Gadgetory

if you've been watching The Verge mobile show for the past couple of weeks you may have noticed that the show now comes in three different sizes we've got the classic version with three editors the Virgin Mobile show to with for editors and the Virgin Mobile show mini with just two today we're bringing you the verge mobile show to with for editors so stay tuned for the Virgin Mobile show hey so i'm dan seifert have lads have oh I'm Chris tickler and I am Peter bone yes so we actually have all four of us here this time with a dealer coming in via phone as you notice there and this is our 20th episode for the week of October eighth for the Virgin Mobile show it's it's a milestone it's a good miles get a strong number indeed next next week we're going to our binge drink and yes next one else where we are all drunk during the shitty drunk completely yeah it's a good play I think that I brought this up before but I just want to confirm yes the 20th anniversary is you give the gift of China but a modern that's the traditional gift but the modern gift apparently is platinum so listeners if you'd like to send us platinum you're welcome to do so we'll give our just our home addresses well isn't the gift of China you know in expensive smartphones made by slave labor I I see what you did there wait that's what I was gonna ask do you mean like actual China like bone china like post yeah my entire country yeah you just you give the gift of 1.3 billion China yes okay cuz while you were saying that I brought up my cup of tea up to our mouths and it's made out of China I was going to note that but I was amazing i want to interrupt chris there she's also really on that plaid you should have done that once now people think that you don't need china and they're not gonna send it to you okay what look I don't um have this and it's a really educational cut because as also saw ducks on it including their names including a mandarin duck and a PO chard I guess I guess people who drink tea get bored easily so it's good to have some fascinating information oh I also want to note that we would like to really thank flag for joining us today because he is on vacation and he took time out of his vacation to join us for the Virgin Mobile show today yeah by really distant vacation in my own we pulled them off via the sunny beaches of Britain over to to join us this sunny in Shin good beaches of Britain yes mm-hmm well you guys did pull me off of the the sunny beaches of San Diego which I would be at right now rather than actually going to the the mobile con convention today because there's not a whole lot else to do at mobile comets it's an enterprise only show and it is ridiculously quiet and so are we even talking about stuff that having a mobile con later in the show yeah I guess we are yes yeah absolutely but like I'm skipping the keynote so that I can be here with you guys and I couldn't be happier well we couldn't be happier that you're with us dieter it's it's a really emotional thing for me because this is the first ctia that I've missed since 2006 so I wow I'm sorry that I couldn't be there that's crazy yeah yeah and I do believe Chris today aware of the fact that you're not going to be there which is why they have absolutely nothing new sure right yeah that's it they were like well Chris isn't coming we got to postpone all these launches that we were planning for the earth for the event that's exactly what happened I believe that all of us oh sorry glad I was gonna say there's one thing that is new that I saw which was the t-mobile variant of the samsung galaxy note 2 cool a really bad new because we've seen it before because Vlad you wrote an excellent and comprehensive review let's talk about that flat tell us about this review tell us about that you guessing yes about the note 2 ah what can I serve our ally at the moment like my conclusion at the end was basically at the moment in my beat the best android device you can buy and I'm gonna stand by that even though it's kind of outrageous to say because to me when I look at the premiere Android devices we're talking about the HTC One X or the one x+ or the one XL whatever variant you want to look at and we're talking about the gate is free from Samsung and both of those are 4.7 inches and above and to me that makes them devices that are most comfortably used with two hands you know one hand to hold the phone why hand to operate it and then I look at the guys who note 2 at 5.5 inches and I think well that's kind of a small jump but is it it isn't the same way that it was with the original Galaxy Note with the original Galaxy Note I thought I thought it would be such a niche device because it was on a tablet wasn't giving you as much a screen real estate as an actual tablet but it was forcing you into a new way of using your phone and at a time the premier phones were actually around 4.4 inch size so now that your best choice is a 4.7 inches in above I just feel like well step up a little bit and get the bigger battery the big screen and the stylus with the galaxy note 2 just my reasoning so I just figure it's so close to the galaxy s3 in terms of specs and some of the capabilities it has the exact same cameras and processor etc why don't just get the better more powerful device so you're saying but if you're willing to go big enough for the galaxy s3 you might as well just go as big as you possibly can exactly and that's exactly and the thing I also said at the beginning of my review is that this feels like the galaxy has free no tuition the crazy thing to me though I mean I hear what you're saying about you know like they're not being that big of a difference between the s3 and the note 2 in terms of size but there's a this really striking picture somewhere near review where you have it next to a 1x and like the eye I'm not positive about this but it looks from the picture like if you place the One X on top of note to it would be completely contained within the outline of the display itself on the note 2 which gives you know yes how big this device is the note 2 does make the 1x which I'm holding up right now next to my face uh so yeah if you know how big my faces you know how big the 1x is you can get an idea of Alaska I think we need a comparison next to a bicep to really know but all right there's there's a scientific principle that says that the size of Lance bicep cannot be accurately computed anyway yes ah i ah I also think that anything that is not bigger than my biceps counts to the boat as I special so the note 2 is a phone no it's not it's a tablet I'm counting it's a tablet I've never called the note to a phone I never called the original note to phone I'm still not calling in a phone but the distinction is that I will use it in place of a smartphone because it can replace a smartphone I just don't think it is one any other thing I was gonna say quickly about it sighs is that yes it makes the 1x which is a big phone look kind of small and cute which is amusing so maybe you can answer this for me Vlad the problem that I had with the original note was that it was a giant to me it always felt like a giant smartphone because the software on it was all smartphone software you had the smartphone version of android smartphone apps except for like two customized samsung apps has that changed at all with the note 2 does it feel like are there more tablets specific type of software on it or are we still just dealing with blown up versions of the same phone apps that we would get on any other smartphone well you said to Samsung specific apps that you must have had some sort of stripped-down bloatware free version well perhaps perhaps I was exaggerating a little bit but it was only a handful if i were to download an app from the Play Store for instance i would get the smartphone version of it i would not see a tablet version no of course I mean there's no tablet of my station here to speak of Samsung has loaded I don't know dozens and dozens of its own apps some customizations its own presets when you first like using the note 2 you're going to have to dismiss so many little tutorial notes and little do you want to do this do you not want to do this it starts feel like you're setting up a windows machine and so there you go all my check boxes for hating on samsung hating on TouchWiz hating on Microsoft I'm just doing it efficiently but there's no tablet optimization it is very much a phone experience extended upwards but I mean I still don't feel like android tablet interface such that it is it's particularly good right so just expanding the smile for one seems reasonable enough so I sound concerned okay alright so brass tacks can you fit this thing in your pocket yes okay fair enough I come down with it in a but it fits there's a one hundred percent chance that dieter is going to buy the 18 Tiant of this stupid device yeah I mean I'm the guy that said he was guys like I do you need to sustain the stylus is useful I guy I think we need to make a point out of this I mean the first thing I already mentioned the 3100 milliamp hour battery to note 2 is very strong and very good in probably the most attractive feature far as i'm concern is is legitimately useful and and the handwriting recognition is really improved than the original note like it'sit's I can't make it a miss now and my handwriting with that stylus is so much worse than my handwriting with a regular pen so it deals with the challenge very well recognized his handwriting and on most occasions now I used it to take legitimate notes you know I'm on a call with somebody not with the note itself but I will sit down and just scribble notes on it and Silas works it doesn't like when you when you say that are you are you talking about in the you know the S note or the sm oh man I forget that it's still insane to me that there's s note and s memos that's still the case I don't understand was to exists okay are you are you talking about taking handwritten notes on the main screen as you have in this gesture here or you talk about using it in like the keyboard input area where you get rid of the software keyboard and you use it as like a handwriting entry area like like Dumbo I've taken full page notes just have written notes which i haven't converted to text I don't know Samsung has the option to you know take your handwritten notes and then retro actively convert them nfo so written messages just by using the handwriting area in like the messaging application I both are good both for useful see that's that's really bad news for me because I'm really interested in I've been I've been taking a lot of notes lately handwritten on you know I like carrying around a little field notes notepad in my back pocket so I'm really used to used to taking notes on a piece of paper that's actually smaller than the Galaxy Note 2 and so like I could maybe legitimately use this thing for note-taking and so you can and expect that so yeah I might end up needing to get one of these now the thing that I'm worried about is as as you mentioned like actually sitting down like I love that like there's nothing else to say about this other than you know talking about its size from my perspective but I guess it's because I haven't played one but like if this thing takes off and becomes popular I'm calling it right now the holsters back baby oh no now that'll be the greatest travesty of the note in the note 2 and whatever comes after the note 2 beyond the fact that they exist would be that if they brought back the holster here's why here's why the holster is not coming back I can tell you exactly why it's because unlike uh you know that the late 90s early 2000s when holsters were were chic but I'm gonna stop you right there Chris they were never chic they were just in use yes what correction when they reuse the StarTAC holster was pretty suit was pretty sweet well what was this we have no common it was it was a plastic holster designed specifically for the start it was very svelte and thin and you know because it had an antenna you know and like you would click it in and so the back of the phone would would point out and so it was just you know it was it was very low profile so so it behaved like any other plastic holster that's ever been produced but it was the first one that it that like was saw widespread use everything else copied that one well look the difference how is that every man it is now acceptable for men to have purses and it wasn't when when holsters were first in use I I carry a purse everywhere I go basically uh so I mean it's not called a purse is called a messenger bag but for all practical purposes it's a large purse so you know if it doesn't fit in your pocket you're just gonna throw in your messenger bag oh yeah I could see putting this in a jacket pocket that's actually where i put my nexus 7 is in like the inside pocket on my jacket and i suppose you could do that with the note 2 as well yeah i was going to just suggest that just where you know dinner jacket everywhere you go which I speak so looks like TouchWiz is still sort of i think the phrase you use is that they're still emphasizing quantity over quality and i was really hoping that they would try and tone it down a little bit now that you know they've revved it up to to android 4.1 but oh well how's google now on it is it is it you know the same is on the Galaxy Nexus you know I didn't use it telogen everybody going to use google now much I mean two things have you said here now the first is the TouchWiz is the most tolerable skin as far as I'm concerned Android skin and when I first turned on the note 2 and starts just wiping around the home screens which Sampson again preloads with just the crap ton of things you don't want and you have to clear away it i'm seriously really feels like you just bought a Windows 7 machine where there's just all of this stuff we which you need to disable and get rid of and clean up and tidy up like part of the packaging is having way too much stuff in the software but the besides that besides that complaint when I started swiping between home screens I was like wow it was just so quick and in my first reaction was I must have forgotten how responsive the galaxy as free is but then I realized that is gently and jelly bean his project butter and project butter is gurus optimizations to make the screen animations fever make the better etc look project button is a lie it has done nothing on the Galaxy Nexus in fact I that's my most glorious day that's my point you need a fast processor to benefit from it because I had jelly bean on the Nexus S and I was like well that's impressive yeah but it is in this phone oh sorry on the note 2 which is not a phone but to be fair you haven't used the note 2 with ICS so I mean the note 2 could in theory be just as fast with ICS yeah that's also true and also its quad-core processor is clocked at one point XK hers worse I believe in the galaxy s3's 1.4 so another thing that the note 2 has is it has a title for benchmarking the highest out of any android phone pad it's kind of a hollow tight with bad days because there aren't that many games or things that use that much power but yeah well I think it essentially what it is is the same solution as we've always seen with Android to make it faster smoother they're just throwing more hardware at it and upgraded hardware and faster hardware and faster chips and stuff like that yeah but it that's true and people complain about that but at the same time things are actually constantly improving and every time somebody like Samson throws more hardware power problem it improves things so it might not be as fast or as a you know just clean cuts as somebody said okay improving a software then it's fixed for everybody but every single time is improving is getting better it's getting smoother which is a good thing if you're willing to upgrade your phone every six months yeah what's really amazing to me is that you know for a Jesus at least five years if not more there was his principal this widely accepted principle in mobile that the region between five inches and about seven inches was no man's land it like nobody could create a successful product in that in that area and like most recently like the dell streak is a great example that rightly i'm being a single person in the world bought the dell streak and samsung has pulled it off they've pushed this product through and actually created this nature that simply didn't exist before and it's obviously here to stay and you know you got to give him credit for that the question is whether other OEMs can and will follow you know we've heard these rumors of the 5-inch HTC that's coming but i don't think that one has a stylist of course LG has tried to follow without this view so we'll see if this category is here to stay or if it's a flash in the pan Vlad tell me about the display real quick because it's actually different than before the the dreaded word pentile appears to not apply but you say that it's still not as good as the One X right well nothing is as good as the 1x nothing I've seen a lot of people have said good things about the iphone 5 display but i haven't seen in person I'm actually really terrible in terms of getting a hold of an iphone 5 ivan actually experiencing using it I in any case I've compared them I've compared them well I can answer that I've compared them side to side and the One X is slightly better because it has better viewing angles so the One X is like basically 180 degrees and that the iphone 5 kind of washes out when you start to angle it yeah that's why I clients exactly good job by HTC now if they actually had an Android skin worth using their be in business that the birth again is not to display so his thing is not pencil anymore but way you had a red and a blue and too green subpixels you now have a red and a green sub-pixel and larged blue sub-pixel so the enlarged blue sub-pixel is the same size as the two green ones previously which kind of generates the same look I think in terms of like how many subjects did you actually have in the display now you have bri sub pixels per pixel instead of previously having to a red and a blue and then two green ones so ultimately the new display actually has more sub pixel I think that's the case yeah so I'm very sure most people are following me anymore after I started you know trying to break down so do you I said we're gonna start calling this the heck styledisplay ah I don't I don't know hex why hex six well yeah six cuz pen is five isn't it no yeah I pentose now a brain pentel is a brand name right like that's yeah that's a branding okay yeah right I'm just I'm just waiting in any case like uh it's I don't know how to explain it exactly um there are still issues with it it's still not a straight RGB where the red green and the blue subpixels exactly the same size and regular like the good displays have like LG's IPS displays like the 1x that were mentioned um but generally speaking in your general use that doesn't really matter like the only issue I had a couple of issues oh if I only pick it as a couple issues of note to one is that the screen kinda has a blue tinge which you've noticed almost with any AMOLED display particularly with Samsung's outlet displays and also its automatic brightness test to be a little bit too dark so most of the time you might want to set your own brightness level instead of trusting it I think Sam's is kind of over-aggressive on saving power correct me if i'm wrong i think the galaxy s3 had that same problem with the oh yeah brightness and I'm sorry they still haven't figured out how to do both automatic brightness and still allow you to adjust the brightness like they do on iOS I don't know if that's a patent issue or you know I drives me nuts although Samson's credit its notifications drop down it has a brightness slider you can adjust the brightness from the notifications menu which I think everybody should be should have that there's a little shortcut and also Samsung has the most useful notifications dropped out in terms of also little toggles things like turning off gps Wi-Fi etc um I like it I like Samson little tweaks on the side not samsung software Samsung's apps you can just broke protem of this device and you actually enjoy yourself more but Samsung little tweaks on the side are mostly good the weird thing about that sub pixel arrangement to me is that correct me if I'm wrong but I think that the like scientific concept behind pentile was that the human eye is less sensitive to green than it is to red and blue you got it backwards it's more sensitive to green but your head in the right direction but yet it though the eye is more sensitive to green light no but but doesn't it have twice as many green subpixels as red and blue that was the original pense out the new one has more blue I thought I had more blue subpixels that was my understanding at least I was the explanation that I had gotten from Samsung when I when I asked them about it was because according to them blue subpixels on AMOLED displays degrade slower than the red and the green so they make the blue ones larger or they use more blue ones ought to make the display last longer yeah let's just move on from some pics right so can it can actually just make mention something here I do believe were under estimating how many people listen to our podcast and how many companies is to a podcast like I say the ctia people they found out chris is an attending so they decided to completely nuke their show and I've been saying that somebody should do a high-end phone 4 inches and then Samsung confirmed that they're doing a galaxy s3 mini and then this morning even though wasn't working I was like yes I'm excited it's gonna be galaxy s3 mini is gonna have a 4-inch display it's probably gonna be like the Galaxy Note 2 in so far is it just the S free but in a different shell so let's go now we have real competition for the iphone 5 but alas it seems like it's not going to be what I was hoping it'll be so I had the same exact excitement as you Vlad but I tried to keep it tempered with a huge dose of reality because I don't think Samsung would ever jeopardize its baby being the galaxy s3 and and it seems to be from leaks that just this morning of this this alleged Galaxy S or I guess this galaxy s3 mini these alleged leaks are we're looking at a pretty mid-range to low-end device with a WVGA display a dual-core 1 gigahertz processor that is supposedly made by st-ericsson it's not a processor that we've seen before but I wouldn't count it to be up there with like a Qualcomm s4 or an exit now there's a there's a sony phone that uses that processor i believe oh yeah there's a couple you know everybody male second i thought it was a variation of that Nova Thor a new variation that we hadn't seen in a very yeah yeah that we hadn't seen yet but it's still a dual-core 1 gigahertz processor that might be fine pushing around to wvga screen but that's all it's doing is pushing around wvga resolution so I'm livid about this because Samsung when it confirmed the galaxy s3 mini name today or that a mini galaxy s3 was coming the head of the company said that it would be a competitive device that would not be a low-end or entry-level device and that seems to be exactly the opposite of what these leaks elite specs are telling us so it's just as much as I would love to have a really high-end really awesome 4 inch android device that has the best specs as far as processor goes and a really great high res display it doesn't look like the galaxy s3 mini is going to be it now hear me out hear me out people would be note to not be better served if it were called the galaxy s3 mega I mean am I am i right yeah the mini this the classic and Omega no I the note brand is really good and strong man sorry yeah I know I know you kind of takes the start calling anything mega is awesome but I just don't think that it works here I'm sorry uh fine so just a quick mention Samsung differentiates between its note platform and it's a smartphone platform right with the stylus the or the not the stylus but the year the a spin yeah what whatever look up crapping on my dream hey listen I've had my flat and I have had our dreams crapped on all morning with this very much yes three a mini so you know I'm just gonna say one more thing about it and it's that manufacturers have said I know Samsung has said this that consumers want bigger phones and every time they do these market research things they say they want a bigger size device and people are buying these bigger sized devices and droves but when you think about it if you want on a high-end Android device you couldn't buy a 4 inch high end android device now like you don't have that choice if you want a high-end Android device you have to buy a monster phone that's 4.7 or 4.8 or god forbid 5.5 inches in size so essentially I I don't know if you know consumers if they had the choice would choose the 4-inch one when it's sitting next to a shelf on a shelf next to a giant screen but I know that I certainly would and I know a lot of other people that like the 4 inch size form factor for its usability as an actual phone so yeah dad and I were in the you mentioned idea yeah I actually blame carriers I think that you know and i think that basically comes down to manufacturers like we could make a sweet 4-inch phone carries like yeah but that's really hard to sell because we've got our suite 4 inch phone with the iphone but if you make us a big huge phone it's really easy for us to sell that and so don't give us the suite 4 inch phone because it's too it's just it's too complicated it's too much work for us to actually move those units and that makes me die inside but dance dance point was a good one when he said that Samsung wouldn't jeopardize its flagship by setting a 4 inch device with the same specs and and I like that because I do you feel like if you actually offered the exact same spec the exact same user experience which as I say jelly bean would actually I was stack what color eyes nose is just gorgeous alright if you offer that at a 4 inch device and eject in a 720p display I don't know this is a 4 inch 720p display particular another good one um but if that was possible and somebody did it I think that phone would sell like crazy at 4 inches you only need to HD realistically I don't think that there's a compelling reason to put some 20 p & 4 inch qhd or whatever the resolution of the retina display is you know if it can just match that I'd be happy yeah fair enough yeah the retina display is a little higher resolution than Q HD or HD is what 960 x 540 540 yeah but even if you know Samsung did what Motorola did with the razr m and made a 4.3 inch screen in a phone that's the size of a 4 inch device like I'm okay with that the razr m was not the answer to my dreams because it has a terrible display on it but otherwise it would have been a good device if it had a better camera it has an s4 processor so it's got a very solid processor and if it came with jelly bean and a good display I would have been very happy with that but again disappointed yeah and and what what also drives me nuts is that they made a point of saying that this you know they're responding to a specific market need in Europe you know which is like it's like such a stereotypical thing to say that like Europeans want smaller things like you go over there they have they have like a you know tiny cars coffees many coffees a tiny coffees and it's and uh you know I mean I you've seen limited success well i think i've used this analogy at least 20 times on the on the show in the podcast over the years but it you've had limited success but some success with luxury segment small cars in the US you know products like the audi a3 in the mini cooper and and there's no reason for these guys to to keep believing that Americans always want everything as big as possible so you know I think that if if some carrier would go out on a limb and range a high a quote unquote high-end four-inch for 3.7 inch device it would and and if it was marketed properly would stand a very good chance of doing well I mean look no further than the iphone you I don't understand why the iPhone should have the exclusive on that form factor it's very mad Mary and also from the European perspective I'm also headed because we're not just into small things somebody from these companies should go to oktoberfest and see the size of the beer junkie quadratic and end if the specs are exactly as we've heard as the leaks indicate this is essentially a galaxy s advance and I would also point out that people in Europe don't like being taken for a ride they don't like companies being dishonest with them so if you're calling this again as he has free mini and you specking it like an old-ass phone people aren't you impressed that I'm going to be happy and the ones who buy it on the premise that it's a galaxy as free drunken down I'm going to be disappointed it yet think so if it hurts the galaxy s3 brand yeah yeah you know all this doom and gloom can we talk about the next Nexus phone uh yes called the next week I just want to make one I just want to make one final point I was I was looking something up there and and I think it's very telling that Vlad calls the galaxy s advance an old-ass phone and it was introduced in january of this year so it just to be put there in respect to be fair the advanced did not have cutting-edge january 2012 specs exactly yeah it's fair I mean anyway it has the same display that we saw on what the galaxy s2 or maybe even the original Galaxy S so I don't know staffing pre-2012 which means I'm not expected to remember it okay Nexus oh so we've seen lots of pictures we had some pictures that we posted that had actually shown up in a random album on XDA developers and since then I believe we've had some more photos come out with with that basically make it look like take an LG optimus G and make it look like a Samsung Galaxy Nexus and that's what it looks like and you know we're expecting you know whatever is going to happen with the OS I don't think it's going to be a huge leap because we just had jelly bean but yeah it really looks pretty obvious that LG is making the next Nexus phone and having played a bit with a couple versions of the optimist now I'm actually pretty excited for this yeah I'll say that I'm pretty excited to actually have a Nexus device with a cutting-edge modern processor in it well and a decent camera and yeah that too and LTE well yeah that's that's that's the problem though is the optimus G is heading to AT&T and Sprint with LTE and that's awesome a super pumped for that it's weird that they're different like sprint skits the 13-megapixel camera an AT&T get doesn't which is a little bit odd but the you mentioned this in your post on the original pictures Chris that the stuff that we saw at the FCC for what we believe is going to be LG's Nexus phone didn't have LTE it was just being tested on HSPA right so like yeah be multiple variants right very easily in fact our history there are there would be have to be if they're going to range it on ATT and Verizon and whatever else so I can't get a nexus phone on AT&T with LTE out of the box that I don't have to hack a rahman 2 by the end of the year uh I'm going to go to Google's campus and I am going to take a pickaxe to all their cute little statues that's not a real photo joking just just to be clear I won't take a pickaxe to them I'll simply do somewhat spray paint because I mean cuz honestly dieter at this point I am strongly considering going there in and destroying them with a pickaxe myself and then pinning it on you because you're the one that said it on the show oh man I mean yeah it's just not having something either a cyanogenmod or a stock experience with LTE and 18t I know you can you can get you can it's doing really well in the gs3 cyanogenmod on the One X is not it's you know it's great given you know the resources of the guys that are working on it but it's not quite ready for prime time and I'm ready I'm ready I'm waiting and I'm angry that it's not available and I'm deeply hoping that it will be but we should talk about this LG Hardware because I think who here is actually held an optimus G and like and put it through at least a few hands on paces I think you might be the only one dealer oh really oh well golly you just want to gloat about that do you just want to let us know that he's held multiple versions multiple times while the rest of us have been sitting here rising not handling them it's the LG is really an interesting presence at least here at mobile com because they've announced for AT&T and Sprint they've got this you know low-end mock slider phone for sprint whatever and then they've got this mid-range l9 for t-mobile so they basically you know they basically been talking about LG not having anything in America for like a year now that their last hit was whatever that lowend Optimus was that they had a bunch of carriers and MVNOs and all of a sudden out of nowhere we're expecting to have a Nexus device and they're launching like legitimate contenders that are like decently good you know I don't know you know until we review it i'm not going to say it's in the same classes that the 1x and the galaxy s3 but it legitimately could be and could maybe even better them in terms of build quality if you're into this weird like glass not glass but some kind of shiny back with the texture underneath it doesn't look terrible it's not i'm not totally into it but it looks pretty good yeah i'm holding judgment because uh you know we I think we said the same thing about the optimist HD and its variants like the nitro HD etc etc and those phones ended up being just complete garbage so LG has has a lot to prove with these next few devices that they're released and a lot to prove onto multiple fronts I know a lot of people were burned by the whole what was the g2x thing with its software updates that we're coming weren't coming and then weren't coming again so I think LG really has to if it if it wants to make a dent in the American market it really has to hit a home run with this next device you know assuming everything comes out as we expect have we ever seen this many US carriers launched this many LG phones yes and really I mean how about well so the the optimist one like you mentioned was on almost every carrier as an entry-level android phone and then the the one that Chris just mentioned that which was the optimus LTE was the nitro HD on AT&T it was the revolution on verizon 22 LTE carriers here in the US so this is the first high-end one that I think we've seen for sprint if i'm not mistaken but we have seen LG attack multiple carriers in the US they're actually recently their own branding you know it's getting the the Optimus branding instead of getting renamed like 44 different carriers yeah that's that's a very good point so I mean it will be really interesting to see if if LG decides or it manages to pick up some mindshare if not market share in the US I was talking to Phil Dickinson from Android Central and he made a really good point that LG if this launch of these devices goes well for them they turn out to be really good like they have the potential to like kind of eat HTC's lunch because we all know HTC is not doing well lately and you know they refresh the 1x and you know we love devices is not not a huge fan another software skin but it always feels like they're kind of you know underperforming relative to the the kind of hardware that they're making but like you know they're on the ropes and you know and drink their milk shake so that was a nice mix of metaphors going on it but I well my question about the optimus G is whenever has that quad-core Snapdragon s4 incited um and maybe that just I'm about to reveal how little i've been paying attention lately but first it doesn't ship with jelly bean on board and secondly what is its responsiveness like how smooth is it so every time i played with one here at mobile con you know I get the the standard song and dance about it still being you know pre-production I don't know whether that's true or not the responsiveness it's not it's not like whoa it's just like oh this is okay this is pretty good and so I don't want to I don't want to judge it one way or the other until I have a device that is you know shipping and sold but like basically my overall opinion on both the build quality and like you know even the skin and everything about these is like they're legitimately good and they could be legitimately good when they ship but there's there's nothing that's immediately like oh my god this is going to suck or oh my god this is amazing it's like oh hey LG's making really good stuff all of a sudden okay and I also just want to bring us back to the LG Nexus phone for a moment because we saw today something called the LG Nexus 4 and the carphone warehouse stock listing and Nexus 4 would make sense because it will be the fourth generation of Nexus device but it kind of sounds like then I mean do you only have one nexus fourth generation device mean the big room when the one everybody Obama's was excited and proud about was that we would have a nexus from multiple manufacturers so I've actress looking for a linux is it boys if that isn't referring to a 4 inch device I think that's a very misleading name I because he the previous nexuses weren't named 123 so no one's going to grok the fact that they're trying to say it's a fourth generation device you're just gonna think oh it's a 4-inch phone and of course it's not the first of all what's chris the first one first one was a nexus 10 yeah good point I'm an idiot yeah but but now we have the nexus 7 which clearly indicates sighs yeah so yeah so having the nexus 4 is exactly like what Chris said it would most people would assume that has a 4-inch screen I mean the fact is we don't know that we just have the name LG Nexus 4 so all that really tells us is yes LG has a Nexus device so yes who can be excited on that front um I I just again I'm kind I'm kind of like I'm sure myself and Dan would be proud to have a 4-inch Nexus device brand new one that would be great but I just kind of feel like two desus argument and point everybody's pushing 24 point whatever do you know sir so maybe maybe and this will be the pretty awesome thing maybe LG gets to make the 4-inch Nexus device and then somebody else gets to make the 4.5 inch Nexus device and Sony get to make the 5-inch Vita Nexus device cetera cetera so just to uh about the to go back to about there possibly being more than one um Nexus device and is there any evidence of it the pictures of this alleged LG Nexus G or whatever show on the back of it it says it has the width Google branding which we haven't seen in a long time I don't think we've seen that since gosh I mean I recall it on the the original g1 but generally the Nexus phones have said Google on the back and not with Google so you know we can kind of read be reading into that and be pretty skeptical as to what exactly that means at this point but perhaps you know there will be a line of them that you know each one is stamped with Google and they have like a pretty standardized hardware specifications and then each manufacturer can can have a Nexus device in their lineup nobody else matters no no I'll figure and I think it makes sense I think ultimately what might happen is that the nexus branding and name could just mean stock Android which I'd be totally cool with and I would just make that by one like my first prerequisite for buying an Android devices make sure it says Nexus somewhere on it and a quick question LG with the optimus 2x in the first joke or smartphone they had with Google stamped on this thing this is kind of backbone that the phone had in the back bit in its shell so with google maybe one or two years ago now um it was being used but yes since then most most haven't been using that sort of branding but a nice LG has kind of a track record with yeah I'm gonna say if this if this like you know just call it a nexus if its stock Android and multiple manufacturers offer it pans out like that'll be great but I'm telling you right now that Google better get its update situation hashed out right fast like because it's not been great on the Galaxy Nexus it's been pretty terrible actually and so like if they're going to have you know the whole big new push then they need to also not have people wondering when they're going to get the latest version of Android on a device that says Nexus on because well it was it was just fine for the unlocked gsm version the Galaxy Nexus it's always you know as usual to the carrier's that gum it up right the verizon version just started getting jollibee a couple weeks ago right uh yes yes that's correct so that's I mean it's as always it's the carriers okay so can I just use that as a segue and move on to a company that does software updates in a more organized fashion which is Microsoft surprisingly but yes and we could do we could do a bit of Windows Phone talking cuz we even Oh Android all day today so what's happened is the Lumia 920 is an AT&T exclusive which would have made a lot of people cringe and it's launching sometime in November alongside the Lumia 820 in brie and I do that they have a cyan version that's the only thing that matters about this device screw windows phone 8 screw the camera on the 920 nobody cares are the only thing that matters is the fact that it's coming in cyan thank goodness all right so the world is a better place it goes yes yes I'm gonna go get agree with Chris here uh that the world is now right it was it was you know right before here's the thing for us it the science online only right right so it you're not gonna be able to walk and people aren't gonna walk in a store and see cyan it's not gonna it's not gonna change the world man it's not gonna change fashion industry it's not gonna change anything but doesn't beat her i don't i don't care if not as if not a single other soul on the planet buys this phone the only thing that matters to me is that i can go to a website in order a cyan 920 that's all that matters that was the only reason i was i was bellyaching about it everybody would actually be happy if nobody else bought it right everyone else can go use their yellow and red versions it's fine by me I think the gray ones were I think yellow yellow is also online only right yellow and cyan the only ones you can get instructed by red and black well it's like a matte gray I think all right all right so look a try he screw civet e a bit I could see it it's gonna go one of two ways one it's genuinely exclusive and Nokia is not going to launch uh-uh it's you know top the line phone on any other carriers which is a bummer or two they're going to do what they've done with the 820 where they're going to launch variants on other carriers we've seen the 8-10 on t-mobile and then there's the rumor of the the Atlas variant of the 820 horizon and so everybody gets an exclusive but it's basically the same phone which also seems like kind of a huge bummer III think that nokia's is trying to have its cake and eat it too they're they're signing exclusivity deals with carrier which I'm guessing in some cases is the only way they're able to actually get carriers to range these phones considering what a lukewarm reception the 900 ultimately got a retail so I think that 18t said look you can either give us an exclusive on the 920 or you can go expletive yourself yeah and Stephen Elop said okay well then there you go there's your exclusive and meanwhile we just happen to be working on a very mildly change version of the device known as a 922 which verizon will get as an exclusive right my guess that's my hope because you know I've been basically having I've been basically saying all year that this fall verizon's going to go big on Windows Phone and it's going to be a big game-changer for Microsoft and now I have egg on my face because I'm starting to think it's not going to happen well if if it does turn out to be that the 920 is the only version of the 920 that we see in the US and it's only on ATT that will be directly against what nokia has been saying itself all year and that it would be you know working with as many carriers as possible in the US and working with all of the you know the big four to get its its phones out there so I i really think that it's going to be the second scenario it's which is still unfortunate because it nokia loses the whole advantage of the iphone and burning and the galaxy s3 branding that its competitors have but at least it'll be available to more people well and also these are you say that might happen you know verizon making a big push Windows Phone we don't know yet and the still ample time for that big push from verizon to come because the windows phone 8 launch event are multiple expensive now be scheduled folks over 29 other the one in San Francisco there's one in London that we just recently announced but amusingly the windows phone 8 pre-orders are going to begin on October 21st so for Microsoft will let you preorder a phone an operating system which is going to get us big unveil on October 29 Glee don't know yeah I don't even know it's like it's like they've got to email threads going for planning this stuff and everybody just keeps responding to you know the wrong email thread and so they just you know they just got their dates mixed up because of that that must be it like they just need to switch to gmail that has better threaded messaging then they'd be fine problem solved yeah can I talk a little bit but yeah the 810 yes it is terrible oh it does have an interchangeable back plates though there will be a cyan back late from what I've ya know there's a cyan back plate but like remember was it last week or two weeks ago I took that picture of my old visor prism that big blue chunky PDA that's what you eat 10 reminds me of it's like just this big square thick hunk of phone and you know they wouldn't let us turn it on and I took the back plate off and actually like the route like you know cuz everybody's locking all the screens on these phones they wouldn't even like let me turn the screen on they like actually like they put a piece of paper on the battery contact so that it wouldn't turn on but it's like it's super thick and the other crazy thing is we know it's a variant of the 820 but it's not like I mean nokia did more than just like take the a20 and put a square frame around it like they move stuff around a bit and moving stuff around on a phone is not a trivial thing the stuff gets packed in very carefully and so like they've spent some time making this and to be honest you know if you're going to sell a mid-range or low end Windows Phone there's got to be something that's really like you know appealing and cute about it and I just don't feel like this is it despite the fact that it has you know user replaceable back plates I actually think that the the 710 was a much better play for what a windows phone alone Windows Phone and t-mobile should look like than this I just I just think this is moving in the wrong direction i I'm gonna I haven't handled the 810 yet so I'm not really in a great position of authority here but I'm gonna disagree with you dieter I thought the 710 was a hideous mess and and I hated that physical home button physical Start menu search back button was at the bottom of it I thought it really cheapened the device and really made it feel like garbage och you honestly I thought the 810 was kind of good looking well wait till you hold it maybe maybe disagree with me and you'll think it's got some sort of you know retro blocky charm but like there's just what it looks like you know what it looks like to me it looks like uh the 810 was a last minute they're like oh crap for whatever reason we can't sell the 820 on t mobile tmobile wants to range a mid-range phone from us so we need to throw together something you know maybe they needed to skirt some exclusivity clause that they had with with other carriers so they're like ok these are the minimum things that we need to do to make a version of this phone that we can sell on on t-mobile so they threw this together in like a rush in a few weeks and that this is what they came up with because you're right d I mean like I'm looking at your gallery here and I just I mean it's such a nondescript like its amazingly nondescript for a company that has kind of become known for its hardware design this is kind of outrageous that their that they're selling this I mean it looks like it looks like a um like a pro not a prototype like a like a reference like you know if a company is coming out with like a phone that they like a you know rims dev alphas right that's exactly what idea yeah yeah this is Nucky as a dev alpha B device yeah i mean i like the Lumia 820 I liked it too look at the other I honestly I'm sighing with X you know a exhaustion exasperation is aspiration that's what I was looking for yeah at the fact that no kids gonna have to do all these variants you know it's gonna be a little tweak for horizon a little tweak for tmobile I understand the remote we've heard about the verizon version of the a20 that it will have different specs as well it's just uh you know I mean its status point you're diluting your branding like okay people will get that Lumia means nokia lumia means windows phone but the number is constantly changing after the Lumia is just annoying and it's not consistent and consistency is actually what acne yeah if they can hit a 49 99 I'm contract price point for this thing out of the gate I will rescind all of my complaints and say hey that's actually pretty cool but I'm you know who knows that's that's the other thing is asinine MOA guess what you can get for free on contract in iphone 4 like 999 is not impressive anymore so free I can't get an iphone 4 from t-mobile true but I mean yeah that's details have you guys noticed like in the past I guess basically the past month like everybody forgot that it's a good idea to announce price and release of it release dates like nothing that I've seen at mobile Khan has got a price or a release date attached to it which I'm really advise but that's just kind of par for the course for the companies that you're seeing stuff mobile come from I mean need the note that's par for the course for nokia it's been doing it since you know forever LG's been notorious for that Samsung's notorious for it I mean the closest thing that we've gotten out of all these new phones to a release date is from HTC when it announced e8 x and the 8's and it said you know it would be on these specific carriers in November but even that is not very useful yeah but I mean a big part of this is Microsoft's in the Windows Phone development cycle I mean this is Samsung ative s or active+ atif t bless you yeah thank you tita it work that is one of the most fascinating phones just because it hasn't existed outside of some renders and some samsung produce the video and pictures you know um and the reason it hasn't existed because what Samsung got to do they're gonna bring it out and exactly is due to just add with the Lumia 810 they're gonna you know screw around just show people the shell it's like what was the point in that you know everybody do this hardware which is just perfectly ready I hey I also hate the fact that they say things like pre-production some pre-production is the freaking production device it's just the soft boys I'm ready it'll call it what it is it is the production device you know you could take pictures with it and you're gonna get the exact same camera quantity gonna get the final device it's just that the software isn't baked ISM ready and this is why it's looking at this ridiculous situation where you can pre-order a phone on service very first and then eight days later microsomes gonna do the big unveil like Microsoft's deadline for finishing windows phone is probably October 28 midnight I the other getting done get it ready we need to go to the event the other thing is I don't think that Microsoft's actions are stopping any of these manufacturers from announcing price with it I mean the the software being finished or not is not going to affect the price of the fun when it launches so I mean I why they with holding all this information is it just it only makes a sky hell that's really I have a theory I have a theory which is that they know that there's a lot of news happening in the month of October including presumably or possibly some Nexus announcements and it might be just a game of brinksmanship where they want to wait as long as they can until they find out how their competitors are going to price things to decide how to price these devices I also feel like maybe maybe Microsoft is asking them to hold back the pricing and the full details so that October 29th Microsoft be the one who says here it is with this phone 8 coming out here's a pricing is a date is the carriers the phones of course if you're also pre-order on the 21st you you'll be pre-ordering blind if that's the case yeah yeah which I don't put it past Joseph oh this is just gonna be like do you want to give us money do you want to invest in with this phone it's gonna be the Kickstarter campaign it's going to be like sign enter your email for more information type of thing see so you know what I want to kick start is an achievement 5 inches I would I mean think about it a windows phone version of the galaxy note 2 I mean that would play right am I crazy uh well the whole point of the note is it's is its s-pen right yeah um so yeah so so do a UH you like a I don't know maybe have an atif mega running Windows RT instead of I don't know I'm spitball here live on video but I think that there's I think there's a product here that Samsung should probably consider me I mean look Samsung makes so many products at so many sizes half of which probably don't sell a single unit they might as well make an atty Vega even if nobody notices that it ever came out like they might as well it costs them nothing they own the display manufacturing like just do it which would you would you buy if it's a Chris can I get you on record that if Samsung is uh would be willing to release in at Eve mega you would actually go out and buy it and be the one person that buys it no of course I I just want that make it kirsta just so reckless with other people's production lines I'm telling you whatever whatever OEM steps forward and starts using mega in their product names gold mine like it's it's an untapped font of like it just it's gonna print money for these sponsors embarrassment chris months at Motorola's already using macs so if somebody wants to go up against motorola and its max branding yeah make its way better than max it's just a stronger sounding term and then they contend patrolling that's okay let's talk about this a bit of has been a bit of development with t-mobile and it's talking about more takeovers and mergers but i'm gonna let you guys handle this cause it's American so we were we were talking about this last week actually because it was on the verge of possibly happening i think by the time we were on the air for the mobile show it was rumored that it was going to happen but it wasn't confirmed and then like the next day it got confirmed that deutsche telekom which is the owner of t-mobile USA is by essentially buying metro pcs and plans to integrate metro pcs into the t-mobile brand and company and it will use metro pcs ha's spectrum and network for t-mobile's LTE network at years down the line and into by 2015 so it's it's kind of an interesting thing i think both Chris and I said that it wouldn't be a huge surprise if this were to happen so it makes sense based on the both both metro pcs and t-mobile's needs in the future maybe not right now because they have not incompatible networks for their non-lte services but for the future it makes sense so and it's a sudden I hear a rumor that that sprint was maybe going to try and swoop in and make like a competitive bid or was that bunk so that was rumored we haven't really heard about it since the rumor which came out just it just after the deal was officially announced the rumor came out the next day that that sprint might do a counterbid against Deutsche Telekom for for metropcs but we haven't heard anything about that since then so okay so my theory is that Deutsche Telekom really doesn't want to own t-mobile USA even even after the 18 teeth and they tried to show some lukewarm re commitment to the organization but in reality i think that they really would like to get rid of them so my theory is that they're using this metropcs acquisition to in an effort to create value in the company where they're currently you know i mean it's it's no secret that t-mobile is deficient number of ways both technologically and you know in terms of spectrum ownership and and sometime oh shanthi yeah and then personally he's gone to hell they're no good Carly on the race likes it just annoying right thank you very yes because you can trine rhyme six with Phoenix it drives me mad every time every time I see that commercial oh but she tries to run she's like 12 Kalamazoo 34 Jersey Shore 56 west Phoenix and and you can't rhyme six with Phoenix it sound really weird so glad that you have that memorized Chris I've seen the commercial like a million i I've not seen that commercial I was just referring to the one where she drives through the city and a motorcycle and all the buildings turned pink or I'm sorry magenta right yeah I know I've seen that one too but this one is like it's every other commercial on TV right now but but anyway so I suspect the Deutsche Telekom will ultimately try to spin off the combined organization as a public company sometime after 2015 and then you know we'll just be you know and their their theory their hope is that it will be sustaining by then and what do we like do anything that actually has a chance of working out at I mean I'm still not convinced that the US market can sustain for profitable national carriers as much as it pains me to say that but this probably gives I do think that this properly gives t-mobile the best shot possible in light of you know the spectrum that's available and the circumstances and the competition that they're facing what's funny is that even with this merger it still doesn't put tmobile within range of even sprint which is its next biggest competitor so Sprint's got 50 million plus customers now I believe with metropcs and t-mobile combined it's somewhere in the mid 30s so it's still a ways away from even reaching number three yeah okay wow so us seriously guys you need to make these US carrier discussions a bit more exciting for Europeans it's like we were added onto my face because I do it any 15 and it's a long road and they need out t.o.o bellyaching ah ok I'll give you some drama I think that verizon has a huge chip on its shoulder about LTE like they held this event yesterday where they announced that I think was October 18th they're gonna launch their 400th LTE market they're actually gonna get like for 17 or something and they're gonna hold some like party and marquette to you know celebrate their 400l te market and there you know here's our by the end of 2013 every single 3g area that's got 3g is going to be have LTE and we're working with rural carriers and you know on and on and on and i think basically like the they had such you know a lead in LTE and they pretty much still do especially if you compare and even compared to AT&T there just in way more markets and I think that you know eighty calling HSPA 4G and you know also just saying we have LTE now even if it's not and you know in anywhere near as many markets I think verizon is finally like tired of it and so they're trying to swing the LTE hammer while they still can and wildly still have you know a huge lead and LTE I think I think you're totally right dieter because now Verizon used to say that it has the largest 4g network and then you know the definition of 4G got really murky and changed and now 18 he claims that it has the largest 4g network because it's counting its hspa+ and LTE networks combined and I'm fully wholly agree with you data that that gets under verizon skin to no end because if you're really going to be a stickler about the definition of 4G LTE is much closer to the original definition and verizon's LTE network is much larger than any of the competitors here in the US so now Verizon claims that it has the fastest 4G network in the nation instead of the largest so I mean I you know I I expect that they're going to be doing nothing but pushing 4g for a while and you know once 18t catches up in terms you know or at least gets close enough in terms of covering you know markets in 4G we'll see another turn but like the question is like what's next for these guys in terms of pushing themselves is rise I'm just going to go back to reliability or are we gonna like are they finally gonna start doing like you know voice quality again you know that would actually be kind of nice to see carriers competing on like voice quality that I hate talking on the phone that's I don't think anybody I mean voices I'm just gonna raise that question I know HD voice is something that was picked up by sprint and I know Apple introduced that with the iphone 5 and I think this I'm I don't think it was a feature in the Lumia 920 I don't know if it was but I seem to record it on the iphone 5 and so some other recent phone what is happening with HD voice what's happening with picking that up amana carry at least here in the US it is available from sprint but it's available for on one phone and it works between only that phone so if you have an EVO 4G LTE you can make HD voice calls to other evo 4g LTE owners and we haven't really seen anything since then about that I don't think any of the American carriers are really going to be pushing HD voice I think that the next step for them is vaulty and that's what they're going to be putting their focus on and and that's what we're going to see I know that it's been Verizon's been very cagey about its multi plans and it might be yeah so I actually see them but I asked them about they brought it up in there there little press conference and then I asked them specifically about it later and their line is you know it's still a ways off and the reason it's still a ways off is we are our implementation of it is amazing and the best thing ever and it takes a while to lay the groundwork for doing it right instead of doing it quickly where they got that line from yeah by the way I just looked and apparently the Lumia 800 supports a mrw B which is also known as HD Voice so aren't good carriers in the UK that that have it for some time lady Vlad you can confirm that I believe or an orange has it yeah or a while yeah but I mean I I like it i've seen tested it and it makes a real real difference and and it's basically no phone that can't handle it because it's just kind of increasing the bit rates on your phone call like it's it's a tiny extra bit of data transmission I can't really see why nobody has picked it up I mean voti is nice and all but then you need to be connected to the LTE network which consumes the most power out of any networking option like there is a seat boys you know you can do can you do it over 2g connection uh I think so yes I think so too but you can do it over free g connection which still I mean that's one of the things that companies often scold us about like we get excited about latest phones the latest technology etc and then they tell us ah but you know the rest of the world the this China there's India there's Africa all of these countries don't have you know the capabilities or the budget to buy really really powerful devices with large screens and fast connections so to me it just kind of silly that you have this HD voice option which seems really straightforward on the technical front and nobody seems to be pushing it hard enough because I can I mean I don't see what the marketing issue is with pushing HD voice it's like here's your phone call and I use your phone call on HD voice can you tell which one is so much better than the other right and then you saw that's people I think people will buy into it I wife I think that it's it's pretty straightforward I think that it's a combination of you know the fact that you need to roll out handsets that are compatible with it and at least in the u.s. there aren't many yet so you end up you know having very little practice enough it to the feature but but more importantly I think that that voice is widely regarded as a dying feature of phones and so is selling people putting any significant marketing effort into a feature that is attached at the hip to a dying mode of operation is is a you know a tough sell I think ok and then what's the point info t so faulty has a couple of different reasons especially for verizon because right now on verizon and i guess you could say even sprint you can't do phone calls while you're on LTE especially like this came out with the iphone 5 the iphone 5 on verizon and sprint if it's on a phone call it will drop its data connection vaulty will allow it to keep the data connection because you're you're doing everything over LTE and also volte moving to volte harmonizes the like that the operation of the phone so that it doesn't need to be connected to multiple kinds of networks so it becomes a power-saving issue it becomes a reduced complexity issue because everything is is packet data instead of maintaining both the circuit switched and a packet data connection and then also long that means that they can repurpose all of their bands to LTE and and higher technologies whether that be lte-advanced or 5g or whatever instead of having to maintain both both those kinds of technologies simultaneously and I think the most important is that the most most important point is that volte is just really fun to say yes it is it is and I was just gonna say Christie's argument is spot-on I just wanted to you know raise the earlier point because our podcast should include developing nations and developing world where less fortunate people than yourselves such as myself here in the UK can only think and dream about LTE is something coming in the future maybe I don't get me wrong but I was absolutely love to have HD voice that's something that I would love to have because I I hate talking on the phone I noticed with the iphone 5 the calls quality are much better than with the iphone 4s and a lot of other phones but it's still not HD Voice levels because we don't have to support for it here but i would i would love to have it it's just a matter of whether the carriers will give it to me which I just we just can't see happening not here the price at least now I get that get that and what do you say to me is is even with HD Voice the bandwidth is outrageously low i mean i think that the lowest defined am rwb mode is like six kilobits per second it's insane I have notes is that with you guys in America in the fact that you you like to have a choice of no more than two so AT&T or Verizon two presidential candidates it's like as soon as you get a third or a 4 competitor you kind of lose interest and was just make a league out of it I want to desist that right there because a lot of people would love to have more than two choices and more than two carriers and more than two presidential candidates it's just it's it's a matter of that's kind of just the way it is but it's it's not something like like I don't like it see I person who is one Manny I just want everything tech related to me just give me a bone like don't give me a choice you know okay so I don't really have any good transitional segue but I think we should move on and talk about Hawaii ah who are into a new congressional report pose a national security threat to the United States with their networking equipment and they've responded saying rossetti said is disappointed by the allegations while we said that the evidence is lacking predictably enough but again i'm handing this over to you guys in the US how do you go about it so what would we thought i'm leaving this one up to Dan ah so I'm actually very disappointed with this report um you know it's essentially if you read the report there's no smoking gun evidence that the investigation turned up against huawei and ZTE and they spent 11 months doing this and really where they're still at where they started where they had suspicions that this could possibly be happening as far as you huawei and ZTE using the equipment they make sold to American companies to spy on either trade secrets or national security concerns and then relaying that back to China and the investigation didn't have any smoking gun like I said that that says that they're definitely doing this the one complaint that the committee had was that huawei and ZTE did not open their doors as much as they wanted them to they didn't show them as much evidence that they're not doing this and they essentially did improve their innocence in the eyes of the committee so the committee said there were just issuing this recommendation that American companies don't buy their products which is like kind of crazy when you know the whole basis of the American judicial system is innocent until proven guilty but you know it makes it makes me disappointed I think that actually huawei and ZTE feel the same exact way if you release is that they put out that you know it the decision was kind of predetermined before the investigation was completed or even started and it's it's going to make it difficult for them to break into the US wireless market to bring in their infrastructure and and their equipment here if companies are explicitly told by the government that they shouldn't buy it there was actually a report on 60 seconds our 60 minutes this week where they interviewed seconds would be better yeah 60 seconds would be better right but they interviewed a couple of people involved with this they interviewed some of the members of the committee and an actual a an executive from a regional carrier that bought equipment from Huawei to deploy on his network and was visited by federal agents afterwards which is like insane to think about so I mean I I don't really have a conclusion to say about this other than you know I I don't like where it's going I mean I can I can totally understand out of a out of an abundance of caution I can I can definitely understand why the federal government would not want to install any foreign source a networking hardware in sensitive areas you're not going to put a huawei switch in Los Alamos National Laboratory right but due to recommend that private companies don't use our equipment is I think is a bit over the top and and the other thing is that there really aren't any American competitors that you can sources stuff from Cisco still exists but it's not competitive on the same level that huawei and ZTE are with their their equipment at this point so if a company wants to buy the best that's available to give them the best advantage in the marketplace they're not looking at American companies they're not looking at Cisco they're looking at Ericsson and they're looking at huawei and they're looking at ZTE yeah well I don't want to necessarily support the Congressional report which is dan says is light on substantial you know allegations and saying things like you know there's this piece of information which somehow found itself into chinese han any pass through their networks that like dust never happened so there isn't like hard evidence against them but I do recall that over here in London while we had an agreement I believe to provide some networking infrastructure for some either Wi-Fi or 3g roll out on longing underground like my memory of this is hazy and unlike Chris I'm not looking at opening up on Wikipedia during the podcast and but they had one of those deals in place and then there was some concerns about who i away from from the UK and from the government which is coupled the deal was actually so there is some sort of track record there is some sort of distrust there and I'm more willing to credit the UK government would be rational about it than the u.s. one so I would well be a UK is not alone Australia actually banned yeah Huawei's equipment as well so they have the same concern so it's not it's not like the US government is the only one that has these concerns I just would have liked them to actually have proven their concerns absolutely yeah yeah yeah I mean I think exactly same as that I don't think there's like a hot conclusion that that we can put under this there's not a hardware hard way yeah we have to talk about hard way um it's not like a single line which we can summarize it but neither party in this seems to be particularly clean or right which is kind of annoying is we like to conclude on some sort of definitive point perspective I guess um but you know you know I mean I also without getting too political I do you find it kind of shocking when I see how openly American politicians just attack China and just say China steals from us china is a Peyton thief and an IP thief and like choice I mean those allegations are not with out Merritt I mean I then they're not they're not but you know usually when these conversations happen there so there's so much more subtle and diplomatic where is America politicians have taken to just being like uh you know Chinese a thief china cheats china etc and i don't think that's perfectly fair in the other thing so what does sorry go ahead white well i mean just a quick point i was gonna make is china is a huge country and we underestimate how huge it is as a population and size and scale and all of these things so does the other thing even if Huawei is in in cahoots with the government in the state that doesn't I mean yeah it implicates the Chinese state but it doesn't implicate all of China doesn't implicate all of China's businesses and it's dangerous for countries to also generalize in that fashion as well I feel right yeah what what's what's very interesting to me is that apparently dieter I don't know if if if phil mentioned this to you when you were talking to him but apparently androidcentral has been blacklisted by the Great Firewall so you can't reach androidcentral in China anymore of apparently over there reporting on on this on this issue I had not heard that that's that's amazing anodyne so China is taking this very seriously ok say the betta crazy affair with you we should like stub ourselves but before we start talking too much about things we don't know about or understand yeah I don't want to get too political here but yeah before we wrap up I i do wanna tease a couple of things which we've got coming up so apparently i just want to give this clip mentioned jolla which are the guys who are working on developing amigo device former splint nokia guys who i like to call splinter cell but another in its been so they're gonna show off their meager based a western finland next month so that's coming up I bad that i really want to pronounce that Hoyer instead of insert jolla or joy awesome look cuz it must be Joe la jolla but moving on ok if you must jaja want to call it that one do that it doesn't matter yeah so does that and also next week a sous is going to debut the platform to which me and I'm going to be there live in person but with better lighting that I have had on today's podcast so that's happening on tuesday i believe so choose the next week the platform launch event is happening we may we may have to move the podcast timing a little bit to accommodate that event happening but I should be reporting having touched it and play with it and probably touched all the 17 different accessories that it ducks into a pretty sure is gonna be a phone looking into a tablet ducking into a keyboard that makes it windows 8 laptop talking into an all-in-one desktop talking you to a tank they just showed the final version of the original padfone at mwc like it's to the point now where they're going to announce the launch event for the PadFone three at the same time that they're showing the padfone 2 for the first time okay I just combined them into more still muck idea in the US ever yeah at the end of the padfone 2 event they're gonna be like and come back join us again uh in two months for our pad poetry of it I'm actually excited to see the padfone 2 I think there's been some specs leaked that really make it kind of like a pretty bunch of a beast of a phone very similar specs to the optimus G if I remember correctly so I'm excited to say I'm very eager to hear what you think about it glad when you do actually get to to see it in person all right I sure I should do my utmost to give you the first-person experience and also Annie I need to just apologize to anybody you're watching a show by because I've been messing around with my mood lights here in my room because this podcast started wow I had daylight and I was so delighted because for once I'm not doing cast in the middle of the night and then Dale I just kind of died half of an hour into the podcast and I'm like I don't think I'm visible anymore and incited screwing around with this despite your background has gotten progressively darker but you're still you're still illuminated properly so yeah that's it that's all I got so do we have anything else to wrap up here we think we're we're just we're just waiting for you to wrap it Dan alright so let's wrap it even you that was a virgin mobile show for the week of October eighth we want to thank you guys for tuning in of course you can follow us on twitter i'm at DC seifert chris is at z power Vlad is that Vlad savov and dieter is at back lawn and they can email us right yeah mobile at the verge you watch you why not yeah why not I don't show it with the verge or you can tweet at us or whatever you want and there's the farms I think in a farm and the forums yes so jump in there go crazy in our mobile forums because we always like to see what you guys are thinking and doing in there as always st of ideas I mean yesterday's about seventy percent read already is uncredited yes yes we always do like to cultivate or free ideas from there so right um next week we should be back on Tuesday but like ads flat mentioned we may have to shift our normal time light a little bit but we will definitely give you guys a heads up as to what's going on there but for that's it for now so I guess we're signing off so see you guys later thanks guys hi guys you