Gadgetory

greetings mobile captures welcome to the verge mobile show this is episode 42 the week of a plate we have got a lot to talk about we are a day later than usual primarily because we wanted to be able to talk about the facebook phone HTC first I'm dieter bohn humble and some move i'm dan seifert i'm chris sigler and how are you guys feels like it's been forever but it hasn't has it uh no we actually did a show last week so yeah for me it's where you guys is yeah it's been like three weeks for you Chris Chris what have you done to evolve your complete inability to broadcast audio because you've been you've been the worst is it is it bad this week no you're totally fine and I'm wondering how you fixed it uh I it's a little embarrassing go ahead I have to say yes i rebooted my modem oh my god are you serious yeah it was like the one saying on my ex months yeah it was the one thing in my inner my chain of internet that I hand tried I just I don't know how you how you got away with that because I reboot by mode of like every three days no I literally haven't touched it in like a year and my power never goes as let's just been on for a year and and I finally thought to do that and sure enough everything's been fine since then wow wow wow wow that is crazy uh so anyway this is a virgin mobile show we talk about smartphones and smartphone software and modems and the fast and furious and vegetables and oreos I guess it yeah one occasion yeah but today I think that the topic du jour and maybe the only topic we might actually get to is facebook home and the HTC first so actually I'm sorry but before we talk about that I just want to mention one oreo related thing oh please do last night I had a an artisanal Oreo made from to handcrafted short bread slices with dulce de leche in the middle that's that's some fancy into Missouri of you that Chris how is that an Oreo yeah they closed the restaurant called it an Oreo that's all I'm saying they could get sued don't name the restaurant okay continually deliver Foursquare check-in isn't it it's not black it's not chocolaty what can be it can be Dan will be the first to tell you there are chocolate filled Oreos yeah they are also an abomination and Ally and nobody should eat those so okay as long as we're talking about Oreos let me just say that I am so freaking tired of seeing Dan's picture of two mega Stuf Oreos crammed it is the cover photo of his Facebook thing and the way that though I've enough yes the way I cover feed works is if you just post a text-only status update or a link it still needs to put some kind of full screen image behind the status update and so anytime damn post a facebook he's lazy doesn't post pictures doesn't post anything he just posts little bits of text and so I always see that fricking gross looking horrible Double Stuf Oreo on my home screen every day I turn it on and how long does it take to update I'm just ah it's very it's very fast like super fast so my most recent update on cover feed is the thing that's at the top of my newsfeed right now it does update in the background but it doesn't suck that much data down and facebook also said that they are very careful about if if you're on Wi-Fi it'll do it more often you're not in Wi-Fi it will do it less often and then when your battery starts to go down it doesn't less often as well less often is really nebulous though like what does that mean I don't know less off so it's not it's not adjustable it's just kind of a magic thing yeah hmm so there you go I also dinner you've done the one who's gotten to live with the HTC first you obviously yeah massive reviews on the person and I've written and I was gone mostly open us before we get into a the actual nitty-gritty of the Facebook aspect I think the primary question that a lot of us have is since you have the option to run a stock of stock ish Android okay is is the thing that most of us are going to do with this phone if we use it for an extended period of time is this a nervous be at most you play around with facebook fair i'm with home for a while to get rid of it and then just from the stove android option full time is that what we're going to do yeah well i mean that's what people that you know aren't huge facebook people are going to do and i fully recommend that it's great i like i like the chat head sang though which like we can get into a little bit but yeah you can you can turn off facebook completely and actually I was talking to Chris about this the other day the facebook home software either because I didn't have time or because they're good people at Facebook is actually really I don't know the word is like respectful of Android there aren't hooks everywhere and all of the apps if you turn it off it's gone and it's just Android underneath they could have really liked Ben dirtier about it and made it harder to turn off and stuck their fingers in a lot of other different places but they didn't do that it's all siloed off in that one little area and you can turn it off the problem with running this thing is like a replacement for say a nexus 4 is well it's twofold one it's 4.1 point2 so it's not android 4.2 and I have asked HTC and not gotten a good answer yet or any answer actually which means not a good one either about when if it'll get updated to android 4.2 and also the processor is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 it's clocked at one point 4 gigahertz it's a dual-core processor so it's not quite as fast as a nexus 4 or an HTC One it's it's probably safe to say it's got a week or GPU in there too I don't know if we know exactly what yeah I don't know what the I think Izzy Adreno 305 we should be pretty good yeah like then actually fast and like it's not slow it's just not like fast I mean in the review I said that it's sort of like you're using an iphone 4 and you're totally happy with it and then you get a 4s and like oh wow this is really fast I didn't know things were slow before it's kind of like that where the where the the first is the for the 4s the first is the four and then like you know Gotye should be I don't know maybe the nexus 4 I guess it's not quite that big of a golf and speed but it's it's it's noticeable if you like use a lot of android phones which I have so there's none of us that fish and then for you d 2 and for those of us who aren't big Facebook users ah what I mean you mentioned the chat heads and we should probably get into those what in the facebook home software would you say is good what is attractive and maybe a better idea than other software CC so i gotta say like cover feed which is the the home screen thing where you can you know see all of your friends status updates and swipe through them and double tap on them to like is actually really good if you like facebook and even if you don't if you're not a huge facebook person like me i still am like i used facebook a lot when I was using testing this phone like I went from like check into facebook and see what's going on you know once every 3-4 days to like constantly looking at it and in fact like I wasn't even using Twitter as much like I would open up my phone like I whoa I'm gonna go look at something on my phone and then Facebook would be there when I unlocked it they're like oh well this is cool i'm gonna look at a couple more facebook updates oh wait was i doing again i don't remember so like far as echoes facebook has got a huge win if they can get it i also like the other good thing about it is facebook has done some really deep hardcore like nerdy coding work to make stuff move around very quickly to you know if their little chat heads and then you know all the transitions and stuff you know more I'd like to see better tools for developers and more developers try to like do this deep coating to make animations and like just transitions and everything else as smooth as they are on Facebook home so that's like the best part of it if you want to keep using it but I don't because app management is terrible you get a grid of four by four icons you can make multiple pages of them but you don't get folders and so you're kind of constantly like hunting around looking for your app you get used to it over time but like even a first-time smartphone user can understand folders i think i think that like their its oversimplified so so for someone like me who has like 200 weather apps installed it's probably going to be a headache to manage on you yeah you would need a page for each of your weather apps and you'd have to keep you know going through them over you no swiping over to get to them over and over again now the chat heads feature is probably the most intriguing feature to me I think and if I turn off the Facebook home and say I want to use it like I say a pseudo stock Android device can i still use chat heads you can on the first I don't know what it's going to do on the download version but all of the settings for turning chat heads on and off our inside messenger facebook Messenger and facebook Messenger right now will let you do SMS it like the current version that's out there right now so I expect that you'll probably be able to do that both on the first I know you can on the first because I've done it and I expect she'll be able to do that on the download version and again like the only problem I had with chat heads is that it only connects to SMS and facebook Messenger I really wish that they that they would copy webos and do something like synergy where any messaging app can plug into it and say yep i'm going to use the default messaging half of the default messaging app is chat heads and so i'd be able to get whatsapp and ravine i don't i don't know whatever else you want google talk but that tells you i think that jet heads is a good implementation right because you don't wish that other people's messaging clients will plug into a crappy messaging client right and you know i haven't used it another think Dan is usually either but from what both of us have seen it's intriguing it's the way that you can overlay your chat messaging on top of what you're doing but it's a browser where it's checking the weather with Dan you know looking for some new facebook profile picture whatever it is you can overlay the message you can relate a conversation you can have multiple conversations hence the chat heads hence the little previews floating about on your screen and I think it also just makes better use of screen real estate you know i'm so tired of every single app being full screen and just dominating and having no matter how smooth you make it you know transitioning between a chat application and your web browser let's say it's not as moving just having the chat on top of the web browser which is your facebook because that right there are some custom roms you know I think cyanogenmod does this with its built-in SMS app that you can have it like pop up like a little window and then you can reply to a message without actually opening the SMS app when you get a new message in which is really cool and that's one of the features i like about that particular rom but obviously that's not accessible for most users whereas this the chat heads feature is if it's you know you just install facebook Messenger and turn it on it's a little bit more accessible but yeah it's the same concept and I totally dig it on the cyanogenmod so yeah but I mean the nice thing about chat heads is like when you get a message it doesn't just show you like the message and then a reply you get the full thread and you can go through the full thread of your message or you know your conversation but the thing that that's really cool about it is you know it doesn't interrupt which I mean it as interruptive it's happy to switch over to another app but like if i'm texting somebody chances are we're going to have like a ten-minute conversation we're going to have some back and forth and i'm going to be waiting for them to reply i'm going to do something else in my phone and this makes up way easier because you just keep on screwing around on your phone looking at Twitter browsing the web whatever it is and then it pops in you look at it you're apply to it and then you close it again and it's right there you don't have to do whatever multitasking there is wait for the apps to load and and so on and so on the other thing like and we should really get into the the first like this here it is next to it s 3 I don't have my wand handy but like flat this is the size phone you been waiting for right yes and it's coming out as in oranges I have a friend who works at HTC he's and here's my big problem with facebook home it's not really a technical one it's a social one I have two people with whom I have chat conversations of facebook to pee this is like it might be useful if we have really really developed our relationship to where we constantly chat but i am not sure that's going to happen anytime soon one of those people works for HTC and it looked like his his reaction once everything was official was mr. phony be waiting for isn't it and he starts listing of the specs for me and I was like actually yes Oh 720p display oh it's a good one it's a super LCD Daventry and it's like it's 4.3 inches there are no crazy camera bumps getting in the way I understand the camera sucks but I can live with it because they have been a lot of sucky cameras and phones but you know the size is right for point free the display is right it promises far as I'm cassette is most likely to be good enough he has LTE which I understand is very nice awesome experience this is the thing I've the u.s. I'll let a dealer talk more about the hard works he's been actually using the phone for days but I did hold it for a few minutes yesterday vice and its really well put together it's like a to me it struck me as a mid-range nokia device as far as hardware build quality which is you know a pretty good compliment because nokia puts together really really good phones so it doesn't feel cheap it doesn't feel really super plastic even though it is made of plastic or polycarbonate the soft touch grip is grippy and stuff and it doesn't feel like it's going to fall out of your hand like so many large devices do yeah the way to think about it is imagine that an iphone 3gs and an HTC One X got together and made sweet sweet love to one another and I guess I guess the one x is the female in this relationship I don't know anyway they have a baby together and this is that baby so it's the the feel of the plastic is pretty close to the One X it's a little bit smoother but I mean tell me this doesn't look exactly like an iphone Oh totally oh I've been saying this for days I've been saying this lee dude it's a cheater turn it on and like a message so buff no it looks at me it's like that when I saw it and we saw discovered the announcement stuff I was like that looks more like an iPhone than any other non iphone phone I've slow yeah I wish that had a iphone 3gs here because I mean here is it gets by my orange completely powered down I'm playing five of the forest dude dude dude look at an iphone 3gs and then look at this it's the same thing look to me it actually looks likely looking at a 20 but nice fact yeah there's definitely a 20 this leg beautiful coat in the room is actually just the phone with the sides you know oh the edges curved down so they're done so that you can hold it up against your head like you're just doing without leaving marks itself yeah you genius but ok but actually I won't have a little digression here because i was getting educated today i was watching this yay or lecture on youtube and i have to recommend youtube there's so much educational stuff now that they post like how long documentaries and stuff I've grown addicted to it but would you say there's a lot of stuff to watch on youtube yeah thanks thanks for so sarcasm then the seriously I've gone through the neil degrasse tyson archive and now i know so much more about cosmology and our future demise but besides that was what i was watching this lecture about the romantic love and social psychology and things like that I like one of those things one other one of the piece of research that they found was on the court on the causes all the things being equal for people following a loved one another and though they actually like showed how lazy we are so you fall in love with people who are close to you you fall in love with people who are similar to you and people who are familiar t and that wasn't just readily related to people it was transitive as far as objects go as well so people are more likely to fall in love with for many things that's what I'm saying and if this phone resembles the iphone if it resembles every other touchscreen device and it feels familiar then that just makes it more likely for us to fall in love with it as my decorator about the noise there is that the first uh no I think that was the one I've got everything turned on right now I like when I have a new calendar appointment my entire office explodes and yeah I know that feeling multiple times a day my vibe rates uncontrollably and bursts out in noise and you know some phones have really really sensitive power buttons particularly HTC phones I've noticed us and sometimes I'll get really freaked out because some old review phone will just kind of wake up myself and stop give me email alerts another like what the hell exists every editor off but in all of a sudden somewhere in the ether you get an email notification like to dance point about this like the phone just being nice and not feeling cheap and like a mid-range nokia found like it's totally true like there's there's nothing that's amazing about this but there's just a lot of really nice subtle things like the the earpiece speaker you can't even see it it's this tiny little slit that's just barely there and it doesn't get in the way the glass has a tiny little bevel into the plastic it's got the micro gerald speaker holes just like the One X that are on the bottom it's just in the buttons are nice so it's not like like I know that there are a lot of people saying you know there it's not like a jewel like an iphone 5 right it's not like a finely tuned watch but it's just like it's good except for the camera so was it was it designed to Facebook specifications or what did HTC designed this and presented to facebook I do not know what do you think uh well I mean it's so I noticing I do know that Facebook was involved in some of it because I mean at least a claim they were because i'm pretty sure that the the three buttons on the bottom which was just like a little arrow in a circle and a line i'm pretty much facebook asks for that but it's like it's like when we were talking when you talk to google about the nexus and like you can't tell like they talks like they designed it but really you know that LG or Samsung did some stuff too so it's hard to know just how much input they had I feel like if if Facebook designed it it would have a capacitive like button just you know a thumbs up not not it would just be like it would just be on the side of the phone soon you're holding it you just be like like yeah just redefine this instead of a power button it's got a light bug I don't know if you double tap stuff too like and whatever but I wonder if Facebook it's this thing they care more about messenger than anything else right now like when you got your little chat order your saw your little bobbled a little your little face down on the bottom of the screen and you pop open your shortcuts oh is that my is that my little update for you dinner with my Oreos yeah there there you are thanks a lot man all I see all day it's my home screen actually okay before we get into this messenger thing like do you guys read Ellis's piece you know what happens you know facebook phone Facebook home is beautiful but what happens if your friends are not yeah like what if happens if your friends are dating yeah ok so the metaphor I think this didn't make it in the review but you know your inboxes to-do list that your friend your that other people make for you you know I've had to unfollow a bunch of people since i started using this phone I've had to like you know and then you can't get rid of stuff quickly you got to drop into the facebook app itself and then I'm following their you can't just get something out of your home screen which is super aggravated yeah that's that's really annoying and I think Ellis made some really good points in his post on this that like because you can't control what your friends or what your facebook friends they might know you made real life friends it might be somebody went to college with seven years ago you can't control what they put on their wall so they could put something really offensive really provocative really you know something that you might not want someone to see if they just happen to pick up your phone i think the example that Ellis gave was that if you hand your phone to your significant other and then boom there's a shot of you know somebody in a bikini on a beach on your your lock screen like taking up your whole lock screen that might put you in a little bit of an awkward uncomfortable situation so it's and it's like III could say from experience from my facebook well it's all a whole bunch of those like everyone seems to love to post these these some ecards things which are these like pictures with a with a not very funny quip next to them and there they got terrible grammar and they're usually like full of foul language or whatever so like if I had that that's all I would be seeing all day long I'm not seeing the you know maybe my friends aren't that interesting but I'm not seeing the you know the cool vacations and the awesome world traveling trips that Facebook advertises that you might see on your home screen with facebook well when Mark Zuckerberg introduced the whole thing he did say multiple times that it's personal that it's almost intensely personal they wanted to have a personal phone the facebook experience to be personal person person and personal is just another byword for potentially embarrassing you know the same way that caring sharing social social do is just another way of give us your data we need to make money out of it you know every time you share you the foot I said this before the first person or the first entity you share with is the service provider not the rest of the world not other people so I mean that's part of the deal you know windows phone is more personal in that respect than the iPhone and iOS and Android that just the way it is android phones that give you massive previews email previously set from the web screen I more personal than other devices and you know that's that's a choice that you have to make I think oh but I think there's a there's a distinct difference when something is sent to you directly as a message or email then when somebody just posts it on their own Facebook wall and then it shows up in your feed because you happen to be following them I think that's a very distinct difference than something that's sent directly to you that's a message for you that yeah that may be personal and it may be embarrassing if someone else sees it but it is like you know something related to you or we're supposed to be related to you as opposed right that is the same time you look up your friends with actual friends on Facebook so in the end in in the dream sure but I think everyone knows that like they are friends with lots of lots unless you are strictly curating your Facebook friend list a lot of people are friends with people that they're not really friends with anymore or that they were just merely acquaintances uh that they met pumped in two years ago or that they used to notice chameleons that this phone is going to drive you to redevelop your web social landscape and I think that's what dieter said yeah I mean that's exactly a terse point when he said it I had to unfriend a whole lot of people or stop or stop following or hide their updates from my timeline whatever the the nomenclature is that Facebook uses so yeah you're putting a lot of trust in Facebook's algorithms for what it shows you on the standard newsfeed because remember they that used to be that the newsfeed was just the fire hose of every status update of every single one of your friends and that was it and they changed it and it made people pissed because anytime you change anything people get pissed at least on facebook to be like algorithmically showing you what they think you're going to like the most and hiding a bunch of the other stuff and then you you know you've had a couple of controls for unfollowing and following and like seeing stuff more often but not that much and so like you're trusting facebook to get that right and it's super important that they do and that that algorithm works well because it's your home screen now it's what you see when you turn on your phone and was it stopped newsfeed could suck and so there's no like down voting in facebook right you can thumbs up but you can't thumbs down and maybe it's time to start unlike ins maybe it's time to start with what's hate we need likes and hates he likes and dislike yeah it's pretty strong where the word exists is there is just facebook it's usually i should get and i bring us back to chris's question because i do find it intriguing and whether this phone was designed by HTC presents to facebook or whether it was facebook demanding the particular design I mean my impression is that Facebook has done as far as Facebook home goes the software side of things goes is played it safe in not trying to push too many features they've pushed chat heads like Jesus says because messenger so it's important to the company and they've done it really well and they've tried to make the software work really well which means surprising because keeping things simple and functional and smooth is the exact opposite of the web experience of facebook at least to me so that's odd and then and then looking at the phone itself there's almost an overwhelming feeling of somebody saying from facebook to HTC give us something really really simple I don't make it work don't get too involved the design make it said I think what I mean there's been rumors going around of another HTC device that did the one was called the m7 originally it was its code name I guess there's been rumors that there's a code named m4 device which is a smaller device that has a very similar spec list to what the first has it's got 4.3 inch 720p screen same processor blah blah blah but I the rumors say that it has an ultrapixel camera so it's got a better camera and of course it runs each GC sense so my gut feeling is what happened was facebook said went to this HTC they're like we want to release a branded phone or a phone to showcase our software we don't build phones but you do we want something that's you know not too big what do you have and then you know HTC says while we're working on this and Facebook's like well you know can we make a couple tweaks here and there and you know crap up the camera to bring the costume whatever they come and and I think that's really what happened to it and that's where we where we got the first from and if HTC actually does release this this so-called m4 I think it'd be pretty cool and pretty interesting um you know as a smaller device with with an acceptable specs that's not a facebook phone yeah but I can't imagine what you sense since six whatever that what what ya said about blinky blink feed sense um how that would run on this processor I I would worry about that the other sports Android what if there's no sense oh that's not going to happen yeah no that's not going to happen and in fact the HTC came out and said that they are you know fully behind Spence 100 you know that there was some boilerplate statements and saying that they're completely committed to sense you know in light of the first the existence of the first so that's not changing at all so Facebook mostly and maybe it's you see but Facebook mostly this also deserves credit for not letting ATT put a bunch of garbage on this thing there's like the contact app is clean that everything like the only that I can't find any AT&T crap except for visual voicemail because I'm sure facebook like oh yeah we want to be able to say we have visual voicemail and like the the Wi-Fi auto-connect stuff that's it that's which is really impressive yeah well here's my mean here's here's exactly what happened I mean facebook shop this phone around two carriers and maybe 18 he just haven't be the first carry that they talked to and they said hey we want to do a facebook phone and AT&T is like where do we sign you know because it's it's it's a it's a buzz word and it's a buzz product and obviously it targets a very specific demographic that 18t would like to bone up on and they had no they that they had no good reason to turn down that exclusive offer if if this has been a device it was going to four carriers I guarantee you'd be seeing more more crap we're on that device but um but you know 80 was I assure you they were more than happy to take this phone clean the problem I have with it and I made this point on announcement day and I you know even in light of the review I don't think that the point changes really is the fact that you know because this phone is only sold on 18t in the US you have the traditional contract model ninety-nine dollars on it to your contract yeah and the economics of it I mean I that's great that it's a solid phone but still at the end of the day it is not the economics don't make any sense because you can get a gs3 now for ninety nine dollars on contract which is objectively a better phone that you can put a certified a facebook home on this week right is it this week well yeah well probably yeah so this friday so i mean if you're talking strictly about dollars and cents you need to be putting this you need to be putting this money into a gs3 not at first i would rather have a first one gs3 period there's no question I don't anybody the bottom gs3 instead of a first needs to be slapped with Jesus and it would hurt too because that's a you know pretty broad follow just I would well is it okay so layout layout your reasons I'm curious it is a round the same speed or so the hardware doesn't feel cheap and slick and plasticky a the camera the gs3 is better I will grant you but stock Android dude and a better screen well the putting stock Android on a gs3 is not exactly rocket science I mean it's on its don't you just use the custom rom why no no no no no I'm just saying if you're that no no no look if you are the kind of person if you're the kind of perseus Lee if you're the kind of person who buys a facebook phone knowing they want stock Android and those knows what stock Android means they can put stock Android on the gs3 even if you would have a point there but they will also appreciate the the first a much superior screen what oh so you guys are arguing so so wait wait wait wait so let me back the train up for a minute okay so you guys are telling me that the best way an AT&T customer can spend ninety nine dollars on a two-year contract is on the HTC first god no I'm not saying that at all but if you want a decent android phone that's got you know not insanely large that / has good performance has LTE you know the faith the first i think is a good choice yeah i mean what you're saying if i say you'd say the best way to spend on a nine bucks nadine to use to get a gs3 i'd say i take a 1 x plus or a gs3 over this for ninety nine dollars absolutely i'm gonna split it down the middle and send Chris insofar as i really like the galaxy s free camera and I wouldn't sacrifice that for the first even though the first has the better display and all those other things we discussed but i think it's close and another thing i would say is that i am completely over the HTC One I understand it's not even out yet over in the US but I'm just over like as far as I'm person if you're gonna give me an HTC phone to phone over it will be the first after you I mean I don't know glad I mean I guess we can transition though for tired of talking about the facebook first no no this was not like a sneaky segue I wasn't like expressing some false passion for the first in order to get us to segue to the one we can get to that same way we can force it in that's fine it's the first is actually the thing we've been asking for for just so freaking long is okay it's an option rather than the default option having stock Android and put is there and it's just something you can flick on enough whereas yes chris is right you can install stock Android and pretty much any android phone nowadays but I know because I've tried and because i have an HTC One X that is still pricked because yeah minus 2i bridge but I broke my wall acts a couple of weeks ago like I just don't have the time to it's an epic struggle yeah with a lot of these phones and the other thing is is it also completely sucks or Mac because most of the methods you're getting for unlocking look your bootloader getting on your software done I sorted out of windows-based but if you guys look at the Venn diagram of who you're trying to appeal to you've excluded everybody because the people the people who want stock Android want 4.2 not 4.1 they want to expect out phone not a mid-range phone so you're appealing to nobody by saying that the first can run stock Android outline on and my if my aunt and my cousin or get into it experience yeah but my father my cousin or anybody were to come to me and say hey I want uh I gotta want to spend a hundred bucks on the phone I don't know anything that fancy and I kind of like Facebook I would tell them to buy this phone if they're on 80 I mean the flip side of that the flip side of that is how people to buy an iPhone but like they're going to be a ton of people that are going to be into this and the thing we're for people it's a really tough sell diesel anybody man the thing is like if you know somebody if you know deters aunt is in the eighteen t store and they buy the facebook phone pitch hook line and sinker and they buy the thing and they're using home and then like six weeks or two months later they're out of their return policy and you know facebook home isn't really that great for them they're not liking it that much she'll call dieter and be like dieter why did I buy this phone a deer will be like go to settings turn off facebook home there you go and like then you've got a you know a standard Android experience and you can access all the Android apps and everything like that and you got a decent phone to go to boot can we can I just propose that we permanently make deters aunt like the universal like like example i have several i'm trying to think which one it is but you just one more one more argument against least like to a lot of people yes that there is that group of people who want stock Android in a conscious of it and who would be capable of installing it on any android device that's fine i'm longing with that but i think that there's the other group of people who won't stock android because that's actually the best center experience they can get actually it's it's a it's a can do no do it unless you buy this or no more crazy or you buy a nexus in which case you don't get LTE because Google uh chickened out of forgetting advices get a device's d to what I'm saying is if stock Android is the best user experience then much all of us want it it's just a lot of us might not be aware of it but that doesn't really matter you know if stock is the best Android experience which I argue that it is then what you want is the best so you aren't is actually a stock Android aficionado deters aunt is like hunkered over a pc with like a 1x cabled up to like a BB is there is there a fake dieter say at Twitter cuz i was just gonna let shoot we did that you get here nobody get on there oh my god let's talk about the LTE version of the one because um you know as much as I like the first I do kind of I want a better camera and I want something a little faster and I mean for me um you know in in two months I'm gonna probably be using the one or the gs4 so Dan uh yes the one on ATT so I really really liked the one on AT&T uh I didn't get to spend a whole lot of time with the HSPA a model that we reviewed earlier but like I did spend a bit of time with the LT model and you know it's a really really impressive phone it's really solid performance the hardware is by far the best Android hardware that's ever been like put together as far as build quality and I think the design is great I think it looks great um it's you know still big because it's a flagship Android device which is huge which is always the case but performance is really solid network performance is really solid the screen is amazing like we've said earlier um and you know there's a couple of complaints with it that we still have that are pretty much the same complaints we had with the HSPA model which is that you know the battery life could definitely be better and the camera could be better but as far as a flagship device if you're looking for the flagship Android device right now i mean the the one is is by far and easily hands down the choice that i would recommend for most people and would you really would you recommend they go on by the one would you recommend they hang on and see how the gs4 turns out you know obviously we haven't reviewed the gs4 yet because it's not out yet but you know i have handled the gs4 and I can't imagine using the gs4 after using the one like the one just like feel so much nicer when you're using it and like the the hardware is just so much more pleasant it's like I comparing the hardware the only thing I can compare it to is an iphone 5 as far as the build quality there's like you know zero gaps between everything it's a metal aluminum device I mean it's it's great as far as you know that is concerned and then like the other features that HD is thrown in as you know ignoring their stupid marketing names but the boomsound speakers work really really well um I've actually you know I'll be like in my living room with my wife will be watching something on TV and I'll you know fire up a video on the one to watch suddenly and she'll like tell me to turn it down because she can't hear what she's watching on the TV and like you no longer have to you know do the whole silly dance of cupping your hand around the phone to redirect the sound up to you which is like the smartest thing ever and I don't know why manufacturers haven't done this before but I really hope that these front firing speakers become a trend because they work really well uh actually manufacturers have been aware of the fact that people do tend to cut the hands around the phone so that they can essentially exploiting that fact yeah but it doesn't work as well like you know my nexus for like i do that and it still sucks like i have the volume all over it and make them seeing less ignorant no there I mean except for HTC you figured it out with the boom sound but you know the fuss about go ahead it's not just the sound this crazy on this vote the vibration function is also yeah I mean that that's intense arms come on with vibration starts before the sound the whole table start shaking it's like you know I guess that's what coffee machines do when they're grinding beans oh no not chris is gonna have to enlighten us but yeah the HTC One and the experience dead from Saudi the vibration of those things is nuts and fun if you would is there just for a quick digression is when you get a call and you pick up the coroner you tap the button on the screen to answer the call the connection is made quickly but then you still have to pause for like a second a second half to let the vibration finish because otherwise you just gonna keep going right next to your face they have these super powerful vibration monsters I don't know why they go into these necks but they do it you know I guess we pause about about saying yeah I'm getting the one forget the GS or I don't care as battery life like even if the gs4 has the same battery life as the one it's got a removable battery but with the one I don't know like I'm getting better battery life on the first than I that I have ever gotten on the one and the first as LTE the one doesn't like I wish that we got like twenty percent more battery in the one and then I yeah yeah that's it that's what I'm getting I completely agree with you dieter um but you know when we fall into the camp of power users who are going to bother with you know getting an extra two what is for come on I think that a lot of people will go into a store and be towed be totally sold on it assuming the you know sales person you know cares to show it to them just because if you just hold the to like hold like you know right now you can go to a store and you can hold the galaxy s3 you can hold one and the three feels exactly like the four so you can hold them right next to each other and you cannot tell me that like the one does not have much more impressive feel right right at the boxes yeah everyone that I've shown the 12 who isn't in the industry is just blown away by it which is really saying something like the hardware is genuinely like mind-blowing the only phone that i can think of it as in the same league as that device is the iphone 5 not even the porn for exactly the five right you know a when we when the five came out we said all these superlative things about how it's got like a jewel like construction and the fit and finish is like you know immaculate and its really really well put together about all those things that we said about the five can really also apply to the one as far as I'm concerned because you know I I don't have like you know complaints with with the gaps on the thing and you know it's just I don't know it's just really well put together phone like I don't want to sound like I'm gushing too much but it's just I'm just really impressed with the solidity of the hardware it makes me wonder how battery life would have been affected if they had used to 720p display instead of at 1080p because I guarantee you that none of you if you put two phones if you put to one side by side one with a 1080p of the one with 720p display you would not be able to tell the difference unless you had like a microscope with you uh yeah you might be right um let's see if I can get this to show up somebody has created the dinners on parody Twitter what happens oh by the way Vlad you will appreciate this actually you won't appreciate this I had a conversation last week with an unnamed OEM I'm not at liberty to say which OEM but n OEM uh and and we were talking about the sizes of phones and how they keep getting bigger and how you and I have decided that phones in the 4.7 to 5.5 inch range really aren't for us and we would like smaller phones with flagship specs and the very blunt response to me was the market has spoken people want big phones like that was it that was the response no it was funny because just today Sascha Segan over at a pc mag wrote an editorial about how he's you know leaving the Android platform because he can't get a decent phone or a high-end phone with decent with high-end specs in a decent size that's comfortable to use in one hand and he made a lot of great points and he's been using a thing an HTC 8x because it's a 4.3 inch 720p display yeah that's much more comfortable to use in one hand and you know all of the things that you just said Chris where exactly what the manufacturers told him more or less to the point you know the market has spoken a big phone cell because big phones look better on a shelf big phones look better when you're watching a video or something like that and because so many people in North America or wherever you know I spend so much of their time sitting using the phone with two hands is not so much of a problem they're sitting at a desk they're sitting on a couch they're sitting in a car you know so they can use two hands to control it but if you're sitting in your car using two hands to control your phone I don't want to be drawing near you well maybe maybe we're not driving better than or a passenger in a car sure Farah let's first us really well there's one of three lessons that that will teach the rest of the world lesson one people want a facebook phone lesson two people want you know secret stock Android and less than three people want a really decent or really good 4.3 inch phone that's the point of view I think the market is spoken yada yada yada everyone has invested is a chicken and egg thing I don't think the market told everybody stick all your money into 4.75 edge devices like when Samsung introduced their first 4.7 inch flagship they didn't have a corresponding 4.3 inch alternative so the market hasn't spoken it's not like there was a 4.3 inch alternative with the same specs same camera same everything else so my thinking is let's have the first okay let's have more devices like the first let's hit the 4.3 inch category as well SPECT as nice a design I mean I and you've got things I believe in 720 from Nokia right really nice design things like the windows phone 8x I think that's your second 03 right so you have all these devices when you have more of them and when they're closer to the super high-end ones when for example we have this HCM for which might be an HTC One but shrunken down and all the good things are kept about it you know then you might actually have a direct comparison and a direct choice for people to make I don't think the choice is fair it about well I see your point fly that like you know if if they only make big phones and that's only that you're going to be able to choose and then people have no choice and buy it but you know from the manufacturers perspective if Samsung comes out with a four-point aided phone you know HTC has to put something out that's going to sit on the shelf next to it right and you know I can totally see why a company would say well we can't have something that's going to be an inch smaller next to it because it just won't sell um no but that would be a really stupid and superficial company but that's how they work you'll be a company life is afraid to levy they leap frog each other all the time that's how smartphones have been for like three or more years now since you know they just keep leapfrogging each other and getting bigger and bigger and nurse at any point and I mentioned this maybe but it was around mwc when i met the asa designer and he was saying you know people who make sacrifices to have bigger phones they appreciate the benefit of bigger phone because might be there on a device cetera cetera so one of the sacrifices of people make in those circumstances is better life all right DJ just said it first gets you more better life than you get with the one and this floral display is you know other folks I was with all right thank you um but I think it's a really fitting analogy for this which actually comes from desktop side of things because there was a period of time when nobody gave a damn about power efficiency of the desktop this was at around the start of this century around 2000 2001 and what you had was everybody just having faster faster processors more and more massive coolers faster and faster graphics class nobody came damn about power efficiency and since then things have turn right back around and now the more power efficient the computer is what people appreciate that a lot more whereas previously it was like I'll just put a bigger fan I just put a bigger power supply in it and it was ultimately point where all the noise that was coming out of your desktop tower or the heat set etc just got too much and then people kind of wound it back again so I feel like that's where we're going with we're pushing it to the extreme and then we're gonna put it back we're going to get it back we're just gonna take time I want a fan in my phone hey I just slap a screen on it oh yeah and you've got it you've got phone or go to the fan Wow yeah um all right what else we got you guys want talk about babble it's coming you proper proper messaging from google yay yet another proprietary messaging but moved away it'd be interesting to see how that competes with facebook Messenger if it's a unified chat platform that all the rumors say that you know this is going to give you a synchronized notifications across your desktop and your mobile devices even if you have a bunch of mobile devices like us nerds have um you know and it's going to be a single continuous thread you know it seems like a very direct thing against well you know never never mind facebook Messenger this goes back to that you know the fact that Google had beaten Apple to the punch with the concept of synchronized message in mobile messaging before I message ever hit the market with google talk and they just I mean they didn't do anything with it they said on it to you know David I do because I do i get google talk notifications across four devices and they don't clear it so it's like you know i get a google talk notification on my desktop so i carry on the conversation there and then i go pick up my phone and i gotta clear this stupid notification then i go later on I go to my tablet and I gotta clear this stupid notification so right like totally broken yeah it's never worked correctly and they just they seem to have been sitting on it for the past four years and I guess babble shows that they're finally waking up yeah I just hope it has you know stickers man I opened his wave I hope it a hella hundred emoticons lock on John devoted to his memories ya know I to complain about these his introduction I mean he just sounded so tired of it like how good or bad we've known about his courageous for us needing this morning I was actually really buddy for the first time outside like Jeff for my Japanese seem he does i ran up we really really get around them overnight yeah and I should know I guess I'm just tired because I'm tired of the messaging space in general it makes me angry that's the point it makes me angry to the thing that made to be most interested in this google babo idea is that it can all be pulled together so there wouldn't be a Google+ messenger and a gtalk and a google hangouts it would just one thing yeah that's great for google what about people what about skype messages what about whatsapp messenger messages what about text messages what about maybe ms what about I message every single way that we talk to each other now is owned by some giant corporation and not talking to the other ways wasn't there a court case like like Microsoft and we're forced to interoperate like in the late 90s for they're just there IM messages are like oh yeah i remember they they we're gonna get sued or something I i want i want the department of justice or whoever's going to replace Janikowski in the FCC to just slap down gigantic monster lawsuit threats on every single company that lets you enter text and send it to somebody and say they have to work together that'll never happen in the u.s. moving this theta it's that back major it'll never happen in the US so we're gonna have to rely on the europe european and it's like we've got jabber like why why don't why doesn't you know we just make jabber optimize it look I mean I'm on the cosmic scale on the cosmic scale wasn't that long ago that SMS wasn't interoperable that's right i remember having a sprint phone and not being able to text people with a verizon phone yeah so we're back in that whenever message spread was the worst they had their own custom proprietary thing and yeah yeah i wrote the article like oh my god you can send an mms from sprint to verizon look at this you guys it's a whole day oh nothing already this how long she's shocked that you guys couldn't tect between networks that sounds nuts to me when what sort of prehistoric age was this this is like 2006 2000 for we believe that may be okay to the punch with we beat the UK to the punch with with foam port with phone number portability I think didn't we probably I don't know hey I think so so we aren't totally in the dark age and oh by the way we've had LT for LTE for like five years now so screw you what's up anything man but you guys were so freaking look down it couldn't send text messages between networks until like 2006 well and granted you know just to play devil's advocate here it's a party now when we prank LTE networks are terrible so compared to like 3G service in Europe our 3g services a joke so we want our government to stay away from our networks man we're free libertarians right I I you know just like you know it's funded extramarital late 1800s built the trains I don't know are going I was gonna make an Ayn Rand joke but I've lost it um let's move actually that's a good point though they're not your networks their AT&T verizon sprint networks but they use our natural man they use our spectrum you're such a communist Vlad I can deal with that you know I mean that's not just funny thing i have to express this because otherwise i would just explode the whole conversation the whole bread trick in the US is about our rights and our freedoms and our copyrights and then you look at who actually holds the vast majority of copyrights its corporations so anytime you guys decide to keep the government out of it you have a different form of government it's just cooperation so you might as well just go with the elected ones that's what that's what I'm saying who'd agree with you what deters idea let's have the proper justice get in on this and decide on the ultimate messaging client / sir listen yeah then that messaging can be as effective as government cheese you can run as yeah bable just first messaging just for a second the same Bible because my thing is I can't get into facebook messages because as I mentioned I have only two people with whom I speak on that thing and it also feels going to inform a one way to you again personal it doesn't feel like a great way to communicate with our colleagues at work but and deserve things like not everybody I know has Apple devices or an apple email address or uses that message so I can't use that but pretty much everybody that I know as a gmail email address right so it's a gmail user and gmail can both personal and professional is both business and pleasure than in how you use it so to me it's universal so if Google comes up with a good communication sky which does all the voice in the video and all of our stuff brings it all together then I only care about the rest in the fragmentation relative to skype or I'm message or whatever if Google does that work because then I can just have everybody on gmail and communicate with them that so this is why I'm actually interested and not as bored of it as dangerous hope you get bored with something for chillin in existing released yeah that's fair that's fair um well don't doesn't somebody need to go do we need to wrap up instead of a idea everything else do I need to book well on the party poop before before we end the show we want to point out that the bird has been nominated for a bunch of webbie's webby awards and we'll have a link in the show notes for you to go and please please vote for us the verge cast was nominated the bridge bubble show not so much remember next year five webby awards for the final exam is announced 1h four of us and Mumford make a producer yeah the verge cast is great you should listen to it if you're not and if you're if you're listening to this show at the verge cast I'm very confused by you but no or we're nominated a bunch of categories and it's it's pretty cool and please go and click buttons for us because that makes us feel good and it doesn't she makes movie that is the virtual show everybody thanks so much for listening and watching we'll talk about Windows Phone next week I promise we are on Twitter we're all at verge I am at back on Gladys flats ABBA dan is DC seifert with Annie I Chris's Zen power and we'll see you guys next week cheers mine either