Gadgetory

so earlier today Chris put up his status symbol post for the the palm five incredible PDA from a 1998 incredible design it got me thinking about my handspring visor prism this big chunky thick PDA no internet built in unless you put in a module on the back and then you know I put up a picture of it next to the the iphone 5 just how much thinner and better it is and I mean I'm gonna be honest we're going to talk about specs today and it's easy to get grumpy and complained that you know these are just small iterative bumps day by day week by week month by month but or course a year's you you just miss that we're living in the goddamn future it's kind of amazing and we're gonna try and give it the appropriate aww today stay tuned for the rubble show I'm dieter bohn I'm dancy from plasa and I'm Chris tickler we don't have our process down for the order I'm when we go for up we have the whole time just thinking about that yeah I was thinking about it well the whole time we were we were sitting here in silence waiting to start like this is gonna be I'm always last I'm always fast that's all you guys need to know I'll take that one I think I think it's my fault cuz we should probably just go in alphabetical order and I would suppose that we could just answer yeah alphabetic my last name of course right um so uh it is really hot in san francisco and i'm just going to start off with the off topic madness it's october and it like i'm a sweaty mess and like I had to walk and by a fan for the office and it just hasn't helped it it's uncomfortable and I'm unhappy and I'm grumpy and so even though I'm you know all optimistic in our opening the truth is I'm really angry and unhappy except my sister just had a baby which is gay congratulation also look yeah I you know didn't contribute at all because that would be gross yet every weird but so do they not have air conditioning in San Francisco not in my building there is a like a 25 year old eric window air conditioner sitting in a closet but I don't know if I permission to take it and use it but I might just have to do that are our landlord not too well I shouldn't say anything their landlords a little bit persnickety and so I can't do anything until I actually talked to her about it well meanwhile your regular San Francisco weather has made its way to New York because it's 60 degrees and raining out so I would totally take that right now I'm I'm not used to heat I just can't handle it it's been a long time since we've had a mobile show where I haven't known a word and I've had to look it up on the air but I'm doing that right now with persnickety ah placing too much emphasis chris- you or mine details yeah actually here's the thing have you guys ever heard the phrase somebody's going to have a bird no but there's a whataburger my family it's always said it's like it's like having a conniption fit you're gonna have a bird so I was gonna say that my landlord would have a bird if we just took the air conditioner but person aquino one with no yeah yeah by the way a fun fact a synonym of persnickety is pernickety I wouldn't know s dead oh come on per ticket is that our social one of those versions of the word is American but you don't know each one I don't know I know it's like aluminium and aluminium and flammable and inflammable I'm sure inflammable was never meant to be or maybe but I know which one was meant to be which was good to me inflammable I presume it's just flammable and answer Americans decided actually inflammable sounds like a catcher's flame so we'll use it for the exact same meaning even though it sounds like it's the exact opposite one which I don't know what the exact opposite of the first bubble show is but I think we'll be doing it dr. business I don't even think it's so nice to have everybody in the same you know for a box and just have us all together I don't even want to talk about phones I I just want to talk about the fact that everybody has a beard except for Dan and he really needs to get on that no I actually I actually didn't shave today uh so you know give me a few more weeks uh-huh yeah you know exam went when dieter Wendy turd came here he didn't have a beard and he claimed that he was unable to grow one and now he has one of the most luscious beards a team well I I want to say that I would call it lucious my first week here I had a pretty rockin beard and if you watched the first 90 seconds I was in like back in August my beard was you know in full force and then I was like you know what I might be on camera more often the beards gotta go and and so I've been I've been you know stay my friend here it's gotta stay now I my beard is basically like like hair that meant order on my arm and just missed and it hit my face it's not luscious all um we gotta talk about we have yet to dog Vodafone's I think we've been on the air for like five or ten minutes now you've yet to mention also the messages gotta be less you see right yeah yeah okay well okay we'll talk about Tiant optic stuff and how quickly introduce the HTC one x+ which is so bonkers is so unique that only somebody who's had the opportunity to see it and touch it in person such as myself can really speak about it I mean honestly it is such a special phone such fish phone um and this sarcasm needs to end and uh agency just upgraded the One X and gave it faster processor a bigger battery more storage encoded one x+ and it's shipping it with jen p all of it is actually good news I'm just kind of underwhelmed with these iterative upgrades and I don't think I'm alone here and the most notable thing can really say about the one x+ is that it has a more matte surface than the white one x and comes in black so if you really wanted a dark man black one x is here and I mean I do appreciate the fact that has a new bigger battery that's good and jumpy what isn't good and the thing that actually annoys me is that HD is going to ship this phone so this phone across Europe before it ships up gently an update for the WAGs in the 1s not long before but it still before and that's just a bad habit yeah so my concern I'm really glad that it has a bigger battery but it also has the switches to it's a 1.7 gigahertz Tegra 3 is that right that's right yeah and one of the things I love about the One X is on ATT with LTE s it's got really good battery life and you know a big fan of that that Qualcomm processor so a little bit concerned that switching to the Tegra is going to offset that bigger battery and it'll basically be awash in terms of longevity and battery life on this thing no I mean that's a very real concern I've been using the tegra free based one eggs and his better life is decent but it's not great I believe he was Chris who reviewed both the One X and the AT&T one x and he freaked out when he saw the ATT one with the extra efficiency from the you know the latest s4 processor from Qualcomm so yeah I mean to me it's a loss and also ATT announced its version of the 1x which is going to be released in the coming months so it seems to be a bit later in Europe and it's actually going to come with this new Tegra 3 processor and lt so this is going to be the first I believe the first Tegra free and LTE phone but i think i'm with you DJ i would much rather have the dual core snapdragon steps egra free i mean the other thing is as the problem with the 1x been the specs I mean we know that you know pretty happy with the device it just hasn't done as well as you know HTC was expecting and not as well as I was expecting I mean it'll this will help push things along a little bit and I guess it's good that they're sort of sticking with their plan to like you know keep the 1-series consistent but it's just sort of like you know would they really hurt them that to not release this phone honestly this is fun going to help them that much you know it's funny that you mentioned that dieter because I was thinking this the supposedly 2012 is supposed to be like a new HTC with with fewer devices and a different HTC than we've seen in the past and that's so far that's been the case but this device kind of feels like last year's HTC when we saw like the sensation come to the market and then you know that phone that came out like three months after the sensation with a slightly faster processor which is totally escaping my mind right now but it came out for tmobile sensation XE yeah the XE and the whatever the t-mobile had branded it amazed the amaze 4g it was like virtually the same yeah as a sensation but I had a faster processor which just feels just exactly the same as that and like you were saying it's hard to say that this will do anything for HTC it's still going to be limited to ATT just like the 1x was here in the US and you know it's it's a it's nicer that it has the more storage because it's got the 64 gigabytes of internal storage as opposed to 16 but in this day and age you know a lot of people are dumping stuff in the cloud and 16 isn't really a problem for the average user I don't think so it's it like I kind of agree with you it's hard to see how this is gonna be really beneficial for HTC yep what are you what are you up to Chris and what do you thoughts miss Lennox so I I can I have to confess I think that my internet connection is causing me to inject just enough of a delay that it's impossible for me to actually speak during the course of a normal conversation in this grand HTC debate but now that you specifically called me out I will yeah I do have a couple of thoughts on this thing I think that expletive think of X plus as being I mean it's exactly like you guys were saying I think of it very similarly to the jump from say the iphone 4 to the 4s the difference is that instead of turning that product or any year they're trying to turn it around and what four or five months and and that is not III think that that's a very very difficult habit for Android manufacturers HTC and Samsung included to break Samsung has done a better job and I don't think that will see you know there were those rumors going around recently that we'd CGS for at mwc next year I don't think that's going to be the case I don't think we'll see that until june or july um but uh yeah so I mean you know maybe it was a carrier request and that's another problem for HTC is that they're still beholden to companies like AT&T and Verizon when they want something it's probably very difficult for them to say no we're going to do this our way and they've they've certainly tried with one series but you know speaking of these announcements today let's let's talk about the VX which is an AT&T exclusive device and so here's another example just like the during credible 4G LTE of a carrier bespoke a product that that does not really line up anywhere in the grand scheme of HTC's product portfolio apart from the fact that it shares the one name and the specs are weird but I mean the you know the processors but it's got the dual core it's got a 1.2 gig hard stool core Snapdragon s4 which is a great processor and we've done nothing but praise it all year long but 4.5 inch qhd is just a weird size resolution combination and add in the fact that they're not discontinuing the 1x on 18t where the heck these three products not because AT&T is already selling the 1x4 9999 and I in talking HTC earlier about these phones I got the impression that they're not necessarily keen on lowering that price again in time for the holidays so you're gonna have the X plus presumably at one 9999 I would imagine then you'll have the 1x at 99 99 and then the VX is where 4999 free I just like it's another price pressure situated we've been talking about this problem for years but it's it's happening once again where you've got too many products in too small of a price I think and yeah the thing about the VX for me is like why did they change the design that I mean that was the one thing everybody said about the one v is it looks and feels amazing are they I mean they must be aiming for a lower price point with this thing well right yeah totally different than the one v I mean if you compare the envy is like a 3.7 inch display vs this has got a 4.5 inch display which is like you know a totally different feel and I think target and market and but though I do feel exactly the same way as you dieter like the one v's design was was great and it was a great entry level 1 series so if they're going to just do a spec upgrade on the One X why not just do like a internal spec upgrade on the one v and then you know keep that in its entry-level slot but doesn't look like that's in eighteen eighties plans yeah it's true the Dana I was gonna ask actually is if the one p is available on AT&T I don't believe that it is not right no no it's not alright so yeah so this one VX is going to occupy I guess that sort of position n HTC's portfolio but such as it is and I'm guessing in terms of display their kind of dredging up old supply which is going to be you know going really cheap of the old displays of the class and kind not the same type resolution as we had in the HTC Titan and the sensation because this sensation XE was the jumbo size 1 4.7 inch one um see I think the VX is HTC just be a little bit cynical and just taking you know chief supplied that it has particularly of the displays and and the other thing is you know nowadays as much as we don't like this friends you can sell 4.5 inch phone more easily than you can say a 3.7 inch phone for each phone just because it's like people seem to think he'd they get more for their money right well I guess we should also talk about so jelly bean is coming to the One X and the one s it's going to start rolling out this month although as lad said probably after the release of the X plus and the VX man I hate these names anyway and I mean I'll be interested to see how HTC handles it because we know that their take on on Ice Cream Sandwich they you know very heavily skin it down to a custom kernel made it really hard for rom developers at least to start especially with the two processors that they had so I'll be hoping that it's very buttery and very fast because if it's not I think that it kind of sucks for Android uh you know in a weird way that if you know the big effort the big important stuff that were part of jelly bean doesn't translate to these other OEMs these other skins like that just sucks like although be there is you know Google Mail which is cool but it doesn't feel like a point upgrade to me big upgrade yeah this is nothing good to say it's just it's just a really underwhelming phone and really underwhelming upgrade I think and also there's something here to also mention although this isn't a substantive point there is the matter of the perception of your phone and HTC has been a premier android phone manufacturer for a long time and make it the premier devices involves treating them in that fashion so exactly as Chris was saying the samsung galaxy s3 it's part of Samson coming out with a ton of mid-range phones the Galaxy Note phones and upgrades and whatever else is now going to be touched like spent the smartphone flagship for samsung galaxy s3 which will probably last at least until june next year or as HTC just taking his best phone and just upgrading it kind of randomly like here's the 1x a favorite phone it has soup roasted like theater just mentioned and then here's the one XL is the same thing but it has LTE now and now he is the one x+ we've tweeted a little bit more so these things first of all they did they reduce the resale value at the 1x because it's not a unique phone and people who go into x 1 x w know exactly which version they're going to get now exactly because you dilute it first of first of all second floor I'm kind of repeating myself but yeah because as I lead the whole message of the one phone which which was a HTC zone creation you're going to get your marketing and that same thing that agencies trying to create that same emotional bonding connection for people isn't going to happen if you're going to tweak the formula every few months even if it's otherwise harmless so you're just not great you could have been great maybe could be redesigned like okay I'll say something really positive or something positive which is that it has 12 to 100 million power battery in the exact same space and she'll as the eighteen hundred million power battery in phone which AC deserves credit for like digit jacked in a better that's a sixth bigger without altering the device size just you know five grams heavier which is good engineering that's good job by HTC yeah and the screen is still for all right I'm gonna I'm gonna challenge you a little bit on this being an underwhelming phone blood I think the problem I mean you said underwhelming phone under underwhelming upgrade and I totally agree with you on the underwhelming upgrade part the problem is that I I think the proper HTC in for the android business in general is that the 1x did not need an upgrade this year and this makes i think that the existence of the X plus makes HTC look little weak and it makes them look like they're trying to get a you know get some sort of leg up on the gs3 the like they feel like they're in a defensive position and they need to kind of like rejigger the 1x just a little bit to get a leg up and try and get back in carrier scores which maybe they very well need to do but still from a public perception perspective that's not necessarily the image that they want to protect absolutely and also just to mention the samsung galaxy note 2 just started uh well it's on sale now here in the UK and obviously other markets I think it's already in Salem career so from my thinking I just see HD seen the Galaxy Note to grab in a whole load of shelf space in cary stores exactly the same chris and they're saying we need to get something big to sit alongside it we can't just let Samsung have this big new product particularly is Samsung's first shipping jellybean device as well so HD decided to counter that but again problem is that Samsung's Note series is separate from its flagship where is for HTC this quote-unquote upgrade is to its actual flagship device and for what it's worth here in the US it's still going to be on one carrier and it's not going to get the exposure on multiple carriers like say the galaxy s3 has right and as well news yet speaking of rudderless directionless defensive actions while we're treating open webOS release its official one point oh four yeah yeah so it's out and you can install it on a computer there's a group called level s ports which is associated with webos internals they're kind of you know they work together and they got it running on a Galaxy Nexus they've been working on it for a while they still don't have hardware acceleration going on it and Steve trottin Smith actually has also got it running on a transformer prime although I suspect the hardware acceleration might not be going there either so they really need to get that figured out and I mean HP needs to help if they want to get any kind of traction here whatsoever um can I just say I mean unreasonably excited about the Galaxy Nexus board like I am super I don't know why I can't explain it but I am extremely excited to try a Galaxy Nexus running open webOS for no reason whatsoever well I see it this way it's the best hardware webos has ever been has ever run on even though it's you know a year old hardware that wasn't exactly cutting-edge at the time when it came out it's still the best town that web les has ever seen because of you know various hardware issues that webos and palm had so that's kind of exciting the other thing is like you know what's the endgame here like I mean this is going to appeal to webos diehards and super nerds but you know where do they go from it from with with it from here I mean why I think the thing that's hansard quite that's interesting to me I'll go ahead Chris Ison say I think that they they end up having that the same the exact same level resounding success that uh that me go and Tyson have had i think that's that's I mean part of it part of me wonders if we've just seen the end game I mean if you read their like their post about you know this thing you know reaching 1 point 0 like the thing that keeps saying over and over again is we did what we said we're going to do we met our goal like they care more about the fact that they managed to stick to their roadmap then they do about the fact that they've just shipped in OS all right like it there it's like it's more about the first slide is like we did we we've succeeded in our goal despite our you know tiny resources instead of hey look there's a new OS that you can install and so you know the community's going to get this up and running they'll get hardware acceleration going in the Nexus it'll be a fun thing to try and I suspect that we're going to maybe see like Huawei or ZTE or somebody you know take a flyer on a webos device to sell us a phone and you know we might be you know installed like some kind of corporate environment but I don't see any evidence that now that this thing is out that you know what's the next part of the roadmap what's the next step they need to make some announcements and I mean we also need to see how this relates to this this weird Graham spin-off company and what they're planning on doing so I mean it's you know it'll be a fun experiment but I really don't expect you know don't expect level s to return to like you know mattering in the consumer landscape if it ever did well right either I would actually like to bring you back to our opener today which was about status symbols that post and funnily enough it was a palm device that we're talking about this is the only elicit I should the pinnacle of what open webOS can achieve is become sort of status symbol OS with Stella simple devices which geeks will recognize and appreciate and enjoy primarily because the ecosystem issue the third party app ecosystem issue is so prevalent nowadays if you don't have one you're pretty much dead in the water and this is why the guys who are struggling to reach number three behind Android and iOS struggling so hot you know Windows Phone and rim with you know the 2015 blackberry 10 release which there were plans so it's always the case I mean I'm thinking about the guys who left nokia the former Iraqi engineers and set up their own project field more phones on the basis of Miko Harmison right I love to lock it and nine I think most people who used it and God spend time would it also really enjoyed it but as much as I love that software even if they put it on even better hardware it's not going to go anywhere because there are no apps yeah you have to have the support of big guys like skype and Instagram etc you have to have the big social networks particularly with twitter now I mean Twitter boy will let you build an app anymore right Twitter needs to be known on the other hand the other option is to have real and genuine web app ecosystem where the apps are more than just you know a glorified web page and it you know have it be easy to install on multiple devices I mean that's a potential future that never came to pass really well and it would have been great if it had and if my opinion and I know you're gonna rag on me for this but you know blackberry 10 is pretty good for web apps too but in fact than webos really ever was and where I was good as I could as all somebody's ecosystem problems as a direction that room is pushing in but have we ever seen that succeed that's the trouble no I clans never seemed my wish was the mo yeah but I mean it's frustrating because I mean you know I ran precentral i luv 10 s um and you know if you've used webos on a touchpad you know it was a slow and buggy experience but like you can you see hiding behind the lag that the potential for really great tablet experience is there and you know there's this new lunacy e things called lunacy for you know managing windows that the communities you know iterating on so if they're if they're just were a decent app ecosystem and they could get this thing running with hardware acceleration on decent hardware it could be really compelling but it's you know it's one of those just frustrating things like nobody they're just not killing the dream and part of me wants HP to just admit that the dream is dead instead of just limping along yeah I'm with you actually it's like I bleeeh I would rather just put a line under it and I we can move on what's gonna be hilarious to me is when HP makes a windows phone or an Android device yeah oh that's happening that's totally happening yeah well I mean yeah it's definitely going to make a Windows 8 tablet like that's a no-brainer yeah so um well I guess since I brought a blackberry let's just get this out of the way quick well some time we talked at the death last week's we don't need to get a blackberry 10 again but they did release their earnings and you know they lost less money than people expected yay and 7.4 million smartphone ships would shipped which is you know I guess let nothing for people not to completely ignore them but it's still pretty sad well it depicted I guess a lot of people were back in this figure around on twitter i think google activates more smartphones in a week then rim shipped in the quarter yeah Wow nope we also saw leaked images looks like a promotional video of I think it's called the end series is what we're expect to be called the quarry keyboard device with the big square screen and I mean I don't know it looks cool it's gonna be weird to gesture straight up from the keyboard there if the keyboard is really that close to the screen having to do that up gesture constantly I think will be a little bit awkward but I mean I'm probably gonna buy one of these things it's like you are enjoying were literally you are you should be committed to an institution immediately Peter before this listener just happened listen when is the last time that there was a front-facing qwerty keyboard portrait phone with real specs when was the last time we had that well like that was like competitive in terms of specs everything thinking it was my time the treo pro that but I'm even by the time that came around I don't think that was competitive with specs yeah that was yeah the gym someone was close I mean and they have HTC to thank for that device anyway um yeah but I mean you know the 700p wasn't maybe maybe the you know one of their other windows phone 7 WX but once the last time we had a properly SPECT modern front-facing qwerty keyboard device I can't it's been forever and just on the virtue of that alone interested in giving the singer shot venue pro if the slider is cool well yeah but I mean the venue pro was stuck to your standard windows phone 7 specs that were kind of aged by 2010 when window said phone 7 came around I wouldn't call that a flagship hype high-end on the level of say a 1x or galaxy s3 or even a knife I can't believe I can't believe any of you are seriously entered to entertaining theatres ridiculous notion and giving him the time of day you should be hey Brendon our producer should actually drop him from his program right now I was going to I was going to actually answered 'yes this question with a question which I forgot which is fine but the point I was going to make is that this quality device from rim doesn't exist yet so I think actually my question was going to be do you know that this will compete in specs when it is actually on sale which has suspect very much a really good point actually really well and the perfect example is 1080p displays right because just this week sharp announced that it's the starting mass production of 1080p 5 inch displays energy is already doing the same and Chris and others myself included was so incredulous last year when we started seeing 720p displays and you know we just threw up the idea you know 1080p displays there's a next step right and we're like no dude we don't need them and now they're happening so things are moving so quickly like whatever we think of as cutting edge which room is never cutting edge right so whatever think of carnage today by februari march april when room actually releases is going to be blunt to extend the analogy I just can't get over the fact that it doesn't look like rim has iterated on the 9900 design at all like it literally it just looks like a 9900 that's half an inch longer which I mean I'm okay with that it's an iphone 5 too but I mean it did but it's like it's it's it's exactly the same thing just with a ballad difference the difference then is that the iphone is iconic and people have built up loyalty whereas rim used to be iconic Andrew makes you need to change yes look man they're gonna make a Porsche version of this up a 99 99 99 and it's gonna cause and dollars pinay and I'm not gonna buy that one I can't even make the joke no dude that that actually is dredging up bad memories because I spent a solid week review that garbage portion is I thought and just giving it the time of day just giving it another shot and it's crazy it's crazy it remembers you want to strangle somebody and actually that's it that's a good point if you if you ever buy anything branded by Porsche or Ferrari or mitsubishi or Lamborghini or anybody make sure it's the thing that that company and brand is famous for okay good I haven't seen anything good I'm go ahead all right I'm going at easily uh you know argue this point with you because I want to say yeah it's got to be like 10 years ago now there was a line of laptops that actually bestbuy sold that were branded with porsche design and they were like the best looking Windows laptops of the time they pretty much just ate you know whatever Apple was doing but at that point there was no windows laptops that had you know widescreen display and aluminum chassis Xand you know relatively thin designed for the time and they even have like slot-loading cd-rom drives so those are like the only that I guess that's the exception that proves the rule there but nobody nobody wants to corroborate this on me with me I know sorry your your way out on your own I don't know what you're talking about but I'm to trust you so I'm really excited if there's a new years of sad man taian you should totally jump all over that like a Batman tie and I think you can like the Batman give me an 800 which was amazing yeah how about about a James Bond tyne isn't that the the Sony Xperia T L got announced isn't that gonna be James Bond's next phone yes yes and I actually can talk about that because I've had one in for review and I can't bring myself to review it because well frankly the fact that i'm not going to review it sorry should thank before you should probably like 7k could say thank you because it is annoying it well here's the thing um it'sit's ships food ice cream sandwich which is good and it's generally responsive and in terms of the widgets I actually think Sony might have some of the best the skin widgets and that was Kent weeks so it has some really really good ideas but Sony's habit of picking the ugliest most annoying displays I'm talking if you just look into the display straight up in front of you like right in front of your eyes it looks good and all of this Bravia Engine talk that they have with the displays bright top much great you can get some great saturation great color etc as soon as you tilt it in any sort of direction and let me assure people most of the time you're not looking at your phone straight ahead you know it's not a 20 inch display you don't need to you don't need massive viewing angles but you need some viewing angle so a lot of the time you looking at your phone while it's on table or your hand etc and look at it from one angle and when you're doing that the Soudan displays is just garbage and i thought this experience he was an upgrade over the Xperia Arc with the plastic back there's only still using the exact same class signatures and it ultimately you just start feeling it's also feel really cheap I think it's such a major and significant departure from things like the Xperia x10 which to me was he knows it's what was caught right sony ericsson xperia x10 am the one dose stuck on 1.6 for about a decade under 1.6 that really felt like a premium device like you held in your hand you're like wow this is a saudi phone even though the software head issues now Sony's getting better with software it's just cheap eating out on the hardware side and it's not learning for its own mistakes and just annoys yeah the issues that yeah and the the tea sounds like the exact the exact same issues with the eye on that came here in the US this summer yes just you know display issues all over the place hardware issues with it all over the place ah right and just a thing I'm trying to say is this phone also makes James Bond appear completely confused because he's going to wear a mega watch which costs thousands and thousands of pounds or dollars whatever you currently costs thousands right has got precision engineering and it keeps time beautifully etc etc and then just a little bit further down into his hand you got this plastic piece of mmm and it's terrible I mean it's basically ruined a feel for me as soon as I see the product placement folded the Xperia T I'm gonna be like James Bond use of garbage file I kind of respected me more I wonder brushes to win whoever the bad guys are well of course you do your Bulgarian Vlad yeah you probably root for the Russians in every single bond movie pretty mine is there are Russians in the movie Wow um by the way I have nothing tight they had this conversation Ivan Ivan played I will say this i don't think we've ever mentioned it on the show but we should Jeff leg and did an excellent piece where he actually went and talked to Sony's mobile designers at their tokyo tokyo design office and in part c I mean that the text of it is great is that he interviewed them but the gallery is really really fascinating where you get to see all these different design concepts they've iterated through and there's this one shot in particular this table with I think like literally every phone sony and sony ericsson have ever made and it's just in it's insane i want to buy that table with all the phones on it just for my own personal use um uh but yeah I do think after reading Jeff's piece I do want to believe that Sony recognizes exactly what you guys are talking about which is that there's a you know their their devices have felt very cheap sometimes they look great but they feel cheap and I think that as as the new management and the new corporate structure kind of congeal over the next few quarters I'm hopeful that that's going to change Lisa I sort of want it to and I think we all do we all have everyone in our age range has a very fond memory of Sony growing up and we all kind of want to see them turn around but this product is really that and you know on paper the specs are great right but uh but you know too hopeful that this fun that I watch and I look great that's the thing yeah I I don't know if I've said much positive in this podcast today I'm just here ragging on companies but Sony blew it on the spec side as well it has a snapdragon s free from about two years this is still the s3 that was like one of the biggest complaints of the ion was that it was the s3 and it was you know old and is you know okay oh my god yeah thats thats Sarah blowing it yeah so juku is 1.5 gigahertz but it's old so that's one part another part going to chris's point about us hopeful geeks and the way to sony's letting us all down playstation certification HTC made sure to mention that the one x+ is another PlayStation Certified device and then I make sure to mention to HTC when they'll tell me about that the fact that the playstation store isn't activated yet so being placed in your certified basically means zero for the one x+ and put pretty but also let's not forget that sony is trying to have its one sony campaign so we got the HTC trying to give you the one smartphone device campaign Sony's trying to be the one sony it's also trying to rationalize the product line and at the same time they're falling back on bad old habits because you got the Xperia T which is I'm guessing is good to be all across Europe then you go to the xperia TX which is going to be the germany only LTE version and that one actually has a Snapdragon s4 dual-core Snapdragon s4 and LTE I think I think okay had they had to combine the two basically so that's why they went for the new approach there uh I have nothing more to say about Sonny speaking of depressing a android garbage the motorola atrix 4g depressing in and of itself i know it's depressing that it's not going to get upgraded ice cream sandwich like come on guys really come on you said you'd do it I mean this is this is an old phone and that's fine whatever but I don't know man I mean what is motorola gonna get its act together and act like it's owned by google i mean you know we had the stuff about the razor and all you know all that but like i would just like to see this company have the new motorola clean break that we're expecting it to have and just do that and the razr m and the razr HD or not pit and you know this contribute fiasco of you know is is it gonna get an update isn't that when's it gonna come oh now it's not going because it's not powerful enough it just needs to stop like my money and I think that we I think that we talked about this on the show in the past but my theory is that there's still kind of cleaning out the pre group ownership fight and the you know the razor I'm is a perfect example that I don't think the bed that is a a product that the motorola receive a that the google-owned motorola would have necessarily greenlit but that was a job that they had verizon prior to that acquisition completing and of course the atrix 4g is a legacy product and that's probably an example of you know motorola just trying to cut its losses and refocus its smaller team keep in mind that they're they're going through some layoffs right now they're trying to refocus their smaller team hopefully on new and interesting products so i don't want to sound like I'm shilling for motorola here but i'm i'm cautiously optimistic that we haven't actually seen what a google own motorola come to yet I could you know we have my view this kind of delay yeah reminds me of HP and palm it just took so long for HP to quote unquote integrate palm get the scale get the such-and-such get the middle management to remember everybody's name etc and in that a never gelled it never materialized so I'm going to carry on with my negative theme for today and just be like why the question has to be why does it take so freaking long like you pull the company and it took months for Google to get you know ratification from Europe us even China so they knew that this was going to happen for a long time it could have learned everybody's name they could have learnt what everybody does and it could have adjusted things I guess maybe I'm being too optimistic about how quickly probe maps can be changed in this business maybe I am but it still just feels slow slow as hell aside from the fact is outrageous I need to be fair that they tricks 4G was a pretty uh like issue prone phone I I briefly trap to own one but I just I couldn't do it um but you know I mean if you look at it I guess the bothersome thing to me is that this is a perfect example of the device they look at the specs on paper and there's absolutely zero excuse board not nice yes I remember sitting in Motorola's press conference at CES 2011 and they they you know introduces atrix 4g and everyone was like holy crap 1 gig of memory dual core processor um people were in that that was the phone that they they famously announced alongside the droid bionic which got sent back to the drawing board and then the bionic didn't launch till what October or something yeah but they mean this is a phone that when it when it was announced you know less than two years ago less than one full contract ago was a far and away the most high spec android phone to be announced and and here we are in in 2012 and this thing has just been left by the wayside i guess we should talk about the other the biggest you know what fail in mobile of the past couple of weeks so we gotta address maps again what's super interesting is Tim Cook published letter apologizing for maps and they have been promoting third-party alternatives the store and uh who else is using iOS 6 and maps i know that i am and i got mentioned on the verge cast i literally got home like just like David phone map sent me to a random called a sack instead of to my meeting and if I hadn't shown up super early I would have missed my meeting like it was completely insane like I went to the address i stood at the address and i searched for the address in palo alto and standing right at it and it gave me the result back at the other place in in a different city and i reported the problem but i couldn't report the problem on the spot that i was at so i guess the like the big question for me is how long until you know people feel like this isn't a problem will it be a Google Maps or some third-party app that everybody defaults to or will Apple be able to fix up their Maps product on iOS quickly enough where we won't be planing about it and feeling frustrated by it so so I've a thought on that and I'm probably going to catch a lot of hell for this but uh you know I've been talking to my friends over the past couple weeks since iOS 6 came out and a lot of them are iphone users but they're not they're not techie at all they don't they don't read what we do they're not like you know on the only mention of maps they might hear on the Today Show or the evening news or something like that and and pretty much every single one of them has said I don't know what everybody is complaining about with maps because they're just fine for me and it's totally anecdotal but I think that's going to be something that a lot of average users are probably not going to have that big of a problem in you know a few weeks time once it blows over the the whole storm of complaints and controversy one set blows over and everybody's kind of focused on the next thing I don't think average users are really going to have too much of a problem with it in the law I I kind of agree with you Dan but but uh except for one thing which is that it only takes one catastrophic incident to really sour you on the experience and get deters uh examples a perfect a perfect you know case of that where it's like if he had missed his meeting he would have been pissed for you know six months or more that that maps had wronged him and I wouldn't blame him for that yeah I mean that's a designated point yeah yeah so that's going to be a situation for regular users to ninety-nine percent of time they might get to their destination but it's that other one percent that's really going to cause long-term problems for a polite as a potential to any um yeah i mean it's it's it's definitely perception thing and the question is once you've been burned once you've sort of in the air that there's it's a problem and then you just have that opinion and you know it's just gonna be hard for apple that to turn that around i mean i think i've said before like as a first iteration of maps i think it's really good but first iteration of apps is not really acceptable anymore right yeah there was this other this Wi-Fi issue or you could have Wi-Fi add verizon and maybe other carriers it was still using cellular data but verizon's not going to charge you for it I didn't experience this but I'm not on verizon either but it's good that that's getting fixed and relatively quickly it looks like to so yay um I think that's really the big iphone news of the week to be honest other than i had one piece availing on me i have one piece of big iphone news which is that do not disturb is the best feature ever invented and it really upsets me to say that because it's like I I remember when they talked about it during the iOS 6 event I was like oh that you know that's awesome oh wait that's so basic I shouldn't be saying it's awesome but in reality like the programmability of it it's just it's it's awesome it's great they the implementation is perfect um you know I have like three contacts that that I allow to get through if if it's in do not stir mode and I I have peace of mind that why on the mobile you schedule it exactly where are you toggling it am i what sorry are you scheduling it or are you toggle Annette both so I what what I do is like you know when I when the mobile show started I turned it on um and so that's an example of me manually enabling it but I'll definitely use it for like if I'm going to a movie or something instead of putting my bread in silent i'll put it and do not disturb and then i also have it set so that between i think like 2 a.m. and 5am or something it it's in do not strip right now I and that might change I might adjust that depending on like what events are going on newsy events but uh you know I figure that's a safe range for me to be able to sleep without any potential text messages from friends well it's it's I know you've done this in the past Chris but it's it's kind of interesting how much granularity iOS gives you over notifications and do not disturb as a part of that excuse me where the rest of like the OS is you have very little control over certain things that you might expect have more control of but this notification saying you can like it go customize to your heart's content where you can't even do that on some of the other platforms so it's just kind of this interesting anomaly with in iOS yeah what's interesting to me about the Do Not Disturb is it's basically profiles and we had this innovation with the original trio 180 that oh you know and actually no I'm sorry with the visor phone this goes back to the visor phone that you know what profiles that all these phones these different like night mode and do not disturb mode and movie mode blah blah blah mode is really complicated for users so we're just going to make a physical switch and that will put it in silent and that's that's the most profile management that you need to bother with and that is carried through to a ton of different phones you know the iphone of course a bunch of android phones they do you know if you scroll the way down and automatically goes to silent it's a profile management has sort of like fallen by the wayside is a feature that most people care about and want to manage and rather than just bring back the idea profiles and setting up multiple profiles they just bring one this do not disturb mode which maybe gets multiplied by the ringer switch or not and i guess it makes sense to me to do that because it's still simpler than a full-on support for you know customizable profiles but on the other hand i figure if you're going to be introducing sort of complication in the first place just do it right and do it all out I mean you know you just said there's a ton of settings in grandmother and iOS like why not have more well that made it as the thing maybe uh I've always done it right maybe it's just give you a little bit but not the whole thing because I I fully agree i've seen so many phones we're exactly like you saying like silent profile outdoors in the garden profile cloudy day he'll file and you're like what exactly is this adjusting like am I switching between the crazy korean ringtone and the time european one am i going to have a ringtone it is the focal to vibrate is not predictable whereas you do not disturb you get exactly the predictable thing you don't get disturbed and the crisis point about scheduling zen our london intern he's been saying that the best feature hands-down of iOS 6 for him is also do not disturb so it's kind of notable that two of our extremely arid I'd and intelligent members of the world staff obviously Chris being celebrity in the mobile business as well a lot of the teacher and it's actually encouraging because some people myself included started questioning well hang on what was the last time that Apple actually did something really innovative in new and kind of as a selling point on the southwest side I I don't really know like Apple did a whole bunch of catching up with notifications etc and did quite a few things well but it never had like this one feature that it did really nicely really neatly which has been kind of a hallmark previous Apple stuff so that's encouraging to see that it's dunno disturb fig is been developed in-house by a poor what has been done right it is you know getting positive feedback from people i do feel i mean the nokia n9 coming back to that favorite phone of mine it also had like that kind of thing you could schedule things like don't give me any alerts from midnight to eight or whatever all the time or just disconnect the phone I believe sony also has some of these things built into its android skin or if it's not sony then it's a friend of mine had a cell phone hacked it with it wrong i don't remember exactly but but the point is other companies have also tried to do the same thing and maybe if Nokia said selling and pushing the n9 we see that being successful but it's good to see Apple doing it and Ally at least an opinion not I haven't used it going on the basis of what Christians and have said is it Apple seems to have struck the right balance here between customization and simplicity i rescind my previous comments and acknowledge that Vlad's speaks the truth yay that success uh I think one more thing we can't not talk about is this that Deutsche Telekom has confirmed that it's in talks to buy metropcs and we've we've heard rumblings that there'd be more consolidation in the global industry this is obviously an example of that and I'm trying to decide if I think it's a good fit and I mean it's a good fit just strictly from a you know they need to increase customer base and size the business but I'm a little bit less sold on if it's a good fit in terms of spectrum well there's a couple different schools of thought on it and there was some really a healthy debate on Twitter today between some really smart people and you know the one side says that metropcs is a great fit for for tmobile because it already has an AWS LTE network and that's what t-mobile needs to get to is an 80 AWS LTE network and then the flip side the other argument says yeah but metropcs also runs this cdma network that it can't really shut off right now and it's incompatible with t-mobile's gsm network so you know it'll be interesting to see how it goes i personally i think that t-mobile's access to the LTE network is very important with the the the AWS spectrum and since it already uses AWS spectrum and that's what it's planning on rolling out LTE on in the future I think it's a good thing if this were to happen yeah I think that that this is a pretty obvious but I mean people been talking about this as a possible tie-up since before AT&T tried to buy team and metropcs has been in discussions on and off for years and years and years with leap is the parent company of cricket and they've been kind of like flirting with each other for as long as I can remember so it's a M you know I think that those regionals that that are sitting on a lot of spectrum and not particularly many customers namely metropcs and cricket are in perpetual danger of being acquired if danger is the appropriate word um yeah I think this could work you know I metropcs has some some LTE markets that t-mobile could certainly use and i think that the FCC is probably very the FCC in the doj are probably both very friendly to a tmobile tie-up with a small carrier more certainly more so than they were with AT&T so this is something that they could probably make happen from a regulatory perspective they wanted to so you think it's gonna happen I think it's probably gonna happen yeah yeah i would i would put the odds it i mean if i were a betting man I would definitely put a dollar on this wow what American dollar yes done such is life flows nowadays DD are you sure you don't want to save up that dollar and may be invested in sharp oh do such a safe way yeah oh I think I'm pretty good about that well I mean this is just a very quick mention again to pimp out jeff blagdon work over in Japan he got to see sharks five inch 1080p display in person and he's thrilled with it it's extremely pics of dance he's got over 440 PPI in pixel density and according to him it looks great so check out his post on the site to you know get some more of his impressions and take a look at the gallery of pictures from that display just one thing one thought the cross my mind with shop today was that it's why is one of I think every single Japanese tech companies having some struggles nowadays I can't think of one that's driving maybe nickel ion cannon because their business hasn't changed quite as dramatically even though it is in the process of changing but show up is one of those companies are struggling Foxconn has been looking to buy steak eShop and help it out the Japanese government I think approves a bank bailout of some six billion for sharper Renesys recently but the thing that came to my mind is sharp can have a silver lining to the future if it continues to lead in mobile displays and that seems to wear shop is right now because it's one of the companies providing the iphone 5s display which means it's guaranteed to sell as many displays in because as it can actually produce and it's not one of the companies on the cutting edge for displays for what we show to be the next generation of Android devices so it's in a good position well on that hopeful note we're gonna end on a hopeful note i'm making it happen thank you very much for listening and or watching the Virgin Mobile show if you want to follow us you can i'm at backline glad as I flats above Chris's at Z power dan is at DC seifert that's with an e I if you're wondering we are all at verge you can comment on the podcast post when it goes up we've also got virginal show at the verge calm actually just mobile show its first calm if you want to email us that'd be fine too we appreciate that we do and I'm just rambling we're gonna we're gonna go goodbye thanks you