moment relevant contextual augmented reality information well and that's a thing unless unless it's a wearable device and it it's hassle-free where you don't have to pick up your device and point it at something cuz that's the hardest thing like you look like a jackass when you pull your phone out and you're you start putting it around and you're like hey what does this look like over here but even to your point of the translation things I mean the translation things have been around for years they simply you have to take a picture of it it translated it and then showed you the translation rather than doing it in real time so I mean that's available without the AR aspect of it oh that is but but I really do like the AR aspect where you hold up the phone and it actually changes the sign in real-time so I mean again it's it's just that one little bit more convenient than what we used to have that's not groundbreaking it's like that's not mind-blowing that is a nice perk though that it's a nice benefit I'll be crazy if Apple can actually move the needle in any substantial fashion or should we just expect I don't know like would it be nice to have an iPhone with a larger camera sensor like maybe maybe that's just enough for I would be better honestly back with those jewels sorry I know you kind of bounced out there for a second yeah I'm just trying to wait out the stutters yeah definitely of something to look forward to in terms of just being able to get the hardware all to you look at a perfect combination of hardware because at some point software only gets you so much and you just need data you can't just extrapolate things so we'll have to see if the timer lights on so it gets worked in another iOS piece of news that we want to talk about has to be with valve Balfanz not really happy about it's a disqualification of steam link pretty had originally was approved for steam link to appear on the App Store but and this would be a mirroring service so that users would be able to have their games on their computer get streamed over into their Apple TVs or their iPads are their iPhones even and they'd be able to play with compatible controllers so that's a different experience but yeah this this whole steam like debacle the ultimate rejection of an app was due to a few factors the main line here is that a business conflicts with app guidelines that had allegedly not been realized by the original review team so apparently there have been differences to an in-app apps like that purchases for the games if I was going to sell the games on the app and that would be subject to Apple's 30% cut that they wouldn't want to take in terms of revenue so now we're going to see well maybe you can call it crippled up I mean you have to have your computer as far as I understand it steam link you'd have to have you compete on and at least you know functioning in order to be able to stream the game so if you were just to purchase games on your computer instead of your phone well and Nick just outside of the this the more focused conversation on gaming you know we're talking about Apple they have a fairly closed ecosystem is this gonna be is this gonna be a step towards Apple having to play nicer with outside services but they can't just walled garden everything I would say no I think that Apple's gonna take the cue from this and close off even more things I mean when was last time we saw Apple relax on their walled garden in you know it for the longest time you know you they they didn't include subscription services you know taking a cut of subscription services that are signed up through applications and now they do but this the the fact that they're saying no to this application means that any any application that allows you to have remote access to a computer would probably fall under the same rejection because technically if I can remote access my my desktop PC and I can go to the Windows app store while I'm remotely desk you have that remote access and purchase something from the windows App Store Apple wants a cut of that because that's essentially what they're saying to steam right now is oh you can access something else and you can purchase something through your application so we deserve a cut of that like wait a second this has nothing to do with your platform at all you're not buying an iOS service or an iOS game anything you're buying a desktop PC game and you're saying you want to cut of that and that's that's completely ridiculous Apple needs to step it back but honestly I think they'll take this and say no any remote access application that wants to do this and you can make a perky let's say I can go online and make a purchase through Netflix and sign up for my subscription there through a remote access they'll say no that interferes with our business and we want to cut of it it's kind of mating you know it's with the Apple tax that Spotify has to go through if you're buying your subscription through Apple then you pay three extra dollars just because Spotify has to make up the difference somehow so it's what we've been talking about with the smaller developers too that have been urging Apple to extend the ability to offer free transfer all apps instead of just big publishers that have a dependable steady revenue stream and also oh the reduction of the they receive 15% instead of 30 I mean we understand that for Apple this whole services game is gonna be it's a game to them I mean they say they want to double their 2016 revenue levels by 2020 and they are looking to do so through some of their own initiatives such as Apple music but also just yeah and also content as well with the carpool karaoke and other original series I forget what was the it was Dickenson they're ordering a series of Emily Dickinson kind of a serious kind of a funny biopic deal here so that's their play but they're also Nichol dining every other person that wants to play in their sandbox III thought it was interesting that steam got as much as attention as it did because the Apple ecosystem isn't really known for gaming and any any household we're looking at a compliment device to an Apple TV if you were really into gaming especially a PC gaming proprietary steam link hardware would probably have been higher on your list like I can I can have my Apple TV and then the other HDMI port I'll plug in some sort of steam steam remote view solution too so I thought it was interesting that this this piped up is much well gonna see this move the needle much on on consumer sentiment like I don't think this changes anyone's purchasing behavior the next time they're considering shopping living room computing device well there was even steam that allowed max to expand their gaming portfolio by miles just because of your new developers so I mean there's gotta be a favor paid back there really doesn't I mean like the whole thing is it's still it's still in in the gaming community it's still a sort of a funny conversation that you know you don't buy a Mac if you're serious about trying to play your game yep I mean if you're stuck with a Mac anyways then you want to make the most of your situation that's all I'm saying you probably chew through the recipes because I do want to talk to Nick about about traveling a using tech on-the-go so what do we have up next on the docket here yeah let's talk about in dromeda but not from Google apparently we're not gonna be talking about the merger that was well it's become fuchsia so will not talk about that instead we're going to talking about Microsoft and Microsoft's Andromeda excuse me and this has long been rumored ever since perhaps the death of Windows 10 mobile to be kind of a multifunctional tablet device and it would allow users to use Windows 10 but in a multi form-factor kind of way where it adjusts the UI to have you know certain orientations and whatnot and apparently we saw tassets kind of acknowledgment happened in one of Microsoft's first marquee games well technically it's Microsoft Studios in partnership with an electric square it's Miami Street is the game it's really not much of a game it's a click click to play QuickTime event kind of deal it's not really gaming as it's not really racing as the cars on this display on this title screen show it's just well make sure you drift for the right time and you get points so there it is but yeah Nick that's like totally right up your alley right totally I use but your data that really talks here because it's there the game was actually written to be targeted to both windows 10 pcs and this new Andromeda OS so I mean that's something to look forward to right sure Windows 10 on arm and all the other developments and how Intel Qualcomm are still nodding at each other's teeth it's it's worth exploring what can be done in terms of Microsoft's leading the way in new verticals and who they partner with to help materialize those new verticals not my issue right now is just trying to get excited about something that we still don't know the full details of or what it's actually going to deliver to us as far as benefits go and the same for you know Google's fuschia OS and things like that like there's there's a lot of great things that are happening out there as far as the next generations of operating systems things like that but until we get to that point where it's actually going to be coming and we actually know how it's going to help me or be different from what we already have I'm like hey everyone's thinking about something every day I can think of something to write its get excited about my idea I mean go to shark tank and then you'll get like a thousand a hundred thousand dollars and like 85% you're hungry I'm gonna get like five million dollars from Mark Cuban five million dollars - going all the way perfect I mean good for you good luck and I wonder what would say I'll definitely comment like hey I used to know Nick before you as on shark tank with his speculative idea for the future of technology yeah and then if some work that you could just go to Dragons Den up in Canada two weeks later I'll just come back here we're like yeah actually I blew it guys I blew it it'll be the next essential billion dollars and then go out of business yeah yeah - funding rounds a billion dollars and then you got I mean it'll sell the company and hopefully like make half as much as we poured into it but whatever and so maybe hopefully I mean as long as your name is an auntie really let's quickly talk about another device with a stylus on it the LG q7 stylus has apparently made its way to Taiwanese regulators and I just wanted to go down on just the theme of LG's yearly attempt at a mid-range phone it's always been a mid-range kind of Snapdragon 400 deal with a stylus and there's a counter to the yearly note the superpower very productivity hungry deal that samsung knows has what's your assessment of LG's is that a response is it just being able to cater to the subcategory of the audience that hasn't been served I would say it's first off I need to clarify is this an active stylus or a passive stylus like LG's done in the past that sounds like it's a passive stylus just so from its nature it's it's not anywhere on the same terms as the s-pen with the note so it doesn't have I would imagine it would be well that's the thing it's like if you're gonna do a stylus do it right to give us additional functionality don't give me a secondary device that just replaces my finger I mean that's the that's the draw of the note is the stylus has additional functionality that you don't get if you just use your finger so I you know if they're just trying to play me too and try doing at a cheaper budget price point and they've done it for years I outside of Korea I don't think they're you know note knockoffs have been successful at all I don't know I don't know what the numbers are but there's no way that there's a market of people who are consistently asking oh I can't wait for the next you know the stylus and actually I think of melchi I think in the past this stylo and the stylus phones from LG have actually sold fairly well as those budget carrier handsets like I think the numbers on the myth that I've actually been pretty decent for for LG sales but you know I think you're right though that what what I think I'd like to see is because it could LG do something novel with that concept and introduce some of those features to hardware that's been a lot more exciting or a lot more compelling to use like a g7 or a V Series phone that has that kind of productivity Hardware built into it and unfortunately it doesn't seem like they consider that to be a growth market for them well in that would that's what would make the V series even more alluring than what it is is adding a stylus to it and being that direct competitor I mean it also comes out in the fall like the note it's also larger than the regular LG flagship device like the note is to the S you know the s9 and I don't see why they they continually add the stylus to a device that doesn't have any appeal on its own rather than being a much advice yeah again because it kind of makes it feel like the consolation prize welcome to Boost Mobile we don't carry the note stylus instead and no for the record Pepsi is not he's not okay it is the the the lg stylus is the is Pepsi okay oven its smartphone and that's your that's honestly that's the cue to move on to something else yeah I actually I mean in more positive LG news and some positive Motorola news let's just kind of clip this one real quick this one made me made me very happy to see I've been happy with project Phi as a service I used it as my backup SIM card for for my review devices it's it's just been a nice catch-all and we're looking at LG phones and some Motorola phones heading to project Phi and that not just like oh you know like you can get an unlocked g6 on Amazon for a little less monies we're talking the V 35 the g7 and motos new g6 that's a pretty solid lineup for what used to be just Nexus and pixel devices I don't know do you think this will help improve the visibility for a service like v do you think this is still just going to be a hobbyist and an enthusiast service or or or is this the kind of traction we need to see like going into a carrier store now project Phi has direct options for consumers looking to pick up newer phones for me it comes down to what the service plans actually are because when project Phi started out it was kind of a deal with the amount of data that you were getting but they really haven't revamped that recently and I think actually I think that a new plan is pretty competitive because now they've got two caps at that now because it's there's an $80 cap so once you go over a gig you you don't keep paying per gig after that point mm-hmm well but that's the thing if you add a like right in line with unlimited plans at that point an unlimited plans gonna be like you know around a hundred bucks a month so now you're pretty close for t-mobile it's 80 bucks a month for unlimited for their unlimited plan and if you do a family unlimited plan then your second device is 50 bucks in the third device is 30 bucks so if if you have you know if it's just yourself then maybe it's you know competitive with the unlimited plans but if you're talking to devices or more than it's a ridiculous amount of money to pay well and I and I think well I think project by also does some sort of family grouping plan but I think the the benefit would be is if you have a month where you're under eight gig then you're you're under spending t-mobile just to have that unlimited yeah well I mean t-mobile a few people know this but t-mobile actually has a a refund process if you go under a certain amount of data that you use every month you get like 15 to 20 bucks back every month if you go under like two gigabytes of data usage so it's kind of the same thing where you know you're only charged so much but then instead of charging you upfront they charge you on back end so yeah and it's particularly hard for me to see the g7 thank you and the v35 thank you at project five at the same time when AT&T passed up the g7 for the v35 well what what's going on with LG Google I mean they've been buddy-buddy for a long time but there's this whole kind of bureaucracy with oh the v35 is better for showcasing DirecTV now has OLED that doesn't have an arch like its own it's all about the display and like that was their case but it's like oh hey we're project fiber Google apparently we don't we we can do evil from this point on but it well that's I mean that's I feel like that's not a direct quote from Google Jules well like that speculation well just the mission of like to prevent us from getting sued by Google we needed that a little bit of extra clarification they met and joined and I appreciate your candor yeah like but apparently we can still do these kinds of little friendly things like I'm giving us a $50 discount on the Moto G six as opposed to MSRP or well I mean yes gonna be priced at $1.99 if you pick it up on project fire service I did want to look it up just because I couldn't remember what my actual bill was from month month because I'm usually only using about a gig of data on my review sim every month one person is 60 bucks for unlimited two people to kick set up to 100 for unlimited three people 124 people 145 people 160 and at 6 people their plans top out 180 dollars for unlimited data you know I would say that's competitive with what you would get on a t-mobile service but the the way to join t-mobile and Sprint before t-mobile and Sprint finished their merger so you'd be ahead of the curve being able to use Sprint towers at the same time or you get the bonus of the bonus of a US Cellular as well so my question is you know how does the merger between t-mobile and Sprint affect project by going forward I mean if we're looking at a you know yeah a year from now you know if if it goes through you know hypothetical if it goes through t-mobile said that their plan is to shut down Sprint's Network which means all of project files customers essentially lose half of their well over it no I think they're looking to shut down Sprint's Network to use their their towers and their their services like it's not that they're gonna just gut sprint and then that that's gonna vanish it would be I mean they're gonna fill out the holes in our own network and then use that for 5g well their tendencies they're gonna they're going to keep the some of Sprint spectrum licenses so that they can use them for 5g and then they're gonna but it's more primarily on t-mobile's network no but like so the spectrum that they're getting from Sprint they said they're gonna use for 5g which means what they're using now for CDMA is gonna be turned off and so any phone that's connecting with project Phi over CDMA to those networks will no longer be I don't I don't think I don't think many phones are actively falling back to chspe I appreciate your Voynich and I'm not not trying to like to fight me this is an fisticuffs I just think the scenario you've painted is probably not a you know a significant number of users experiences when we're talking about jumping back and forth between t-mobile's HSPA Network versus Sprint's still kinda terrible no totally I totally get my my question is though like I I wonder if there's someone's created an application that tracks a project feist devices to see how often it's on t-mobile's network and how often sits on Sprint's Network yeah and wisdom t-mobile's network has gotten so good over the last two to three years and Sprint's network has continued to essentially be great as far as you know in in comparison good defense if he's on Sprint so but I'm not I'm not saying that Sprint's network is getting worse but in comparison to t-mobile's network getting better the Delta between them has increased it feels first so for me in the valley in Los Angeles where we have just la being the ginormous megapolis urban sprawl that it is in the worst way possible and every carrier has huge issues with signal dropout around town it's just impossible to perfectly cover wide areas of humanity with that kind of consistency I would say in the valley Sprint's been in a holding pattern I'm still having experiences where from one block one city block to the next I'll have amazing LTE because no one's on it and then I'll just find myself in a gap in between towers where I'm on you know 500 kilobits per second CDMA mobile actually has been moving the needle on improving the the holes so you know again it's great when you're on a good connection you're getting that bandwidth you're getting that throughput but I've seen t-mobile making bigger strides to filling in the holes in their service than I have I have well we've got that six hundred megahertz they got that they have they're working with TV stations and other entities that are currently on 600 megahertz to get out of there and they're basically they've been really aggressive in that they have a 40 billion dollar plan for the next what three or five years or so so I mean say just in the context of taking this back outside of this Sprint t-mobile in looking at Project Phi as a service I've been using it with a number of unlocked phones which means that they've almost all been defaulting to t-mobile's network yeah because a third part does that I don't have the CDMA exactly and and I would say that using that as a primary service it's been phenomenal so I don't think that the Sprint t-mobile merger is gonna be necessarily a negative for project Phi customers I think what we'll probably see is sort of a status quo than maintaining the same kind of connectivity that they had or that you would have if you were using like a huawei on project file like I like I did from my matin and honor reviews and then from there hopefully that means that we'll see t-mobile getting you know a bit more aggressive with their 5g rollout which I think will just benefit whatever future version of project Phi they can they can license out to especially with regulatory scrutiny over Sprint and t-mobile representing 54% of the prepaid market I think they'll be apt to keep project Phi under their umbrella I guess they don't want to keep there as opposed to maybe forcing Google to consider courting 18t and Verizon more more aggressively well yeah I mean they have wholesale data issues that you know they're trying to sell to MVNOs and all that they're trying to keep costs low so that you know regulators do you see them happy do you see them as more willing to comply to a certain musters to be able to go through the merger I do want to move on we're running short on time here and talk about the last thing here little nice note to leave it on with in terms of accessibility and that's with the the dot watch one of the newfangled smartwatches that well it's not it doesn't have a display it doesn't have like notifications as we know it but it's a SmartWatch it does do a lot of things but it doesn't embrace it doesn't in tactile dots and it provides blind users with a great way of accessing the time it also Act provides them a way to get messages or short messages with just a small thing like these Graham machines that we've seen these Braille tablets are pretty big so to be able to have something substantially smaller I mean given its six characters that we're seeing here but I feel like I kind of want one because I want to teach myself Braille oh look I think this would be like an intro to learn your Braille numbers one I think you know just from an aesthetic standpoint it's one of the coolest watches I've seen in a long time and we've seen smart watches for the last couple of years and you know large displays LCDs this looks minimalistic it looks sweet like I just want it just because of how it looks and add in the additional functionality that they're planning on building into it it's a cell for me I mean or by design takes me right into things that I love like my Skagen you know people who tuned in on this podcast before I've heard me front my my hybrid connected watches I love a classic analog timepiece that also has a few things like a pedometer built into it and basic control notifications certifications exactly yeah so just the fact that this is I think this is an amazing outreach - we've had some conversations with other people in the industry we had a long conversation with an executive at AARP talking about bringing more people into the technological fold and this to me is one of those accessibility accessories that actually moves the needle on improving the situation for someone who might be seeing impaired yeah yeah definitely so I mean mobile technology finally betting better instead of the more marginalized suddenly differently abled communities out there so I mean that's totally great so I think what we're going to do because I've just run out of time I have to get to our meeting is I think that you guys can talk offline about the mobile living mobile and do many thing and you'll be able to fit in the ad read for there so I think that would about do it for this podcast for now live for noon for life and well we'll continue the conversation so for the rest of our conversation with Nick gray and his mobility experiments catch us catch us in the dedicated audio feed that you can find through your favorite podcast capture subscription service and jewls thanks so much for hosting and we'll we'll catch you next week on the show man see ya