Gadgetory

hello welcome to the verge mobile show where we talk about mobile this is episode 27 for the week of November 26th 2012 we have our entire team here which is very very exciting let's sound off who we are because that's how we start podcast now I am dieter bohn i have class saba i'm dan seifert my name is chris sigler and i don't know about you guys but I am just an angry cranky hot mess and it's gonna show on the show a little bit today we're gonna argue I feel Chris are you are you ready to are you and be cranky I'm gonna take you down I'm gonna tear you limb from limb you're gonna be a bloody corpse by the end of this show Wow well but maybe I'll be a zombie and I'll rise again I like not going anywhere with this uh so as I said this is a holiday weekend for you guys in America how come you come back home stressed out and frazzled and rates fight because I'm off my regular circadian rhythm I'm off my you know my my habit of working all day and then going to sleep and waking up and working again and drinking somewhere in there usually after work today before work no um see I told you I was off my game um no but my thanksgiving was actually really good I've got a new niece got to see her and got to hang out with my brother and my sister my parents and in-laws well actually they're not in law's my sisters in-laws it was a ton of people do you guys have good Thanksgivings I did we actually hosted it here at our house which was an experience but it went okay and we didn't burn the house down so yes we could say that was just a success um my mind was legit i got an ipad mini with LTE holiday she's pretty awesome i love a leader nigger dieter and I lead with you know we're the families here the wheels were good chris is like yeah I bought myself an ipad mini and I think that wish is the only one who actually spoke to our audience nobody else really gives a damn about families or but anybody else would do right and besides like a good LTE network is like the warm embrace of a family member I could really do it one of those right now because at the moment i am connected to the internet essentially by shoestring i'm using my phone's hotspot which may or may not let me down during this podcast because virgin media as usual a provider of cable internet which supposed to be rock solid and reliable is stinking right now ce o-- simply your enemies are also you gotta post i have to breathe out what's going on in the in the chat for the verge mobile show right now if you're not watching us live you're really missing out because everybody is laying out all the specs for the proposed nexus kin device and i gotta say it sounds pretty awesome that sounds horrible just by name is sounds horrible regular SD cards look be 4i den that's great guys full size SIM card exes oh the nexus one is the bass or factor device ever created nexus one bring back the triangle excuse excuse me that the kin the kin one not the nexus 10 the kin one is the best form factor of any device yeah you know when I had a palm pre I thought you know what would really make this device would be if you just smushed it and that would really have just nailed that device in them and you know the kid one really really yes thank you Dan I've got a veer that I could grab if you really want we could we could debate the their tiny little sliding devices um actually speaking of operating systems that probably don't have a real chance in the market we finally got a look at sailfish which is from a group of people called Jolla Julia I think they I think they yalla yalla I'd like to pronounce it holla I want to cook pronounce it hoya how about i know i i'd be like we can only refer to this company of haha Jol la it is based on Mego and I think out of everybody here Vlad probably has the most affinity for for this OS yes we can let him sort of break it down what we saw and that's great because I haven't seen it yet let's break down I can sum it up in one sentence uh it looks like something you could do with a custom android lock screen in 2010 wow that's hard man well I mean it's just it's i don't know it actually there's there's something that like blackberry 10 stole from me go and so this is also based on Mego and so there's like live tiles for your active apps and then you know left and white swipes and whatever um I mean it looks fine but where is it going to go it'll run android apps yeah you know what else runs android apps the playback right and that really worked really well well the playbook you have to submit their just gonna do it straight i believe is the plan and so you don't have to admit the thing that's crazy about this is like i know i'm pretty sure that they're releasing like developer kits and all that other stuff but like they're also plan to release their own a hardware for it if I am not mistaken which is kind of insane to the thing sorry I just realized we had like two different glads and the hang out at the same time disconnected and reconnected which is pretty amazing actually I mean look this windows phone blackberry 10 back at stoja moment connection guys and the lag and your connection to we've been talking for like 15 minutes about you and you just caught up yeah I guess go I would like to see a viable third ecosystem and I do think that Windows Phone still has the best chance I'm just putting that out there to absolute silence let's move on we haven't seen I mean are you seen you private dieter you've probably seen blackberry 10 more than any of us um but I guess we haven't seen it on the marketplace yet and we won't until january thirtieth or shortly thereafter depending on if they can actually pull off the real launch I mean I guess I mean let's just talk about it now since and came up I mean we we got to interview tourists and Heinz along with a whole lot of other people he really made the rounds and you know I mean we didn't really learn a whole lot knew about blackberry 10 they're planning on having a couple of surprises for the launch they're probably going to be related to the services that they're going to use for media hopefully it's something interesting but probably it won't be and what what's really interesting to me is that room is sort of got these plans Heinz keeps talking about the future of mobile computing and if blackberry tez even a little bit successful then they're planning on like trying to be the de facto tablet OS for enterprise and like seriously taking on Microsoft I mean Heinz wouldn't say I'm taking on Microsoft but read between the lines it's like wow that's like really insanely ambitious it wow is that ambitious Microsoft has no traction whatsoever I don't think that's it I mean that no he's not talking about it phones he's talking about in computing period he thinks at that blackberry 10 on a tablet like can just be your computer okay I don't want to say anything terribly negative or be especially since i haven't seen blackberry 10 on a tablet uh nobody has yeah i like my skeptic Punda tree is like raging right now because I don't see that happening at all I'm kind of afraid to pitch in because I don't even know how about my lag is over here um just do it man I'm just saying like I'm just saying like steel frames of dieter and Dan every three or four seconds chris is just keeping it legit and he's just staring down at screen oh well behind his quarters remain under telling it lizard go yeah no no I'm with you guys I'm following you roses buttock all right are we back on the air cuz I gotta not everything right now we're back I believe if someone could yes there we are back you guys miss those that using point Vlad totally laid down some eloquent knowledge and we don't even want to continue because there's nothing else to say about mobile after what he said when we were off air yes she had just eaten yeah thing I think it was a good point I'm but I was just saying that it's not out of the realm of the reasonable for RIM to compute Microsoft on this computing stage because Microsoft covered two-pronged approach having the old desktop interface and the new modern interface it's just kind of a patch Patrick system until the next version and until the future because the future for Microsoft is going to be this touch-centric interface and that's the future for Microsoft and Microsoft has the big enterprise business market does the future for all business we're all going to be doing work with such capable touch-centric devices interfaces it just where everybody's going so room obviously it already has a relationships businesses it already has the network established it just needs to have quality of software and hardware to back that up which as usual is the big question mark I mean I'm all for aiming high but i don't know like it seems like it's kind of a stretch and it's I I agree that we're going to see you know something like a tablet interface take over and sooner than we expect but I don't think that I don't think that grim should be getting ahead of itself in this regard I mean yeah I me add that that's exactly how I feel I feel like rim needs to lock down its core business first which its like before trying to reach out and catch the bigger doesn't point then what is room school core business because everything is falling apart for him this is true that's a very good point i mean when i say core business I mean mobile technology as far as like smartphones yeah which are not selling right but like so I mean baby that does the point like if you ask me it's just as crazy for him to be competing with Microsoft and the enterprise is this for room to be competed with smartphone leaders at the moment because the company is showing zero in terms of competitiveness over the past what is it two years so I mean what are we what are we basing any faith Abrams bulb our chances here's the like rim still has the same team that of employees that it used to build smartphones like that's what they know how to do and it'd be one thing if like the company did like a total about-face and flipped its whole staff and then suddenly started building laptops and tablets and everything like that and buy tablets I mean not the PlayBook that would you know maybe they have that but like the the smartphones is what rim built its business on right so I feel like it'd be a lot easier for the company to actually rethink how it's doing smartphones and do that right than to try and tackle a whole nother market okay well yeah is that the mouse the markets aren't going to be different right that's that's kind of the future that he's looking forward to yeah yeah but I'm saying is can you name the last innovative really competitive leading smartphone developed by rim the best ribs smartphone ever was the curve 8900 and I don't think I'll ever beat that Wow and that was how long ago 2009 I think yeah right so mean that's what I'm saying it's it's kind of a really pessimistic downbeat outlook but the fact is that room has no evidence to show that it can compete in mobile so if Boston wants to go and just be you know aggressive and jump into a whole new category you might as well because I don't think room has that competence that we assume it has because I they shone out right and I mean to be I think initially they're talking like health care and other really you know specific things before they try and go into computing writ large but you know what it doesn't matter we won't know what chances are until after we see what blackberry 10 toes and that's a ways away so we'll just have to wait and see us Chris yes I would like you to lay out your thesis that you were ranting about on Twitter so that I can tell you that you're wrong would this be the debate that we were having over the weekend yeah so it's very simple and and it's very simple and very correct what what I'm what I'm positing is that we are nearing an inflection point in mobile where specs are stabilizing to the hardware specs are stabilizing to the point nobody's ever said that before I've never heard that that story mobile before that specs are stabilizing that's really interesting continued specs are stabilizing what are going to be stabilizing to the point where users are going to be dis incentivized to upgrade at this breakneck pace they're not going to feel there's to spend money at the same pace that they've been spending money over the past five to seven to ten years and at least in the in the segment of the market that already owns smartphones and as that happens carriers are going to use one of their trump cards which is their ability to lord subsidies and lock devices over their users and that opens up the market and and presents you know clear and present opportunity for for carriers like t-mobile that play nice with unlock or play nicer with unlock devices for these kinds advices things like the Nexus 4 and products in that category too kind of flourish and it's going to turn carriers that much closer into the dumb pipes that we all want them to be so one spec race slowing down I mean let's just grant that although I thought the cons okay I was trying to be nice that's cool before these agos goes ahead and slams Chris's major point we can't take that for granted at all the specs slow down I think for us being constantly in the industry I think that things move slower than they actually do move like just think back we're just busy roads alone yeah just think back to the fact that a monthly but a year and a month ago the 720p display on smartphones sounded futuristic and out there now we have 1080p devices come si es we're going to see in 1080p device from Samsung and LG to be sure just once is growing so quickly but what's but what's after that flat there's there you're not gonna see 4k mobile displays I mean even 1080p is absurd I like I get that the I get that the DNA is it has an awesome display I don't need it I'm fine with 720p and I think that a lot of users are fine with 720p but fine upgrade everybody to 1080p about 4.5 inches or whatever that's fine you can't go above that either note there will be no such thing as a 4k mobile display and if there is it's going to be a pure gimmick okay Chris okay I'm being a bit too but I'm good with this place but but there's also with this place is the point about obstacle lamination which has now become pretty much standard this thing's like gorilla glass which are making display so much stronger and nicer we can you talking about thickness being reduced I mean the iPhone 5 is the thickness and weight is for the user ID ti4 is my buddies with this well I don't know yes it's concerning 40 stress it Chris plan look okay every single point that you mentioned okay nobody not a single human being maybe you but you're not a human being not a single human being is going to buy a phone because the OEM or the carrier says it's got laminated glass and and nobody's going to to your point Chris there are ads and AT&T stores that advertise the one x+ is having 64 gigabytes of non partitioned storage you know letters I in the ads well that's just sad man that's another yeah that's that's reddit oriole way but uh no I mean and and but but furthermore the the the thickness race is nearing an end and and I was speaking to an employee of an oem recently who will not be named who told me that they have actually conducted research uh they've conducted a you know focus group studies where they've determined there's like an optimal thickness that you like below which users can't even detect that that is getting any thinner and uh we're nearing that point and once that happens is all it's going to be entirely about you know battery capacity and stuff so phones aren't going to get any thinner at some point in fact in what was it 2006 or something there was that samsung x 8 20 or whatever it was called is 5 point something millimeters and phones actually got thicker than that because people realize that a five millimeter phone was stupid so but and and the iPhone 5 is what seven points something millimeters so so that is that is a red herring my point is that you were getting to to the point with processing power and and display quality like even the 1x which is but you know by mobile terms an ancient phone at this point a processing power screen camera thickness all these things are reaching a plateau beyond which the like the improvements and the user's ability to perceive those improvements are going to be very incremental to the point where you are not going to feel the need to buy a new phone every year ok so I think I think cameras are one area where there actually is room for improvement and noticeable improvement because you know my cell phone doesn't take DSLR quality photos yet the other big thing is obviously a battery life which is like you know that had that's kind of stayed stayed still for well everything else has been you know accelerating so quickly battery life still kind of is a bummer on most phones and then you're saying that processing power is there I think you know eat in this year alone we've seen such great leaps in processing power moving from to like second generation dual-core processors to these quad core processors where everything is getting faster and smoother I still think there's room for improvement there that's not to say 15 people I mean just look at much faster like the the quad-core s4 pro is and look how much faster the the a6 in the iPhone 5 is compared to previous generations like it's well here's my point let's let me let me put this in different terms I think what I'm saying the point that I'm trying to make is that if you look at a pc if you look at it's like for example right now i'm talking to you on a three and a half year old imac I feel absolutely no need or desire to upgrade it it's because it has a core i7 it's got it came with a king of ram a one terabyte hard drive uh and you know there's there's nothing that is compelling enough in terms of processing power or what have you for me to upgrade that machine and I think that we're going to start to move the mobile industry into the same or very similar upgrade pattern that the pc industry has been in for the past 20 years okay and like if you look at wait wait wait wait wait let me make a point maybe one more point look at look at pentium fours look at look at pentium fours from 10 years ago look at the clock speeds of those devices we've actually come down in clock speed what we were at three point 0 gigahertz plus now we're at 2.6 to 2.8 so let's clock speed is is like you're you're comparing clock speeds across different architectures so listen I think that in the spec race Chris's point that we are reaching a point where the core specs on a phone are good enough to last more than a couple of years is probably true in terms of processors yeah via reticle e in terms of battery life in terms of display technology like the core specs I do think that there's still a pretty good chance that we're going to see innovation in other spec like zones like the camera like I don't even know I don't know adding something crazy that I haven't thought of that will continue to drive innovation or drive purchasing cycles from a hardware perspective but you won't be NFC that's for sure the the point is let's grant that that's happening that we're going to hit a point where phones are in the same zone as computers you don't need to upgrade every couple years to feel like you're up to date one like all these companies make a ton of money based on this aggressive upgrade cycle and there are there going to be incentivized to continue to keep it going and I think they have levers that they can push to make that happen requiring a phone upgrade in order to get a new version of an OS for example you know continuing to push the subsidy model in certain ways I I think that to believe that verizon is just you know waiting for the day for it to become a dumb pipe is pretty what's the word what sort naive no I don't think that they're waiting for that day to happen I think that that's going to happen and they're gonna have to deal with it right so what I'm saying is they have got ways to prevent that day for coming and i'll let me give you an example that so let's look at a market where the hardware just flat-out doesn't matter that people maybe are on a five year upgrade cycle if that but these companies that control the pipes still have a lot of power and that would be the cable industry when's the last time you know you upgraded your DVR who cares right you get it once you rent it you might upgrade to a new T Bo if you're really into it but whatever but that hasn't stopped these cable companies from still continuing to exercise obscene and intrusive control over how we watch TV right and to think that we you know our it's inevitable that we're going to have a nice and free and open system for cell phones though like the rest of the internet just because we're getting to a place where a you know phones might look more like computers in terms of their spec upgrade cycles I think that the it's much more complicated than that I think that you know the fact that what the point I'd like to make is like we've got these insane mobile share plans where you've got to pay per device to get on the network right but imagine having to do that at home with your computer like to get on the Wi-Fi at your house like that's insane right so why are you assuming that that sanity would apply to cell phone networks when they have the power to just say no I mean the bottom line is we talk about this like verizon gets to decide what goes on its network 18t does to the only reason that stuff is unlocked on ATT and and unlock works on that network is because they're like being nice how long are they going to be nice when you know they're up against the wall I don't think that they're being nice I think that they're playing a very very delicate political chess match with the FCC to determine just how how much of an asshole they can be before before the FCC brings the hammer down and yeah my bday yeah like the SEC is not a grandmaster at chess like the ATT is playing chess the FCC's playing tiddlywinks they're playing checkers right they don't they're not shown any ability to exercise real power in the past few years and I don't have a whole lot of faith that that they're going to and and here's the thing Chris I I want to believe you're right that we're going to be in a world where like we just have got phones like we have computers and worry free to use one I need any network we want and you know we'll get the spectrum thing figured out and the compatibility figured out and all that stuff will happen but what I'm saying is just because specs normalize doesn't make that world inevitable we have to make it happen and right now we're not making it happen why I always I appreciate your your input I'm now going to refer to you as a tool of the of the carriers have no I'm saying we've got to fight that the tool for the carriers is just assuming that they're gonna roll over and die they're not no I don't think that they're going to roll over and die I think that it's inevitable that this is evolution this is this is the this is the carriers getting their comeuppance for 15 years of of pushing these subsidy hangovers on to its on to its customers that this was this moment was predetermined the moment that the first smartphone came onto the market that it was inevitable it was a statistical method ability that the market would reach this point that the market would saturate that specs would saturate that that that customers are going to get smart this will this ain't going to happen and it's Anna's companies like Google that are going to end up ultimately pushing it I that doesn't mean I like the Nexus 4 i still think it's a fatally flawed device but I think that Google is a very important piece of this puzzle long-term wonder what he says Martinez they're not pushing for it anymore they they totally they they gave in to verizon and now they're just not even engaged they're just like yeah well we'll just putting it on a lock networks like that's legit but it's not just not whatever Chris sounds so much like the architect from the matrix this is a mathematical inevitability this has been built into the system probably getting yada yada yada I'm not convinced by christie's argument and the reason i'm not is because on the p ec under this upside we still have so much blood web being loaded on by companies and we still have people being forced into upgrades they don't need just by pure marketing and shapiro and salesmanship and in fact is you could say it was inevitable that people will start stretching out that great sac was longer over there but they're not as long as they should be just given rational information i think it's much more likely that we're going to build a national grassroots Wi-Fi mesh network upon which we can use our free and open unlock devices than we are to get verizon to just back off and get out of our way and AT&T and Sprint and whomever look I like that business blog that I I'm as much of a pessimist as any of you guys and and and I know that you all can vouch for that but I really strongly believe that this is one point where you are all horribly horribly wrong and I'm not I'm gonna laugh in your faces and and throw unlock phones at you you know when when this comes to fruition there's one thing I could say against the whole spec stabilizing and customers are not going to be pushed into new phones every year is that not only do carriers make money every time that someone upgrades their phone every year but so do phone manufacturers and if you keep your phone for two to three years and you know Samsung blesses it with a couple of software updates Samsung's not making any money off of you after day one they would love to sell you another phone at six months and love to sell you another phone again in six months so it's like either it's going to be either pushed on you whether through hardware or through software or through the carriers or whatever I don't think that any of these companies are going to roll down and and and and just let their cash cows you know take two to three times longer to cash in than they do now well one thing to consider though is that I mean I hear you but one thing you have to remember is that we're still the u.s. is still only at fifty percent smartphone saturation or just under like every night upset so I there there's still a huge market to be sold into and and I think that that OMS would feel very empowered to be able to sell their phones directly to consumers the way they want at the price they want instead of having but how many because that's gone so well for PC manufacturer how many others feel like the end user is their customer though I only company that actually feels that way is apple and and every other OEM and and I guess yay google now which Google doesn't really technically produce its own hardware but every other OEM their customers are carriers they're not end users and that's why they bend over backwards to me ya know happy you're you're absolutely right the way the market only works you are absolutely one hundred percent correct I'm envisioning a world where this is not the way the market works right man I'm saying well that that I want to live in that world that you're envisioning Chris but I'm saying that it's not inevitable it is inevitable by speaking of you know what we have answering machines on our land lines wasn't inevitable the FCC had to like pass the Carter phone and like make it okay to own a phone instead of rent a phone like that wasn't that wasn't just something that was like proof magically going to happen because of technology like because technology is not an answer like it has to be so you're saying give more teeth to the FCC give more teeth to you know the regulations them to make it possible to make these things free and open and interoperable but you just conceded that the FCC does have teeth well they did they did minutes in the 70s I think what everything that's happened recently with LTE networks and with the 700 megahertz auctions and things like that have shown that the FCC does not have the teeth that it had maybe once add in the 70s I wasn't there but you know that today's like the the 700 megahertz auction was Google was involved specifically in it to push a clause that mean that forced carriers that adopted the 700 megahertz spectrum for their LTE network to make it interoperable and they can allow any or they have to allow any device on there and what are the carriers go and do they go and make divide and demand devices that are not compatible with their competitors networks and they just like skirt right around it can i just pick up another point that that made which i think is really important the one about Apple and Google considering the end user as their customer I think in order for us to reach Chris's house in scenario we need to have every device manufacturer think in that way and work in that way yes I'm going google aren't just trying to sell you the device like in Google's case Google is trying to show you the cheapest device possible the same is going to be true of Amazon when it reduces its own smartphone chris sigler exclusive he had that months ago yeah but the point is Apple Google and Amazon I got to try and sell your services which the smartphone is just a device to reach into those services right they make their money whether free search for advertising for selling your music content etc samsung at the moment doesn't sounds really makes this money from hardware st. 40 G which which I get Sony and they get their money from the carriers they don't get their money from you because the carriers by their phones and then they subsidize them and sell them to you like so there that's why they are want to make carrier XYZ as happy as can be and that's why you see things like a verizon logo on the home button of the galaxy note 2 verizon i mean even though the tramlines you're talking about the tramp stamp these companies anyone what VZ navigator installed on every single Android device which is like a costly less as good option nice good option then what's built into Android itself right but but I'm just going to say all of these companies are also quite aware of it because we've got nokia with its mapping software none of this other software trying to burn yourself into a services company room has always been aiming to be a services company as well as a hardware company and everyone needs to kind of move towards using the device again it's kind of meshes with christie's idea that specs i'm going to matter so much in the future and i guess we all agree that's going to be true which is not agree on how long the timeline is going to be to get there but ultimately every single one of these vendors of hardware is going to have to be a services vendor as well because they're just a hardware vendor then they're just be a puppet of verizon ATT tune up to that point even though Apple does offer a lot of services through itunes and things like that it still makes the bulk of its profits through hardware sales but Apple is kind of unique in that I'm gonna give this also goes back to this discussion we had last week about boot loaders on Android which sounds like a really nerdy whatever topic but like if if specs normalize and we we want to be able to stick with our phone for you know 34 years we need to be able to make sure we've got the latest software we can do what we want with that phone it's not arbitrarily lockdown and I mean what's the motivation behind locking down an android phone with a la coupe or even you know an iphone so you've gotta jailbreak it right it's not you know it's not a mistake those are happening right it's not an accident and so in order to get to chris's beautiful dream world of openness we have to make sure that you know we're buying devices with unlocked bootloaders uh we're buying open devices so we should all go out and buy a nexus 4 right now except we can't because Google sucks at selling yeah let's let's talk about this since we're so talking about selling to the end user let's talk about how Google is not able to actually sell to the end user oh can they have bungled indic they like they put the thing out last week the whole store went down you couldn't even like put it on track order or pre-order two weeks ago sorry two weeks ago cuz i ordered what I've been waiting for it so I know it's take took two weeks to like figure it out and they went live at noon pacific today and it worked for all of like two minutes and any people in our chat are still trying to buy them right now like and they're congratulating each other if they had one go through google what this is a deal so what's crazy about this is when you board order something from a standard online retail whether it's from amazon who does everything very well with this or ebay or Apple or whoever might be ah the system is programmed to be like we have X X number in stock say a thousand phones in stock and once a thousand orders are placed the Buy Now button turns into a pre-order by now turns into sold out and Google can't seem to figure this out because Google itself is saying if you go visit the page now that the nexus 4 isn't sold out we can't sell you one right now but it's not sold out so come back later because it's system isn't set up to handle the demand properly which is just boggles my mind like ecommerce has been around for you know a major part of people's lives for over a decade now yeah Oh Christian do you want to go back to our argument since you didn't get the last word I'm sorry didn't mean to transit no no no I was just debating how hard to make fun of you guys that I had a nexus more like two weeks ago and uh yeah I the nexus for that you paid like a fortune for because I'm just gonna turn that right around I a Touche Touche I'm still not buying one and you know after all maybe I will after all my ranting about trying to support free and open but I mean OD say you can't well so I mean people are saying in our chat room they're saying that they're able to get one into their car and then when they go to checkout it disappears from their car it's like this is what you expect from one of those fly-by-night daily deal sites and last I checked Google's not a fly-by-night company they do stuff on the internet so I don't I just blows my mind how badly they bungled this not once because the same thing happened two weeks ago but now twice in a row but as things that Google Checkout right goo has offered check out services to other parties for ages and this is not news to Google it's some disconnect from what its system does not say how many it has in its warehouse to it doesn't tell its system its purchasing system its checkout system that it has X number available to sell I mean that's as far as what I can tell that's what it seems to me also congratulations to you come down get her back we're back we're on air again so the moral of the story is that our google hangout is powered by the same servers that play next door yeah so we're going to we're going to constantly be in your car and then suddenly removed and then back in your car and then something remove and then you'll find a week from now that you actually purchased eight virgin mobile shows which will be shipping sometime in the next three weeks um do you want agrees hat do we want to point out that the nexus for the the LTE chip that was found inside it does in fact work although only on like some random bands and no look but Google Google should just stop beating around the bush and by t-mobile USA like that they like there was when we were at Google's campus everybody was using t-mobile pointing that out no right and and the same has been true since the since the nexus one days and I mean they obviously have a major crush on t-mobile and I think that's largely because t-mobile is by far the most open at the big four largely because they have to be largely because their networks underutilized and because they don't have any subscribers then it would be the one that is like for sale I don't I don't think 18 to you would be like okay right so I'm just saying Google go ahead and just you know reach into your massive coffers and make this deal happen and then we can get this little charade over with we all know you're in love with t-mobile and run every search the g1 yeah versus the g one that's a very good point going all the way back to the original big one yep um well as long as we're talking about picking phones and buying phones we did refresh our smartphone buyers guide for the US carriers and you know we all had input on this and we basically decided that in terms of a general recommendation for most people on verizon attn sprint we're recommending the iphone 5 or the galaxy yes 3 t-mobile of course is the next four but make sure you try and buy it from google if you can and I mean you know we you know as always when you make a pic people kind of go round and round with it but we kind of just felt like you know these are the best phones for most people that you know if you want android the galaxy s3 because it's got a big enough management out of you guys well okay what more commitment out of you guys so coming okay I I saw of a guide and he's just so repetitive I totally agree but it just for pets it's like verizon iphone 5 galaxy s pretty well here's here's how you guys is free you know a lot of us have been doing these buyers guides for years right uh and and every single year we've had to say if you're on this carrier you should buy this phone and if you're on this carrier you should buy this phone and we're recommending eight different phones across the board yeah this is the first time that I can remember or recall in my experience where we've had that arguably the two best smartphones on the market are available on every carrier save for tmobile which has the nexus 4 option uh and and i think that's that's awesome we've been a just tell people yeah i could just tell people oh I don't care what carrier I go buy an iPhone 5 or all you want an android go by galaxy s3 it doesn't matter what carrier but that's what I'm saying I need you guys to pick pick one of them that like just pick one defensive 1 e to the FM 500 GS free which is your favorite well I believe we we said iphone 5 was a top pick yeah then the secondary option was the galaxy s3 yeah okay easy enough no I don't think i'ma go ahead Chris I just think I mean I hate to be I hate to beat around the bush but I really think that they're such different I mean look I OS Android we all know it's a holy war like you can't I mean you can get people who've been using iphone since the original iphone and they're going to want the iphone 5 you have people been using android for 23 years and they're gonna want the gs3 and they're both great platforms and but they both have a ton of apps so I don't think I mean I in many ways I don't think that it's fair to say the iPhone 5 is the best and if you don't want to get the iphone 5 you should get a gs3 I think that it is okay to put them both on the same i'm the same pedestal yeah yeah i will say that you're not you're not really losing anything by going with the gs3 yeah and in terms of picking the gs3 over other android phones you know there's pluses and minuses to everything but we just you know the the broad range of animal accessories the removable battery it just you know it makes a whole bunch of every phone makes compromises and the compromises that they made on the galaxy s3 tend to be the best for the largest group of people if you desperately want a 1080p screen sugar get the DNA if you you know if you really want you know if you'd like the way she see takes pictures better get the 1 X 1 X plus whatever but for most people this is this is what went with now I think now one thing that we can say conclusively is that if you own a phone or are buying a phone that is not on our buyer's guide you have made a really horrible mistake and and you should you should be ashamed of yourself and you should probably return whatever you bout ya to be enemies you have warnings about the absolute worst choices to my so if anybody oops for those up seeing the guide then they're beyond salvation and correct me if I'm wrong but we took off all the warnings to not buy blackberrys because we just assumed everybody has that message oh right that should be crystal clear by now yeah you could still buy a blackberry for multiple black grades especially for verizon for ungodly sum some money on contract so it's yeah and no no topic about BlackBerry's the funny thing is they were always kind of a premium device over here in the UK because you had to pay extra for blackberry email exchange server and all that stuff nowadays Vodafone is doing special promotions with pay-as-you-go freebies for blackberry so so now it's gotten to a stage where you have to discount it on pay-as-you-go contracts just to get these phones out the door it's gotten that bad yeah I believe this year in the US the only black right models that were troduced into 2012 we're like the 9320 or something like that which was a very cheap a curved variation on boost mobile and maybe a verizon and they were paired with these us like specialty inexpensive BBM plans yeah they didn't require special smartphone plan yep it's also interesting me Chris you wrote a four-post about this and you're actually you were living in the world that I live in that you know pick whatever phone you want and then just get an iPad Mini or I guess we could generalize this and like just say that whatever phone you got is fine but like I think are we all of all four of us on board with having a small tablet be it an iPad Mini or nexus 7 like I I love having a tiny little tablet around with me all the time yeah it's awesome yeah i agree i never really thought I would um to be honest with you because it there's so many things i do on my Nexus 7 that are redundant with my smartphone or redundant with my laptop but I was we were when we were bantering earlier before we started the show I said you know the tablet is perfect for when you're sitting in bed sitting on the couch and you say you want to read an article that's a few thousand words you don't want to break out your laptop and you don't want to read it all in your smartphone and that's where tablets and it's awesome and what makes it even more awesome when you have something like the iPad with LTE or the new Nexus 7 3g it's not locked to your house so you can be sitting in a park course you know anywhere you go and have the full capabilities at your disposal which is pretty cool let me just quickly say if anybody wants me to assess the benefits of having a small tablet they can find one and i will use it and then i'll tell them how i feel about having a small tablet but i can say that i have gotten to the point where I appreciate the benefit of having two devices wanna be a bigger one because going back to this example of being on the couch or in bed or whatever using the HTC One X is a great example this is a such a massive screen I can just stream things from the BBC iPlayer or watch stuff on YouTube etc and just drain that phone's battery and keep my regular phone fully charged up because if I'm just constantly using my regular phone for everything what would be an android phone or an iPod or whatever you know you just use up the battery a lot so if you have a secondary phone where you do more battery intensive things in that phone or device maybe it's a galaxy note gets not to as a nice big battery in it that just a benefit that I can see so again being a 7-inch tablet be an iPad Mini or nexus 7 makes a little sense Vlad I i'm offering this to you live on the show if you'd like I could send you the google i/o review nexus 7 so you can yeah i'll take that the white edition yeah it's white now I have to accept that it is just dirty and scuzzy at home looking on the back I guess the right stains like it is it there's definitely a spaghetti stain on this note for sure small tablet also doubles as a coaster / dinner plate I use it all the time as a coaster all the time um and Google shirts are hanging out right knee out yeah I'll take it out clean it if you promise not to be disgusted by it i'll let you play around with this because it's insane that you haven't played around with one it's no detail you know that's perfect actually you should have said it to me we should do a giveaway it's gonna be like one of those game on jerseys from NBA player because i don't you have to order yours disgusting horrible town oh that he's so mad he just quickly he rage quit ah so look I I don't want to I'm not going to name any names but I will say that there is a lot of revisionist history among the Apple pon de tree community because for a long time there was a strong belief among that group of individuals that anything beneath 10 inches was not appropriate for for doing a lot of things and I think that I the iPad Mini is dispelling most if not all of those beliefs if I could play devil's advocate here for a long time I think that was an argument that was used that will just misguided because the reality was anything that below 10 inches uh was just a sucky tablet yeah it was a long time where you know there wasn't anything good there because there wasn't any good tablet option and then you have the nexus 7 and even I guess maybe the original kindle fire could say kind of changed that where you have these smaller tablets that are still capable devices especially with the nexus 7 i'll say with the nexus 7 uh that and then and then of course the ipad mini where you know it makes sense but when we're talking about the first 7-inch tablets of what was it the original Galaxy Tab was terrible device and then you know the blackberry playbook was a 7-inch tablet those a terrible device so it's like I could see what they were saying but they were just saying it the wrong way if that makes sense that makes for our expense and I totally agree and ever since I mean I tried I tried the playbook for God's sake I tried the kindle fire the nexus 7 was was really what sold me on this far in fact because it was you know a genuinely good table up the size and um you know the ipad mini's in the same zone you know we've talked about before i wish it was a little bit less wide but i love having it um i guess a lot of at how an apple we should mention that apparently dude get fired today I wasn't charging what was his name guy in charge of maps anything my guy you've never and the only buddy he would work that he worked it next with steve jobs and he came he's been at Apple for like 11 years Richard Williamson and then also apparently Eddy Cue is reportedly talking to Tom Tom to get there you know location data in order so that they're not depending so much on Yelp there was actually a story we saw yesterday that made the rounds that there's this um there's this famous pot dealer in San Francisco he's like the truffle guy he sells like truffle pot infused things I don't know and he's got like he's got a thing I think you do know Dean I think you do know very well i think you know you don't pretend like you don't know I'm high right now um anyway he's in like you can search for him on Apple maps like he's there in dolores park and you know it's stuff like that that they just got to get resolved what is that guys anyway so not only is he in everybody has like 50 for Yelp reviews it's felicity yes he's like a restaurant basically except ee sells pot I actually missed this story and i'm very disappointed he's two cents illyrius yeah just open up Apple maps and search for like dude I'm gonna find it it's like truffle guy or something I have to start in San Francisco though right yeah truffle guy just search for truffle guy 53 of using the ALP right there in dolores park he's been arrested recently apparently but yeah there he is truffle guy good times um that was a great advertising study that we should do more of those I is able to use nokia here for iOS i haven't yet i haven't used it um officially i installed it and opened it it was like oh this is what we're dealing with and then i moved on with my life because it is you know we tear it we tear everybody apart when they do this and it's a web app in a wrapper and that's never been a good experience um we constantly berate google for doing that with uh with the gmail app we braided facebook for doing it for so long in iOS with the facebook app and an apple nokia is doing it here with the nokia here maps on an iOS and i'm searching for it in the app store right now and of course it's not working because the App Store and I oh here we go finally is the worst like it's terrible I search for stuff that I know exists and it just doesn't appear I always I always like when the App Store tells me I have updates and then doesn't show me the updates yeah so lately what I do is I open up the google search app in iOS and i use that to search for apps and then i click the link to go into the app store from there and that is way more effective than just searching inside the app store itself how sad is that yeah you guys must be looking for some really obscure stuff Oh like what's my sap sources have been pretty reasonable and if enzyme searching for pretty random stuff like like I said I think of last podcast I've been looking at ex supermarket apps which generally suck and other you know London cedric things and this ends and pop up maybe it's a regional variation thing yeah I'm sorry to the yelp reviews on truffle gun but speaking of companies that don't know how to develop apps for other platforms we now have a outlook.com app on Android and uh how bad is this app this bad this app when I downloaded it and I was searching for when the news broke I was like this has got to be a fake app i'm downloading like that somebody is somebody is trolling me with a fake app that's in the the Play Store and no it's the official outlook.com app that looks like it was designed for android 2.1 and it is like the ugliest thing I've seen in ages yeah and like they're there screenshots they've only got two screenshots they don't actually show the UI they show like a random compose window with a squ a six and then they show like the welcome screen like come on guys you've gotta be kidding so so here's here's the thing that um with this this particular thing is we always berate google for treating iOS users like second-class citizens with their services and the iOS gmail app is not nearly as good as Android experience etc and that's exactly what Microsoft is doing here with Android users but the problem is that Microsoft and out look like they're trying to capture gmail users and part of their press release when they announced that they had this android app was how many gmail years as they've attracted to look calm and how many millions are using outlook calm and switched from gmail but when you provide an app like this why would anybody switch from hotmail to gmail or gmail the hotmail especially on Android yeah like this is this is who you're supposed to be selling to and this is what you're putting out there it's I i think i felt trolled I've just felt um yeah sorry i'm giving a discussed with and chat everybody's really excited about the truffle guy shout out from earlier today um I guess that's news oh no we should have actually no we definitely should point out that thought Warren's got a piece up on the verge about Apollo Plus which is a iterative update to Windows Phone 8 that will finally add VPN and some Wi-Fi fixes you know I wasn't on board I wasn't on board with Windows Phone 8 but now and VPN just like NFC Oh Chris's chris is so excited he left to go by thank you google thank you God hey actually we can we can try and see google just by pointing out because I'm kind of psyched about this you can now send up to thinking about attachments in gmail using your google drive which I just like like now there's just no reason for me to ever worry about some of something being too big for me to email somebody well I'm I'm you know I've been whatever I have a big attachment I'm throwing it into dropbox and I always worry like am I going to move it later do I want this link to be public here's the problem here's the problem for me though is all my storage that I've paid for is in dropbox oh yeah and i only have the five gigabytes of free google drive storage yeah I think I well and my problem is I you know I have two different Google accounts and I'm you know I don't want to pay for storage on both of them right um so blah your hay nadie se is I was trying to pick up koo koo sow hang out does it kristijan one ball no seriously does home is that where you went is he here is he back Chris what hey are you guys talking to me yeah Chris when we said was that you've got it so excited about the he had a new features in apollo cover that you guys it was those photos Assad I bought one of each color of the Lumia 920 chris is busy trolling us about DLNA and its massive epic success what's the what's the other standard that they're pushing with the nexus 4 because with an air cast miracast that's another I don't care standard that's not going anywhere I'm growling that so i will say on my Nexus 7 I wish that I had an airplane like option on it because it's annoying like if i buy if i buy a movie from the Play Store and I watch it on my Nexus 7 and I'm like sitting in front of my 40 inch TV I'm like why can't I just watch this on my TV or why can't I just plug this thing into my TV through an hdmi cable and I don't have that the Nexus 7 and it annoys me ya know it's like it's it's like actually embarrassing that nobody other than Apple has been able to figure this out it's like such a basic and fundamental thing now that we all have Wi-Fi networks now and it makes such a huge difference in your experience on iOS devices that is like really stupid like what makes air place so powerful is that you can go into any media app on an iPhone or an iPad and they all have that that air play button on them where you can shoot the content to whatever and you can't do that you can't do that on an Android device or Windows Phone yeah and you know and you can't do it you can do it a little bit here and there and there's some people figured out DLNA and now Google is doing this thing like they do with the Q and now they're doing a Google TV you are like that streams directly to the device but not instead of from your phone or from your tablet and then you you know you're real control like a smart glass is kind of in the same zone I guess that makes a little bit of sense but it's just so much easier just be like from my device to the screen and not worry about if it you know I've got a compatible app on the the box or on the TV right yeah I know why isn't there like some fundamental standard that is built into every single smart TV still an etiquette it's not dealin a little B miracast it's that mere cast and that's people we're asking for they're trying to do they just suck at it yeah I mean what what really where it really falls apart on Android is the fact that there is no enforcement of support for shooting the media from any particular app out to these standards right yeah that's where it falls apart like I don't want to send an mp3 to my phone using DLNA like I want to send whatever app I'm using to my TV and on that note I'm done Michelle we've had lots of disconnections and it's been wonderful but thanks for sticking with us and hopefully the podcast version of this will be a little bit cleaner I'm totally giving work to the producer who's not happy love you Brendan if you want to follow us on twitter you can I believe that we all back on and using the Twitter's now is anybody on a hiatus right now no good I'm back long chris is e power dan is DC seifert lat as well thats a bob we are all at verge and leave a comment on this post when it goes up shoot us an email mobile show at the verge calm and we'll see you next week thanks for watching bye guys adios