Gadgetory

but not everything this week was all about WWDC for example all the HTC you 11 reviews are coming out as well and we have a little guest here from HTC source Nick gray has joined us in the pocket now weekly chat room hello to you sir good day to you and thank you for having me again it's been a long time it has been so we needed to remedy that and I really wish that hewan was here so that he could lend me his a casual interview skills but I think I'm going to have to be straight-laced and focused for this because we have so the ongoing narrative arc that I'm getting from the reviews I've seen is that it's generally positive for the U 11 but you know we're straddling between you know g6 territory here just below g6 territory in terms of accolades and positive spots so what I want to get your take because you've generally been more positive on this on our favorite son of the tech industry or the mobile tech industry right well you'd have to think it because you know I do write for a circuit or so I am a little bit biased just a little bit um but no I mean as many of you guys know I've written for a handful of different sites over the years I've reviewed a lot of the main flagship devices for this year as well and I've been really positive about the U 11 simply because it's actually been a better device for me than the other flagships that have come out this year like I'm actually finishing up my review for the Galaxy s8 right this week shot video for it today finishing up my script and I know I'm late on that way late but it is what it is and it compared to the s8 compared to the Huawei p10 compared to the g6 I think the U 11 is right up there and has you know a couple advantages over the competition in specific areas so you know everyone likes what they like but I don't think that you eleven is inferior to any of the flagship devices in any way so I want to get to those advantages in just a second but in terms of reviews definitely check out HTC sources you did damn good job on that one with the video and also check out pocket nails of course hello I'm Peter bucket definitely quick yeah i watch the video the other day yeah yeah how many rivera did it not too bad job on that so before we get to talking about advantages there were a couple of general notes that I've taken here and that is well let's start with sense because HTC has a tendency of letting things sits to enrich you know go you know over time we saw that with sense and it's kind of like first generation where we have that signature flood clock and the aesthetic that was all wrapped up in that and we saw that go on for years and years until the one f7 which saw a completely new take fresh flat muted and over time we've seen it grow into colors and grow into all these little features such as sense companion which is supposed to help you out there about your day and I think we're sort of at the point where we're asking ourselves is this is a start getting stale now because as we see the marketplace that's all more trending towards stock or something more bright or something more colorful I was wondering what your take on that was yeah and that was actually one of my highlights or one of the lowlights from my review for the HTC u 11 if you pick up a phone from last year say you pick up the HTC 10 and you pick up the HTC u 11 there's some underlying differences in the software build but if you look at it the software looks and I'd beg them for that in my review they were they were on a good course for a couple years you know moving closer and closer to stock they were kind of toning down the HTC sense look and feel the heaviness that had if you remember back to the HTC Sensation with sense for and how heavy that was on top of Android and just all the animations and all the gloss and everything like that kind of reminds us of TouchWiz a couple years ago as well and they were doing really good getting cutting back the unnecessarily features coming back in unnecessary bloat but for some reason this year it seems like they just stopped and they didn't do anything more they had actually added on top of it I mean you you mentioned sense companion which is their AI assistant that's built in it's not as far-reaching as some of the other AI features that you that Bixby wants to be it's simply a an extra helper to help you manage your device a little bit better with a few other suggestions so it's not overbearing but some of the things that I what I don't know one of the things that bugs me so much about that one too is they give you other suggestions and they say the weather is going to be this and there's a little button that says click to more instead of opening the weather app on the phone it loads up accuweather.com within Chrome because as everyone did you think you have all these links it with a blink feed and all that all these promote I was thinking what what software engineer thought that was a good idea like you know none of the software ideas were well thought out on this device yeah and I think software I've had a checkered track record with HTC and software because back when stagefright was the big concern we saw HTC one of the first to jump on that 15-day software frame for security updates and they've always been stretching themselves in different eyes and Google like they've worked with Google to reduce the blow and reduce down on native apps but I mean there has to be some investment on differentiating items on their on their side of things in terms of andly at the very least aesthetic to you because everyone else is changing HCC hasn't and it's like there's always like it seems half-baked yeah I definitely agree yeah I mean I've never liked Samsung's software on their devices and I you know as I said I'm finishing up my review and I can tell you I adore the software build that Samsung is using this year and just compared to what HTC is doing it's night and day and for me to say that I enjoy Samsung software more than HTC's goes means a lot because I'm not a Samsung fan whatsoever and even with the slack that bigsby has taken up everything else about their UI seems you know more cohesive or at least more you know attractive and smartly done there's a message behind it and there's there's a direction dieted so I mean yeah and not very HTC's doesn't have direction it's just they haven't progressed any we have a proven where the stop yeah I mean the software is good it's not that it's bad it's just feels exactly the same as I did last year which means to me someone just kind of gave up like hey we got here and now we're going to stop so well in terms of one thing that they have progressed on it's hardware UI and let's talk let's talk about that squeeze feature because it's like I've been reading up it's also been a love it or hate it kind of thing now of course you can activate any two apps that you want with a softer hard squeeze but by default it goes to the camera goes to the shutter and some people that that's kind of a issue with especially with a pincher claws like if you're trying to do this sort of thing instead of just squeezing low-light situations especially in the case where the motion kind of might have to deal influence that so I mean it's a good step but I was wondering if you had experience of the same problems or if you were able to work around them I honestly really enjoy the feature I mean it goes exactly the way I hold the device I have three fingers on the left-hand side one finger on the back and my thumb on the right hand side just squeeze and it opens up the camera you're looking at the back side of my phone right now but if I long squeeze then it turns on the flash I've had no issues I know some people don't like it and it's one of those features where it's not in the way if you don't want to use it you can just go to settings and turn it completely off I've I probably had 13 to 15 comments on my video review of the phone people complaining saying oh my gosh this feature is going to ruin my life I don't want it smartphone I can squeeze and I'm sitting there thinking it's a feature you turn it off or you turn it on it's like NFC if you don't want to use it you don't use it so I think it's getting a little bit too much attention for what it is it's not going to revolutionize the way that you use a phone a lot of these features you can get an app that you know if you long press the volume rocker you can turn on the camera or something like that you can already do some of these things with other devices with different types of gestures so it's it's not revolutionary it's unique but I think people are giving it way too much attention maybe because he is trying to market it but I have to be fair it was one of their the motifs during the whole run up to its launch and you know it compares like they talked about it during their press event in Taipei where they had they mentioned the prototype video that was out showed much more advanced features having blast putting out there and it was like you could swipe the size with a capacitive size and you there was a feeling of that some that they couldn't produce that in time for today in time for this year so I because I was at the launch event in Taipei and I actually got to talk to some different people about it and essentially the the video that leaked there was actually multiple videos that leaked one of them was kind of that concept video just showing the phone with gestures and then there was a pseudo commercial that came out which showed kind of the same functionality but the one with a UI that was controlled with gestures from the side and for what I got the feeling was those were pitched as concepts for the higher-ups and the company to say hey there's this type of technology maybe we can build this and it was it was never at the point of saying this is the phone that we are building but kind of this is what we're going to try to implement and obviously we know they weren't able to do it and what we have now is you squeeze the phone and it turns on some apps it's nothing like what the video showed but I think that's kind of what they're trying to work towards so I don't know if the technology is not there now I don't know if the software is not there now could be a combination of the two but I got the feeling from a couple different people that I talked to that that's it's something that we might actually see in the future I don't know if it's one year two years but it could become it could become but and so until that point we're left with this and I think you get worried I think I'm gonna get I was like - seeing those videos it is it is but I you know I was about to go in to the point where you know us cognoscenti are kind of spoil by insight and like leaks like this and you know it's not it's not really fair to you know have that in comparison when judging when editorializing on you know this kind of stuff especially when the end consumer has no interest in sausage-making for all intents and purposes so yeah well I will say this everybody that at non people in the industry and people who don't follow smartphone news all the time and knew about whatever h-he was trying to work on every time I've shown somebody that I can squeeze my phone and it launches the camera app from the device being off and locked they're like oh my gosh that's amazing and you know you let them do it you're like what do you do are there special you know the some people thought the site of the phone was had to be rubber or something for them to squeeze it so everyone who's seen it in person likes the concept I don't know they would buy a phone because of it but it's something that kind of resonates with users that's something that nobody else has which is a good thing for HTC because there's really no other unique feature that sets this device apart from whatever else is on the market right now indeed indeed let's I do want to get some thoughts on boomsound on just the whole audio situation too because that's kind of complex mix so gloom sounds does I know in your video you've said that it does not compare with previous boom sounds before the HTC 10 but does this implementation beat out the HTC 10 at least yeah it definitely does I think one talked about it as well in his video it's it's I would say almost double like I I don't have the equipment he has to do all the fancy testing but the output you put them side-by-side and it's night and day even though the HTC 10 was probably one of the best phones for you know on device audio last year this this steps it up a notch but the sad thing is it's not that this is really good it's that everything else is really bad again I go back I bet for me the the best one of all of HTC's was the one m8 that was my favorite one I still got into my drawer here and I use it as a little speaker from time to time just to listen to music just because it is that good I mean I've got Bluetooth speakers all over the house but you know if I just want to turn something on quick I don't even worry about it I pull out my m8 and it was that good this is not that good I think the difference is you don't have that stereo audio which you had on previous versions and for me that's a key difference indeed and there was also he also a cutout bar the 24-bit audio like they've cramped down on the dynamics on it and also there's also the USB see we're talking about that you sonic unique set up with the ear microphones and then the four microphones on the sides of the device itself and all that works together to do active noise cancellation do you have to have a other pair of noise cancellation because hauntin and his his usage it doesn't or excuse me Jaime sent in his usage that his Sennheiser's did a little bit better um I it all the guy I don't mean to put you on the spot with this because you know it seem like you're reviewing what's in the box and not yeah i mean i i've used this with the v-moda headphones that i'm using right now and because of the you sonic profile that you get within box headphones is unique to your ear the audio quality that comes out of it is III don't want to it's hard to say that it's better it's different and it's different in a way where when you're putting in earbuds into your ears you typically feel that the music is inside your head versus when you put on you know something over here here you feel like you're immersed in the music and what you get with the you sonic is more of that feeling like it's not that the music is just jammed into your ears and you know it's blasting loud it feels like you're stepping away from the music a little bit and you're getting more I don't want to call it virtual surround sound but it's something like that I I had to give it to a friend of mine who does audio stuff all the time and he said his words were you get a wider soundstage and I I don't know particularly what that means in his world but it kind of goes to what I was feeling like it's not in your head it's there and the profile is different so that if the audio is coming into your eardrums just a little bit different to make it sound bigger okay so you definitely have more of a proper atmosphere that it at least gets blocked out with active noise cancellation as well and all that like I want to wrap this up into how HCC treats audio it's legacy in it because we you know boom sound was their main main line main trunk of things before they've differentiated and played around because there's there are so many brands out there that are going to be working with you know Samsung just picked up a Harman and Apple has Beats and it is like they did I'm not sure if the way they wanted to differentiate was you know like I thought boom sound was enough I thought I thought that's what that was going to be the the thing for them and you know I didn't I don't think you know it's nice to have active noise-cancelling right in the in the box but I don't think it was necessary for HTC to put that in and you know things moving forward yeah and that's one of the things like the the so HTC said multiple times that these were the first noise cancelling USBC headphones and I was just shaking my head I was like no guys you did this last year with the HTC 10 and you sold $200 headphones on your website I forget who who is in Bellingham they actually sell him still I think it was a JBL reflect oh yeah yeah the JBL once and I'm like you're not the first JBL made them for you last year but the difference is like these are really good headphones if you buy them separately I think they're 39 or $49 if you need to buy a replacement but as far as in box headphones these are probably the best in box headphones I've ever used besides the Beats headphones that HTC gave away with one of the Verizon phones you know four or five years ago I forget me and I it could have been the DNA it I can't remember but they were a hundred and thirty dollar Beats headphones that came in the box so other than that I mean this is if you want a good in the box or value for your money I definitely think it's worth it I can definitely say they are much better than the in box headphones that are custom tuned that come with the Samsung Galaxy s8 it makes those sound like they're you know five dollar knockoff headphones I mean you know they have it it's good to know then that at least they're playing at least this game correctly if they're going to be playing in it at all so yeah but I mean I'm kind of just so the one thing that's disappointing with this all if you pick up the HTC 10 you can get the same you Sonic profile that you get with with the U 11 but you have to do it manually what HUC did with the u 11 is that the manual option is no longer available so with the HTT 10 I can use these v-moda headphones I have right here and create the you sonic profile that I want I cannot do it with the HTC u 11 with the USB C to 3.5 millimeter headphone dongle the option is not there and they simply turned it off I don't know why I don't know if it's with a suit future update I actually need email a couple people at HDC to see if you know there was a specific reason why they did which for me that's kind of disappointing because that was a main feature with the HTC 10 that you could create the profile yourself that indeed sounds dumb and yeah definitely get on the response back yeah guys know the Sham please please so I think you know in terms of all the bashing that I've done on HTC u11 I think you know it's still overall good device and the camera seems to be doing its job properly but is there any overlooked aspect you think that has gone relatively unnoticed by US reviewers um that's hard to say I mean if you liked what the pixel did with the camera its using pretty much the same post-processing to create every single image so if you liked images from the pixel you'll definitely like this the advantage this has is that it does have optical image stabilization so your video is going to be smoother than it is on the pixel it's got that neat 360 audio with audio zoom when you're recording video I was actually just at my daughter's piano recital this afternoon and used that to record some video you know sitting three rows back and being able to zoom in and kind of isolate the audio from you know the crowd around me and just get her I'm kind of disappointed with the front-facing camera I think it's gotten a lot of praise and a lot of reviews and I I gave it high marks but I really liked the optical image stabilization that HTC had last year with the 10 everyone was pointing back out everyone wanted oh is back on the front facing yeah and when when I was there in Taipei I mean the day before the launch we got the tour HCC's facilities and we got you know 15 minutes with the camera team that worked on the HTC u 11 and that was one of the things I asked them about you know I I said you know I really love that o is why is not there and they said it I mean they didn't have a specific response but it kind of came down to well no one seemed to care about it and I understood their thinking I'm like when I recorded video with that thing I were walking down the street and it was as smooth as you could imagine and now I'm looking at this and I'm like oh gosh it's going to be shaky and jittery and you know I need my DJI Osmo Mobile to hold this thing in order to get smooth video so I don't know but personally that's me I'm one of those people who uses you know the front-facing camera to do video calls with my family to do things like that and it means a lot to me but I don't know how much it means to other people so that interaction I want to bounce that over to what we saw in terms of the whole elevates dealio going up in their faces because in that react you know I'm wondering what their feedback loops are in terms of gathering information and just you know doing that at least externally they're saying that they didn't get feedback that this was an important feature and then you know changing things up for the U 11 um so elevate its this little community that HTC has gathered up for influencers of its brand and um so let's talk about what happened actually because you and I actually work in this big Twitter mess thread together uh and if they're people tweeted me within night 24 hours is ridiculous I don't I don't want to even them and so it's there after the phone arena is a article about the thing we're in HTC wanted its members to combat the negative press especially they claim you know you know stuff a lot of it is a UNH's like unsourced or and you know not relative to what was being seen in review they have to held it whatnot and in exchange for you know going in with positivity and comments about that they were they had a chance of getting swag and some people saw that as astroturfing and but all in all like what from all of this from what I've seen in in our thread here is that HTC has some pretty caustic fans and I wanted to know you know in your experiences dealing with who you know you write about HTC for a living part of a living at least how have you dealt your commenters had they been alright I've been very weird uh surprisingly you know you would think me I I started the first HTC blog I went to to the to the launch event and they actually brought a lot of influencers to the launch event there was probably 10 or so english-speaking and then they brought some from Europe and Asia as well I would say maybe 30 to 40 influencers part of elevate to the event and you know meeting them in person you know everyone's always nice and cordial and then there's always some people who are kind of those fanatics of oh my gosh I love this brand and I will do everything in my power to make sure this brand is known and loved so you always get the tipping of the scales there you know you get the people I want to say kind of like me like I'm I'm an HTC fan but I I think of myself as well-balanced you know I I'm I love the Android community as a whole I recommend phones to people that are not HTC phones based on what their needs are because I know everyone likes different things but there's always people that will take things to the extreme so with with what was happening I think HTC was seeing some negative comments and you know you've seen them all everyone's seen these comments of oh my gosh I would never buy this phone or it's so hideous you look at that back and a lot of these people as we know have never bought this phone aren't even considering to buy this phone and probably have not bought a phone in over a year and a half because they don't have enough money to buy a phone and they're just being trolls on the internet and what HTC elevate was trying to do they were trying to get their community out to kind of dissuade some of these negative comments that were out there and they were hoping for positive comments on negative comments but I think what happened was the the thing within elevate got leaked out to the press and so it got put up and it was kind of pitched in the wrong light because the wording of what was out there was saying combat the negative comments that are out there and so they were using forceful words against something that was forceful and as soon as you do that it becomes a negative fest and everyone's like oh my gosh they're trying to create trolls on the internet and everything like that but I don't know like I I've gotten negative so many negative comments on my videos and people are like oh my gosh is Samsung paying you and my response to everybody is do you not know me like I would never accept Samsung's money just because I made a negative comments on an HTC device doesn't mean someone's paying me and there's always the extremes I don't know like you get caught up in something and people are trying to make it sound like HTC had this big conspiracy and you know giving people stuff to support their conspiracy but HTC does this for pretty much everything anytime there's a device launch and I know other manufacturers do as well they have communities like this and they give away stickers or give away hats or give away mugs based on the community members involvement I think it was blown out of proportion yeah yeah and especially you mentioned Samsung it did some shifty stuff with PR firms and back in a few years ago in Taiwan so they actually were fine for that let's not you know compare apples oranges but I can understand HTC in terms of warning to get that first impression especially when their marketing dollars just aren't there in terms of TV in terms of traditional for that so they wanted to at least do something online where you never fight YouTube comments even in 2017 where the situation has improved you don't fight YouTube comments so no it's the best you can do in fighting YouTube comments is hitting the delete button and even then it stays on the internet forever so I am but no I mean so one of these things though so what a comparison that a lot of people forget though is HTC was trying to promote people to spread the goodwill about the brand they're worrying about how they were doing it was could have been better but I have a friend who works at a cell phone store and she just got a new LG g6 for free from her LG sales rep for the region because she was promoting LG's phones and sold more LG phones than her other people in the area so we have store reps who are being given a $600 phone to help sell like actively sell versus community members who are volunteering their time to maybe get a sticker and where's the outrage about a sales rep getting a free phone to promote a specific brand like you know what's the difference there I don't you know I mean you know well part of that is you know it's their job to sell you other device especially when when they they're under pressures from their company and others all OMS that actually do participate in providing skips like that so you know you could say as opposed to you know I understand that especially in this alternative faction universe that there's always a guys being set up to always a facade and people just don't like the you know you dated my fakers so or at least the notion of being paid to express an opinion when you wouldn't have you know you would have stayed quiet otherwise you would have been still supportive but you wouldn't have made that comment otherwise so I think there's all mean there's sides to that that I I'm trying to tightrope around but you know it's it's it's definitely a complex issue and it definitely doesn't help the discourse that we have already is you know it doesn't take us anywhere else is what I'm saying so I don't know I'm just like how do you do how we're just general good rules in terms of actually dealing with you know the extremes of this um for me you know starting out a new YouTube channel and trying to encourage community on the channel encouraging comments and you get those attacking comments saying you know you got paid to write this or you got paid to say this in the review for me it's always to remain positive no matter what trying to we all know this on the internet and it's so hard to do it though if you go the negative route you'll never get yourself out of the hole it will keep going and keep going because the first person to post negative and you're going to reply to that he's going to make sure he gets the last word in no matter what and you're never going to convince somebody to change their mind and so you know if I see negative comments I see people saying that I've you know sold out my reply is no I've not sold out you know if it deems a reply sometimes it does because they're you know a lot of people are replying to a specific comment you know just stating you know every opinion here is mine if you don't like it I'm perfectly fine with that and just leave it open on a positive note rather than trying to shut things down on a negative because I don't think that effort works and I think that's maybe what some of the HCC elevate members kind of screwed up on you know they were seeing negative comments and they were trying to go HCC wanted them to go post positive comments but a lot of what we saw was a lot of negative comments on top of negative comments which just takes things in an incredible downward spiral and when you get the disproportionate you know outraged about outrage it doesn't help either so I do what I do ridiculous yeah indeed indeed I do want to not leave us in any sort of negative mood so I want to ask how are you how are you enjoying your last days of Italy in your last days of just just being there because you've you've lived there for the past year-plus and you're trading out nice Mediterranean dancing yes I think that my days here are limited July 27th we are heading back to the states we moved here in October of 2015 for those who don't know I actually grew up in Italy once I graduated high school I moved back to the States stayed back in the States for 15 years before coming back here Italy is wonderful you can't imagine how good the food is how good culture is a good life is but where we're gonna be packing up and heading back our house is in shambles right now because we're trying to sell furniture packing up everything just a little bit crazy indeed but I think throughout all this you've been much like HTC in that you are quietly brilliant and like to thank you for lending some of that quiet brilliance over to our show really appreciate its first going to week like this thank you my pleasure thank raveh me