Gadgetory

I'm really excited the band's back together the boys are back in town where we're reunited and it feels so good stay tuned for the Virgin Mobile show hi I'm dieter bohn have a lot 7 i'm chris sigler and we're back together the three anchors of the show it is episode 10 that we could July thirtieth the Virgin Mobile show and I am in my apartment because there is insane construction at the verge West offices that I thought would be done by one o'clock pacific turns out not done I considered bribing them to go away so that didn't happen so here I am at my apartment lounging it feels really good actually just kind of leaning back chillin elaborate let's be honest I think that that calling it the verge west office is kind of understating it's more of a verge west campus it's like you know it's it's the size of like an apple headquarters kind of situation it's taking up an entire city block it's the size of apples headquarters at Apple's founding in the garage yes that's the skies okay yeah okay fair enough fair enough so here's my question for you guys we haven't been together in what three weeks now I think is that right ferry awaits yeah three weeks oh really River oh yeah are we gonna be is this gonna yes it's gonna be like an unmitigated disaster are we gonna pull this together it's gonna be a disaster I do you expect us to interrupt one another all the time but then that's kind of profit of course it is I am before we start talking about actual news that happen in last week which I didn't read any of cuz I was on vacation i just want to point out that there is something like right outside the camera view right now that i really want to show you but I can't leave it at that I'm gonna letter our listeners uh stew on that for a little while I want to wear something I'm not wearing pants actually no um it's uh i can't i can't tell you i'm not gonna give you any hints whatsoever there is there is something that is right outside of the camera view that I really want to show you but I can't that's all I'm gonna say but but you will you will see something on it on the site within the next few days well speaking of things that are out of camera view I guarantee you at some point in the in the course of this podcast my cat is going to come and ruin everything the camera is precariously balanced on a box which is precariously balanced on an ottoman and my microphone is just sort of sitting here like it's going to be a catastrophe just be ready um do you take your cat to the office ever no no she uh she's just fine staying here actually she's a good cat very quiet but would not hansi going to the album well she's had to go to the bed a lot lately and so anytime she like thinks she's gonna be traveling she gets really snarly oh yeah I know the type I'll be got 4 news I I was good try and transition but there's no transition for this uh so apparently the next iPhone is gonna be announced on September 12 sounds about right I mean that's the time of year I was expecting right well everybody was expecting October right Ella september-october same difference they're both everybody didn't know yes so whatever you expected was based on basically nothing yeah so I mean the news broke on I'm or her neighborhood she had it then we've heard from sources confirming it presumably it's the eye to eye phone possibly it's the the ipad mini and going along with that we've got a you know more purported case leaks that are more of the same this this look with the like the metal middle on the back and then the two glass pieces above on the top and the bottom I mean part of me wants to say that this is not it that it's like we're being deked out like you know meant to throw us off so not really and part of you just you know feeling like iOS 6 is not the Great Leap Forward that I was hoping for feels like this next iPhone is not going to be a huge crazy change in design and so I'm like I'm equal parts just straight up believing it partially because it's not that exciting looking uh well I have no I'm of two minds on this I I'm getting really tired as great as the original iphone 4 design was I'm getting kind of tired of it at this point but if you think about it in terms of a macbook life cycle design life cycle I I can totally believe that that the thing would look basically the same as it as a 4 or 4s right sure there's just not a longer cycle of keeping it that they settle on this design as we'll talk about a little bit it's one of the designs they've sort of liked for a long time and like they'd have like no intention of radically changing it so in four or five years we'll be looking at you know the iPhone 10 that looks basically at with the same design language as the iphone 4 is that the world you think we live in yeah it doesn't necessarily need to change hardware design in phones first of all has been uses become much more limited in terms of what you can do because of the fact though we've been talking about for such a long time that it's all touchscreen terminated you know so previously you could fit around where you put your buttons or he had buttons the way that Nucky used to do and it was a lot of versatility with what you could do nowadays just like here's a rectangle I mean this is probably are not discussing at the apple vs samsung lawsuit is going on right now one of the things that Samsung mentioned in its disclosures was that people want rectangles well people of course duty because that's what touchscreen devices are there just rectangles and like the go around the rectangle is to just reduce the bezel reduce the extraneous beds and just focus on the content and focus on the device so first of all you don't really have much freedom with what you can do but also i do want to mention something that we had to kind of a like the internal friend here on the verge we're all of us for every isn't like nobody he said okay let's just sit and speculate about the new iphone design whatever reason you just kind of organically grew and everybody decided to pitch in with a theories about Apple strategy and how it was being designed what was going to happen and is this perpetually leaked iphone 5 design the one that were actually going to see and i was going to cite Billy Davies who's a I'm sorry Billy Davies this is how sorry abilities I so sorry to delay is one of our video my strobes and his point is so good that i'm just going to you know quote it and what he said was that apple's goal isn't to sell iphone 5s isn't to sell millions of iphone 5s apples go is just so more and more iphones right and this is why we're seeing the ipad not be named the ipad 3 is just been named the ipad most of us are anticipating the iphone 5 to also just become the iphone no extra branning be beyond it yeah you know we've seen that Apple do that again going back to its laptop range you know it's been macbook pro and when people have to reveal my produce a macbook pro 2011 macbook pro 2012 macbook pro 2013 and apple iterates on the things that it can iterate on and this is another point right now you're in a particular spot in terms of processors in terms of battery technology in terms of display technology where you can't really make any massive leaps like maybe two three years ago you could you know take off three four five millimeters of the thickness of your device you know when the iphone 4 was first introduced that was also a year when every other manufacturer was really just shaving of thickness from the devices i don't think many are doing that right now we kind of reach the plateau in terms of those hardware innovations and improvements and I mean real big redesigns Mike with you know arm a 15 chips next year assuming they're extremely efficient power efficient and assuming that Apple can fit batteries into an ever thinner space so you know my put my personal perspective is that the iPhone 5 or the next-generation iphone leaks that would be C are exactly what we're going to see an alligator 4 inch device very much designed like the old one and I so forget somebody did a comparison where they looked at the curvature on the side of the iOS icons and the curvature on the side of the iphone and that was the same so apples attention to detail extends to how the side of the front of the iphone is curved and I don't think that Apple is ever going to change that because some neat feature it's a distinguishing feature it's one that continued from the 3gs to the for design as far as I can tell and remember um so really Apple can't do too much in terms of redesigning the phone and looking at the sales out of hand up already needs to do too much at least not yet yeah so many I mean he go Ahead's how many of the variables are are fixed now right there there was a period there was a solid decade where like the quote unquote winning form factor wasn't established the technology wasn't there and all the components and we've gotten to the point now where you know you can't go with a bigger display the Galaxy Note takes that title and we're not gonna see anything any bigger than that because hands aren't that large um we're gonna see movement and processors of course that's gonna make the devices faster but that's not something that's physically distinguishing and to your point phul that devices can't get that much thinner we don't need them to you know Samsung already took that title what was in 2004-2005 2006 and with that was the X 8 20 I think we've actually talked about on the show but is it you know it was 5 point something millimeters it was just absurdly thin it was too thin um so you know I think we're gonna see that stable isomer between six and a half and eight and a half millimeters what you know what else can you do it that it but everything what we hang on that I feel like this this conversation like well there's nothing there they're stuck there in a corner there's no way that they can get themselves out of the design it's its iconic and it can never change again like no that's the Jonah no modern no no let me finish yeah that's the challenge of modern design is to take something that feels that is familiar and known and has never changed and using a new technology or new materials or just you know something unique on it to make it feel new and iconic again without just being like a gimmicky change and you know we see certain android phones do this right i mean you know take the design language of the the galaxy series its iterated but it feels a little different i think HTC did with the 1x you would you could argue that these same design constraints about get it really thin have a camera on the back have a big black box on the front you know they're the same designs the stories of a chair it's got to be on the floor it's got to have arms at a back at a seat but you know it's possible to have millions of iterations on that some of which feel like they're essential some of which feel like they've always been around but they those got designed right and so I think that it kind of is a cop-out to say that Apple should just they can't design away from this look that they have currently that the iphone always has to look the way it does it's possible for a design geez yeah I've to make something feel fresh and new yet within these design constraints that's the whole point of design well they uh yeah and that's exactly the point I was trying to make which is that the Devils in the details all these products I do think I your point is taken on the chair analogy but I do think that it is a unique the smartphone is a very unique challenge for industrial designers globally because one entire surface of the phone is already squared away it's a big black rectangle and there's there's nothing that you can do with that full surface right it has to come in the design of the edges optimally you want to minimize the bezel around that that that surface so any design details that you put there are kind of like cop-outs to the ultimate goal rid of that bezel entirely so you know what that I back I'm finding that the bezel on the galaxy s3 is too thin when I'm holding it um I will hit with the the FATA my thumb the button in the corner like every couple of days it's super annoying like I've deleted emails I'm like ah because I had that I was holding it I am I don't one pink no I I I may have experienced that once once or twice and I don't disagree that this was remember we talked about this I think with the the nexus 7 right because a Duarte is whole thing was that he claimed that the bezel was intentional I wish it you know I can see the argument but it's also a great cop-out for OE you know we were minimizing costs or this thing was already designed by a sous by the time we got our hands on it so you know but but i can see that argument sure let me just raise a quick point here and to interject and say the data's chair analogy is absolutely terrible and just absolutely terrible because I wish you done after I should done a fair bit of research into chairs and those are some of the most sophisticated things for design and there are so many things I mean it's kind of like think about what chairs being designed for their being designed to accommodate your spine which is just about the most complex construction a complex bone construction in the human body I mean whatever I say about complexity of the spine people going to correct me and say the brain is more complex or something else more complex anyway the point is there are so many moving parts in the spine there's so many muscles are so many things to accommodate and I mean the thing that we know and defender every piece of research shows is that sitting down is unhealthy for is bad for you so when you're designing a chair what you're actually doing is trying to is essentially a form of damage limitation and there's lumbar support and this upper back supports and do you have a neck rest do you not have a neck rest we I mean you know some like you need a chair for when you're leaning back you need a chap when you're sitting up and typing there they're just way too much variety and diversity and chair design see I wait to meet you think and attachments that you can step on you know it's more complicated than the human spine the human heart and that's what a phone needs to appeal to is it I mean I'm curious about that was the cheesiest thing that was the cheesiest thing sir were uttered on this show yes I've really put the collection this is actually think about it it is a high she complicated or is it simple I don't know I well it's got four chambers which is pretty I mean I think some hearts are just like one chamber right does have four chambers it is a quad-core device you might say as beautiful actually human female uncrate architecture thank you yeah this is going down okay as long as we're talking about iphone design we should get into this stuff from the the Samsung vs apple case so yeah this was talked about on the verge cast so I don't want to get too far into it but in the discovery Samsung you know had a whole bunch of documents from Apple that were images and drawings and like pictures of a whole bunch of like design experiments and prototypes that were rejected for the iphone and some of them look pretty crazy like there's this you know this thing that referring to is a Battlestar Galactica one that's got you know cornered off edges that you know looks quite similar to the you know the the droid razr language a little bit there's the stuff that's based on basically the the ipod mini that's got rounded edges and flat top and bottom I mean and then there's the there's the the sony one that actually doesn't the joni one which actually doesn't look all that far off from what we've got with the iphone 4 i mean it's it's interesting that what we have landed on with the iphone 4 is something that Apple has sort of been had bouncing around in their head for really long time and for me it's instructive like when the iphone 4 first came out and the initial reaction from everybody before they actually saw it and held it was kind of like right remember you know when gizmodo had the leaks and it just it didn't look that great but then it you know it finally became the iphone 4 and everybody you know loved it or most people loved it but the initial pictures of it didn't look so good and my sense is like Apple had sort of like had that version of the iphone like deep in their four chambered hearts from very early on and so when they were finally able to put it out there they're really like personally invested and excited in that particular design and I think that it hurt them that much more when their ended up being antenna problems because they genuinely believe like that that iphone was the version of the iphone that they wanted to make from the beginning yeah the true with I'm sure that's true with every every product in Apple's line i would guess that they're they're planning several generations out at any given time so i can't say I'm surprised but it's still really interesting to see something that close to the production iphone 4 back in 2006 yeah the thing I was going to mention is just that I like the revelation of all of these prototypes because it does show us that Apple is to use a flawed and energy immortal company because a lot of the time and plenty of people might just you know look at Apple's track record and the successes have to pretty much every product and just think well these guys can't do any wrong whereas they are company just like everybody else they do you have setbacks did you have designs that don't work out just today I saw this already on this website on the Internet the verge about Johnny I've and he was saying the apple almost share with the iphone entirely because it was too complex or too complicated and so there's a whole there's a whole bunch of moving parts behind the scenes and the only reason why apple looks so smooth and so flawless in its execution is because it keeps such a tight little secrecy so when an apple device or an apple design doesn't work out it's testing is done this sub secret that nobody actually knows about it and nobody actually knows about the failures behind the scenes so so I like these revelations because it kind of give us a glimpse behind the veil or the Iron Curtain or whatever fanciful way what put it well yeah I mean a lot of companies are much more open with you know we tried this we tried that or think about this that they like they try and share their thinking but you know Apple wants us to think their products sort of comes sweet generous you know just sort of out of the the brain of Johnny I've like you know like Athena coming out of Zeus anyway and it's it's nice you know obviously everybody knows that that's not actually how it works that every design iterations but I totally agree with you that it's nice to see the stuff they threw away relative to the stuff they actually release yeah I don't know it's already encourages that image yeah as far as its bearing on the case I mean we'll have to see you know we've got brian bishop there every day live at the courtroom there's apples opening arguments got made today you should go read that i haven't had a chance to look at it so it would be stupid of me to try and talk about it too much but we do know i mean it's a really great article from matt makari and i'm sure Neal I helped out like showing what the two sides are trying to prove to each other and without getting you know too far into to lawsuit talk I mean it basically comes down to a handful of patents on both sides and and to me the core issues you know was the the article I wrote which was you know all this stuff coming out of Samsung looked like they were they were so focused on beating Apple that like did it cross the line into actually copying like they they're beat Apple strategy was known internally as the beat Apple strategy like I I knew that Samsung competed with apple and I knew that they were like you know kind of obsessed with Apple but like actually seeing the evidence in the documents of you know just how much focusing on making sure they get ahead of apple instead of just winning in the mobile industry in general is really interesting like what Samsung isn't going to beat up an HTC and Sony or Nokia Samsung is going to beat up on Apple well but the funny thing to me is that as obsessed as they have been with beating Apple specifically their the actual execution of that strategy is hilariously wrong you know I mean you can argue that that the galaxy s and some of these other Samsung devices bear more than a passing resemblance to the iphone but all of the details surrounding the galaxy s and the galaxy series as a whole have nothing to do with the way Apple does business right and we're only now in 2012 string to see some small hints of that with like you know the fact that there that Samsung insisted on the same ID for every release of the galaxy s3 which is actually in the court documents you can see where they made that call last year but but there's so much about what Samsung does everything that Samsung does their entire business that it bears no resemblance to to the way Apple does business whatsoever can I just say that this this joni iphone with the the jog dial on the side of it oh man i would love that like bring back the jog dial get rid of stupid volume buttons give me a jog dial I'd be so happy I mean that's not a Jagran tell is it that's a three-and-a-half millimeter that's the three and a millimeter jack isn't well it's it's not a jog dial like a sideways jog dial but it is like a rotating dial on the soil is it I thought that was a jack know something so maybe I'm i think this jug house i had one of those in my rio 500 mp3 player about a decade and a half ago that is it i mean t actually you probably just isn't as convenience buttons when you're totally honest with yourself but it just feels cooler Buenos tolle emil I mean what yeah the thing is they went to the trackball yeah but seriously though if you if you look at how many bad average and nondescript designs were seen smart phones these days would it really you know do so much harm to anyone one company's reputation if they just came out with a crazy freaky phone they had a jog dial ahead elusive like old-school things attached to it so nokia used to do that all the time right like sony music memories you thousands yeah yeah that had a job it has a drug I'll and it had the flip down microphone nothing was so badass I had that I I had that phone and I loved it I had it on sprint or yeah peace yes as it was thought at the time when I was in college but the Nokia in the mid-2000s went on this terror were they were releasing just all these insane phones that you know for any other company in the world that never would have made it out of a you know a design study but I think Nokia you know this was in their heyday they were you know they had cash coming out their ears here like what the hell will throw this out there and see what happens and i remembered i think that the first UMTS device they released but not mistaken i'm probably completely wrong on this but i think that it was that that weird like a teardrop shaped phone where the screen and the screen was at a 45 degree angle and the on either side there were like five digits from the from the numeric keypad it was insane and you know they did that that on the 3600 they did the circular numeric keypad they had the UM that lipstick case shape phone they were they were doing all sorts of crazy things and would be great to see i mean i think now more than ever we need industrial designers to really like focus on doing crazy stuff with these devices because they're starting to look really plain and that's I mean that's probably the main reason why i love the Lumia so much is because they've they've kind of you know stuck your neck out there a little bit and done some cool things both with colors and with the with materials so hopefully we'll see so any act recently Apple used the Lumia as an example of how not to copy Apple I remember if this was the samsung case in the US or where it was but it was on the side a few weeks ago which I thought was great and hilarious you know because even Apple recognizes that the Lumia is a completely different looking fo ya know I actually have been using the linear design as an example as you call it did n9 design because the n9 was the first one to come out with it but I still use it as an example of a good desired and distinctive design to get it with phones um and anything that I always say when it comes down to designing things is that the good ones just seem obvious like well of course you're gonna do like that like of course you're gonna curve that bit of course you're gonna use this material I know with apple I always thought looking at the macbook pro se two years ago listen Oh three years ago in fact 2009 I was looking at it and at a time was one of the thinnest laptops you could buy and you know it's one of the thinnest is one of the longest battery lives it's pretty durable strong great display etc etc and I'm looking at him looking at I'm thinking how on earth do you improve on this it is kind of like the situation we have with the iphone 4 to wonder d to disagrees is the case you know how do you improve it I me with the iphone 4 is kind of easy you get rid of all that fragile glass which seems to break all the time but if in apple's perspective and in a lot of people's perspective the iphone 4 design is indeed iconic and isn't the superlative then the way to improve on it is in very small iterative steps such as with the retina macbook pro but again in order to make those steps the retina macbook pro needed the new display it needed only SSDs it needed to get rid of the optical drive so it's still the case that hardware design is driven by what you can actually fit inside the machine itself like three years ago you could really get away with your premier laptop being one without an optical disc drive now you can definitely get away so I mean the rumors that the the new iPhones gonna have a larger screen right part of me wonders of Apple genuinely didn't want to do that that they were happy with 3.5 but they felt forced to do it not by the market pressure of other big phones but they just flat-out needed a bigger battery and so they had to go with the bigger screen in order to keep it thin and that's that's the whole explanation of why there's going to be a bigger screen on the the next iPhone I think that's possible but and I know Vlad's gonna agree with me I think that four inches I still think that four inches in many ways is the sweet spot for smartphones and yes and it's a great compromise size between the 3.5 and the 4.3 / 4.5 / 4 between seven and eight no the absolutely four inches is a sweet spot I mean I'll tolerate a 4.3 inch phone before inches is where it it just becomes something that doesn't feel like a chore when you're walking around with it whereas with me nowadays but when i leave the house if i'm using something like the 1x galaxy nexus galaxy is free you know name any one of those 4.6 and above devices I have to think long and hard whether I actually need the phone with me it's like if it's the weekend I don't expect anybody to call me and I don't need to listen to music because actually that's the other thing I realize I have no music listening options other than phones like I have nothing like if I don't have a phone this is no way for me to listen to music on the move that's it are you saying you go out into the world without a phone in your pocket dyoods I do things and and when those thing when does times happen the only thing I could think is but if it was like a smaller phone I will take it but you know I'm wearing jogging bottoms and I don't feel like like you know you stick a big oh do you feel does it make you feel free or does it make you feel naked or does it make it make you feel free because you feel naked oh you actually go with me yeah just that um I'm quite comfortable with that I mean I spent two weeks in the wilderness in Bulgaria I I don't know how to um you know I had a field attached with that phone I'm fine without color well i mean i guess that is different no you're you're a very self-confident a man and I am completely insecure and must have my blankie aka my connection to the internet with me at all times IBM wristwatch as well I mean what what do you really need you phone that much Bobby Paul one of Paul's offline pieces I think really hit the nail on the head with this whole issue and he's absolutely right like that the phone is such a social crutch for getting yourself out of awkward moments in any situation right like you know you're on an elevator with somebody oh I'll check my email you know so i don't have to engage this stranger in conversation and you know you're you're having dinner with somebody you you know there's a pause in the conversation normally you would check your phone I don't have your phone like things get weird really fast yeah I actually think things get weird people start checking their phones cuz then I just get silently angry but I'm trying to be tolerant so I don't uh you know uh scold them for using their phone and I'm just being patient and let me continue with their phone and I keep eating and they keep eating and they continue with their phone I'm being patient I'm being a nice guy but then while that's happening at the back of my mind I'm also thinking how boring must I be for this person to continue reading on their phone and then have the meals it then I'm just pissed it two and two yeah okay look let's let's be let's be very clear email Trump's and eat physical person in your presence like if I get a new email that is the highest priority thing going on at that moment see I versus mater maybe 12 emails since you know well in the past like 20 minutes and I haven't looked at a single one of them I mean I'm focused and your sis stuffed with one single email stuff right no but seriously that if somebody's using a phone I mean I've been a both sides that divide right so I can be using my phone and be having a conversation with somebody it's no problem I'm multitasking I'm focused on the conversation but when you're on the other side you just feel just shitty because it's like well your whole attention like so I mean we know this right when so much of human communication is done non vocally right and in order to pick it up you have to most of the time see it most of it is visual and the person is in looking at you when you're doing that you I mean what you can meet you're communicating with only a tiny proportion of you're available communication tools and you're just not pleasant and good I always try to make an effort not to be using my phone unless i strictly have to around other people well Vlad I gotta say in the future you and I are going to have some very awkward uh one-on-one dinners I think cuz i can't i can't turn away from the phone I just can't do it I'm sorry but nothing personal I assure you it's nothing personal but if it is I'm kind of used to it with you I I know who you are I know what you do um I know the deals and the millions of dollars that depend on them so I can kind of right tolerate you but you're a special case led blowing my cover as a international coke dealer there with the million dollar days come on seriously do you really expect people to believe that you actually away on vacation this past week like you could get away for a whole week from work I was in South America is what I was that I'm gonna leave it at that South America that's all you need to know anyway did you get it sad day what did you get a tan in South America I got a tan in rural Wisconsin actually Neal eyes home state um it was it was a good time I I saw a lot of aircraft actually I'm sorry what we're gonna go off topic here but let me talk about this briefly because um every year when I go to so the event that I go to is eaa airventure which is one of the largest air shows in the world it's it's more than an airshow it's like a whole aviation convention it's not farnborough it's like more focused on on home-built aircraft and general aviation but they for years they've had a problem a growing problem with with network saturation their verizon does okay i didn't check rising this year but in the past verizon has done okay both on 1x and on evdo AT&T flakes out like at minute one when everybody shows up the entire network goes down you can't use data in fact does this weird thing that I've never seen anywhere else where you can't even latch onto HSPA or UMTS it drops you down to edge and that's still not functional you can't use edge either but HSBA doesn't work as doesn't work it was marginally better this year and that there were moments there were brief moment in time where you would be able to check Twitter or like an email would roll in and then like if you tried to send an email would like sit there for half an hour and then eventually send and I noticed walking around the airport that they had set up a few they weren't cows like traditionally you think of you know these these events they roll up the trucks with with the telescoping cell towers on back that that they you know they put up and leave there for the duration of the event they didn't do that but they had these um bees I mean I can only describe them as like portable towers there were literally like uh 50-foot tall cell towers that were that they brought in and and stuck on the ground and then surrounded what like these cement blocks to keep them in place um and I don't know who they belong to i don't i don't know if they were supporting AT&T or a multitude of carriers but I it did get a little bit better but here's the thing like as busy as that event is it is nowhere near the number of people that would be required in that size of a space to saturate a fully built out network so and I don't pretend to be an engineer but for goodness sakes like if you're a TNT if you're any carrier bring it do do the proper planning for the EAA AirVenture is not a small event people know about it all these carriers should know about and they obviously do because the cows were on there not the cows but the purple towers were on site but do the proper planning you know roughly how many people are gonna be there bring enough towers bring enough infrastructure to make sure that the network isn't going to go down because i know that in this case it is not a spectrum exhaustion issue it is merely a temporary infrastructure issue so oh you know they're getting a little bit better and hopefully in the next few years you'll catch up maybe they'll start rolling out LTE there again it's in rural risk was caught one that rural but it's in smaller part it's in oshkosh which is not a very big town um so yeah hopefully I'll get better over time but I just want to I at the very last minute I realized that I had something mobile related to talk about with this vacation of mine so I'm glad I was able to get it out there for you folks anyway I was actually anticipating some the sufficient sorry I just I just wanted to tell you guys that my I just watched the arrival of the death of my weekend come through the door i muted myself some men have delivered like I would say about 10 square feet of boxes to be built into ikea furniture it's taradise it's something I so much fun we're gonna build a center kitchen island with it and yeah so ikea so it should not islands cuz that's like that's not even furniture that's like part of the house oh no you would trust we we spent many many weeks putting stuff together and planning it together i'm visiting the store to seeing if it would work and now I get to build it it's gonna be awesome and I'm going to get will see the nice thing about building ikea furniture is I'm really i build ikea furniture like I bowl I suck at it completely sober I'm really good with like one or maybe two beers in me and then beyond that I suck at it again so you got to get right in that sweet spot yeah I look forward to spending my entire weekend in that to beer sweet spot that's exactly what you're talking about when you say to beer sweet spot like I'm really sad that I know exactly what that means but I do uh anyway uh what were you saying you I think you were trying to say something earlier I was disappointed about when you went off topic when you went up 40 you're going to enlighten us about airplanes but then you weren't actually back on topic and discussed mobile networks which I did I is it's disappointing from one perspective but then pleasing from a whole other perspective if you're really that interested in learning about my thoughts on general aviation visit my personal site where I just wrote a piece on it um but I am more editorial going on there yeah I can't we have fast and the furious in the air why can't the facts and rios airplanes they they do that it's called the reno air races and they're in September I encourage everybody help I'd love to go to reno air races i just i'm gonna dream of mine I just have never made it out there um alright uh demand something I suppose I exist anymore what's that you have a toughness deserve to exist so to some yeah but just about to try and get bring us back on topic I was gonna say the other thing in the documents just real quick is we finally at leaks of windows phone 8 devices there's a samsung Odyssey and Marco I mean yeah out of Alex hi aunt bottom looks low-end the high-end one is LTE 4.65 AMOLED screen and an 8 megapixel camera the other one's a 4-inch wvga screen of the 5 megapixel camera you know if there was some secret part of you that hope that the windows phone 8 devices would like be radically different we'd be talking about completely different specs that live in a completely different world where I don't know something else would be on phones that would be like oh my god like it's not gonna be that world that you know we're talking about screen size and you know LTE chipsets and the the same stuff yeah the green on the line rage yeah so is there good memories because I want to take an extended moment with my rage oh ok I was just gonna say I think I can't remember which those two code names is the high-end device but yeah I advice is greener Odyssey god is he okay yeah i think the screen the odyssey is literally the same part as the galaxy s3 screen which good part so probably mean more power yeah i mean they both super amoled the both the 4 inch and the four point six inch I think I was going to say is that the way this is shaping up is the samsung is going to essentially replicate HTC strategy with the 1 series where the absolute flagship premium stuff everything good in it device is 4.6 4.7 inches and then the slightly lower end mid-range device is 4-inch 4.3 inch size so this is what we're looking at the 4 inch device me okay yes the Super AMOLED display boosts wvga which is not as good as getting an average and I sure HD display I mean I don't need to explain why that's the case more pixels equals more loveliness on the display and it frustrates me it totally frustrates before the reason just outlines like I'm convinced and this isn't like I'm Callistus this is just my preference i'm convinced that it's just the fact of ergonomics that for inched 4.4 inch device really fits and works you know it's kind to me it's kind of like the 3.9 to 4.3 inches is kind of like seven inches to 10 inches with tablets it's a sweet spot all the sweet range let's call it the sweetie range right for four factors and if every company outside of Apple because we know Apple is going to stick with just one device so that's it if every company goes for this kind of mode where the true premiere device is 4.5 four point six inches and then the mid-range device is four inches in the actual sweet range that I'm talking about then eyes are gonna be frustrated because I'm never gonna have the perfect phone like I'm gonna want things from the top end device but then I'm going to warn the form factor of the mid-range device and I'm going to continue with his frustration where I want things from one place and from another place for a third place and nobody ever dares to actually put them together into one device there was one except so yes is that Apple Apple is doing that there was apple and and also the Samsung blaze 4g which was a relatively high end piece with a four-inch screen or was it three point is 5.9 or for something like yeah but yeah generally speaking you know the larger you go the higher end the device yeah and shouldn't be the case that needs to be actually I just feel like companies of old shop it's basically simple is that they overshot with the side also I mean to the same time Samsung with a Super AMOLED technology super amoled plus yeah the areola actually this isn't super amoled plus it's it's a pentile display that they have yeah at four point 65 um yeah I can kind of see that getting a super amoled display 4 inches and at 720p is probably tough and they can't get the pixels that small etc etc but you know then that's also one of Samsung's weakness is if you like something is very strong with sounds acknowledging but sort of not particularly versatile you know so if Samsung can't ship Super AMOLED display smartphone as a premier smartphone they seem unwilling to compromise and look elsewhere if they can't ship one with the wrong processor and again they seem more willing to look elsewhere and to look for alternatives mean they fill in supply gaps we've seen them do that with tegra chips and other things where they force into it well I guess the Windows Phone welcome Joe coughing kind of okay yeah take that point away this has some per ticket but you know when Samsung has the freedom it just kind of very rigid in its approach yeah except I see you know yeah Chris you said that this screen on the this part the the Super AMOLED screen on the galaxy s3 is a really good part and by and large I agree with you i'm looking at it now but since i moved to san francisco and i'm like walking a lot more i'm looking at my phone a lot more like when i'm walking which is dangerous and stupid but there you go at least i'm not driving and in the Sun I forgot how bad these screens are in the Sun upon I didn't go outside when I lived in sunnyvale like it's it's terrible and I'm gonna be switching back to the One X because of it like I can't handle it ya know that that's a good point you know what I miss in fact I was just thinking about this earlier this week remember back in the ipaq days they use the transflective displays that were actually like get her in direct sunlight then indoors and that technology is just vaporized and I don't know if it's because they can't make them thin enough or what the deal is but if we could go back to that that would make the ultimate outdoor device yeah although come on yes yeah yeah yeah means there's a recession you want somebody yeah okay what are the one of the original TFT color displays unlike the palm tree or the visor prism like when you do outside with those devices it was literally it would just be straight up black like you literally you not see a single thing yeah so then compaq came out the Tia with the the transflective stuff and blah blah blah but yeah I'm really tired of like like I I the pentile doesn't bother me on the gs3 but the the sunlight visibility I just can't handle anymore I did I actually remember that I remember the first color displays on feature phone you know back in the day when he was like one inches in two and a half inch displays and it's exactly like you say they're just disgusting deities with like one degree viewing angles and no sunlight readability in all of that garbage and this is this this is actually cut part of the reason maybe while we're so fond of monochromatic phones like if you think back to your favorite for memories they're not of that transitional phase where phones had like two megapixel 3 megapixel cameras which all stunk to the high heavens and couldn't be used for anything and had the very first color displays it's the generation just before that I cat lease in my face it is because I remember I having a couple of monkeys at last time you know nomadic1 chromatic this place did their job perfectly well the batteries lasted for a couple of lifetime's um everything it just kind of evolved and reached a nice maturity level and I were serious that I ever had that the worst experience ever had on a color display was with the the sony ericsson t610 / t 6 16 which was an awesome phone in almost every conceivable way it was the first it was the first um it was the first phone I own that made me realize that a phone could be a lot more than just a phone I think if that makes any sense and and the industrial design of it was great but but the screen was so bad I mean first of all it like he say dieter went completely black when you went outside but it Adam it had the screen had a standby mode where would the black the back light would be off but it would show the the time and like a you know an in motion pattern but it was worthless because the screen was not viewable without the the backlight on so you couldn't see it and to the icing on the cake was that the plastic the transparent plastic over the display was so soft that it would just get completely scuffed and scratched in a matter of weeks of owning the phone so you have this haze of scratches over the this display those are already hard enough to read as it was so it got to the point where the only time you could ever do anything with it was indoors with the backlight on high basically a shame because the phone is otherwise a really awesome phone speaking of phones that are meant to be used indoors near Wi-Fi sorry that's terrible republic Wireless is bringing in another round of users from its wait list and so they've got a new device or no longer using the old busted optimus s they've got their using the Motorola Defy XT the XT 535 which is unfortunately a gingerbread device but at least it's you know a little bit newer than what they had before and they're sticking with the same pricing which is 19 bucks a month for unlimited everything and you know they want you to use Wi-Fi but they did get rid of the caps when you're back on falling back on Sprint's data but yeah it's not like rolled out everywhere they're still letting beta customers in and these things are calling waves and so you know I don't have one I don't know what it's like to use one but it is nice to see even if it's just an MVNO even if it's you know not a huge carrier somebody trying to be a little bit disruptive and like they're taking advantage of that right if you look at their marketing materials it's like it's all like oh we're gonna take back wireless from these evil monopolies blah blah blah and like I don't know if this will scale but the fact that there's a company selling a phone with no contract for 250 bucks even if it's not the greatest phone ever and then charging you 19 bucks a month and just saying we know you're going to be using Wi-Fi we're going to aggressively make you use Wi-Fi whenever we can that's actually pretty cool like I i'm kinda I'm kind of intrigued by republic Wireless in a way that I wasn't when it was just the optimus s just because like that not that I walked to use the defy xt but it's at least like other than the fact that's running Gingerbread it's not like a completely you know ancient phone its relative i agree with you dieter and I do feel like you guys in the US have suffered so long and so hard I'm going to rest of those crazy crazy multi prices that you pay for your phone contracts i mean i can't imagine like twenty dollars a month is or less than half your lowest price t and otherwise way less than half yeah i'm paying for like five gigs or no 2 gigs of data a piece unlimited text and like 450 minutes or no so 700 minutes or something shared 42 plans i'm paying like 140 bucks for that on eighteen t i think like 70 bucks a pop so like way less than half but i mean the question is will it scale like can this company operate and make money and actually compete nationwide at scale and you know don't forget there still an mvno so it's one thing for an MVNO to offer this kind of deal it's another thing entirely for you know a carrier that is actually responsible for the infrastructure directly to offer this kind of deal surely the dream of the dream of ubiquitous Wi-Fi never really materialized materialized right there was this period in the 2000s where everyone like municipal Wi-Fi was like the hottest topic and wireless and that is largely evaporated i I think that AI mean I love the concept and I love the company and in particular I love their their boxes which are I don't know if they're still doing this with the defy xt but with the optimist they they literally took like the regular optimist box for sprint and turned it inside out and use that is the box for the phone which was extremely cool and it was like kind of a at the system attitude you know like it conveyed their their whole attitude as a company right but yeah you know I thinking of municipal Wi-Fi so you know I was at the Google Fiber event not got another article that I'm you know I'm trying to get get written for it but one of the things i said at the event and they told me after like we you know Chris you want to know why aren't you guys just doing municipal Wi-Fi with google fiber in Kansas City and like they're focused very focused on like end consumers but you know how you're a Wi-Fi network can have like guest access so you can give internet access but not let them into you know your main passworded network they said like two or three times that we haven't announced our guest access stuff yet but it's going to be interesting so like that something might happen in Kansas City that's super interesting with regards to like bigger Wi-Fi networks and guest access like I could they didn't say this but I could foresee them like putting out a standard that's like look every house in Kansas City is going to have our network box that's providing Wi-Fi so it's easy very easy for us to have somebody be able to jump from network to network within a house but since we are supplying the network boxes for this whole city basically now if everybody signs up we could have it such Wi-Fi network to network across houses and have it be secure like they could totally pull that off that's that's very compelling that is very good the one the one thing I've always wondered is you know I'm sure there are technical ways around this but um you know cuz i've been following phone for a long time you know and they're trying to do this whole communal wat i think but i always wondered uh you know if somebody attaches to your network and does something legal i'm thinking mainly like you know downloads torrance yeah you know that's tied to your IP so when the subpoena comes in for the IP who does that get routed to it gets routed to your account you're not with isp so i don't know how how r if that has really been resolved but that would be my main concern we could dream what would happen we can actually as long as speaking about dreaming about markets if you haven't we we put this on the front page i tweeted it with a typo which is terrible but mr. Nicol has written a post in the forums about where as regulation is not about free market versus big government and he sort of uses our constant joking about calling ourselves communists like starting off point for actually explaining the market forces that are going on in the US carrier market and it's incredibly good and you should go read it right now it is it is that it is the most critical acclaim thing from the past week and quite naturally I haven't actually had the time to then read it but it's getting an everybody Latinos yeah he basically you know explains you know how saying that the debate saying it's either you know free market let companies be free to do their thing capitalism versus evil big government regulation is totally a myth like that's not actually what's happening here and it's much more complicated than that and you know gets into the things that are keeping other startups from breaking into it and you know the monopsony or mon up sony but not believe how do you pronounce that monopsony anyway it's not as easy to write it yeah i like i like opsin ii like that's that's the best whatever the alagappa neon device two min anyway so anyway that's that's all i have to say about that um do we want to talk about the facebook phone zuckerberg says they're not gonna do it but Bloomberg says are gonna do some kind of collaboration with HTC in 2013 I just heard somebody go Blair I mean it's absolutely this 2011 is x 2011 all over again is already living all over again that this exact same like progression of rumors has already occurred and I was occurring again and we're gonna adapt any other stuff as another child yeah I mean seriously they're having Facebook phones there will be Facebook phones they just have some extra little lick of integration looking forward to a facebook phone that is fundamentally built around Facebook and built around a facebook centric operating system something like the Amazon smartphone which is definitely actually going to happen chris sigler call that i think three decades ago i did and dad's not going to happen in a Facebook garb facebook is not going to do that no I came out of the womb in my first words were oh yeah um yeah they see HTC cha-cha-cha 2 is what we're looking at that's that's how this cha-cha-cha cha-cha-cha is that what its gonna be cha-cha-cha cha-cha-cha yes yeah bass GC cha-cha-cha cha-cha-cha I just the edge I know I just have no vision of a facebook rather getting into this entire mess of device production and then iteration and development and design and and all of that stuff I mean look at Facebook's long-term goals and I mean Zuckerberg I mean he didn't put it in these terms but facebook wants to be everywhere on everything right and they want to be the social layer that is on every device and Brian if they do get in the market and they do end up having any level of success whatsoever it's going to give all of their newfound competitors a bit of a pause when it comes to integrating Facebook into their services because then there they might be enabling a competing phone so like for facebook to get into the phone market in in this kind of way could be harmful to their long-term prospects and it becomes more harmful the more successful it is and so I just I don't see how it makes sense right what's like the end md anything is the motivation for Amazon to have a smartphone and to have a dedicated tablet / media consumption device is because amazon has so much stuff to sell amazon is a store that's what Amazon does right it's a content delivery system anyone's to deliver that content as quickly and as immediately as possible to people with facebook it's it's what is facebook I mean it's a means of communicating between p1 and figures everybody appreciates the importance of Facebook it has that critical mass of like a trillion people I believe that's the correct statistic as of yesterday and everybody just can't avoid I'm plugging into it like if you don't have facebook on your phone where you know whatever sort of manufacturer software provider you are you have one of the major check boxes left and ticked which you know and again if you look at Google why Google got into the whole mobile game the reason Android exists is so Google search could be a mobile devices the reason chrome existed so Google search could be on browsers etc etc etc it's always been about google search and by extension google ads which is the real crux of the issue but you know google search could be obviated by a better service right a lot of people are suggesting that instead of search engine optimization people should be doing social optimization now because a lot of people are finding things on the web by the social networks rather than via search engines not as many to justify that conversation in my opinion but it's our right a lot of people are going through social instead of research um but I thing is you could replace Google you can't even place Facebook's millions and millions and millions of users there's just nobody who comes even close so everybody needs to have facebook on the phone and until that changes Facebook is pretty much no reason to have a phone and I'm so right yeah you still the same I mean complete agreement I like it your your argument is solid Vlad but keep in mind that virtually everybody in the mobile business right now is playing both sides like I can't think of anyone who isn't playing both sides assuming the Amazon Amazon smartphone exists I mean you already mentioned this but you know they'll be playing both sides they're already playing both sides with Kendall Microsoft is playing both sides between Nokia and it's other OEMs Google's playing both sides with exes wine and and other OEMs there is nobody who isn't playing both sides so I mean to suggest that that it would be strategically a bad for facebook to play both sides i think is probably um I mean one level you're right but I don't know i don't i don't think that necessarily means not going to do it yeah yeah no I'm not so fair you should make a suggestion from my perspective I just don't think it's worth the trouble like the possible gains Facebook and not as high as possible losses and the possible had I know it's funny it's almost like these companies just can't help themselves i mean if if facebook is indeed doing something again with HTC it and you know amazon's getting in like it's it's not that like they like oh yeah we have a plan to dominate the world with our phone it's that well phones are really important and we should do something so like we can't we can't help but like try something and make a phone like they just it just happens it's like oops oh hey look right now we're making a phone right yeah i just said yeah these are not the same companies hey like i would expect that kind of let's just be part of that mainstream thinking to me from more old-school ceos you know and the guys at the helm of Facebook and Amazon are now more modern thinking guys you know at least from what I know I mean Zuckerberg is young so we can just assume he's a more modern thinking CEO it wouldn't just be caught in the same waves everybody else um well I mean social network is any indication he's not very modern and was thinking about women right same thing had to had to go there um all right we've said more than the facebook phone deserves do you guys want to talk about Samsung or sprint earnings I mean we talked about Apple last week Samsung's still making money off of phones nobody's surprised by this and Sprint is still like man I remember when I was working and running like Windows Phone experts are no I'm sorry windows mobile experts way back in the day and like one of the first like the second time I hit sprint earnings we started like making a joke about the sprint Death Watch because they were like they were so bad and we didn't see anything in sight and here we are like five years later and like does anybody remember a quarter where sprint had earnings I made you go hey really nice job guys congrats that's really awesome like has sprint ever had a quarter where you you went like oh wow they're like really come back this is great everything's looking on the up-and-up a thumbs up it's always been like you know like it's always been like yeah playing this game with postpaid subscribers and like the the bulk subscribers I get by selling the MVNOs and like it it's always been just hard well I you know anybody on it profitable quotas right yeah oh yeah yeah back in the day but I it wouldn't been before I was closely tracking them I don't know about you dieter but it's it's been a long time I mean there may have been a couple were like they managed to eke out a profit but i can't i can't remember a single time where i was like wow sprint is like they're they have turned around and they are tracking upwards and I don't need to wonder about their financial health and is a board gonna freak out like it seems like every time so like well yeah the nextel acquisition has has widely been cited as one of the worst strategic moves in modern corporate history and it may have been what is ultimately led to Sprint's current malaise but at this point I don't know whether a better management could put sprint where it needs to be or if it really is a matter of critical mass of you know subscriber count where they can get the economies of scale that they need on the OEM side and if it's a critical mass in terms of spectrum availability to roll out the network they really need to roll out and of course that gets gets back to the duopoly questions around 18 T and Verizon I don't know I don't know if a better management team could could bail sprint out better than they're in they're currently doing yeah you know I wonder I mean I wonder when the history of sprint gets written if the the overarching narrative is going to be that they just got super overconfident because they had early wins they you know they rolled out there they love saying that the first digital network they were relatively early with cdma and evdo and my max so then that exactly then like well we are really good at picking winners for wireless networks and we're really good at getting out sweet devices that fanboys go crazy over so you know yeah of course we're gonna go with wimax yeah of course we can we can pick up next tell in their crazy i tend network because that that's going that's you know there that thing is taken off like gangbusters where we can we cut in is the future yeah and so i just wonder if like they just sort of I don't know believed in their own height I don't baby that's crazy analysis but they have had you know with wimax and with I den like two major infrastructure basically boondoggles and it's just hard to recover from that yeah yeah and t-mobile Phillip whom just resigned so it's a it's a battleground out there you should you should just cut this this whole journalistic kershaw and set up our own network I think you know what we're doing I'm sure we only need like what a few hundred billion dollars for Jim via know yeah but no matter you know dude what you know what which seat to pitch should Apple Apple has the money like nobody else there's no government already state has actually any money way dude they all have dead so pitch to apple and will say what's up your Apple specific network will do it or make it happen you have it all wrong Kickstarter yes we're gonna order going to start a Kickstarter project by either t-mobile or sprint or maybe both if we're feeling crazy I'm into should be cheap enough to buy as a pet yeah or we will get a disc with quality together get a discount actually glad to make this a little bit more relatable to you what we'll actually do is we'll start a Kickstarter project to buy vodafone which in turn owns fifty percent of verizon so again you know what we'll we'll have both the both sides of the Atlantic covered then okay but but then if we only own fifty percent of verizon that means we'll have to deal with some mustachioed CEO and negotiate with them whereas that if we take a horizon I want you know at least like 50.1 percent that's true that's a fair enough it's a good point you know is speaking of it we have different levels in the Kickstarter project and so like you know the stretch goal the top level would be taking over vodafone well you know at like the if we meet the goal of like you know a thousand bucks we'll just buy I don't know and that'll be enough to buy a case of TNT to put at the base of all t-mobile's towers to put the network out of its misery you know like like it's a course hey you know it was good hey i want t mobile they're the underdog I want him to succeed I like t-mobile yeah I don't like their current I don't like their current ad campaign but I'll I yeah I I feel like they're the only like truly scrappy national carrier express the little different is your happy anymore really no I really don't I think that they're a little bit too stodgy and weighed down by um legacy assets to feel as crappy as they need to feel t-mobile feels genuinely scrappy to me that just me Rena I've no I have no scientific basis for saying that that's just that's just my gut so guys just before we actually a wrap up today's show and let's try and do a little segue and say on the topic of scrappy underdogs sony and LG are actually out of the top five phone sellers smart phone service oh yeah you said he as you stepping up and on that topic with Sony now being out of the top five we can is it a limo scrappy underdog and this past week we saw a couple of leagues which or of the if I'm not mistaken the LT 30 and the LT 29 phones from Sony and in terms of actual industrial design that basically the same phone but I believe one of them is four point four inches the other one is four point six inches but the encouraging thing and the thing I like to be happy about them is that all these phones that are linked out there running ice cream sandwich and they're using the on-screen Android bottoms so Sony is the only company I've seen yet of all the android oems to just completely by motorola motorola i was in the photon q just got got an ounce that's got the on-screen buttons and a physical keyboard crazy I stand corrected if we decide to release any of those phones in the UK I'll make sure its pension exams I mean it got make up with urban is it's it's sad that we have to acknowledge it as being a new thing but it's on the other hand is good that somebody is doing the other screen buttons exactly as Google designed them um so you were very very little bezel because of that around both these phones it'll say their design is almost identical like I was actually confused i was looking and I was like okay one of these is LT 29 1 is LT 30 but both of them look pretty much the same but it one of them is just a little bit bigger the other the other 29 is actually we believe it to be the Xperia GX which was announced land think you were released over in Japan the good new got a couple of really nice problems in the experience also arrest him yeah the SX is one that I Japanese guys just fell in love with a rather our guys in Japan cuz now Japanese but I'll team over there Japan just love the sx uh it's about time Sony action brings those things across the Europe in the US and it seems to be happening it seems to be and brute to us and you know since I'm still considered the experience kind of a disappointment particularly because it will ship it what ice cream sandwich you know those things um there might be some rays of hope Sony on the horizon yeah it's it seems like they're making a genuine commitment to unifying their product strategy you know which which if you would ask me uh you know six or even three months ago I would have said I'm skeptical if that's going to happen but I feel like we're seeing some pretty encouraging synergy there and you know we might end up seeing them go the same route as as Samsung in many ways which as I say that I realized that's not necessarily a good thing but yeah the Samsung is really the company that eclipse sony it to become like be ubiquitous the electronics brand yeah we'll see we'll see if they can use smartphones as one of their major prongs for that push back into that leadership role that they've had taken from them I mean actually today we also saw leak of an xperia tablet right which looks just to be a case of the seventy tablet s still that it still got that folded magazine look put name is slimmer its Lena it has Tegra free system on chip on the inside it's running ice cream sandwich again I believe I mean oh this is this a whole bunch of slides that will lead to covet it on site but it doesn't look so nice building like dude another 70 said yeah here's the thing like it wouldn't be a virgin mobile show if we didn't mention the Xperia mini pro so I'm gonna do that right now with the exception of the Xperia mini pro if someone were to ask me what does Xperia mean I would tell them that it's an English eyes English Anglophile anglicized Wow anglicized version of the japanese word for disappointment so like taking taking xperia and putting it on a tablet like that's just it's not gonna work for me how not not interested so what are you suggesting that they figure designed really pretty phone so there was a clear pretty actually no i would i would be totally 3x10 which was just so nice and even the xperia s just looks really good i mean it doesn't feel that great in the hand but it looks so good like I I still feel I see if you like two companies they gave me most excited terms of phones sony and nokia maybe that's just because my most useful youthful and impressionable time with phones were spent that those guys were at the zenith and they weren't a peak but at the same time they have such a long history of designing things and doing it so well uh basically have a pedigree of doing really great designs i just wanted to continue you know because the point of course pay is absolutely spot-on the current mass markets giant is Samson and the it's Korean competitors guys like LG in some Chinese competitors and you know those south asia southeast asian countries but we lost something in that transition away from Japan like I still feel um may maybe that's unfair to the new companies but I still feel like the Japanese companies like Toshiba Panasonic and Sony just have a higher standard of quality and quality assurance in their products and if their designs that's how I feel so yes experience but there's there's a higher standard of like inspiration in the design that there's a there's a there's more of a desire to make stuff feel good and look cool whereas with Samsung phones I I don't know if I can think of a single samsung phone or I was like right I saw it and the first thing I thought was oh my god that is amazing looking I have to have a bit like that happened Peter Xperia phones Peter the samsung continuum bro oh my god hey I was there for the game son continual lodge oh no I remember at the moment when they were showing it and like them we all got to go run to do the hands on the first question was how they do the second screen and like everybody there every tech journalists there like pretty much at the exact same moment oh it uh it's just one extreme is a young time you could hear the room just deflate ya know the audacity I will never forgive samsung fully for having the audacity to paint a black stripe over an AMOLED display I will never get I will never let them let them have that back oh look spa though I mean that's gotta give him that right the the damage is done III will not I have the continuum I I didn't buy it but I had to reviewing it for a while and uh yeah it's just not not a good device and I think that is you know it's interesting i would love to have the full story i don't know if we'll ever have it in fact I'm pretty sure we won't but that is the perfect example of the relationship between an OEM and a major US carrier when completely wrong and oh yeah yeah you would love to excuse the pun but it's also the perfect example of Samsung's continuum of their relationship with with carriers right so the container was based on the galaxy s right it was the last two device that's right it's like that was the apex of Samsung just doing whatever and they were a carrier would ask for and even if the carry didn't ask for the continuum just like making a million billion different versions once they kick out the platform the galaxy s there were how many phones were based on the galaxy s how many phones are based on the galaxy s2 just hundreds of models it feels like and now they have swung to the other side and they've got the galaxy s3 on every carrier in the US with the exact same design as it is everywhere else in the world and I really think it'll be interesting to see if in 6-8 months if Samsung is going to be able to restrain itself from creating a million different variations on this basic platform of the gs3 I think they're gonna try and I think it's gonna be really interesting to see what that does to you know their market share and the smartphone ecosystem in general I think they don't edema to do that we had the red calluses free just introduced by AT&T over the weekend ugly yeah but it's still galaxy s3 like it's not like a continuum or a skyrocket or and I don't even I don't want to try and remember all of the variance of the gs2 in the gs3 because it'll just hurt my soul but there were so many of them I mean am I misremembering am I just like don't have like no your dear you're absolutely you're absolutely right but I I think that they will be able to continue down the galaxy s3 path of unification for as long as they maintain their enormous market share lead and I as long as they continue to build the galaxy brand in a positive way if they can do that then they can they can own the market in the same way Apple does it's all about power baby it is I do want to say the continuum although we were happy and laughing about it is a really good down point to end the show with because we always need a damn went to end the show I do you feel like the continuum one of the most outrageously terrible design decisions in recent memory is a good one to end on we will act before we end though Wow tables turn I usually I'm trying to end the show I'm glad won't let me now it's the other way around we have to mention that we are giving away an HTC One X Chris what's the story for how people can enter to win this HTC One X so the way this works is we have a very tricky trivia question that you need to answer you need to send an email the email addresses in the post go check it out but you need to answer the question Neil I once said that he stupidly loved two phones and you need tell us what those phones are I don't want some people are some people are asking for hints and I'm not going to give you a single hint because we've already got a number of correct responses so this is not an impossible task the answer is out there you have to go find it also I think the answer might actually be in our phones already we might have had a pretty sure where she had read in the forums about your favorite old phones and that's where Neela I admitted his love for one of them that's also where I admitted my love for the same phone because independently before Neil and I had ever met and embraced and broke down we both fell in love with a particular phone was for your name yeah it was prices so this consciousness Christmas thing that isn't in the frame would be very mysterious today we started off a mystery of finishing mystery yes all right that ladies and gentlemen is a virgin mobile show if if you want to follow us on twitter you can we are communally collectively at verge i'm at background chris's at Z power Vlad is that Vlad savov and you can email us at mobile show at the verge calm and we'll be back next week thanks thanks guys all right guys uh this is live uh Peter I want to say it once that's what you gave cut my way now