Gadgetory

hey guys it's joe the android guy that's a smartphone that's a tablet the thing behind me that's a computer are they ever going to cross over and if so how that's our topic for this week's episode of the android guy weekly so what a couple of previous episodes we've talked about how smartphones and tablets are getting multiple cores extra processors lots of RAM video processors cool stuff all built in to do well stuff that used to be just computer based in the past what are we doing with them well right now let's face it that's pretty much still a smartphone it does phone stuff it does basic web stuff PIM stuff that's personal information management just for those of you keeping track on the acronym tally sheet 1.4 PIM but it's still just a smartphone the apps are somewhat limited and i'm showing you android devices but the same is true for iphones and for windows phones as well it's still a phone and the apps are well they're really dumbed down and i don't mean they're dumb because they're cool they do neat things but they're simplistic so let's move over here to tablets and yes this is the android guy podcast so i'm showing you another android-powered device if you want to watch apple stuff we've got hi bata bata and he's got all kinds of cool apple stuff but back to android because we love android so tablets even on the apple side of things tablets are basically just big smartphones at least when it comes to apps sure you've got a much bigger battery some cases you've got radios in them for like LTE or hspa+ or you know some kind of data connectivity not too much of the voice connectivity even though this has a speaker you know right there and you could technically use it as a phone one hello can you see somebody on a subway or a bus talking on their phone like that Wow that'd be any hidden video little funny video if you guys want to do that send it on in we get a chuckle out of that but back on topic it's still a simplistic operating system or a simplistic environment the operating see this system is really kind of you know complex its robust it's linux for goodness sake you can run linux on one of those things behind me you can run linux on a web server and serve up hundreds if not thousands of web pages running linux and it's lighter weight and it's arguably more configurable and blah blah blah definitely cheaper than microsoft solutions even though i run microsoft based technologies at my day job but we've simplified it here for this form factor and really that's starting to limit us so take a look behind me I can't run Android well good but not realistically on my computer back there and even if I could where's all my video editing stuff where's my audio editing stuff where's my you know high-end games ah but that's kind of the crossover app games you can get really good high definition playable games on this and even better on this and it's kind of almost to the point where it's the same realism and the same experience that you'd have on a desktop computer but here on a desktop I'm going to have a mouse so there's my little mousey pointing device but I have to have in one hand going like this clicky clicky scrolling scrolling in this hand on wa's D and the pain this guy I want to turn I turn on turn I turn I want to go forward I go forward I want to go back and go back look at that ok so the controls are really there and they're a lot better the sensors that everything is built-in while its built-in I've even got front-facing cameras on these two devices but I don't even have that on my desktop computer behind me but I'm getting way off topic hey we've seen a few manufacturers try and bridge the gap from phone and even tablet it's a computer you can have desktop docks that have hdmi that have you can have bluetooth keyboards and mice and whatnot that hook up to it and essentially gives you a desktop experience from your smartphone or from your tablet now there are a couple ways to do that the first way to do that is through some kind of a virtual desktop environment now when I say that I mean you're kind of like running in a web based OS where you just have a web browser that has your web apps installed on it and yes web apps especially with html5 are becoming much much more robust they're becoming really really well good for lack of a better word but still look at Google Docs look at Microsoft Word look at Google Docs look at Microsoft Excel there's still a lot of growing to do well you don't have those microsoft like experiences on turn your tablet with a desktop experience that you have on a desktop with a desktop experience the same thing goes with Mac based stuff you know I want to use iMovie to make a movie great I have to have that on my Mac I can't really do that very well over on my tablet or on my smartphone even when it's docked up to a big screen TV so there's another way to do it after we've talked about just kind of virtualizing the in experience kind of Chrome OS if you will then you've got an actual real remote desktop okay that's kind of cool and it has some advantages and some big disadvantages I've got an app that I run I like it a lot called jump desktop my iphone guys new friends out there that run the the Apple products they've got the app too in fact I think it started on that side of the fence but who's keeping track with that you can rdp let's remote desktop protocol into your computer at work into a computer at home at school wherever you've got it configured so long as you know the address and the ports are open on the firewall lah blah blah technical mumbo-jumbo here but you can do it and once you've got it set up its really kind of easy at that point as long as I've got an internet connection I can connect to my computer my desktop computer then I can remote into it now that computer doesn't have to be here it could be at work it could be halfway around the world it could be at some data center somewhere post it as just kind of virtual environment that I RDP into and I do that every day I RDP into computers all over the place and it gets really annoying and frustrating sometimes because there are so many of them but if you had one computer that was hosted somewhere else and they took care of all the updates and all the apps and all that everything and you remoted to it from wherever you wanted with a thin just a very thin computer and all it needed was hookups to a monitor keyboard mouse speakers network connection and then you log in it goes across the network to your server if you will their terminal session there you go great well now you can do that on this because you know what this is more powerful than most thin computers out there and it's a phone all you needs a bigger screen well that's a piece of cake alright so that's the second way the third way is kind of confusing kind of cool which is why we're talking about it in this week's episode so that topic is kind of dual booting or hybrid booting and I know that's kind of confusing but hey look I've got two cores in here to them two CPUs why not split them so one processor runs Android and another processor runs linux it's being done now this is for like the uber geeks uber geek so the uber geeks are looking up to even geekier people and that but it can be done which is the cool part but then we got dual booting so hybrid stuff we're just going to leave that for another episode wait for it to mature a little bit high or dual booting rather i turn my phone off i turn it back on i get a boot menu and it says what do you want to boot into well I'd like to boot into linux today thank you very much here's my ubuntu or here's my red hat or here's my and this is where it gets really funny somebody thought that android this version plus one we're assuming it's going to be android five and we assume it's going to be called jelly bean but there were some rumors flying around that Microsoft was kind of getting bed with Google or vice versa which doesn't make a lot of sense because they really don't like each other that much but what you do is you'd be able to boot into whatever operating system you wanted to so if your tablet you know you're you're done with it being an android-based tablet great reboot it and now you're in a Windows 8 tablet whoo sounds kind of weird but technically possible all you got to do is basically boot to another mount point so instead of pointing to one section of your hard drive we used to call them your volume so what linux likes to column you know you just switch one or the other now the downside to it is generally speaking you've got to reboot but once you do that chances are you can have access to that same volume so you have access to the same files stuff that you work on on one side can work on the other side and vice versa as far as files go now apps that's a different story so three different ways and the hybrid kind of weird way to do it what's going to happen well I don't know that's why we're talking about it on the android guy weekly because I want to know what you think too so go ahead pause the show type your comments in okay cuz i'm going to bias you with my opinion at this point in time my opinion we're going to see something like what Motorola has been doing with their devices where well you can plug them into a monitor and you can have a what's called a web top experience where you have more desktop like applications you don't really have desktop applications but their desktop like takes advantages of keyboards mice the bigger screens now you kind of give up some of your touchscreen stuff and your your sensors and whatnot but in any event you have that experience so here's what I think ok Google has something else going for them they've got their Chrome OS and their Chromebooks ok why not do that on these guys so I've got android and I've got chrome and then run side by side and I can switch between them and you know make that experience as seamless as possible so I don't even know that I'm touching between them so there's one possibility and I think that would be more logical than sending like Spock from Star Trek here live long and prosper it would make more sense for Google to go with a Google platform for their a desktop or notebook type experience on tablets if they go that way at all is that how I want to see things go new no it's not what I want to see happen is I want to see the android OS the way it is now continue to grow and develop I want to see it flourish I want to see Chrome OS die I want to see Chromebooks go away or you know what let's keep them around because we're going to run android I don't know six key lime pie about that you like that okay great we're going to run key lime pie on them key lime pie is essentially Android but screen dependent so we've got a bigger side of the screen well we're doing that already you know things look different on you know smartphones is they doing tablets as I do on google TV so we've got the three screen sizes right now well let's introduce to another that has a built-in mouse or pointer interface built in keyboard ah you know what though that's going to require apps it's going to require really good robust apps it's going to require apps that are built to work on a variety of screens it's going to require the development community to adopt that and run with it and make it succeed and that puts the control outside of the hands of Google or does it there's one little bit that Google has control over of course they've got the SDK they've got the whole operating system thing like that's really important that sarcasm guys okay thanks what they've got is google apps or gaps as they call it now gaps that's your market that's your gmail calendar contacts that's all of that all packaged together it's your core pim stuff now it's coming with google music it's coming with your maps and navigation all of that stuff that's your gaps that is what Google has control over and if Google goes and may those things work really really work on you know the current three screens smartphone size tablet size TV sighs and then they bring in you know like a 12 or a 14 inch size something that's more tablet or desktop style something that'll work just like a desktop computer will that's their foot in the door and then I think the apps will follow unfortunately it's still going to take some time for all the developers out there to get their apps to work with it now Google has made some strides with fragments not to be confused with fragmentation that everybody's you know crying about oh no fragmentation fragmentation the world's going to end hey look that's not going to happen until the end of the year okay and look at that I've got off my screen already so the Mayan say we got like at least another seven eight months don't worry about the world ending it'll be okay fragments are good fragmentation is just something to sell newspapers but I digress so that's what I think we're going that's what I think is going to be in key lime pie it's real real early to be making predictions like that so who knows if they'll come true or not that's why I'm going on the record right now so you can come back when key lime pie has been announced they've shown it off and you can say holy crap that Joe the android guy he's a genius or you know reality which is just I'm some guy with the camera and you're a whole bunch of people who know a lot more than me so now it's your turn go down in the comments write what you think we've covered a lot of stuff so make sure that you're clear with you know what part you're talking about whether it's remoting whether it's dual booting whether it's hybriding whether it's webtop whether it's chroma whatever let us know and let us know why you think your idea is better than my idea which it probably is but I want to know why and so does everybody else who's watching so go and do that now well before you do that thumbs up big thumbs up for the video so I you know let your friends know about it head on over to pocketnow.com so we can all share from the news and the other views that are out there because I'm not the only guy on it ok now you can go and comment Thanks do that down below for pocket now i'm joe the android guy and this has been another episode of the android guy weekly