Gadgetory

so every once in a while dieter bohn just disappears without a trace we don't know where he is we don't know where he's going we don't know what he's doing we can only hope he's okay that doesn't mean we don't have a show for you stay tuned is coming up next hey welcome to the Virgin Mobile show i am chris sigler and this are this show is presented by the samsung galaxy note you may notice that I'm a little rusty here Peter usually does this I want to apologize for the flow of this show which is not going to be our normal buttery smooth stuff but I'm joined as always by vlad savov Vlad hello and we also have a very special guest to replace theatre because it wouldn't be appropriate for us to have anything less than a troika we have ross miller who is joining us from our new york studio ross thanks so much for being here i'm proud to be here une hookah for the troika and other foreign words the what wait huneke what what is one-third of a troika anyway it's a new note guy he's got a point oka okay question my logic it's flawless clearly yeah no I'm I can't argue with your logic if if Rosalie already made read and from casting I promised I'd ruin everything as fast as possible uoka would be too okay and you know go would be one more minooka quad Roca we can keep going but we won't instead we'll talk about nokia so i think is the first big piece of news of the week of course stephen elop laid off 10,000 people or is in the process of laying off 10,000 people which is just terrible for this company that what percentage of of their workforce is that why do you know uh off the top of my head no no i don't but it's a thorough chunk but it looks a lot i'm not i mean this is terrible for the people themselves because they lost their jobs you know doesn't need explaining while as a bad thing but for Nucky itself it was pretty much necessary like a lot of people still feel that nokia has more cutting to do it's such a massive massive company it's essentially built out and designed to be a leader in selling mobile phones and that's not where Nokia is today so now it's kind of cutting itself down to its market share reading where exactly are the cuts being made mostly there's some in canada right canada they're shutting down their factory in finland one of their factories in finland yeah and i think one in somewhere else in europe if i'm not mistaken of course we could all just look at the post were not let's let's pull up our post and yeah I think the big the big thing that people were burns up about was shutting down the Finnish factory I saw actually quite a few people in Twitter citing the video from nokia world 2011 where Stephen Elop was so proudly showing the Lumia 800 and how it's being produced and how much care is taken about it and how much how much of it is finish built-in made and all of that stuff you know he's really talking up the whole finish heritage and and then now as gone but most part you know this has this finish factory is where they've historically built most or all of their high-end smartphones is that right yeah yeah and then they shuttin it down um you know so I mean one thing a Stephen Elop said in the subsequent conference call it had was that nokia is still finished to the core and nokia will remain finish forever whatever but it does kind of feel like all the words because the fact of the matter is nakia is production and manufacturing are not no longer in finland like every part of it is moving over to China right so all that naki really has left now is its design jobs which is to has and that is still happening in Finland for the most part from what I know but it's still you know it isn't the company that you used to be as much as Stephen Elop would like to paint it as that finish you know source of finnish national pride but i mean they've moved they moved a lot of their engineering resources to sunnyvale to they have that big new office on the west coast right in the heart of Silicon Valley so yeah it's um you know I I feel like I'm torn because on the one hand I feel like Stephen Elop is doing some of the things that were set up like he had no way to avoid some of these things they were set by the time he got to the company all these wheels were in motion and so some of these cuts he had to make but still that's just a terrible number of people to be let go and it's not the kind of news that you want to convey both your consumers but your customers and to investors when you're trying to make this big windows phone push we're expecting some big windows phone news later this week which we'll get to later in the show actually but yeah this is a this is not good at no and the other thing is that with these 10,000 jobs in toto since elope is taken over the CEO position he has got over 40,000 now um which i think tomorrow Wow Thomas ricca from our team put it really well in saying that yes Stephen Elop is jumping off the burning platform but he's leaving 4,000 people on it ya know so yes he's a leader yes he's a captain but he's doing the exact opposite thing of what the Honorable captain is supposed to be doing well is it i mean if those 40,000 people cut actually save the ship or save the burning flat form as it were it may be a horrible decision to make but it may be the necessary one to save everyone else I guess 40,000 yeah but do we know how big the company is as a whole even before that let's get some numbers let's uh let's find some total employee numbers here hey chris is gonna wikipedia that for us right now he's good he's gonna come back like two billion people if I could reach through this skype conversation and strangle you right now I would uh no okay so according 2 i'm not using wikipedia i'm using google crying to google nokia had 120 4292 employees as of mar 31st 2009 so if they've cut 40,000 employees and what the last year and a half two years yeah I'm thing like that yeah yeah so simple math would suggest that they have roughly 80,000 employees remaining which is still a huge huge company you know I was working on that that palm piece for a long time and you know that they did everything that they did from you know 2007-2008 through the HP acquisition was done on under 2,000 employees I think at all times and at the end I mean they had just a few hundred so when you write when you put that in perspective it's like what are these people doing umm so so it is easy to see why and how Nokia could still survive on a much lower employee count especially since they're they're outsourcing so much of their their smartphone platform to Microsoft but still that's and of course symbian is me we talked about this last week's I mean is being run out of Accenture now so yeah I mean I can totally see what why it would make sense for those employees to go but still that's just a sit I'd said thing to hear and no key stock to cook took a beating I think glad you brought it up last week they were down what twenty percent or something I'd forgive reach 20 buddy go above ten percent it was really dying news but actually actually to Ross this point I think that that is the realist perspective the fact that Nokia was already huge and you do have to cut it and that is basically only chance to survive because Stephen Elop and the new executives they has put in charge that's the other thing I think he's new chief something officer is a lawyer and he replaced quite a quite a few the senior people as well so he's done a bit of reshuffling there as much as they want to put a happy spin on things nokia's cash reserves are running out you know nokia is losing money every quarter and is forecasting is going to keep losing money every quarter so things aren't going to just magically improve while you're still employing such a massive workforce so the things that he's cutting our first of all the people that's the biggest human impact but he's also cutting back a lot of research projects he has said that nokia also prioritized some markets specifically the u.s. the UK Western Europe in China because China is big growth market Western Europe and the USA is where you make your money and also the speculation is Stephen Elop hasn't conserved with speculation is that the multi me OS which was supposed to be some sort of middle ground between the Asha phones s40 and Windows Phone has also been shelled and now it's basically what about Windows Phone so what if he if he had if Stephen Elop had not already put all of his eggs in the Windows Phone basket he certainly has now it because shelved he shelved every conceivable alternative harmattan is long since if not dead and gone and certainly in a state of the state of stasis and melt unless there's some crazy skunk works project going on in espoo but um Mel Tammy was was another big project for them that yeah I mean they could have potentially fallen back on that head Windows Phone fallen apart and if they freeze that than the other they're just they're just going full bore on on Microsoft and I still think we could we talk about this literally every week I'm still bullish on Windows Phone in some a foolishly optimistic way and we'll see what they have to to unveil this week I want them to succeed I want them to be competitive I desperately want a meaningful third horse in this race but but yet it's not looking very good right now there's more nokia news too though right because they sold virtue to inequity thank you to you yeah big news you're in the market action so doubutsu phone yeah so here's the really good news here's the great news about them selling virtue is that it probably means that they won't be stuck making as 40 and symbian devices now because every single device in the vertu lineup is as 40 or symbian which you know I'm sorry if I'm if I'm a multi-millionaire and I have 20 or 30 thousand dollars to blow on a phone I don't want to send me in device with all due respect to to the good people working on symbian and who have worked seven the money and I don't want to symbian advice anyway come on what I do want a gold-plated windows own though yeah 24 oh no not gold plated rock oh sorry sorry cellco yeah a little rust rust is not a pro sorry but i will say low known fact about this deal it was a about 249 million dollars which in fact was paid in their two phones about 10 of them seal the deal yes that sounds about right uh yeah that's the filing yeah what's there it's fact so my question is uh you know what without having the the umbrella of a company like Nokia I wonder where virtues going to get its guts you know we've seen a mode labs which is a french company succeed making devices for companies like tag heuer and i think they did a Christian dwyer phone year or two ago or do or I don't know how you pronounce it but anyway they've made a few fashion phones and years multi-thousand dollar fashion phones and they seem to be doing okay so maybe vertu can survive doing that kind of work but you know white label stuff but but they're they're going to have to pick their guts very carefully from here on out I can't imagine that they want to stand symbian maybe they'll just become a Windows Phone house I don't know but then they they don't have as many opportunities to differentiate on the UI I don't know why we're spending this this long talking about a phone Brandon know there is a reason there is a reason because this is actually building us up into one of the most amazing segways ever because you just said all of the virtue phones opportune I have been severe s40 but actually we saw a supposed league which is showing a 64 gigabyte virtue with Windows Phone on it Anna is interesting we don't know this answer pretty legitimate and we don't know this necessarily something that's going to be going to market but it is interesting because windows phone hasn't had any 64 gigabyte devices yet so that's one thing the other thing is that this new integration for skydrive storage which is showing off by screenshots I've seen which is another thing all of which is pointing towards this when the phone summit which is coming up tomorrow how's that for sale yeah I like that which is it's it's very good segue but before we finish with Nokia okay I'm sorry haha your segways glad I apologize it was beautiful what a heck I wonder oh you were you had this all set up you had a plan you want take a bone I love the Segway if you if you had a plan to get back to nokia i'll allow this egg way all right okay okay let's see what so let's yeah let's talk about the Windows Phone summit um we're expecting Windows Phone 8 News you know it's it's about that time where they need to move past mango and tango and talk about Apollo and and there are a few rumors floating around right we're we we saw what was about a week ago we saw some skype integration shots that were leaked from somewhere we've heard rumors over the past couple months in fact we had a very credible source come directly to us and say that current devices will not be upgradeable to Windows Phone 8 which is the biggest slap in the face in the history of the mobile industry and I went on a Twitter tear when that when that story broke in fact you want to go back far enough in my timeline you can dig that up and enjoy oh we talked about Mia the story from a last April or this past April other like that sounds about right that's about as bad as I'm saying and if I recall like the didn't issue denial the issue this kind of we're working on it we're trying to figure it out of the issued some kind of niall and realize that wasn't accurate can someone catch me up on this one so that the latest we have on this story that I'm aware unless unless fled you want to crack me but I but we had a source come directly to us and a credible source and say and it that's all we can say credible source come to us and say that current devices will not be upgradeable to Apollo but that is I believe all we know official well it's not official but that's that's all we know that we can say it's probably correct everything else kind of speculation and leaks at this point but we're we're pretty we're pretty confident about this upgradeability thing what that means for people who have bought devices like the titan to the Lumia 900 even the Lumia 800 it is unclear hopefully we'll get some clarity on that this week in fact Microsoft is going to have to give some clarity on that because that's going to be one of the foremost question questions in people's minds it's not just about it III don't want to get on my my soapbox for too long here but it's not just about servicing the customers who bought the Lumia 900 and the Titan tune devices like that that have come out in the past few months it's about preserving your credibility as a platform supplier that wants to that wants to create phones that will not be obsolete adore will not give off the air of obsolescence within a few months of their release and that's really important you know Apple has been so good about that you look at what I os6 even the 3gs is upgradable right and that's the benchmark that companies from every OEM for both windows phone and Android need to be shooting for they need to be looking at Apple and saying that's what we need to accomplish and you know it's it's upsetting because I mean for example the Nokia Lumia 900 I may forgive the focus series for not getting windows phone upgrades I want to know why exactly on a technical level that Lumia 900 which by the way is the end of the smartphone beta test is now itself I beta model that can't get Apollo exactly that's a great so much credit yeah they've lost so much credibility or they will if that happens so we'll see I mean we're expecting this is developer focused event this week which i think is you know microsoft has done that for a long time right going back to like mix in 2010 when they first issued a lot of guidance on how developers should attack windows phone 7 and it makes a lot of sense because they need to get developers on the same page so that by the time devices hit the market by the time the upgrades if upgrades exist hit the market will have products in the pipeline new software in the pipeline so but we're expecting news you know we can we can obviously we have a long history from events like WWDC and blackberry jam and all these these kinds of events of extrapolating consumer-focused news from the developer events and i'm sure that's gonna be the case this week as well yeah she's going to be a big events as well yeah it's two days right I think well I'm not sure about the overall event but just the presentation looking at because theta is going to cover that detail Brown going to cover that for our team and from what I understand like the whole presentation to journalists and the whole or at least the initial stuff presumably including any potential hands-on opportunities is going to wrap up in the afternoon whereas it kicks off at nine a.m. pacific time yeah i'm kinda imagine microsoft is gonna go through a whole heap of things is i mean not you know it exactly sacrus it's time for windows phone 8 to be revealed at least two developers is it's time for us to see what's going to underpin all of these upgrades i also feel like if it's enough to blow us away enough to you know capture attention in people's imaginations maybe we'll be more forgiving about the fact that the upgrade isn't coming to lumia 900 will hate it more because we would like to have it on lumia 900 but if we see a big enough technical gap exactly as ross was asking if we see a big enough technological leap between 7 and Windows Phone 8 then maybe we can find it more forgivable and say okay you could have made these new changes without cutting compatibility with the old stuff and and there's still the possibility that Microsoft kind of the way that Samsung has been doing with the android phones they did an upgrade 204 point my kind of back pour some of the windows phone 8 features to the windows phone 7 devices yeah that's such a hack though I mean Elia know what we fight for from our perspective from up from a geeks perspective we might forgive them if the technological gap is large enough but that doesn't account for the consumer who you know all they know is that they've been left behind literally you know two or three or four months after they bought their device I mean Louie 900 isn't going off shelves anytime soon right it's probably gonna be sold right up until the release of Windows Phone 8 if not beyond so uh you know that that's a huge slap in the face if two weeks before Windows Phone 8 is released and the first devices come to market you buy a Lumia 900 and you're just you're you're left behind it really really bothers me and it's I I don't know and it doesn't sound sincere as well because yeah I mean Ross's point is great the Lumia 900 was supposed to be the end of the smartphone beta test why don't we say beta I mean this i'ma go to write but what I was saying better this shows like every single show ago this time abita no this time I'm in tune because Ross said the tone thank you for us thank you I'm gonna I'm gonna mess with your mind Vlad it and if you start out by saying beta I'm gonna say Vlad is not beta its pita and if you say bead I'm gonna say bled it's not beat its beta you already do show Chris you're already doing it don't act like you're just gonna stop now but yeah I mean russells point exactly ah the thing if you is Microsoft and it is not here tell people this is a big leap whatever you thought about as a smartphone before forget about it this is the new smartphone and the truth then you're making a statement affect people and you need to back that up whereas if you then go back and then call it six months later let's say it takes Microsoft a while to get Windows Phone 8 to market if you then turn around and say no actually this is so much better this is the new smartphone then you know people do those memories aren't that short you know and they won't feel like we can trust you anymore then they will be like well actually you just give me a marketing Shapiro and a marketing message where's the thing with who is as exact as as much exaggerations Apple might use with all of this revolutionary and resolution airy which is like the worst mix of words I've ever heard Apple kind of delivers on its promises okay not on magical revolutionary but it it kind of treads the fine line the fine balance between promising a lot and then delivering on that whereas if user is going to promise every six months this is the next real smartphone and then just upgrade away from it and then try and sell people holding you other one then it doesn't work right right and i'm going to i'm just going to throw caution to the wind and say you know when they did the mango upgrade they actually as long as it took it did get to most of the phones out there granted there were not a lot of windows phones at the time but microsoft took a lot of effort doing so so until we hear otherwise i'm going to have hope at least one phone out there in the market will get an upgrade probably the lumia series because nokia more than anyone probably knows what's up with Apollo all right great a whole other mess true because one of these phones expect so similarly that if you upgrade one then it's like wait wait why isn't mine upgraded also the questions without you cooperated that's but yeah that's been going on for three years in the Android ecosystem though like there's no rhyme or reason to what phones get upgraded when and which ones are left behind I mean I think the consumers it you know especially people that vet Android devices in the past and are upgrading to Windows Phone like they they're just used to that nonsense as terrible as it as it is and then we're also in the developer summit I mean app developers have to now develop for Apollo but if you develop for Apollo and it doesn't work with all the other phones what the mark what market do they care about are they not going to use the new features are they just going to go for universal p or they're just gonna say well there's not a lot of Windows Phone out there excuse me Windows Phone users out there anyway i can just ignore the ones are currently there and focus on the new market and what's special about that and we're already at fragmentation in a very young platform right it's a very sore point yeah yeah and and the other thing is microsoft even how far we move from the introduction windows phone 7 way about 18 months two years two years here thereabouts well I mean sure our some receive me two years and three months something like that vamsi introduced talent of 2010 nose at mwc is keep guessing I'm going to use the power of the Google's exile babies won't be back okay yeah okay well yeah no no that's fair enough i mean i was actually thinking when it was actually introduced to market but you're right Chris it's a it's actually introduction to developers was my be c 2010 right that's correct um so actually microsoft finds itself over two years removed from that and as ross says still kind of pitching to developers the idea of a potential market because a polo is the one that potentially is going to expand the market and get some real market share in a real foothold which isn't you know the best assessment of what's happened over the past few months well so Stephen Elop one of the things that he said in his uh in his really dark address last week is that they are receiving ongoing support I came over the exact verbiage that he used but it was something to the effect of we're receiving ongoing support from Microsoft which comes soon as a closer no 250 million no is something he can't be $250,000 a quarter is it if it is a quarter million dollars a quarter nokia is getting ripped off um yeah I think I think 200,000 that is a quote to my not cover Steven he loves salary probably does right you're right um see it's a substantial payment yes it's 250 million I'm sorry yeah and and so Microsoft by all accounts is firmly I mean as it was a day one they appear firmly committed to brute forcing their way into the market which is the only way that they're realistically going to be able to do it right they can't they're not going to be able to do it just by saying hey check out this cool because they haven't been able to so far and webos is a prime example of why that doesn't work you know the only way you can do it is is with a lot of money and a lot of patience and so so I still you know I hate to keep driving this point home but I'm very bullish on the fact that I believe that Microsoft is eventually going to be able to buy its way into a very firmly footed third place whether nokia is a part of that whether they remain an independent company one that does finally happen I don't know but but I do think that's probably going to happen and let me also raise another point admit to see this is in service of my next segue but you know whatever i'm working the segways today i'm probably big issues and one of the big issues of Windows Phone because of the fact that it's a relatively standardized on specs and relatively standardized mean he's totally standardized so Hugh's experience really was how can manufacturers differentiate themselves and I mean I wondered about the same thing um but what I saw from Microsoft yesterday when it introduced is new surface tablets was actually will hang on this is a Windows 8 tablet that differentiates itself really well for more the others and it's done just with Hardware just with hardware and just with pretty good design so bring it back to Windows Phone I think there is definitely still room an opportunity for all of Microsoft's hardware partners to do something that really sticks out and stands out from others they just need to as you say Chris invest a lot you know go with some actual investment of resources and money and time and plow those things in because what I saw with the the windows RT and Windows 8 tablets for Mike's but was a great deal of that and something that really does stand out but then II also kind of has implications for that's Microsoft want to do the same thing with phones produce its own hardware I mean everyone spec relating the virus of might as well buy Nokia now because it's kind of growing to be cheaper than skype at this point mhm um but let's talk about surface talk about surface because we said its tablets but it's so damn interesting that we should address it and get stuck into it right and it also is a nice I'm gonna have my own segue here I'm gonna backtrack and give this a shot because I as excited as I am for the windows phone developer conference that's a that's an event that Microsoft actually spent a few days planning whereas the surprise event was kind of out of nowhere and they came in kicking I mean this is a surprise surprisingly good announcement it was really weird the way this was all set up the fact that um we didn't know that the members of the press did not know until literally hours before the event even where it was in LA but like journalists were just told to come to LA and chill and await further instructions so the common belief was that and Ross you you may have been deposit that someone posited this it was that uh that you know knowing the location of the event would give away the the the subject of the event and that turned out not to be the case right like milk studios had nothing to do with with the surface so I you know I think that this event was very hastily planned that they pulled it they pulled off a relatively smooth event all things considered but there were a few very important thing missing from yesterday's announcement right we don't know critical things like battery life and much more important more importantly available in price yeah it you know until we know that the surface at least in Windows RT forum is going to be no more than an iPad and preferably less it is vapor where I don't throw around that term loosely but quite frankly it is a completely irrelevant product until we have those details and they do need to at least match the iPad in price one of the things that killed the touchpad was the fact that they sought to go head-to-head with the iPad which was a non-starter HP needed to subsidize that device to by its way into the tablet market they failed to do that until it's too late me that's about my gran hours that's Microsoft's problem in actually entering the hardware competition because all of Microsoft's fans all of the analysts will say exactly what you just said you either price it on par with the iPad or much more preferably you price it below the iPad because one is incumbent and leading the market and the other one is non-existent in them but if Microsoft does if Microsoft just cuts its profit margin on the surface tablets to zero or close to zero word Microsoft's hardware partners end up because as a hundred partner first of all you haven't invent invested as much in designing your tablet and I know they haven't because not too many companies are planning on coming out with some special magical magnesium cases and gorilla glass 2 screens and all of that fancy stuff and the integrated king stand just I mean the whole surface package like in Hardware terms that isn't the PlayBook or the kindle fire it's not just a black show it has a lot of really nice design touches in it and then right if Microsoft actually competes with the iPad on price it's screwing in some hardware makers so how do you reconcile the two how do you beat Apple without beating yone OEMs I don't think I think that Microsoft is finally at the point I think that they're getting fed up at the executive level with the products that they're there chief OEMs have produced complete pieces of garbage like the HP Slate that have done that have not served Microsoft well in any way whatsoever and if Microsoft can't rely on its OEMs to produce competitive products what is stopping them in the long term from becoming a completely vertically integrated manufacturer what is preventing them from going the Apple route and completely blowing companies like HP and asus and acer right out of the water nothing I mean that is that is a possibility it just that would be a really major a change and what word it would leave where does that leave samsung and Acer and all them stuck with Google who themselves I've always you know kind of play favorites with certain devices with her Nexus series was supposed to be setting the tone yeah but what if Google does the same thing where's that leave everyone else in terms of platforms to use yeah it doesn't hear inscrutably right it's this weird interplay of hardware and software that historically i mean you know going back 25 30 years microsoft has sort of been the this constant that has allowed the entire pc industry to throw I've and it's getting to point where Apple is eating everybody's launched so hard that I think that it might be time for Microsoft to consider a radically different approach we know for a fact that they have design chops right look at Metro which is still very very attractive in a rate of UX and the surface is proof positive that they can produce I mean you know I don't want to oversell it we need to review it we need to see if the hardware really lives up to the hype but from the initial impressions it we have every reason to believe that they have the design shops and the manufacturing chops through their relationships with with ODMs to to produce world-class hardware and we've I see I iPad matching hard work yeah everything there from the arc mouse which I still think is one of the best mice you can get to even the Xbox itself especially the slim which is a gorgeous piece of industrial design I mean I something we can do yeah thank you know II USM now Ross name the xbox is a good example because think about the first well the first gen original xbox which was just a PC in a plastic show it's true but I also think about the first gen xbox 360 which had all of the overheating issues and other you know reliability issues well no yes what I mean Vesta fide slim for a reason i will give you that the xbox 360 and the original xbox are pieces of garbage and of course there's the kin here's the kid yeah well I probably blame that on sharp can't you you could just lay down on the shelf although it was Microsoft design so yeah Microsoft design they put a lot behind it they should know better and okay look the kin one remains to this day an innovative piece of hardware the actual hardware itself was never the problem it was the the go-to-market strategy it was the fact that Verizon screwed them on on plan pricing there were a lot of strategic missteps they're both on Microsoft's part and on their partners parts but it was not the fault of the hardware i don't think the kintu was was pretty forgettable but the kin one was pretty cool but but one point one other point I want to make about the surface is that that Microsoft I believe only needs to match or preferably beat iPad pricing with the windows RT model I think with the pro they have a little bit more breathing room to say look this is this is not just a tablet it's also the best PC you can buy and we're going to price it like a premium PSA fair enough yeah I mean that's what this will Microsoft have said what I was just going to add to the Kin commentary is that Microsoft completely missed out on a big opportunity by not branding and designing the king one to look like an accessory out of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I seriously if they did that I would have bought one I wouldn't have used it but every time I would see it it will make you smile and you know think about a happier world but yeah let's actually get back to that um about the availability point we can actually extrapolate quite a bit about the availability of the surface tablets because microsoft said that the RT the arm-based surface tablet will be available at general availability of Windows 8 which is expected around september-october and the inter based windows 8 pro version of the tablet should be available three months after that so cheers inside for Christmas so I mean those are the release dates that we can speculate on the pricing that Steven Sinofsky said was that the ARM version will be competitive with other arm based tablets which to me basically said we're going to match the ipad in price that's my interpretation of the sandusky language and the inter one will be competitive with books which basically says like 79 98 99 just some crazy prices for a tablet I think I think that they need to beat with the windows RT model I think that they need to beat the ipad by fifty dollars on account of the display alone yeah yeah i mean the ipad display we kind of forget how crazy that display is and let's not forget that the physical mental holidays grant it is competing with a 500 our new ipad a few months after holidays it's competing with a four-hundred-dollar or three hundred dollar new ipad with retina display as they go down a price as the new ones come out it's a very good point so if they're going to have any lead time it's going to be very minimal so yeah like chris says you have to price very aggressively even the pro model yeah apples scale in the supply chain is absolutely deafening like it it crushes competitors left and right uh it happened it happened to palma it's not as likely to happen to microsoft but microsoft simply does not have the hardware scale that Apple does and I'm sure that they are still fighting Apple for components even with the sir I'm sure that that demand for ipad manufacturing both on the kona side and final assembly is putting some constraints on the surface I very very little doubt about it they've really kind of sucked all of the air out of the entire mobile industry supply chain in China I'm really curious what odm they're using through the surface we I think we've heard rumors of quanta and Foxconn right I don't know about rumors but I'm curious ooh like that was actually my first question was who's actually building this yeah I mean I did I mean my expectation honestly was to get something closer to the blackberry playbook and kindle fire like something kind of stock kind of well he's just you know a tablet and then make it Microsoft's own but Microsoft has really gone to town on designing this thing so it kind of is um like like the Kin it is Microsoft pushing its own design credentials forward which is nice cause just a little bit ago Microsoft has had some brilliant successes and some less brilliant ones so it has kind of a checkered past I do feel like from what we've seen so far these surface tablets are going to be one of those my designs that we look back on if they get I was good one and but again it's going to depend on exactly the same thing I said they would akin which is a software the software just coming to critical in my circumstance that's the interesting thing about the announcement something that Microsoft I felt when I was watching and correct me if you felt differently they talked a lot about what the surface is but not what it can do it's almost an assumption that yes it can do windows and you should know what Windows is and what that means which is almost a shame to me because Microsoft its biggest attribute is not necessary the hardware and it's not necessarily assuming people get what's great about Windows it's this huge ecosystem and where it works everywhere in your life mobile tablet home entertainment now especially and I would I would have loved to see more of this is the surface this is great hardware a great design but this is how it also accentuates windows in a way that you might not have thought to do before you might actually want to get windows as opposed to sticking with it because it's not an iPad or OS 10 yeah that that's the crazy thing to me about Windows 8 is that I feel like this is the first time maybe ever or maybe since like the launch of I don't know windows 95 or maybe XP back in two thousand one where Windows is it has the opportunity anyway to be cool again right like Metro is something that you want to play with an experienced and see what it's all about like I think everybody on the verge team and probably all of our listeners want to at least play with the windows RT tablet they don't know if they necessarily want to buy one yet but they want to check it out they want to see what it's all about and and that's something that is an advantage a consumer advantage that Windows has has very very rarely had through its its 25-year history so that's it's exciting i'm happy to see a company like Microsoft really start to figure out a valid way to compete with Apple is just saying on Twitter this morning yeah i love i love the ipad i love the iphone i love apple devices in general but it doesn't matter how she loved these devices you need a competitive market in order to keep all the products good and continuing to innovate up and that is something that the ipad simply hasn't had and and I'm excited to see somebody try to finally make a real go at it and that's an opportunity that that the Android guys like Asus have never really had a chance to do I mean the transformer prime don't get me wrong it's a great tablet but is anybody seriously considering it overnight I don't think so who does the thing I mean when you think about a transformer prime right now it kind of gets whooped by this surface like I could never be sold on the weight and the bulk of the keyboard accessory for the transformer prime but it's the keyboard that Microsoft introduced with a magnetic attachment and all that stuff thanks slick I mean it's a car is Samaria see Apple smart cover and keyboard so that's nice I mean to rush this point actually I don't think that Microsoft has ever really been able to property properly articulate the benefits of its ecosystem which you know it is to Microsoft great disadvantage it's trying to is trying to give us a pitch very much in the Apple and Google mode whereas it really doesn't need to do that I mean I'm not saying Microsoft's old pitches were really work in particular well but now Microsoft is okay so they just showed off the netflix app for windows 8 for the first time while announcing the surface tablets well that's exactly the point that Ross was making Microsoft is such an amazing ecosystem build up around the xbox 360 for example of entertainment and they didn't they didn't mesh those things together at all they were just like whoa here's our custom-made netflix application with smart pinches ooh it's like when your cable Apple could have that Google would have that anybody could have that custom made netflix application right Microsoft has never figured out how to fully capitalize on the huge win it has with Xbox and I think that that speaks this is this is a topic that's been covered in depth there are many great articles on it from Mary Jo Foley and others um the fact that Microsoft internally soft historically has been basically a fiefdom right like there are these these different divisions that are always at kind of semi at war internally for control of Microsoft's future there are very very deeply rooted political incentives for certain executives not to work with other executives and for certain product managers not to work with other product managers and so at the end of the day that puts Microsoft as a whole in a pretty bad position because that means the Xbox that entire entertainment division of the company is far far more segmented than it than it should be and and that that sucks because what they have with Xbox is oh I think and Ross I'd love to get your opinion on this but I feel like Xbox 360 has turned into one of the greatest video game console stories of all time okay so get into rock for a sec there we go I mean Ross we need to hear from him but I have the perfect analogy I need to get it out I want to hear this about what Chris just broke down and it's so timely as well international football / soccer for American for our American audiences you have these situations particularly with the Spanish national team and the dutch national team where clicks and groups of players will associate themselves close with the Barcelona football team or the real madrid won and when they actually have to come together and play in the spanish national team they hate each other too much and they can't come together as a team like this has been Spain's problem not so much the past few years but it has been for years and years and years before that they will have the most talented teams in the world but the guys when the teams hate each other they have all these rivalries built up from the fact that they compete constantly and when you put them together as a team they just don't chair on the dot mesh so this is kind of the same thing I don't know how much in several competitions there is within Microsoft play it was like a really fitting analogy I like it I really wish I knew what you meant and those players because that sounds awesome I'm sure I'm sure my loyal audience of you can listen that's a cute with like yes glad not gonna lie god I do wish I knew European football more no I think I think I think you're absolutely right i think there's there's a Disney lesson to be learned i guess if you were of everyone working together metro being kind of the tent pole that they're trying to make it Chris to your point to get back to that what you wanted I'm not going to say that xbox 360 is a great game console success story I will say it's the best set-top box story home entertainment device because uh yeah yeah cuz to point uh sorry the closest to your point I think Microsoft is not looking the xbox so much as a gaming console anymore as a way into the TV to the big screen right Netflix and Hulu or big plays a smart glass at e3 i think was one of the smartest moves that microsoft had it's like this is how a Windows Phone device a windows tablet windows 8 device and an xbox can all work together in a way that you want to own all three and if you don't own part of the ecosystem you don't own the phone you can still use an iphone but you're going to want the Windows Phone app because it is better it is Microsoft's thing and it's a further integration to a system you want and that's that's Microsoft's beautiful potential so you want to use it is well you're probably gonna like something that Microsoft does and we can now tell you that you want the rest of it too here's a couple little features but we're not going to force you we're going to kind of we knew into it in a sense yeah yeah but whether or not they actually do that hmm I'll tell you what though there is one thing that the surface tablet was missing and that one thing was the PureView camera from Nadia I imagine Microsoft came out with the tablet with a beauty if if if I ever see any company come out with a 41-megapixel tablet I'm quitting not just this business but life I I'm done I don't want to see any 41-megapixel tablets that's a warning to the entire industry can I interest you in a 42 megapixel yes that would be fine Michael I'd be okay okay with 42 41 42 is the right answer for Chris yeah yeah right so you want to talk about the 808 PureView to uh is coming on sale in America it's coming to America I don't know we can really talk about it is it's happening i mean it's it's kind of crazy because another one of these we're gonna set it unlocked on amazon for a really crazy price and that will buy it 699 pretty much the same way to nokia distributed lumia 800 it's a bundle with some bluetooth speakers and stuff for like 8 99 for Microsoft tools I have no idea then you have to be a crazy crazy nokia enthusiasts to go and spend that kind of money on one of these phones uh particularly with the ADA appear here as well which is running symbian which you know even if you can forgive the really tiny screen resolution and the fact that this is not a phone but actually a camera that can make phone calls as symbian and as much as you know this is gonna piss off guys XD village field it's a dead OS and there's a very good reason why I said I think that Steve Litchfield understands he has a healthy understanding of the fact that symbian is a dead end and so does every mean it is impossible to ignore at this point the the the question becomes can you can you survive on symbian and and do you want to you know we I think just last week a new beta of gravity came out which is the the well-received Twitter client for symbian which I believe as far as i can tell remains the only quote unquote good application for symbian devices and it is somehow become like this champion app for the entire platform so so there is still some support out there but yeah seven hundred dollars is completely insane Aaron just just messaged me to have me point out and this is a good point yesterday no key it's said that beta white would only work over 3g on AT&T and they have since updated their post to say that it'll work on 3g on tmobile as well which makes a lot of sense because of course nokia is known for selling Penta band devices and that's something that they've done for a good year to now but yeah I'm not going to buy this I don't know I can't imagine very many who are the cameras cool but you can buy some really terrific point-and-shoot cameras for a lot less than seven hundred dollars that's the thing I was just thinking at six hundred ninety nine dollars I'm pretty sure i have a sony NEX series camera mm-hmm and then still have a couple hundred dollars to sign up for contract and get like you know a GS free or an iphone or something else already nine hundred if i still want to stay in loads not here i can have a Lumia 900 and a point issue that would do just as well as the 808 for the same a firm price right yeah it's the technology and weight is amazing but it's you know they're they're they're packing all this technology in there only to get the images roughly as good as as a camera with better optics you know because that they're not constrained by the you know the same physical constraints as a camera phone is so yeah I don't know seven hundred dollars that's that's a lot to pay for a Symbian Belle device did he did he even try to work with the carrier's on this is what I want to know or they just say this is kimo was not gonna want his first not gonna want it US cellular's not going on and I'm gonna bother 18-team verizon well if the unsubsidized price is seven hundred dollars you're asking any carrier to accept at least a five hundred dollar subsidy before they start selling it and then no Carrie will probably think this is worth 199 when it has compete with what else compete with so then carries will be like why she generally sell this is at $99 up front which means then the carrie has to bite off a 600-pound six-hundred-dollar excuse me subsidy and then monkeys like you know forget it we're just said the carriers are they re the the carriers are very picky about their uh about the software that's running on the phones in general and i'm sure i would bet my bottom dollar that eighteen t and verizon at the very least have both black belts and being at this point there's no question in my mind yeah and and tmobile i believe the last symbian device officially sold by an American carrier was the ascent on Team Center ascend on tmobile which was just a c7 um yeah that was a issues as well late last year I think yeah yeah that was introduced at ctia last spring if I memory serves me correctly and it's been since discontinued I would be shocked if any US carrier ever carried another symbian device it would absolutely blow my mind in fact do we know is there any evidence that there's going to be any symbian hardware after they to wait is is this it I mean it would be a great swan song for the platform you know that this is this is platform that has been I mean as much as it sucks now it if you go through the history of the mobile industry it is actually a very important platform both for nokia but then also you know it's sort of a huge role in sony ericsson's history and scion before that was just got a quarter by Motorola Solutions actually and this would be I feel like this would be a great book end on symbian story to finish it with this you know really kind of groundbait a groundbreaking device that has just maximal specs I don't think you know probably will be the last one because the very reason I mean the 808 PureView really shouldn't have happened to but the very reason it came out at all was that naka he'll be working on technology for so long and had been working on it just integrating it into symbian making sure photography stuff and symbian work together that that was really the reason to introduce it on a Symbian device thank you know it had it in stabs and presumably Stephen it up and senior management team were like you know let's just release this thing we're not like we're going to get a lot of credit for it which everybody's given the credit for the technological achievement let's go like that lets you know give some fruition to all of our teams hard work etc etc so the release on symbian i I just can't see where and what justification doc is going to have to release another symbol phone so yes I do you feel like this extremely quick quixotic or chaotic device is going to be this one song symbian i agree with you chris is fitting one I would just like to point out we have we have somebody in comments here old drunken sailor who says sony ericsson ran uiq not symbian uiq was a skin on symbian so as was s60 and then s60 and Symbian kind of became wanted at one point after uiq died but yike he was actually based on symbian and that all came from epic which was a scions platform which powered the series three the series five the series five MX all the same thing underneath underneath this game um anyway we should move on we we still have a lot to talk about this this podcast could go on for another year uh what do we have any more nokia stuff to talk about i think that might be it yeah which wrinkly we could actually reverse a little bit and come back to microsoft surface and tablet situation and I mean this is the point I was raising about where Microsoft's decision to enter the tablet market puts OEMs and one of the big ones LG at least in terms of volume of electronic devices if not success as decided that it's going to put tablets on the back burner which essentially means it's just going to exit the tablet market and focus completely on smartphones and we've seen LG do quite a few optimist pads try to compete with Samsung's Galaxy Tabs it hasn't worked out nobody is like them they've had some interesting technology in them they had three cameras which again nobody like so doesn't surprise that never succeeded but it is interesting that LG which does make laptops it doesn't sell them in the US or the UK at least until recently wasn't selling them in the UK just isn't going to play ball with Microsoft at all and try and do it all sort of ultrabook or maybe the idols but but you know ultrabook competing intel based tablets or Windows RT tablet with arm it just saying you know we're gonna take a break from this in focus and smartphone whether there is no years did they don't see how to make any money out of the business be honest right that's it right they um there's this really weird and depressing long tail in the tablet market where uh you know after the ipad you have a couple standout Android products like the transformer prime that maybe be profitable on some level and maybe one or two of the samsung's just because they're so ubiquitous on all these different carriers and they pushing through a lot of different channels but then beyond that you have all these other products like the zai boards and the optimist pads that are selling for near iPad prices but couldn't possibly be selling in any volume whatsoever and we've seen that bear out with LG's announcement and then after that you have at the very bottom end mark you have the 79 and $99 tablets which are just complete garbage but they're able to to pump them out and get some traction by selling them like drug stores and stuff right but but yeah there I don't see how there's any room for these guys to play especially as long as they're they're working with with Android I mean the thing the market I see for them is you know it might sound patronizing but I feel like is the uninformed consumer a perfect example for me was somebody while I was flying between the u.s. and the UK somebody was unboxing a sony tablet s and I just felt so sorry for him because I knew he picked it up you know in the duty-free shopping area and he thought well you know it's cheap over here it's just so many tablet how bad can be now I'm sure he might have been impressed by a nice packaging in the first hour or so but probably by the end of the flight he was like yeah I could see how bad it can be you know I want to tell me I'm not gonna lie I still want a tablet p do you like it's a little screen back its dual screen is it oh let's give it up stop Kristin look at me out stop crazies your screen is Messiah has sewing just work done no no this won't dismiss do screen inside like if you took two iPads of the new version or if you took two of the macbook retina displays and just like I do not know no two iPads does not count as a dual screen tablet that's not awkward yeah if you did that with those viewing angles yes but you don't do freaking juice cream with the nasty horrible viewing angles that you get with Sony's cheap LCD but no and I mean here's the thing they like you need software dedicated specialized software that knows how to handle two screens if you're gonna try type on one oh good god have mercy on your soul we've seen countless people try we've seen the kyocera echo is in the acer iconia we've seen the DA yeah which is just dumb luck that it actually worked The Courier is still figment of imagination which means it's awesome because you've never had to use it yes I have yet to see a dual screen device that I actually care about I think we'll see foldable screens before we see a dual screen device that actually matters jigar cordobas greens well vailable is a beautiful dream I mean like they've been talking about like flexible and foldable screens for like literally since I was like a toddler like this has been going on for so long remember HP uh was his name the guy who's at cablevision now earn at cablevision see a confession that the CTO from HP he always used to yeah like Walker everything like imax something me no that's not his name uh man i I don't know i hit retired he was part of the design team yeah he retired and now he's with vision i think but anyway point is that we've seen so many companies bandy around these mythical flexible displays for ages and samsung appears to be finally ramping up production of some flexible oled but i still have yet to see a compelling form factor for any device that makes me say oh yeah I can see why that's practical and why that's usable and why that should be important me when I'm shopping for my next phone will see but and I understand the need to want something like a bigger screen that you pull your pocket you can actually like lay it down you've got a 7-inch display that like is four inches in your pocket I get that but as soon as you see that hinge in between how are you going to live with that how are you going to be okay with that and how are you gonna have to like buy new specialized apps that actually use it and are designed for that's a very small ecosystem I don't think there's going to ever be a big one that actually uses in a way that's going to make sense yeah well and another thing at the same time people use two displays on a desktop you know and there isn't a hinge between the two there's a massive bezel like at least an inch thick when you put it to display side by side people find the benefit in being able to you know split up the motor task in workflow have one bit here one bit there sometimes you can just use one screen to play back a video whatever I can see the scenarios I a comedy see it see them to Ross this planet can't we see them being as compelling when you're on the move because when you're on the move you're even more of a single Tasker than usual and a lot of people who done some research and looked into it realize that we we don't human beings actually motor starts very well at all we just single task in rapid succession but i can see i could see the value of it in the benefit of it but once again roster spot on you need like really really good software which nobody is done and nobody's related to get it close to doing and so just bring it back to G then or particular close to doing it I know they aren't and and to your point fled every single mobile platform that has any traction whatsoever right now acknowledges implicitly that humans are primarily single tasking when they using their phones right because with Android the multitasking is non-deterministic you don't know when an app is going to close behind the scenes iOS shuts down background tasks after 10 minutes i believe and Windows Phone has that tombstoning thing so there there is no way to truly run many applications at once like you would on a desktop and that alone unless there's some fundamental change in the operating system that that make sense for consumers that alone makes a dual screen phone less compelling which to your point is interesting because windows 8 itself even the RT mode has a few interesting development requirements including the little second sidebar widget which we make a lot of sense first I can screen even when that's not a full size second screen yeah which means I'm gonna have to eat a little bit of crow here and say course you might actually have a good windows tablet in the works yeah I uh I i I'm still going to buy a Tai Chi but y'all can enjoy your surfaces okay we need to give a su some massive critic here Tai Chi is one of the coolest names I've heard over the past four years agree I've ever you want to tie your even without crazy to display stuff yeah yeah I agree I feel you know I feel really really bad for asus and acer who have been just churning out all these wild form factors and tablets for years now and it you know it they just don't mean to what end right like Microsoft with one fell swoop can decide that it's going to just eat up the entire is going to eat up all of the mindshare around windows RT and and that's that yeah so let me see what yes you can't feel bad about it and yes Microsoft is I just don't see an angle or perspective from which Microsoft isn't building up to screwing its OEMs hard like they'll sell because windows devices just sell that popular the ubiquitous etc but they won't save as much with Microsoft Azure sacrus sucking up the older mindshare but on the other hand let's not be too charitable to asus and acer because if we actually look at their performance on android asus introduced the PadFone exactly a year before I brought it to market computex 2011 and ASA it's cloud mobile device was revealed by the if design award that he got just before see bit which was months back I'm still going to come out until sometime in the third quotes or whatever let's go into this flagship coming out in September ish time competing on like January 2012 specs against what's going to likely be a deluge of brand new android phones right including potentially a new jelly bean phone right and tablet yeah these guys these guys have it rough you know there's there are the haves and have-nots those that own a platform and those that don't and it's going to become it's going to be very dicey these guys are going to have to be very nimble to stay run over the next few years I think right and then most of them have done a pretty good job of hedging their bets they're playing both the Android card and the Microsoft card I wish there was a viable third card for them right and you gotta say like it's dumb sure they're all very very scared of Microsoft line Nokia and Google actually using Motorola in any yeah like useful way beyond patents of course but yeah cuz if both them's become full-blown hardware manufacturers and put a huge concern effort behind it where does that leave these third parties and right what is open schools yay right I've lad return via blackberry I guess that I wanted to reach through the screen and strangle you should be it wait wait here's a very simple summary of where webos is HP was selling off touch pads on ebay that's how bad it got for HP itself like it was in fire sales of its web OS devices let that dream go people yeah it's uh it's gonna be a long uphill battle for them there's there's bada there's bodies a shy yourself Christmas that now you're just doubling up with my droning oh yeah i'm i'm i'm trolling you guys pretty hard right now no i mean like tyson uh and boot to gecko both are i think are interesting initiatives um in that they are in a way continuing web wes is legacy of making viable html-based you X's and we've seen Tyson do some pretty interesting things but again I mean like all these platforms you can you can make cool-looking platforms and devices till you're blue in the face unless you get traction unless you get developers on board unless you get big-name apps fin set a thousand times there's just no way to make those devices relevant unless they can get that that ground swell of momentum so yeah Tizen has long way to go we should talk about our LG l7 review these devices the hell else style series was announced at mwc we first got hands on back then there's the l3 which is their little tiny phone l5 and l7 I thought the l3 was like really cute kind of has a xperia mini feel to it but the l7 is their flagship product in the line the entire line is a mid-range line so calling it the flagship in the line doesn't mean that much in terms of a flagship Android devices overall LG still has the Optimus range above the L style range but the l7 is still a pretty cool-looking product it's squared off as a pretty sexy you I I think that you know LG does a custom skin but I think that's a little less offensive than some of the other ones out there um but it still didn't get the best review III don't know what to make of a phone that doesn't have a built-in ambient light sensor these days like what a weird way to LG for LG to save 30 cents off the build cost of this night that is very valid point I think I mean the l7 is held back by LG cutting costs in like really really obscure and we have ways exactly as you mentioned and also they're using an ancient ancient processor in this thing so actually the I think it's called yes the Optimus UI three-point oh this is LG skin on top of Android 4.1 of the first comments on Aaron's review of the l7 were actually to say is it just me or does this just look like TouchWiz on Android 4.2 look like a ripoff I'm not sure that it's necessarily a ripoff of TouchWiz but then Samsung's TouchWiz skin on top of android 4.0 has been quite clean and minimized and restrained and actually not pushing itself forward it's actually been pulling back from skinning the main interface so yeah LG risk is gone for the same look and for the same move and I've actually had the chance to screw around with that on a better phone because I've had the optimus LTE and when you're not hamstrung by the fact that you know the elle style has a horrible ancient processor it works really smooth and really nicely i mean one of the really neat things is the unlocking thing where it's right now I love the unlocking thing yeah yeah I mean this is in the review erin has done a video of it and it's really great you have this circle which starts around your finger and then as you drag out it expands and shows you the last thing you had on the screen of the phone before you locked it which functionally might not I mean it is it might be really rare that it helps you but it's just a really cool thing very cool thing to look at yeah and I think that physically I LG has moved in the right direction in terms of industrial design I can't speak to it's been a long time since I've I've held the phone personally it was it was in late februari but Wow time flies but you know physically looking at the design of the device it's a very attractive phone yeah yeah and actually when I first pulled it out and showed it to me I i confuse it for galaxy s free um and it's a 1 squared off it's more squared-off yeah then a galaxy s3 but it was attractive and it was it was one of these things that my first reaction was hey that looks interesting yeah that looks like something I might want to play around with at least a little bit I'm right and if I if I can just like segue really rapidly I'll say that dr san diego doesn't look like that oh the orange san diego what a complete piece of garbage like Intel should have been doing everything in its power to make sure that the first that that the world's first introduction to Medfield on Android or Medfield mobile period would be like a groundbreaking monumental experience in every sense of the word and that's just not the case right right and until design this this is really annoying thing Intel designed every single piece of hardware inside the san diego this is the Intel what was it the prototype device demo device which now orange is just branding on top yeah yeah and the same thing is is miserable right yes yes um the whole thing is an Intel production like carriers have never been into Intel chips they'd never liked the idea of x86 chips in smartphones because they haven't really been power efficient enough even though they've been powerful weave you don't have the battery life what's the point so winter has still been forced to first of all work with really small carries a small country so this is why we're seeing things like the lenovo k900 being in trees in china before i show western markets getting these devices but then even if you have to design all of it as you say Chris if the best thing you could say about the design of your first phone is that the back cover kind of feels nice to the touch something has already gone very well with the design stage right and in it you know what sucks you remember it was CES 2010 I think when LG introduced that was the predecessor to Medfield Wars town w 990 yes ma'am yeah right yeah and and so they showed this prototype LG that they said was going to come out later in the year and of course it never did but it was like a really beautiful device and I think it would have been an interesting differentiator for both for Intel and for LG he had actually yes come through with that device the problem was that at that time Android was not mature and it was running some proprietary LG thing and only recently has has google fully embraced x86 is like a you know fundamental part of Android and now they have it like a native x86 emulator and stuff so so that's that's encouraging and well you know there aren't that many app compatibility problems with the platform but yeah if they had been able to deliver two years ago I think that until might be in a very different situation than they are now yeah um actually it's surprising in terms of app compatibility because aaron broke it down into top 100 paid and 103 and apps and the top 100 paid of free games and the san diego at the time of release isn't really doing much worse in terms of incompatibility then things like the galaxy s2 the gas is free and other android phones which you would actually expect to be compatible with everything and pretty much a iphone when it's released is housing compatibilities and has some apps that it doesn't work with but it's a very high proportion something like ninety percent over ninety percent of apps the san diego is compatible with so it will work and the other thing I found is that the performance is in these strong so this is you know it the film below San Diego is that it's priced appropriately like yes we would love for Intel to make a massive splash and just do this whole new thing in the smartphone arena but its price is a mid-range or slightly less the mid-range phone but gives you high-end performance so what you need to do is become colorblind first of all so you can ignore the orange skin and figure out ways that you can you know maximize its usefulness so the real question is will motorola deliver on a compelling medfield device because you know that was one of the big stories out of CES this year was the the Intel partnership that they announced and we haven't seen any devices yet we believed at the time and I still believe that Intel was heavily incentivizing Motorola to make that commitment because they would have no reason to do so otherwise but you know we still haven't heard a peep out of them I think at the time they gave summer guidance and yesterday I think was first day summer wasn't like that so we're now in summer it's time to hear about Motorola's medfield efforts I wonder if Google's purchase has influenced that strategy at all or if they're there you know continuing to move along with that effort but hopefully they can deliver something a little bit more compelling than this well I mean they've promised Motorola and formula to do multiple devices over multiple years so you can't expect that partnership would have been codified in some form of contract between the two and you expect they'll have to execute but that also kind of paints an interesting picture the one that you were alluding to earlier Chris which was you know what if this is the thing that we're staring down the face this scenario where Google starts to do x86 and arm tablets and phones and starts increasing it to produce them itself via the motorola arm and a Microsoft starts doing the exact same thing you know branches out the surface effort into the phone arena we're kind of going to get stuck with just free major companies who have the ecosystem services software and hardware and that would be our choice I know I was be able to Renee I think I would be okay with a world in which I could get my phones and tablets from one of three companies Microsoft Apple or Google I think I would be okay with that two editions how much you want American you are three I would be totally okay with because I gross you know I you I on some level look at some level on some level I trust all three of those companies to make very intelligent design decisions and all three of those companies hate each other hate each other so like you know they're they're very incentivized to to compete and and you know that they all have some very very bright design people so I think that we could see some you know and the rest is kind of I mean like Samsung continues to be Samsung in terms of the materials that they're using HTC I love HTC in many ways but you know I think that they're you know in the long term they'll probably get bought do you think that that's a reasonable assumption to make that HTC will eventually be bought by somebody that would be so sadly poetic I mean it started as a no-name manufacturer to you know make phones for carriers your t-mobile branded your verizon branded had a few years arguably couple decades with it's an email front and then slowly wither back into relevance I mean I was sad but poetic well not not not irrelevant necessarily I just think that like I I think that they are HTC is in this interesting position where they are small enough to be a compelling purchase for a giant company and maybe maybe that opportunity has vanished since google has bought Motorola and HP has proven that it has absolutely no idea what to do with mobile company and and Microsoft if it buys anyone will probably buy Nokia so yeah maybe that's completely ridiculous notion so I mean so flat answer your question to chris's point in terms of hardware ID yeah I'm fine with just having three choices but also it goes back to what do you think hardware is turning into and it's just it's just a screen for the software I think your talk about software companies yeah those are the big three you may still have HTC because like it or not since is a compelling argument samsung has tvs and processors and chips and materials and they're still going to thrive with that sony as a playstation brand and everything that goes with it but yeah i do see a special trouble for people who can't make good skins on other people's platforms who don't have other compelling software solutions and who make hardware that looks like everyone else's i mean kudos for the PadFone for trying to be different the transformer certainly was a success story in a way and if google does use them for any rumored Nexus branded tablets that will definitely be a boon to their industry other companies though that can't stand out in terms of software or design I don't see them really having much of a future and I personally don't care if their stuff is on my shelves in best buys so as usual route so but fair enough oh yeah as usual you know I think that it's it's it's only appropriate that we end the show on a depressing note oh I'm so sorry no no no no this is this is this is kind of our thing we always end the Shan a depressing note and I don't think that we should break from tradition um I I sincerely hope that that the the dear dieter bohn will be back with us next week because I am completely incapable of running the show in any sort of meaningful way but for those of you who stuck through this complete train wreck I appreciate it a train wreck on my part not on my dear guests Ross Miller's part Lauren Vlad's have sales part but this has been a complete nightmare for me if you want to reach us by email as mobile show at the verge com on twitter i am z power dieter is back lon Vlad is let's say Bob and Ross is oh no Rosco which is spelled exactly how you would expect it to be spelled I think apparently does apparently there's a suppose beanie but uh I don't buy it it's no II uh yeah no no resign wise ease are very ugly I'm sorry I've decided all right well thanks so much for listening guys and we'll be back to you next week bye guys