Gadgetory

Amazon pulls blue phones again over security concerns next bit and support for the Robin Facebook is planning a home video phone type of device and Apple faces another class-action lawsuit this one over FaceTime plus David retic from Android police drops by to help us unpack the camera comments from former Google executive Vic Gundotra our Android cameras really years behind the iPhone we'll take a closer look at that statement there's a lot to talk about so make sure you're charged and ready for episode two six four of the PocketNow weekly recorded August 3rd at 3 p.m. Eastern this weekly podcast is where we dissect and discuss those gadgets that make our lives mobile smartphones tablets and wearables it's all the stuff you wished existed when you were a kid and every sci-fi film had some kind of home video phone we're finally realizing that geeky dream I'm Juan Carlos back now senior editor of pocketnow.com blasting the signal from a beautiful day in sunny Southern California joined as always by plucky podcast producer mr. Jules Wong out on location what's going on buddy boy are we excited I mean the way into the mall I was supposed to be at hotel but the way into this Durham I was on the bus and but the mall is actually the terminus of the bus route and the PA is in this robotic voice says we're finished thank you right now it's like I was I was wearing my incom shirt you need that that Tron voice end of line you know I love it in just a bit we're gonna be bringing David on I I really want to dig in David's one of my favorite I want to call him a tech provocateur and some of his editorials and his criticisms are just so beautifully eviscerating for for a lot of the tech audiences out there that I'm really gonna enjoy discussing these camera comments from mr. Gundotra but before we get to the point Jules would you be so kind as to how to inform people is how they can get in touch with us for the show yeah sure indeed so you can do so by getting on to your little Twitter app or whatever you use with Twitter engage another API thing and diva hashtag past idea and weekly and typing the question send it to their YouTube could be another way that we could do it but the chat has been very very very active and can't really keep track of everything they want so Twitter is the best way to do things live if you can't make it live if your aren't here right now then podcast at pocketnow.com is the best way to ask your questions and we can pile them up and then it'll be a little note back at the end of the show so podcast at pocketnow.com hashtag key and weekly all the better for you to tell us right now beautiful and I'm we're already getting some great questions in on that PN weekly hash tag from Brandon from and from Andrew Wallace fat produce is a regular a Jif contributor the PocketNow weekly so we've got some great questions in there we will be jumping in as we get closer to the end of the show just so that we can chat all that fun stuff out but um I think we need to chew through the news we started a little bit later and we definitely want to make sure that David's a part of this conversation so let's get through the top news topics of the week I'm gonna take over this one because Jules has like an army of small children that are following him around there's one of them this is the show when tell part and now I'm going to be silence Wow you tell me what's up with this uh v30 yeah so kicking things off we've got the LGV 30 we're gonna be producing actually it's gonna go live later this afternoon is sort of a a rumor roundup on the LGV 30 but one of the the big rumors coming out is well we know we're saying goodbye to the LGV 20s secondary ticker display there is a little screen at the top of your main screen you could dock it for you could talk shortcuts there just have a really fancy signature so everyone knew is phone and that's obviously gonna be going away on a phone that's already stretched and tall to make up for that it seems like LG's gonna be delivering a custom piece of software to have a floating dock and this is definitely something that LG has experimented with in the past things like qslide apps so it makes a lot of sense we're in terms of rumors we're gonna put a pretty high probability that LG's gonna have a solution there I'll be curious to see if it can really properly dock at the bottom of the screen because having really tall long skinny phones it's sometimes a reach to get up to that notification shade now moving on to other fresh developments in hardware news Facebook is rumored to be developing a video chat device we've got a post on this that actually performed really well from Adrienne on pocketnow.com and the sort of dummy image that they've they've developed for it it looks a lot like maybe something that Amazon has already produced with video capabilities just sort of a wedge with a screen and a speaker on it but in sort of doubling down on the current entrenched user base with facebook Messenger and facing more competition from other outlets especially Amazon at being a primary competitor there it makes a lot of sense that Facebook would be trying to develop something in that arena and not going the phone route because we all know how Facebook phones turned out back in the day now shifting gears over to Microsoft this was another hot story because it's just such a bizarre filing to read from Microsoft that in in an absence of you know proper first-party tablets you know not not like the surface but you know some of there's there other experimental like a surface mini which never really saw the light of day we've got Microsoft potentially working on a battery touch cover for the iPad now Microsoft has an amazing track record for sort of office accessories keyboards and mice I'm using a Microsoft Mouse and actually I'm using a Logitech keyboard but I used to have one of those really split awesome wide organ AMA keyboards so this actually kind of makes sense with that old-school Microsoft hardware philosophy it's just I think there is some disappointment from those of us who have had our hearts broken by Microsoft so many times that they're willing to make accessories for the iPad but we're not seeing any development on you know windows for phones or anything like that I mean we actually don't want to break in with it working oh my goodness so earlier on today we found out in their Form 10-k because they always file a new mission statement or whatnot with all the assets and whatever at the SEC and looking at the mission and looking at their overview of what their business is what products they offer include all mentions of mobility and phones so it's like what what products did we offer well last year they had the word phones in that lineup and now it's just there's no phones it's just other intelligent I mean though phrase other intelligent devices has been used in both 2016 and 2017 but it just seems like they're relegating phones to the other to the nether to the void so I mean yeah that definitely has been sort of nutella's initiative is turning Microsoft more into a services company than a hardware company and you just can't ignore the success of Xbox and surface but any any department that was sort of struggling or not delivering or not blowing up their part of the market it seems to have gotten the ax and that again I mean I'm sure we could still see some movement on a potential windows mobile device in the future but it's definitely not a primary focus for this company right now what is a primary focus for Microsoft though and this is gonna be some good news for surface fans out there is they're gonna be introducing a zero interest leasing program for surface devices with 18 month upgrades and this is something that I think makes a lot of sense in the current market we've sort of programmed consumers for their phones to be working in sort of one to three year time frames on how they update devices and now surfaces are starting to become that that's sort of de facto mobility idea and this just sort of gets consumers on board in a way where you don't feel the pain of dropping too large on your computer every time you need to upgrade it's a I think awesome I mean you know even still pay out the 24 months and then you own the device too and there's also multiple options for businesses is defense an upscale downscale it's it's much more convenient economical and ensures that Microsoft has constant monthly flow well and also it's treating hardware like software like we expect significant software updates every year and and now I think that there's a there's an idea of ecosystem where everything is getting updated is this us yes actually yeah absolutely moving over to Motorola we've got some news this is going to be disappointing to some folks out there that the there will be no shatter shield replacements for the Moto z2 force this has been a popular add-on for other companies like a screen replacement for accidental damage and the actually I'm just gonna read from the full statement here our apologies but we were mistaken about the option to get a replacement liner so there's there's a plastic liner on the moto z2 which while he was pulling that up so the door to turbo Qi was the first one to have it the motors he force was the next one and then he's the third generation and we've been following on because people didn't posting about just all these scratches it scratches easily and people are worried about okay what can you do in order to fix the situation and no Terrell initially told us that okay so we're gonna have a consumer version that's going to be improved and we're also going to have the replacement liners which is the top just the top yeah you're gonna be fine that it cost $29.99 and then they followed up with another email and said oh sorry again we screwed up we're not gonna do that because no one was buying those replacement - so I mean it just goes - and they're actively pushing third party screen protectors - which is kind of a it's off well and that's an incomplete solution especially when there are I think some very some very fair concerns over a phone will not I mean it survives the big singular event better you know dropping your phone from a higher height having it land on concrete something like that your screens not going to shatter that does a better job but when it doesn't survive the daily sort of rough and tumble abuse you know where you putting your phone in a pocket with keys is no longer a concern with Gorilla Glass but it's a big concern if your phone and phone screens made out of plastic this is a disappointing step back when this was a service that they offered for previous moto shatter shield products so I think again fairly this is something that I hope Motorola will correct course on if there is enough traction a part of this is also just how many of these phones are going to get sold and people are making some pretty tough decisions on what features they want and what compromises they can live with now another phone that's gonna be getting a lot of press soon and we've only been getting sort of unofficial renders and some some really cute graphics depicting what the general screen layouts gonna look like there's a treasure trove of Apple leaked iphone 8 info and this includes things like the screen resolution which is again this isn't still properly confirmed nothing's properly confirmed until Apple says it I mean so basically it's sending out home hard code to third-party developers for them to work with a lot of it has continued code for the devices that you might interact with it definitely yeah these are definitely a lot more on point than just like you know regular rumors that got filtered out through someone in manufacturing but we will be seeing a a higher resolution panel 24 36 by 11 25 so not quite quad HD but again Apple has always had funky non-standard screen resolutions so that's not too surprising there we're gonna be getting tapped to wake which is a feature that a lot of Android phones have implemented to great effect but no sign of touch ided which might be a concern for some folks if Apple really is gonna have to walk away from touch ideas the security apparatus for a lot of the services on the iPhone instead going through and just the from that there maybe there's been code references to something called pearl could be called her ID and that may combine the face and iris recognition the sensors that may go into it could also be a authentication for Apple pay because he also found that corresponding to contactless payments so someone else to watch out for definitely and again that that's one of those things that makes me nervous about Apple implementing so many changes in in one generation of iPhone but in other sort of controversial Apple news Apple's facing another class-action lawsuit this time pointing to crippling of FaceTime as owners of older iPhones made the transition in software from iOS 6 there was a mandatory iOS 7 update and that did break some of the functionality of FaceTime Apple has been trying to get a judge to dismiss this class-action suit and it seems like we've we've crossed that threshold where this suit is going to proceed it's not going to be thrown out so now it's just going to be another one of these sort of ongoing conversations just what is a company's responsibility to older products what is a company's responsibility to their consumers how should we be handling things like updates we talked about the sort of fracturing and fragmentation in the Android land but there is also a sense of feature fragmentation for iOS you get sort of those core updates but you might not always get the the best individual feature updates from software generation to generation and that is all ultimately the course the gates from iOS that you just can't get past 8 or 9 oh absolutely well and I think it also I mean this actually does in a really roundabout way speak to Apple's success as a software updating platform that their consumers expect a certain level of service and support well behind what we've come to expect an Android land and speaking of soft oh yeah definitely and speaking of software this is this is gonna be a bummer for a lot of the enthusiasts in our audience but official software updates for the next bit Robin are done the actual next bit tweet to clear up some confusion although we're ending customer support we will continue software updates until February of 2018 as planned but this is this is talking more about development so we're probably looking at just whatever security patches or bug fixes might be easy to implement for the platform we're not talking about any major or new development moving forward for this and I'll be really curious to see what impact this has on this team which i think is still operating as a cohesive team under Razer and what that might mean for future products there but it's it's definitely gonna be disappointing news if you were one of those folks who went out there and we're ready to join the experiment of trying something different of using a Robin as your phone there were some really great ideas there the implementation still needed I think a little work and they got stuck with a bad chipset generation but there was a lot of charm in what the Robin could do so it's always sad when we see something just come to a complete dead end and you know what dead end for that was a better segue than what I was gonna come up with Jools it's like you do the news more often than I do the the last bit of the last headline that if this got a lot of noise so what it was last year that we we saw Amazon pull blue phones over security potential security issues again we see Amazon pulling some of their most popular selling unlocked phones from blue and again just some of these issues that with the software that comes pre-installed on the device potential exploits potential holes Amazon is trying to make sure that there is no negative press surrounding this type of direct-to-consumer sale they've really been stepping up their game on marketing and selling unlocked phones so anything to do with privacy anything to do with security they're gonna be reacting to very aggressively we just had this post updated so blue commented releasing a statement I believe yesterday afternoon retreading its defense of the farm we're from November the company is criticizing media attention on Chinese servers and insists that only basic information is being collected excuse me the activity has been more vigorously Johnson claims that the activity has been more vigorously concealed so this is this is from crypto wire researcher Rian Johnson is the one who was tracking what information blue was was keeping tabs on and then also sharing with these Chinese servers there is another update blue has commented on the Amazon sales stoppage since November 2016 when the initial privacy concern was reported blue quickly remedied Amazon has been aware of the aid ups at UPS and other applications on our blue devices which were deemed at the time by blue Amazon and crypto wire suppose no further security or privacy risk now almost a year later the devices are still behaving in the same way with standard and basic data collection that pose no security or privacy risk there has been absolutely no new behavior or change in any of our devices to trigger any concern we expect Amazon to understand this and quickly reinstate our devices for sale and so I want to jump right in on this one Jules the the the crypto wire comments are a little above my paygrade like I am NOT as well first on some of these security concerns and security threats um do we think Amazon might be overreacting this is to protect their own image as opposed and throwing a manufacturer under the bus to make sure they look like they're being the responsible reseller I mean initially back in November as part a said there was some sort of violation or a breach of agreement in terms of what features they wanted food in that will the firmware like reading data and all that sort of get back to Chinese servers and I didn't really you know it doesn't seem like both of them are on the defense's right now and they're both supporting each other in this aim and they're saying that nothing has rather approved changes have already gone through and wires seen them Google and seen them or something you know and I mean trip the wire has said since that they blew does not speak on behalf of them so it's just right it's all word he said she said at this point first place you have to address I think that's fair so if there if someone is bringing up concerns it absolutely is Amazon's not only prerogative but I think it's their responsibility to address those concerns I also wonder if a part of this isn't just exploit fatigue you know the number of different threats that we're all supposedly encountering on a daily basis from Chinese hackers delivering Windows malware to broad pawn to updates for phones to it I Oh T devices that can be zombified and used in DDoS attacks it's it's a chain of trust that we have China has a more lots use your all your data you know part of its part of the Communist you know frame of mind where everything is easier you have I mean how else are you gonna pay for all this stuff Moberly you know get through to mediate eat and all that you know it takes a lot of data moving back and forth the same time and they're much more it's bleach out economy for them whereas young you value more privacy and it's that disconnect that we haven't always been comfortable with it's this relationship of hardware where it's cheap and software that is also cheap to maintain and Bend that is tying us together still and we're just finding ourselves at the crossroads of that well and I think there's also become a growing understanding that when you use a free service you're the product but Google Apple and you know entering into that you know or you know a calendar event and targeted advertising which really was properly targeted like it just clings on to your last you know webpage search and basically shows you wait for the next 90 million day so I mean in exact science is don't they yeah they do and what doesn't suck though is catching all of the latest news headlines on pocketnow.com make sure you check out the site for all of the the top mobility and tech stories of the day in addition to Android police as I see we are now joined by mr. David Roddick I think he's he's muted and his webcam is on he is here and an apologies we started a little late so I know we we wanted to bring you in at the half hour and we're a couple minutes behind there but thank you so much for joining us this is a conversation I was really excited to to be having with you this week yeah thank you for having me on glad to do it absolutely okay so um first of all let's just kind of sum up because this is one of these sort of ios/android grudge match kinds of conversations where I feel there's a lot of emotion behind statements when people have picked a team and they're rooting for their team and so IIIi am inclined to disagree with mr. Gundotra but I also really want to try and give him a fair shake on what he means versus the exact language of what he says so I'm gonna be doing some interpreting I feel which may or may not be fair but it was a when when did he post this it was July 29th in a facebook thread about photography he's posting some adorable pictures of his children people start asking about cameras and he's making these off-the-cuff remarks about how the DSLR is dead the iPhone and image processing this is the way of the future and if you want to be in step with the future apples ecosystem is going to be better than Androids and if you don't mind being a couple years behind that's why you want to buy an Android camera over an iPhone camera and just to start I was really hoping that you could share like what was your reaction when you saw a former Google executive make this kind of statement publicly on Facebook well fix always been a pretty incendiary guy that way I don't think anybody would ever accuse the conductor of not adequately voicing his opinions even when he was at Google I mean you know he was he was the face of Google+ he was the face big Google's big social shift made it sound like that was the direction the company was going in period and that that was you know full steam ahead so he's always been very outspoken very direct and I don't think it's at all out of character for him to say something like this and he was always a little off-the-cuff too and I think in this particular instance what I took away was kind of just the generalizations that were being made especially the whole two to three years behind things that didn't make any sense to me really on any level I felt like he didn't really explain that well if he had a cogent argument for that point in particular I wasn't seeing it I didn't understand what he meant about the SLR I understand what he means about how you know apples been able to do the the wide lens and then the long lens and integrate that in a way to you know works really well and you know produces good results and but he seemed to be going off on a lot of tangents and granted it wasn't like some you know wasn't some official appearance or statement or anything just talking about what he thinks about smartphone cameras and when you started talking about how Google's gotten away from computational photography I thought well as Vic and really paying attention to what's been going on with Google and phones in the last year or so it doesn't seem like it if that's the case you know so I was I was but I felt like Vic maybe a little bit out of touch maybe with what's going on Android at this point comparatively at least on the deeper level and probably you know like a lot of people is just enjoying the fact that the iPhone offers that more integrated experience and I think that a lot of people eat up the brand message in the marketing even people who are you know high-level technology executives can can really start to I think it sucked into that not that's all marketing but I think that really enters into some of the kind of the feelings people associate with Apple products about integration completeness the value of the the integrated ecosystem well and especially from a company like Apple where I think their only competitor in terms of mind share would be Samsung the only the only company that's really sort of matching them reaching parity with having a conversation with the consumer that appeals to the emotional side of purchasing one of these devices I mean all of the various you know billboards around Los Angeles you know shot on an iPhone and you're like you made a photo that you put on a billboard shot from a phone and I think that's that's an easy way to resonate with general consumers and then also with people who are probably more technologically inclined to that message is gonna sink in really effectively I I agree with that for sure the billboards are no doubt Apple when they came up with that idea it's a such a simple idea to but it's so simple I think now that nobody else can appropriate it from them because they look like copying oh you guys are just copying apples you know I was talking about this with somebody very recently about how well why doesn't Google do that with the pixel why don't they do shot on pixel billboards and the reason is probably because the marketing team every time they somebody brings that up like oh my god but it's so obvious they're just copying Apple you know nobody wants to be nobody wants their marketing campaign to be oh we're copying our biggest competitor that doesn't feel great as a marketer but at the same time it's a very effective campaign and the images Apple puts up if you're in the Bay Area for example they change very frequently there's always new pictures going up you know just to keep catching people's eye and it works and I think that's probably probably to an extent to where the whole the DSLR is dead argument comes from is you know the idea oh well we can put an image from an iPhone on a 50 foot billboard so you know what uses a DSLR anymore obviously and we can capture these beautiful images on a smartphone so why do you need the dedicated camera I didn't they're putting arguments for the dedicated camera still but the kind of broader sentiment yeah that the smartphones are replacing the DSLR and dedicated cameras in a lot of respects I mean I don't think you get any argument from anybody about that it's been going on for like seven it's been going on since camera phones were a thing I mean exactly so it's a it's it's a trend that just keeps keeps emerging but and I think it also creates those really fun pockets you know the the smartphone is the all-rounder immediate convenience device doesn't mean that I ever want to put away my mirrorless camera what is gonna afford me more focus better tools for content creation when I need them in same thing with audio you know I just did a review on a little audio player like most phones are good enough I'm listening to mp3s and podcasts like that's fine and then I fire up some flack files on a really nice pair of headphones you're like man this isn't this isn't good enough now but that's a very you know focused like a very singular use that I have to dedicate time for specifically for that I wanted to circle back and actually kind of address a few of these because there's like this four block paragraph from Facebook and and he starts off and mr. conductor starts off with this notion of comparing open enclosed ecosystems as how you can as how one can better improve and evolve something like a camera than the other and normally I feel like that conversation is usually weighted to the open ecosystem having more competition which creates you know better products faster as opposed to the closed ecosystem where you only have that singular perspective especially in his point you know because he's mentioned mentioning Samsung specifically and this is a quote ever wonder why a Samsung phone has a confused and bewildering array of photo options should I use the Samsung camera or the Android camera Samsung gallery or Google photos that to me starts to read a little like sour grapes from someone who didn't realize his social media strategy with Google+ more than its I think a fair accounting of what Samsung looks like in in the market when we're talking about photos and and social media well it's not even correct because the Android camera hasn't worked for other phones for three years no since around the time Vic left Google it's it's again it's kind of one of those things where yeah well maybe if you say that way it kind of sounds like oh it's confusing there's something confusing about it there's one camera app on a Samsung phone you open it the camera opens Samsung's interface choices are completely irrespective of anything Google does with the Android I mean Samsung have to do whatever they want and the idea that Samsung is he also goes on to talk about how well when when manufacturers want to add these new features and say to you know developers obi-wan feature well manufacturers have to wait for Google to build an API and it's also a lie it's not true Samsung can build their own api's and they do there's a Samsung there's tons of Samsung API is out there and now maybe for smaller manufacturers it's a bigger bigger hurdle to get over but it's never stopped Samsung well and didn't wasn't that addressed I feel like again I mean III mean to parrot your point there that the VIX seems that he's commenting on things as he understood them past tense when he was with Google but I really feel like two years ago we got the camera to API which even for smaller manufacturers addressed a lot of these concerns moving from phone to phone and having different interfaces and having different Android relying on that hardware in different ways now I mean like one of the only holy ounces like Sony doesn't support raw capture through the camera to API and I think that's it I think yeah yeah the API is service to all of the necessary controls that you would want over a smart phone camera all the ones that are meaningfully useful so yeah again it's you're right it's not really much of a point anymore it's Google has done a lot to address these things over time has taken time but I think they've definitely made a lot of headway especially in the imaging area if that's the one area is gonna really point to now here's one of the things that I want to try I want to try and sort of hash out from from Vic's perspective mr. gündüz perspective and this is one of the things that I've always had a problem with in when we try and broach these Android and iOS conversations and people will make claims about how much superior something like the iPhone camera is and I want to counter with something more along the lines of the the main credit I will give an iPhone camera is its familiarity and so like in when I was shooting on DSLRs when I was a hardcore Canon user I mean I'm a reasonably good photographer but if you were to just drop me in Nikon land I would struggle to achieve the same kind of output that I could organically get to with my familiarity of a Canon camera and I kind of feel like whenever people are making these comparisons a lot of them are confusing or conflating the familiarity of using one type of of salu as a poet and making that the quality argument and do we think that maybe a part of that might just be over the last couple years he's now become wholly familiar with iPhone cameras the iPhone camera hasn't significantly changed ever since the introduction of the idea that maybe he is just more capable of creating a good image on an iPhone not because the camera is better but because his familiarity with the tool is more reinforced I think that maybe part of it I think the other side of it for me is on you know kind of just general philosophy toward imaging I think among Android manufacturers is a little different than what Apple does I think Google has done a good better job of trying to you know reinforce the idea that maybe maybe imaging should produce more natural results even if HDR doesn't always look very natural you know let's try to at least make it look like something that could look natural whereas on the Samsung foam processing can be very aggressive you know I think that I think a lot of times for people who are used to maybe using a DSLR an Apple product may feel more familiar and more in more the product may feel more familiar and I think that feels cleaner it feels like well if you are going to edit it you know and you want to do this thing so the things that happen after the fact for people who are really into photography maybe for average people I don't think anybody cares you know they're going to apply their filters anyway regardless of what phone they're capturing it's it and that's whatever yeah I think there's definitely an argument be made for the the familiarity thing you know because you know Samsung's camera interface is if unless you can ignore all the visual clutter which arguably is what I've learned to do over the years I just ignore all the buttons like the most of them are totally useless they don't do anything that's helpful you know and there's all you just seen those where the shutter button is and that you can tap to focus you know that's as your big tools so I think there's probably that to an extent yeah the familiarity argument is is a decent one and one that I think Google is you know seems cognizant of and their phones that they're building in terms of just keeping things very simple but if you're going to again if Samsung becomes the counterpoint then you know it's it's it can be a different discussion but I think that in the grand scheme I don't know that most people care very much I mean the end of the day there's a shutter button you press the shutter button it captures an image as a viewfinder all camera phones are pretty much the same that way you know they all have that level of familiarity I mean like I think the the tiny vocal minority of people like me who do care about those things are finding the solutions that we need to feel like we're well serviced in the market it it's rarely like oh well I really wish I had this feature and there's just no solution for me to get that done it's I found it you know like maybe it's a huawei camera maybe it's an lg camera maybe it's a third-party camera app but I I you know I found it I cared enough to go out and do that homework I completely agree that I think most people general consumers I think have an expectation and this is also one of the threes ins why I want to give Vic the benefit of the doubt here is I think your net your point on Google products is kind of right spot-on perfect we're the Nexus and pixel camera app has definitely evolved over time but it's managed to maintain a really consistent experience for those times you might want to fire up something like a panorama or you might want to actively toggle HDR as opposed to just letting the camera make the decision for you whereas I think if you were to go back to like a galaxy s5 and track from the s5 to the s8 you would be in a completely different you know software experience completely different territory you know like if you updated if you made that kind of update s6 to si or s 5 to si you're learning a completely new language just for controlling some of those basics like the first time I handed my s8 to my wife she went to hit the shutter button and it zoomed because she lingered just a little bit and it flicked the shutter button and that's now a new function and that was like well I just missed this shot of my toddler because I didn't know that this was different that's that's a fair point and changing things like that I think is something that I think manufacturers should be pretty pretty careful that some haven't been I remember when Motorola changed something about zoom on their cameras probably like jeez it must been like three years ago it was very unintuitive the way they did it and they just like.he those sorts of things can't even throw those of us who use lots of phones off especially for a moment once you figure it out but you can understand how a regular consumer might immediately get frustrated and get kind of upset if those kinds of basic you know consistent interactions aren't unfollowed across different devices that said I think you know moving from Samsung Samsung phone yeah things change but I also feel like it's always been kind of just kind of had the interface that isn't very great if that's a specific example um they were gonna go with so right well I mean and I think it should be I mean they're the they're the top Android manufacturer I feel like if we're gonna be making the comparison it's probably the most likely we're gonna be talking Apple V Samsung but that's also I think why I think so many other manufacturers have missed out on opportunities to try and tell their own story if you can't do shot on huawei everyone's gonna go oh well you're just copy the iPhone but that doesn't mean that there's not some other conversation where you can try and reach out directly and tell that story to potential consumers yeah and I think that is an important thing to do i I think that God I really wish Google would do it because I think they have the product that has the most compelling story to tell not that I mean necessarily that the pixel always captures the very best images but they're trying hard with the whole you get unlimited google photos backup you know and it just works you know every time you're connected the Wi-Fi all your photos go up in space and you know if you run out of space then your phones like hey let me delete some photos you don't need these or your Google photos is like hey you've never looked at these pictures do you still want them you know and it'll be like you know all this kind of little stuff you know where the camera becomes something more than an image capturing system it becomes a way to manage you know your the memories you've created with that system and that's that's part of where I took umbrage with what Vic Gundotra said about computational photography where he brought up that you know Google had Vic Gundotra loved auto-awesome apparently I hate auto-awesome I think everything is teriyaki yes and all this ever produces is like this gaudy garbage that just looks so corny I mean some people like it so you know aesthetics and taste each their own but I always felt it was just stuff like I would never want to share on social media it always just looks so over rot and like like 80 Instagram filters have been applied to my image and turn them into a gif animation like I don't want that it's not that's not highly shareable that's just weird looks like it sounds like Google like deep learning algorithm or something right so he was you know that's what's the example I brought is like oh but Google's gotten away from computational photography and it's like well I mean if you want to look at it through that one very very very selective lens you've chosen maybe Google's you can't even say yes you look through that selective lens and it's still maybe yeah it's like no I mean I open Google photos every time the assistants like hey I made a stylized photo for you it's not like super awful like auto-awesome used to be but you know it's like you know sometimes they're really bad sometimes they're like okay I don't think I've ever used one but then it does other things like you know hey this person's in your pictures you know would you like to send them your pictures that they're in because maybe they want those like I recognize this person maybe we could identify who it is so in the future when you take a picture with them like you want to share that with them like in an album you know like shared family album or the shared albums two on Google photos are great and I think you know I mean that's not even speaking of like you know Google's HDR algorithm which i think is like almost magic on some level it's incredible stuff that it can accomplish when it works right and I just think that he kind of he looks away from the product that actually matters to the photo you know the the photography experience which is what happens after you take the picture that's what happened that's what's important for most people and that's where Google's focus is like I can go into Google photos and be like mmm you know I remember I took a picture of somebody's dog and like I wanted to show this picture with somebody and I can just type in dog and Google's like I've got all your pictures of dogs for like the last seven years here here they are and you probably type in like brown dog or black dog you don't understand what that means - it's pretty incredible what it can do like if I'm looking for you know a picture of like you know if I went to a restaurant and I had a steak if I type in steak it's gonna find a steak like pretty incredible to say that Google's moved away from computational approach to photos I think is just not right they're just not doing it in in that way that apparently he found very compelling right yeah and again it really I think this is why this outburst has resonated so much because I'm gonna keep using a phrase like sour grapes that Google didn't head down the path that he thought was gonna be more impressive or what he enjoyed about photography and sharing and social media and so it's obviously now what they're doing now is the inferior solution I think the only auto-awesome photo I've ever shared was one of those weird one-time Halloween images where it turns you into like a zombie and that was funny because it actually did a pretty good job of that and literally everything else has been a waste of my time but then I look back on the evolution of like cuz I was a big-time Picasa user way back in the day so I had all of my photos uploaded through this Picasa account which was tied to my gmail and how seamlessly that transition happened through Google+ into Google photos it's not like I've ever had to manage ten years of photography it's it was all handled in one direct evolution through these different products and like you were saying like if I want to search for a steak that I had back in 2008 I can find it and I can find it reasonably quickly I know what I'm looking for and I have a pretty high level of trust that Google's gonna gonna aid me in that mission that that to me has been a key part of this transition a key part of this change where it matters a little less to me whether or not the HDR perfectly captures the shadow detail in clouds in a bright beach pic but I know when I search for a sunset two years later that I'll probably be able to find that photo yeah and that's that to me is also such a huge source of you if we want to talk about closed ecosystem a little bit like that's a great ecosystem locking feature to you know note that well I don't want to take my stuff off Google photos because then it's gonna be really hard to find anything because I've never done any active organization of my photo library whatsoever I've just let the system do it it just knows if I want you know X or Y you would and that's actually another great thing about Google photos like I'm a huge light your room user for all of my stuff that I capture on my on my professional camera for work especially I've got a library of like twenty thousand images there that I manage and you know I've got some stuff stored it sorted some not and live rooms of items great for certain things and great for processing photos and just kind of general management that said for per I would never put most of my personal photography from my smart phones on Lightroom I don't I wouldn't get much out of it I get way more out of what Google photos tells me especially in terms of the search functions because honestly the amount the signal-to-noise ratio when I'm using my smart phone camera sucks compared to when I'm using my pro camera because I'm using my personally my dedicated camera I'm thinking a lot about the shot I'm taking you know I'm not taking five different shots of the same thing usually you know maybe maybe like five different shots from different angles and everything to kind of you know if I'm trying to you know do something that's like aesthetically pleasing but yeah you know if I'm on my smartphone it's possible I'll take like twelve images and like span of a minute and most of them are probably useless garbage and so Google photos is you know generally able to more sort through that whereas a system you have to actively manage like Lightroom well that's a bear you have to go through and do all that and figure out what you do and don't want you know so yeah I think I think Google is really I think honestly this is the most important part of smart personal photography right now is managing and just generally keeping track of what you capture because we capture so much now I think that's you know Google photos had they said they were getting what a billion images a month something like that some insane number people take a lot of pictures and so I think it's fair to say that figuring out what people want to do with them after their upload it is probably a more important question than like you said whether or not the HDR gets your shadows right or maybe there's with a lens flare in one of your pictures at night oh no you know that that is less important now I will fight you the pixel camera had terrible ring flare I just look at one of those photos I'm like everything was so perfect I had someone I had someone fight me on that it was like no I really like it cuz it's like it's like this authentic feeling of vintage photography where our glass wasn't so pristine like that's fine for you I guess I'm not gonna make that a selling point per phone is that it degrades your images in in a pleasant way I don't need to be in JJ Abrams mode oh man one of the very first I mean they actually have addressed this somewhat in software but I was doing a night shot and I was just catching these street lights where the lens flares were completely horizontal from edge to edge of the video like that's ridiculous that's yep that's impressive it's so ridiculous I did want to circle back to one other idea on the API get your thoughts on this too and Jules actually just reminded me of this in the chat could maybe some of this discussion be influenced by the sort of the historic notion that iOS has been better for third-party services like Instagram where the image processing the API is the Apple supplies developers and how they're utilized well first of all you're just supporting far fewer devices so I think it's easier to optimize there but there's just still been that historical notion that if you share a photo on an Android and you share a photo from an iPhone that the image processing is probably going to be better on Instagram from the iPhone yeah his Instagram switched over to the camera to API yet I thought that I don't know I don't believe they have okay I wasn't aware of that or not I I know that the poster child for this problem is snapchat if we're going to pick one where it's not just a problem it's like and it's like infuriating that they won't fix this you know where the image quality is so heavily degraded because you're using a viewfinder capture which is just like it's it's like barbaric this is how we did things like seven years ago on Android nobody wants to go back man you know figure this out I mean I get there's a lot of devices out there but maybe you could make it work for like the 10 most popular ones you know but anyway I agree that's definitely something that's always going to be a bit of an issue but again with things like the camera 2 API it's becoming less of one Google's Google has been pretty good about identifying this developer pain points in terms of adopting for multiple devices in some areas better than other others I think that for example rendering you know gaming for example can be really tough one to build a you know good set of profile metrics for a device because a lot of time its chipset and manufacturer tuning dependent but there's something like photographs you know well yeah we can build a camera API that gives you like the basic stuff you need for any you know modern camera it's there it's usable so I think that yeah you still have this problem but I think it's much less of a problem than it used to be I think again that's kind of a theme in Vic's post as well yeah three years ago you had you had a good point sure and I think today there's still a point there but I don't think it's nearly as strong or at least not something that would dissuade someone from buying oh yeah it's the rest of their lifestyle and exactly if you were that devoted to Instagram you just do you know what I think most people do anyway now is you don't capture from Instagram you just you know grab a photo from the gallery after because you're able to do that now and it doesn't show up any differently and even from an iPhone you know I don't know anyone I'm sure there are lots of people who shoot directly through the Instagram interface I just hang in my circle of friends you've gotten so used to whatever shortcut so someone mentioned in RPN weekly from the using the hash tag it was rena-chan double-click on the home or power button push virtual shutter button photo taken there's nothing confusing about that sort of addressing some of the concerns there and same thing from an iPhone you lift the phone and swipe the screen and you're in the camera there is no point in trying to capture through finding an app in a folder or yeah different homepage to try and capture a moment the immediacy of the smartphone is it's is it selling advantage over a traditional camera I find it dubious that this is really a big motivator for who's using snapchat over who's using Instagram yeah I agree with that and for example you know just like things like the the popularity of like double tap power to launch camera I mean it goes to show that yeah most people just interested in the immediacy and just you know getting the camera to work as quickly as possible yeah capturing through through apps I think is more kind of a it's a it's kind of a holdover I would say from you know III guess it might come from PC computing but it's it feels like something that's just very archaic comparatively you know I don't think people generally are using their phones that way but I mean and I think the one aspect is like cuz I don't know that we found a good consumer solution for editing so I think that's why we've seen the popularity of services like snapchat and Instagram stories where you sort of hold on the screen and it shoots little snippets of video and those just get sort of stacked and layered and and that's how you can create a small little video piece and when you do look at like even an iMovie the people who are likely to sit down and try and edit together a cohesive video or narrative from a phone is probably a lot lower and I just think that's probably one of the last I think holdouts for a custom camera interface and it's something that is inherently replicatable like Samsung could update their camera app tomorrow and they already include you know snapchat style animated filtering stuff you know the idea that you could just sort of tap pause tap pause tap pause tap pause and there's a two minute video doesn't seem to me like it would be something outside the reach of Samsung Developers know and I think it I think that Samsung is concerned with things like that is probably you know for as much you know flak they get for the kind of shotgun approach to features Samsung is probably trying to trying to show a little bit of self convulse control in terms of just adding things like we need this now Apple did it we must we must add it we're talking a very little bit of company self control when it yeah so I think it's yeah I think that you know and I think Google is actually probably the if we want to look at the can we do it as the question and Google were you know every time I talk to people who work on the Android team the process of adding anything to the OS anything that is user facing is true endless agony any time any button any new toggle anything that's exposed to the user that gives them a new option or a new button anywhere it there it has to go through this tremendous amount of skepticism where nobody thinks that anything should be added basically because you're just going to complicate things for the end-user right so I think that philosophy is what is what is driven Google and I think that you know it probably drives certain other manufacturers to Samsung obviously to a lesser degree but but I think that's you know I think that's I think that's also something worth bringing up in terms of just kind of general OS philosophy and it's something that interestingly from me for Apple I feel like Apple has cared less about recently been more willing to throw features at the OS and see what gets taken up for example 3d touch and they're removing certain 3d touch functionality and iOS 11 right I think there was the yeah they're kind of moving the goal posts on that and I think in a way that again it's Apple Apple built this reputation for never beta testing their their general consumers but 3d touches felt like to me like this has been a moving target what is it that we expect from the additional functionality of this gesture the gestures are always really tricky I mean like I think BlackBerry OS had a hard time entering the conversation with so much gesture dependent functionality and I don't think Apple has a good answer for that especially conveyance because there is no conveyance on what is a gesture a 3d force press and what's to sort of a normal long press or what can you activate through this process it's um it's very you know it's silent to the consumer so you're gonna use your iPhone the same way you've used every other iPhone and occasionally you might accidentally peek or pop on something and that really wasn't a core new way for you to interact with your phone yeah so I think that yeah some of the kind of traditional conceptions around what Apple does right and what you know Samsung Android etc do wrong not always you know holding up anymore and in kind of the modern era necessarily yeah these two are kind of meeting in the middle as their own fiercest competitors like well you've got that picture we can do that we got a great little tweet here from Brandon Hardy using the p-n weekly hashtag it's not about the photos it's the memories nice slogan from our that's that's good Robi eleven for this shot on pixel program so he just crafted a whole brand campaign for Google using your quote there and I just thought you'd get a kick out of that that is that's really good I like it somebody should somebody should tell Google well so I mean I guess like the the the last thing that we need to unpack is um what camera what what phone camera do you like because now then we can call you the bright kind of shell for the company that you obviously prefer and are getting paid for to use yeah of course oh I love I just love the pixels camera I mean I look at some of the pictures that I've gotten on that camera I'm just like yeah okay I every time I want to throw my pixel I'm just like okay but the camera is really good and it's really fast and I just keep coming back to those two things and for the camera I think it comes down to you know the processing to me is is somebody who you know uses a dedicated camera sometimes even for you know kind of leisure activities like the processing is not so aggressive the HDR is not always realistic especially in low light but I feel like the end product I get is usually more usable and especially if you're you know you want to frame things you know the thing about using a single lens smartphone cameras like well you've got one vantage point and so if you want to crop and work with your images a little bit you know some cameras I won't name names LG don't really give you much room in terms of you know like you know taking photos apart and cutting them down a little bit beyond making them square so I I like that about the pixel I've always been able to you know craft my photos with the pixel a little bit more and I just think that the the fast capture experience is unbeatable nobody is even close i I think that in terms of by the time you double tap the power button and you hit the capture button it is easily the fastest smartphone imaging experience out there and that that's also huge to me yeah it was really startling in one year to go from double tapping the home button on the s7 and be like wow this is this is pretty snappy today at the end of the year picking up a pixel and going wow wow this is really scary it is you can go straight from double tapping to burst capture and it doesn't even skip a beat it's like witchcraft going on there so yeah I love the pixels camera I love that I get the original quality uploads on google photos I think that's a for me as somebody where the original quality probably doesn't really matter but the photo person and me is like I'd like that please so it's it's an upsell for me definitely yeah like I'm not I'm not gonna be the guy who archives everything and this is like been one of the the weird transitionary phases like I still use onedrive as a backup because we pay for office we have to have Microsoft Office we might as well use onedrive is sort of a secondary cloud and the number of times I've had to go back in to try and get something out of onedrive have been just incredibly painful the after having used google photos and so while I'm not gonna save every photo the photos that I do save I want to have some kind of archive you know like archival quality not just I can kind of share it and it still looks pretty good like I might want to recruit or pull someone's face out of it or you know make it black and white and put it in a picture frame and I can actually print phone camera photos now and they look really good to have that access to like the pixel made a really compelling argument for that sort of general consumer philosophy yeah definitely I think especially with the edits you know everything happens in the cloud so everything's reversible the originals always there no matter what you know and it's it's it's generally very smart about trying stuff like when you share images from you know Google photos it strips out location data because it knows you probably don't want that in there but it preserves in the original in case you know like you want to search for your photos by where they were taken you know it's just kind of I think that they've done such a good job with that and it makes the imaging experience so much more seamless I think that if Google could tell kind of a product story about a camera it would have to send her around photos more than the camera itself and yeah I think that's just such a such a big part of why I like the pixel in particular I think it's the best camera for using Google photos and Google photos is the best image management image management it makes it sound so cold and clinical the best personal best personal like you know media creation or you know media go back go back to your slogan that's gonna be part of the ad campaign it's its memories yes managing it memories yes yeah and now yeah I know what you're talking about exactly so yeah that's that's definitely a big part of part of the reason I I really like it so yeah right on I mean you know III think people who have watched this know that I'm kind of a hallway and LG fanboy for photos and for video but I have a lot of love for the I guess I want to call it like the pixel process or the pixel ecosystem or whatever we want to say I can't get over some of those lens flares but yeah that they've created I mean and again why I'm really anxious to see what we what we get for the pixel to you know cuz I don't think it takes much we're talking some very minor adjustments for that to go from being a very highly recommended camera it's probably one of the best consumer experiences on the market I think so too yeah there there are some changes they need to make for sure optical video stabilization would be a good one I feel like they're they're creepy Terminator II is is like yeah impressive but like you know maybe if we could do a little bit of hybrid approach so it doesn't look quite like somebody's like you know panning on like a machine it has that kind of creepy feel to it and the video quality at night on the so it's very dodgy that's something I also feel like they really missed the mark on I think that may come down to you know choice of sensor and processing techniques but yeah well I actually I think it's just a notion of fighting physics at that point you know you've got such a small sensor and you don't have to use the full frame length you know so you're shooting 30 frames per second each frame is gonna be about a thirtieth of a second that introduces a lot of blur in low light and you can't really crop stitch and reformulate blurred video so you see that sort of ghosting blur ghosting even like the noise the noise that that phone can produce it the high it low light is pretty it's pretty ugly even it is even pretty link rest yeah I definitely definitely you know think that's one of the shortcomings and yeah hopefully they do that and I'm you know I'm guessing based on kind of the the two leaks renders we've seen now both when we publish and the one that on leaks published I'm guessing that the lenses design that way for a very specific reason you know maybe maybe giving themselves some more leeway there for for optics in terms of how the Sun and various light sources are going to play with the the camera lens now I've been a big fan of a lot of these dual camera experiments but I love the notion of Google really trying to nail down and focus on refining what was already a very good experience I didn't have the same sense from Samsung this year where I felt like the essay was sort of a lateral move from the i7 just having you have fun features to see to see Google like again like they're not gonna make the move to more sensors or a larger sensor or some other you know gimmick until they've got the core perfect and that's exactly what I want to see from a manufacturer I was even why I was a little disappointed in the iPhone dual shooter because again they released hardware that didn't have all of the software for it at launch and then what we've gotten is fun it's good but I don't think it really addressed like core photography use you use the zoom sensor and your image degrades like it's not as nice of an image as the main sensor and those kinds of things like Betts feel so uncharacteristic of Apple to have that kind of a disparity on one product you know wasn't like a generational change it's like on one product your photos look different moving from sensor dispenser yeah that is that is definitely something that I've heard about and yeah I think that's maybe part of the hesitancy of some manufacturers go camera obviously we're gonna see Samsung do that with an o date I'm curious to see what they manage with that Samsung having you know significant buying power and also their own image sensor production capabilities so they they are definitely the one to watch for that I feel like you know what we seen Motorola now do and what which was copying with Huawei did with the monochrome sensor acting is basically a sharpening check in contrast check against a color sensor I think that's interesting I don't think that you need a dual cameras story around that like the idea that like oh well we've got one camera that's black and white it's different so like now you don't need like that doesn't that doesn't you know I don't get anything out of that second camera like I get that it's there and yeah maybe feel like you're super in the black-and-white photography like yeah okay cool but I think that the the approach is definitely having either a very wide angle and then a you know more standard camera or having a standard camera and something that shoots more portrait at a longer longer zoom so right I I think that Samsung I think what we've seen is that Samsung is going to go with the long long zoom on their secondary camera I think it's pretty likely that again they're facing Apple that's probably the biggest competitor in their sights and reaching parity means having similar features but doing it one better so instead of a 2x zoom it's going to be a 3x zoom yeah I'm curious to see what Apple does to refine the two camera experiences here or if they really do anything to refine it that's gonna be a big question and I think that if if we do see really impressive results from Samsung and Apple around the the secondary camera systems especially in terms of improvement in image quality and maybe of optics that could leave kind of an open question for Google oh why didn't you push harder to do this but you know we'll see a lot of big what-ifs still yeah and this is sort of the last little exciting period of downtime we'll get before we're just swamped with comparisons and stuff so it's been fun speculation um David I really want to thank you for jumping in on this I Jules uh reached out to you I like I could have kissed him on the face because you were exactly the kind of person that I wanted to have this conversation with about Vicks comments and specifically and then just sort of the current state of Android photography in general so again thank you for for jumping on this podcast oh yeah thanks for having me on had a great time absolutely all right well um I think we can put a pin in this show again I we kept you a little longer to David so I'm just gonna go through our little wrap-up spiel here and and put a bow on it ladies and gentlemen folks another episode of the PocketNow weekly has come and gone this show is over but the conversation continues on Twitter where David is oh no I lost my note Rd Oh God my Twitter handle is a dumpster fire it is are tr0 people just look up twitter david Redick just go on Twitter I search for David running I'm the only results it's okay yeah my twitter handle is bad I should feel bad about it sorry and I had it I had it written in my other show notes and then I didn't move that over Jules is at point jules and I'm humbly at some gadget guy pocket now he's around the rep is around the web on Twitter Instagram Facebook Google+ YouTube and our home site pocketnow.com and now PocketNow in Spanish es pocketnow.com shows like this 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