Gadgetory

greetings mobile accomplishes welcome to the verge mobile show this is episode number 69 for the week of number 18 2013 I am dieter bohn hi I'm flat sebe i'm dan seifert and i am chris sigler you had a long pause so I'm in a different room uh because I'm in New York where I live now forever and ever at least for a while you had an opportunity dealer to say that you were anywhere you could have said anything in the world and the listeners would have had no option but to believe you and you decided to just go with New York you could end it if he had such Chicago nobody would believe him either that's not a very control your view people aren't even trying anymore you're where you're just like all I need to do is mention Chicago and it's an automatic troll no put some effort into it Dan at least I'm not input keep see or whatever for kept see pow keep see nawaz announce it coke ypsi no it's not that's all yeah is it spaghetti poughkeepsie right yes right which you know i have no retort because frankly there's nothing nothing really great poughkeepsie is like a game that Winnie the Pooh plays when he isn't sharing his toys listen when I was in elementary school there was many sections in first and second grade spelling your address so right well in any case I go stop stop looking Poughkeepsie man through lands a good for people all of this urban environment stuff is at least a depression one actually not speaking of urban environments Lena depression we need to have a long deep heartfelt discussion about how bad all of the cell phone carriers all the wireless carriers are in the city I thought this was supposed to be like in Metropolis in fact metropolis is based on this city and they're supposed to be civilization here and connectivity and well it was working but New Year's TT is dropping everywhere and there's phantom data and Verizon recently like it's come out there struggling and you know like if you don't I'm going to be lucky enough to get my singers you were screwed in terms of getting a you know internet connection I just like what's going on I don't know what to do because I get no AT&T signal at all in my apartment however I need to have AT&T signal so i need to get a microcell but i don't want to pay an ATT bill so i don't know if i can just get an AT&T microcell without an ATT account I pretty much can't so I pretty much have to pay for that but it's really not going to work because it's dropping the other places need to go I don't want to get a verizon account I'm all about switching to t-mobile but I wanted to actually work outside of the city and apparently it doesn't so basically I am giving up I'm quitting smartphones forever that's the only option that's left to me listen I can run around with a Lumia 1020 guess it does urban environments or feet so I of it which I would just like to point out dieter that you you mentioned that metropolis is based on New York City as if that means that it's supposed to be a wonderful place now a perfect utopia when infected it's a dystopia so I don't think that's a very good an algae demand no I meant metropolis of Superman not metropolis the movie Oh 12 if metropolis the movie is also based in New York ok ok I chris is it that New York got more Michelin stars in the recent ratings in Chicago is that what's going on here Christmas Toyota was trolling about Chicago I can't plan is that it's also just let not I mean of course New York has more Michelin stars the city is three and a half times as large said that's not even a troll key metric is per capita the key the key metric is per capita and I believe New York beats Chicago per capita as well am i right Chris and 2014 they're actually I think about even in 20 in 2013 York was a head butt in in 2014 there buddy chris is just funny because you know man you shouldn't know that yeah that's really I know that the per capita metric exists is because of you Chris if you don't know all the cities or excuse me all the restaurants that are Michelin star rated in your city you are not doing your job as a human being how many Michelin stars so Sbarro's have they're not even bib gourmand they're they're not they're not in the list anyway please let's let's go back to talking about something remotely phone related I was I what do you guys recommend i do so sir peter uh part of the reason that all of it kind of sucks in new york city is because it's a metropolis the big buildings in whatever but no i agree with you it's supposed to be this mecca for awesome cell service and whatnot and it's really not at all it's funny because people ask all the time what cell phone service should i get in midtown Manhattan and frankly none of them really work that I agree our office is located in midtown Manhattan and you can walk a block and lose all your signal and walk another block and get all your signal back and then walk in the third block and it's all gone again I don't mind losing screen I just want my signal to be accurate the problem that i have with AT&T in midtown is like it'll look like it's fine it'll show me four bars of LTE and everything's awesome but really no there's no data yes there's a there's a chipotle restaurant a couple blocks from our office and well I say restaurant with a very loose definition but uh you know you can stand there and my ATT phone will say that I have like five bars of LTE service and I can't like move any data in and out of that phone like it's just complete dead zone but the phone claims that it's got full service well so this is exactly what het nets are designed to solve right i mean like the dream is that in the future in the not-too-distant future 18t will have thousands of small cells deployed across manhattan and this will cease to be a problem because I mean now you get like you can imagine how like trying to accurately and completely cover a you know urban canyons like you have in Manhattan with traditional cells is extremely difficult for pretty obvious reasons not not to give a heey past but you can understand why it's hard ya know and I wish that you know like it was they should be giving out these microcells like candy like I should I should just whisper microcell and they should have a truck at my door with one they should come in so packs like at walmart when you check out my prepaid phone you just a shoe my crystal the government they should replace phone books with microcells instead and i just have them piled up at your door getting wet from the rain instead of the yellow pages I I've been I've been thinking about microsomes for a long time and I think that they present a huge PR challenge for carriers which is why none of them talk about the fact that they have microcells they're not Microsoft Anna cells or whatever the pica cells the reason they don't talk about them is because the fact that they exist is an admission that the network isn't perfect so the only way they can offer them is very quietly and without advertising them and without talking about them that's why you just never hear about them well yeah but I mean everybody who uses a damn that took knows that it's in perfect and that word-of-mouth particularly comes from such arid aight mouse as data bones as an effect on people and it might you know influence you to go in looking with another carrier what i would say from my limited experience in New York is exactly what the guys have been saying is I it's extremely spotty so for example there was one instance last year when I was there with my head verizon sim cards and L T and Verizon what it works when he have good connectivity was just amazing it blew my socks off it was just it was like faster than what I get a home but at the same time if you go if you can't get that consistent if you can't rely on it then it's not that much of a comfort what I would say is that London is rather the same way and it has a lot less of the excuse that New York does with the tall buildings because London doesn't have that may skyscrapers but it's just a spotty good coverage and that includes both 3g and 4g I mean I'm with the free network here and I have the equivalent of the femtocells that you guys are disgusting but AT&T but I do have a question and dieter is the man that's ideally suited to answer it which is how does New York compared to san francisco in terms of coverage okay kind of gets but so AT&T has completely not completely if they have come a very very very long way in San Francisco to the point where it's probably the best network out there overall it's better than verizon in my experience in San Francisco and t-mobile's new you know not that great so it's actually not quite a lot of percent flipped because I don't think verizon superb in New York but I wasn't expecting AT&T to fall down as hard as it did in the places where I need now that said when 18t does have signal in New York it's fine and fast except for those phantom things so it's it's mostly a coverage and getting around the building's issue I think except in like really really densely populated areas like like Midtown I don't know i'm going to give t-mobile a try i'm going to give i might i'm going to give the microcell try the other thing that sucks is like the perfect solution is I should just port my number to google voice and then like whatever week I feel like using something and I get angry at somebody else I can just bounce around but no google voice says that there's no number porting available for my phone number I don't rust google voice anymore I like there's no telling when they're going to spring clean that thing like they promised it's going to get built into hangouts which maybe that's another reason that's Justin right oh I can't wait till that happens and then you have like one phone app and you've got your like regular phone calls and your google voice phone calls and like they're not like yeah but like things like they did with hangouts with SMS and hang out chats and they tried to put them in one phone at or one app oh yeah talk to each other at all and oh yes I mean they got a fiction multiple account problem all right no dieter the other option that you have on AT&T mobile is self I which was originally launched with tmobile but is now available on AT&T as well and it's like a booster but a little more clever it's also a lot more expensive than a regular booster but you have a remote unit that beams the signal wirelessly to your base unit that rebroadcasts it so but in order for that to work your remote unit has to have a lick a signal right it's got a little bit to work with right well that might might work and that one is nice because it'll just work and I won't have to actually like set it up a GPS located account with the carrier or whatever it's just and it also doesn't rely on your internet the problem I have is that when my comcast guys which is about once a week I lose my phone too so will a self I work cross across t-mobile and AT&T oh I have to buy one for each I think they're different units yeah that's what I thought Jim before we wrap up this topic I do want to mention that sprint exists oh so spring and we'll talk more about this later on republic Wireless but let's talk about a no use come on right now brings are we doing right now um so I tested the Moto X on republic Wireless which you know their whole deal Paul Miller did a big piece on Republic a couple years ago when they first launched in beta and their their whole concept is that they offload as much voice and text traffic to Wi-Fi as possible which is you know more a valid of a concept now than it ever has been because hot spots everywhere you have Wi-Fi in your home you have Wi-Fi on your office so ninety percent of the time you're just connected to Wi-Fi you don't even need a cell signal for anything and then for that other ten percent of the time they offload you to the to the cell network and their plan pricing is from five dollars which is actually just Wi-Fi only you don't have any cell access up to 40 for a sprint voice and LTE and limited across the board and they have a let's say it's a $25 plan that's unlimited voice texting and 3G data and then a ten dollar plan that's unlimited voice and text but no cell data which is kind of unusual and interesting so you can see how that's a really good option you just want you know and also the five dollar option the Wi-Fi only is great if you just want to have a phone to take overseas because then whenever you're in Wi-Fi access anywhere in the world it just acts as your regular with your regular phone number so and the Moto X is price really aggressively to 299 off-contract locked to republic but it has its own rom it shipped straight from Motorola they don't like cook it themselves and like re bundle the phone and then ship it out to you Motorola is actually making it in their factory and shipping it straight to you with the Republic rom and it worked really well but what I wanted to say these if you sprint is that they use the only cell network that uses sprint behind the scenes and Sprint's vocoder is like a national embarrassment like can you define vocoder for people who are not uh it's it's daily yeah yes it's the algorithm that they use to turn your voice into bits and unpinned rhyme and vice versa well no so the funny thing is funny you mentioned the pin pin drop one thing one really curious thing about Sprint's vocoder it's extremely low fidelity it's like it's I don't know how many kilobits per second it is but it's definitely it's audibly way lower than what anyone else uses and one of the weird things about it is that when no one is talking it shuts completely off to the point where you you think that the call dropped so I found that I kept putting the phone down in my face and saying is the call still on or not oh yes it is and I put it back to my ear because like you know with a normal vocoder you can kind of hear a little bit of hiss in between talking but with this it just goes completely dead which is kind of unnerving so and then when people are talking just kind of sounds like a Charlie Brown's teacher so it's like it's completely worthless not completely worthless but moderately worthless is a calling device the irony is is that like sprint is was the first carrier in the US to offer any HD Voice option and yeah yeah there's so few that's unattainable that's all I've got a little bit of a lead in HD voice I mean well it's very it's device-specific right yeah that's the high and if you don't have a device that works on it I don't even know what the latest actually you know a funny thing so when we went to this this last sprint event when they were talking about their crazy spark with the superfast charges bumped Mike from the super fast internet speeds with the three different bands that they use just actually in New York right so they were talking about HD Voice and apparently HD voice gets encoded differently depending on the network hardware so like I forget who's where but like Erikson's in one corner and like alcatel owns another like the southwest corner and like somebody else does the northeast corner of the US and they're the first they'll get HD Voice rolling but it only work within the network so it'll only work between like alcatel networked calls and then it won't be till next year that they actually have HD Voice working across those different networking systems it's completely screwed up yeah I mean I mean it's not Sprint's fault that's just how it works but it's insane to me that well high-quality voices of that complicated I would say this is pretty well i would say it is doing that there's a standard like when they laid out the network they should have said the only way we're doing this is if this is interoperable well that's what they're doing that with the rocks my specific you can't just like turn on any sprint phone and call any sprint phone again HD voice i know i don't know what is different with the implementation with tmobile but as far as i understand it is not device specific and it's also so it's also only within sprint you can't call anyone else and i don't know about you guys I don't know anyone that oh no that's not sure I know one person who with a sprint phone so like that there's there actually isn't anyone you can call to experience HD voice it's like it's come a non-existent feature the chances that the person that you know that has sprint also has a phone that is compatible with it and is also in an area where the it actually works are like you know the Lions will win the super bowl before that happens so hang of things that are completely impossible somebody explain to me why so to explain to me why the first like other than like the nexus 7 whatever the first like big mass market phone to get android 4.4 was on verizon and it was a motorola phone the Moto X on Verizon kit kat is rolling out for right now and it beat yeah everybody else would be on nexus for it beat the unlock Moto X it'd be like everybody it beats a google play edition iht one and the samsung galaxy s4 the only explanation I can come up with is that motorola and verizon have been pretty cozy for many years but that still doesn't really explain it because verizon is notoriously thai tasked with with from her update so III don't get it I mean when I thought to arise in Galaxy Nexus right yeah when I talk to them about the the Moto G I was like why don't you have Kit Kat like well it just got released like yeah but you guys are in the PDK the PDK is the platform developer kit where people like HTC and motorola so your own by googly yeah but there they don't get you they don't get special treatment they're like look yeah we know where we get to look at the stuff early but it's not until the day that they actually release it that like you can really start building on it and it's not until you know you also have to get like all the chip makers on board too so like there's always going to be a lag time but we're working as fast as we can I was like okay well you know that makes sense it's still stupid but it's fine I understand so I was expecting it to be a little while but they blasted that thing out and then it's just up on verizon of all places like yeah i don't know what to do about that i really like i need someone to explain to me how to think about the universe now because i said i suspect i SPECT chris has nailed it in so far as verizon might've put pressure and motorola to make that effort and I feel like I'm not well hang on there III don't think verizon would because no but if your horizon why would you want motorola to put out the awesome software update on its branded phone when you could have it out on your filthy lucre droids that you make more money off of lest we forget that the verizon galaxy nexus which is actually listed as a galaxy next or a nexus phone uh with the you know all of the factory images supplied by google and everything is still on android 4.2 point2 it's never going to get android 4.4 but it doesn't have android 4.3 which the other galaxies next devices have uh so there's just like so many things here that do not add up to why this happened the way it did yeah it's not like they are speculating this boy in any way selector Aizen is suddenly awesome because they're still playing games with the verizon version of the nexus 7 there it's not out yet they said they were waiting for KitKat which is bonkers um so it's not like verizon is all of a sudden like pure as the driven snow and like super consumer-friendly it's just like this weird confluence of like i don't know i don't know what to do what that's my point and like i said then this is speculation we don't know but if you're looking for motivation for motorola will prioritize one over the other i would think well if you go by google play edition who is looking after you interest it's just your phone if you go by the unlock code again it's your phone nobody's going to motorola and lobbying on your behalf whereas verizon in a rare moment of insight might have decided ok agency had this lead on us with the moto maker we can kind of steal some thunder back with the moto x by having the KitKat update first that might be you know one reason why they might have pushed for it all right now that you put it in terms of politics and trying to screw the other guy now it makes sense to me okay yeah but the day hate America you're right at the end of the day if you're a verizon moto x customer and if you're not a verizon moto x customer you can be one for fifty bucks on contract so motor makers available for everybody I think that does that expired it was 50 bucks it's crazy how they did it got fast yeah I mean that well it's it's now 100 bucks which is still a great deal for the Moto X yeah but this past weekend they ran a deal uh which it could still be going on I could be crazy but I thought maybe it expired by he'll actually wrote the article I mean it's gonna it's gonna be Rocky bucks again soon I'm sure that there's gonna be all sorts of all my deals for it yeah come black friday it'll probably be free yeah uh so you know it's a great value and the fact that not only is it a great phone that we've proven time and again through our reviews and our experience with the device uh it's a great value and it's at the latest software from google so yeah nobody cares it's reportedly only sold 500,000 units and yet nobody's buying it yeah I don't get it like I I don't understand why the Moto X is retail flop it has all the like hallmarks of what a phone needs to succeed and what you can't tell me that people are going into this into stores and saying I know Samsung I want to Samsung i'm going to buy nothing but a samsung I mean maybe they are but it's like I think a lot of people are and I think you know a lot of people a lot of the people that work in the stores the actual sales reps are very familiar very comfortable with selling the samsung voices and you know when it comes down to it when the people come in are like what phone should i buy that i could totally picture sales rep being liked by samsung or you know by whatever their favorite phone is or whatever poetry thing again this is something that you need a few generations a few iterations of a device from a company for people to develop a comfort comfort zone with it because the weather I feel right now the LG g2 is the best form that you can go out and buy it's the phone that i'm using and I make no apologies about using cyanogenmod on it until LG straighten out their skin you do have to oppose not abusing the icons guys I'm sorry you're breaking news here right now this is a courtesy of a mic isaac you go to Twitter's blog post they've heard they've got them these are shelters that are announcing for their app but more importantly if you look at the vine for it at about the two second mark you can see some of the accounts that they've got that you're set up around the Twitter office and one of them is to office whichever Fisher is the account or a bathroom at Twitter's headquarters Wow and it's not verified though though um all right I'm sorry I your time about the g2's back button and I had better care because I can't ever hear about that again ok so just face it for was in the face it back but seriously I just not a lot of magic challenge your point because you just said that it's the best android phone that you can buy and they know just like I have to install I have to install software to fix it because it's broken out of the box like got the best phone that you can buy this is the best phone that you can buy and I'm not alone polar Bryan feels the same way and he's Paul Broun of motor co and he's a smart ass guy in England so there you go Wow but the reason I raised doesn't Stephen Hawking live in England I think he lives in the u.s. busy in the US okay I think it wasn't even for a while anyway um but the reason I write a razor g2 is because to me the g2 and the motor works pretty unique in just how crazy smaller devices compared to the screen size and like I haven't seen phones like them any other phones quite like them and you know if you were to tell me that I would love using a 5.2 inch phone I would just say that's crazy but right now having use the g2 extensively I literally cannot go back to using an iphone 5 like forage size is too small for me and then there's a whole gmail app fiasco which is still not improving at all but you know my thinking is people might go into a store the my cg tudom I see a moto x and they might say that's pretty nice hardware but I don't trust these guys they haven't done a good phone for months or years or however long before they go in and they're like my mom or my my kid doesn't own a g2 and a kid doesn't own an LG they don't notice right ahead it doesn't have the Tegra right that was me yeah you know when you're in the store and there was some oh yes right man they have the tickler inside it rain on flat remembering that anecdote I was like six months ago pretty sober to be talking about legit pandas yeah it's been a while wow it's the big that actually predate me so oh that was before you well you were where you you were here for our all of our triumvirate and for other stuff damn we educated somebody so somebody on Twitter said that before us he did a no vote trifecta meant and no no no troika troika that's right Erica and hopefully we educated some other people about quadriga because as we are now um so let's talk about I think from reading it's a big phone so you don't want top of the moto moto g oh yeah God the Moto G got a lot of stuff happened last week so yeah the Moto G it's uh probably the best phone i've ever touched that has a retail price of under two hundred fifty dollars if they don't use nothing but a G thang as the song for the commercial for this phone they have missed out on one of the most amazing opportunities for so many places they could go with it I they could go they could pair up with 50 cent and and market is a g-unit uh or you know nothing but a G thing I mean yeah that was good could go that's good dad yeah I know that Patrick anyway so so tating it is like the hip hop phone and you've got a limiting your audience yeah but those songs are like you know that they span all time and space and genre yeah pretty sure that uh fifty cents song was number one unlike all of the Billboard charts that it could be on for quite a few weeks so yeah but then does the other thing the Moto G is intended to be sold in areas that might not have a big boy chart right because there's something over its targeting here hip-hop is a cross-cultural I bet they noticed it's American it's just it crosses boundaries man it just so everyone's everyone's American now and like so anywhere understand so all right so the Moto G is a unlocked phone that is actually it's it's kind of like a mid-range device that Motorola is selling at an entry-level price in the US you'll be able to buy it for 179 bucks for an eight gig version or two hundred bucks for a 16 gig version but not like you one but not until q1 right yeah but motor role is really not pushing it hard here in the US because this phone is designed for emerging markets and areas that smartphones don't have the kind of penetration that they have here in the West and in developed markets so people can actually get a really good experience on the Moto G for not a whole lot of money and it's actually like really surprising the screen is four and a half inches and it's a 720p display in many respects it looks nicer than the 720p display on the Moto X because it's an LCD as opposed to AMOLED so it's got a great viewing angles great color it's not as oversaturated it's got a quad core Qualcomm processors its got like a real processor in it uh it's it's responsive it the build quality is just about the same as the Moto X um but mission together like this two things that are down it's missing LTE and it also has it why would make yeah it was a crappy five megapixel camera yeah cameras not that great but like you know it takes pictures I mean if you hear it if you compare it to other two hundred dollar phones like it's a much better camera than what you normally get on a two-hundred-dollar phone like you gotta figure this thing is going to be priced against the like lumia 510 the Firefox phones uh and then like whatever Samsung Galaxy a sibling ever yeah yeah yeah and this those are like terrible devices yeah there's no really bad so the the well the Lumia 520 is pretty good I guess that's a rare exception what is not it's not an easy display it's not a quad-core processor it's so know a lot of other things that it's not I was totally with you and I still AM that this is a pretty remarkable device for the price ice nice but a bunch of people when I was tweeting about it were talking back to me and a couple dm's to that like it's actually not that remarkable device if you look especially in China which of course the Moto G isn't going to China but a bunch of it's a bunch of like phones in this range are being sold around this price it's just we're not seeing it here because it's not none of it's coming to the US market and a lot of it is is located in Asia and then the main thing is that like the margins on phones have distorted our sense of what they cost may be well I my retort to the the Chinese phone argument is that you know I I can't say for sure how the level of quality that those phones at selling around that price bracket and China are but I imagine it's not as nice as the Moto G I've actually liked having used and touched the Moto G it's actually really well put together it's a really nice screen you know it's not doesn't feel like it's gonna fall apart in your hands and then none of those Chinese phones have access to the Google Play Store which the Moto G does and I honestly think that that is a value quotient right there which is makes it more valuable to me and I think many other people over like a lumia 510 for that matter um so yeah there's i'm sure there's like plenty of phones that we never see here in the US i don't know how many are actually hitting these marks at the moto g hits that's all I was just going to say there was that top end a sciphone which is quite cute and fun in terms of like the desired and using it so I mean the competition isn't Oh absolute garbage like I will totally agree on those galaxy ace you nothing has nothing as a 720p display well first response max let other mate what wvga LA and then most of these things have Q HD displays at best and they're not good q HD displays yea all I'm pointing out is that if you're not going to be all that bother about the camera or LTE connectivity and things like that maybe they're there are well-designed phones in that price bracket they're not all completely not to garbage but something else that kind of stands out to me is how and maybe did this to date this point about the chips be cheaper than we might think a quad-core Snapdragon processor in that I mean first of all Qualcomm is just owning the entire market right now which is yes but for and it seems to be because their pricing those chips aggressively because I am surprised I'm surprised to see that kind of power in something like the Moto G and you guys are speechless a surprise well as you know it's great sear even 400 which is Qualcomm's lower end lineup but it's the first one that we've seen at least here in the US or that I've seen that has a quad core version of that processor we saw the 400 in the one mini and in the HTC first with a dual-core chip and it was okay it was passable but the quad core is actually noticeably faster and maybe it has to do with the fact that the software isn't as heavily themed and things like that and what just well-meaning doesn't have the Snapdragon 400 first chosen 6 knots it's a Sephora the one mini is definitely a 400 dual-core 400 i reviewed it man you gotta be a 400 I think it was talking to be wrong then then HTC just slipped I don't buy me in that case let's talk about the Lumia 1520 the giant phone which also like this is a watershed device because I believe it marks the first time that we have written the word phablet in an article without immunity apologizing for it we broke down and get it this is that this that's the term now they're called fat okay just a sec typically cones are here we've accepted that note 3 is a very good one we've accepted that the Xperia Z Zed whatever it is is gigantic it's just what they are now they're big and we're just calling them phablets and we're not sorry anymore and I'm so sorry it is a Snapdragon 400 into one mini I was wrong did with blue something explains doesn't happen very often can someone explain to me why the chronic is not on Spotify I just want to play no I just want to play nothing but a G thang how long have you been looking for like 10 minutes there's there like 20 cover yeah dude just go to youtube I was saving any song that I haven't been able to find a ug yeah every other mobile show Chris you like disappear and are focusing on something and I like you're working because like you know I know stuff is going on in the business of the version never stops and sometimes I am doing that too but most the time it's you but really you're not working you're just like cruising Spotify 30 tracks there's no shame in the game don't hate okay i can say with back i can say goes back because i interrupted by mentioning snap around 400 and the living 1520 if i'm not mistaken has a snapdragon 800 inside right then ah that's correct yes it's the first windows phone with a Snapdragon 800 it's got two gigabytes of RAM it's really really fast it's definitely the fastest Windows Phone that I've ever used a Windows Phone typically is not slow to begin with it's a very responsive user interface ah but the Lumia 1520 is noticeably faster when you are opening apps and switching apps and things like that ah and at this point it really just feels like the Windows Phone animations of constantly opening that fan and closing that fan to do things is what slows slows you down more than the processor so that's a that's a kind of a good thing to see um the screen is tremendous here I have it right here oh god that is big oh god I'm really holding back from uh it's really bright it's got great viewing angles if I tilt it to the side here uh it's actually really really bright outdoors as well so it's really awesome outdoors it's got all of Nokia's tricks for polarization ClearBlack I works with gloves all that fun stuff so it's a really it's a great display um and then the Bill of the device is pretty much if you took if you're familiar with the Lumia 720 and then you put it on one of those medieval stretch your things and stretched it out nice that that design um but yeah it is a six inch display and it is very much a very very big phone uh it is pretty much impossible to use one handed uh and you know it's open up the on-screen keyboard here you could just see how massive that on-screen keyboard is it's actually the on-screen keyboard is taller on the 1520 than it is on 27 which I find a highly hysterical Wow and uh you know and that kind of just gets to my point of Microsoft did the bare minimum to optimize Windows Phone 8 for a device this big or a screen this large itemized most of the car apps right well they say they did you know they you could see on the screen here I've got three columns going so I can have more tiles in one space uh it makes for a bit of a jumble and a lot of stuff going on so it's a bit intense you can see they're all flipping and all that fun stuff so i don't have to scroll as much which is nice none of the tiles can be stretched out to the full width so you are still limited with two columns but that is the biggest noticeable difference between this and every other windows phone microsoft says that it optimized the core apps but it did like the bare minimum in the email app I can see about half a half of a more email on the list I could see one line preview more on the context I can see maybe like two contacts and on the app list I could see for more apps before I have to scroll ah but that's about it and that is different no browsers exactly the same uh and so when you compare it to like here I've got the UH what do you compare it is an amazing massive tripod is the background so here's a huge thing and here's another key when when you look at how much bigger it is than say a 925 which is not really a small phone to begin with I you'd expect to get far more out of that giant screen real estate and I think wow you know they didn't really do much of it at all so it's just like bigger for the sake of being bigger the fonts of giant the icons are giant everything is giant the 925 was an iphone when you first brought it up next oh yeah that's compared to the iphone with you really want to continue the iphone horizontally so we can see if it's wider than the iphone east hall yeah i'm sorry i'm trying to try to keep the screen on but i keep you know obviously it's a giant screen and I'm touching it as I move but yeah so you can get an idea of how big that is so it actually doesn't fit in my front pocket I can't sit down with a front pocket and in my back pocket my pants it like sticks up by about half an inch see this is why you need a galaxy round or g flex right the only the only pocket that I can keep it in is in like the inside pocket of a blazer otherwise it's just it's just far too large it also doesn't fit in my American side cup holders in my car oh and that's another point good but in that pocket of a blazer which people might not appreciate I had an AC one max in is that exact position and what what do you what would happen is that my jacket will start to tilt in the direction in which the phone is I'm not joking like it is the leading it's it's heavy as well you know nokia phones aren't really like to begin with so you know this the size of of massiveness is heavy and so you know the thing that I have that the issue that I have with it is that there's obviously a market for these big phones I think Samsung's proven that they you know they're three iterations into the note line it's actually a really good advice if you wanna a phone that's really giant you know the note offers a unique experience the problem is that nokia and microsoft aren't offering a unique experience with this and the software gives you the same experience you might see on a 10 20 or 9 25 without like really any difference as opposed to the the extra column on your home screen you know how close does this thing to just like you're kind of just wishing it you had windows RT on it you know who wishes that Windows RT anything with those are Dixon has its own issues uh but you know it's a fing days I made windows 8 I think yeah yeah like I think a more fair comparison is to say like at what point do you wish it was just a dell venue pro or venue 8 or whatever they're calling it or write like here's here's a comparison to a 2013 Nexus 7 and you can see that it is nearly as big as the nexus 7 the difference obviously being that the Nexus 7 has real tablet software on it so you know I think that the the 1520 gives us a lot of preview as to like what the next windows devices will be like with the awesome processor an awesome screen um but then its you know it never once in using any Windows Phone have I ever said gee i wish i had more cpu like yeah never it's just not an issue for that platform right right and I mean unless you compare them side-by-side you know you're you're 95 or whatever if you happen to own a windows phone is not going to suddenly feel slow unless you compare it side-by-side with a 1520 it is it is a tick faster in animations it's just a little bit more responsive it's scrolling is a little bit snappier but you know like like you said like I said Windows Phone has never been wanting for for more power so yeah I mean the good thing is that it's now a 1080p display which the older phones were not 1080p displays and this has no issue pushing around the 1080p display so that's good to see and it's the typical build quality is great from Nokia the camera is kind of average I think that's one of the bigger disappointments uh this is a it's a PureView camera I uses the same technology as the 1020 but it's a 20 megapixel version so it's not as extreme as the 41-megapixel one but it is not as good in low light as the iphone 5s it's definitely not as good in the light as the 1020 and it's just slow it takes a long time to open a long time to take a photo and a long time to save that photo so it's no that's terrible oh that was my little silver lining that I was hoping would be the true for the new cpu processor exactly and thats things up that's what nokia was said what happened they said you know this new processor let us do a lot of photo things faster and things like that ah but it it's slow compared to you know comparable iPhones and Android devices so so really it's an issue with yourself to a rather than hardware yeah I think they could probably improve it software-wise that's a feeling I'll yet did you try any of the you tried to take any role photos is that compared to go to TV oh yeah it is it shoots um so when you normally take a photo by default it will shoot a 5 megapixel image and a 19 megapixel image and say both of those and that's really where it slows everything down is when it's saving those files the 19 megapixel image Yuri crop and do all those fun things with nokia software uh the other option if you go into settings you can have it saved a 5 megapixel jpg and 819 megapixel dmg file which is a raw format that is kind of universal when you do that you lose all of the ability to recrawl and play with all the fun stuff on the phone so it's pretty much you know if you just want to put thrown in Photoshop and tweak it from there um I didn't actually spend a whole lot of time doing that because the last thing I want to do is is take a photo off my phone and tweak in Photoshop but if you want to do it it's there I think you'll have more fun with the 10 too funny thing that because it's a better camera she yeah totally teachers birds who owned a 1020 I think that's going to be the overwhelming theme of our podcast today um no listen I mean I'm still just like dealing with the fact that like I've accepted that phones that are this size now yeah here's a so I have the one max with me as well so you can see the this 10 20 is about the same size as the one max which I think we said was too big and then the the Z Ultra is here and this is actually a bigger wow so that's six point four inches um so these are phones you can put them up to your face and make a call there are things with phone like features and capabilities well and witty and you guys are never gonna convince me to say fabulous I'm just quit and safe that but I mean like I've I just kind of throw my hands up in the air because you know it's either use a lot of words to describe this or just say one word that I don't like very much so what's the one word you don't like very much Oh family I don't say man phablet it's a fabulous fabulous day with your phablets oh you know what actually no instead of this i think i just want the porsche pineau 982 are we seriously talking about that thing is that has one I am going to do a live in box I'm currently wait did I get the numbers right on the on this phone the pinion pinner what's it called phenomena 998 ooh that's right that 982 it got it right yeah so to get in books and started I would just like to say to the outside of the way we very fine detection we need to we need to let people on Twitter know that we're we're doing a live on I you allowed to put this thing out there you under any sort of embargo Vlad little bit mad well if I had any shame I would just like do it but yeah uh yes I'm allowed to put it out there okay just ask him i justjust on the topic of the world I don't want to live in um I am unhappy that today we heard Samsung has actually shipped 800,000 galaxy Gear's and Chris enlighten me about the most works on a selling half a million I know what is sales the other is shipments but still the fact that even retailers are willing to commit to 800,000 of those atrocious pouches when do you have they made those are in Russia how many bestbuy warehouses does it take to hold 800,000 a galaxy Gear's until Samsung takes him back it's a good question dude so Kwame um are weakened editor here at the verge he did actually point out something worth noting which is we were all joking and making fun of the original Galaxy Note now I'm not saying nothing no stop just let me finish just do it it no a bit of it we were everybody was yes we were yes well I'm not saying this is the same thing no but I am saying there's an interesting parallel there that maybe just maybe we could have AG interface in one like the shipments rented sales is it the possibility difference between the gear and the note is that the note isn't actually a a good good product right it's a good product and the gear is like fundamentally not it might be at someday if Samsung actually like updates it and makes it better but the one that you buy today is not a good product not only so that's the key difference yeah i dunno x backed any egg on my face with regards to the galaxy gear it's also you don't eat eggs so I how would it even happen what we're not even going to go there the egg okay we do eunuchs the egg is like the perfect food and I'm saying it there's a do professor who is like the PR guy for eggs because they have the perfect protein breakdown and give you all your necessary fats and all of those good things anyway I do eat eggs I make amazing omelets now you should come to my house ok so the phone all right wait wait plaid do you eat cheese ok I see you're making an omelet without cheese it's a travesty ok carry on I do make homeless with that cheese and yes the post designer bags sorry dude there are French people who just offended I mean there's a whole country just offended there's a little freaked by the way so France just issued a travel advisory against its its citizens traveling to chicago so i don't care about offending the French what why why don't why doesn't why doesn't France a lot people go to Chicago because of the crime no I think I'm going to be swindled into eating something that they think is going to be pizza and it's not pizza wait wait Chris hurry up to the truck just is that is that for real yeah yeah she can't go Tribune published it today Wow okay I mean they thought about uh I was gonna try and make a surrender joke but I couldn't come up with anything so let it go okay so blank buried the reason i am showing this box is because like the very purpose of this thing's existence is in the accessories and in your imagination so you have to imagine the fine texture of this box okay so then we open it up then is more blackness building up the anticipation and then there's these two thinks this is a low point for the original show right now it's really fitting that there's two things here in the foreground because one of them is the phone itself which has steel and it looks a little nice to being honest with you well it's real leather which might piss a lot of people off you know animal rights and whatever also blackberry tell me it's real Italian leather made of Italian cows I don't know if that matters to you and but it has a shin on the bottom right no it doesn't it's flat no but it's got like a little instead of being straight across it like has a little chin chin a chin like a z10 doesn't doesn't go down as far on the bezel underneath the screen that's what I'm saying yeah it's like rounded off on okay okay i was thinking chin like we know not like it not like yet not like bruce campbell chin like a yeah not one the patrice forward yes climb that goes down right yeah yeah he's got a little bit more does the stainless steel part of it but seriously if even the blackberry guys who were showing this thing to me they were struggling to come up with differences from the said 10 it so it's the same internal same processor same screen all that jazz yeah it just has 64 gigs of storage why didn't they go with the I mean the cool thing about putting into 981 was this was their crazy keyboard and going metallic and it didn't fit with you know the other blackberries they should have totally uh just done the q10 instead of the Zed time I mean this really is one way or the other honestly when you look at this thing the p 9 9 8 9 9 9 9 82 it's it's just as it 10 with the top and the bottom of the p 9 9 9 9 9 8 1 yeah did I could have done this in a minutes worth of work and I don't do design now Glen with the with the original / nanana Nana the blackberry customize the software side like special Porsche icons and things like that is that any different with this one or is it the same software do you get a unique BBM pin but way way way way that's that that's important let's get through the trivia first and we're not really we've spent like 10 minutes on this wait this is this is the Porsche secretly franco on this it's a Porsche theme ringtone but it isn't actually an engine noise okay and boots up and shut down animations have that pd porsche design logo happening and from what I understand Porsche Design guys just like this other group which is licensed to use the main basically that they have nothing to do with the actual Porsche designers but anyway none of that matters to people who interested in this here's what matters this is the other hugely important part it's a credit card sized thing which makes you a literal card-carrying member of an exclusive club and you have a unique pin now what I'm going to say is that exclusive club is going to matter to some people and not going to matter to it's going to matter the people that were civilians in this relation I mean it you it really depends on how you define that Club that's it whether you want that phone or not yet price tag also is worth mentioning is two thousand four hundred dollars totally worth it yeah well if you want to justify it in Hardware terms that you have a charger adapter for every single region in the world and one of the tiniest freaking batteries ever I mean I look at this barrier I just I'm just embarrassed on their behalf like seriously so somebody did a calculation and they said you could get something like a thousand sixteen gigabyte moto g's for the price of one of these I mean the reason this phone exists is because it's profitable right like that they sell it in like two regions where everyone is a billionaire and they'll sell them and I mean the phone costs marginally more than a regular z10 to make and there's the other thing the only premium material here is the leather and write it right yeah I'm saying like if they probably have a printer that is what volition thing Oh fantastic conversion with only 500 be made and I can still see them every one of those are review units that the funny thing the funny thing to me is that like the people who buy that if I actually saw someone who owned this I'd be like dude this just means you couldn't afford a virtue like hahaha poor man's Vertu's all its wow I really like the the acura phones is that it's a decent way but I mean you just offended everybody who's listening to it soon owns an accurate but sure i would i would buy it i would be i'll be grateful if i could buy an acura i'd be super happy not not in New York you wouldn't be well no all right we should we should probably wrap up pretty soon I do want to take a brief moment to say that new FCC Chairman Tom wheeler is not at least in his first couple of weeks week however long it's been the Super Pro carrier tragedy that we were all expecting that'll come later but so far Chrissy seems to be like do it okay he is not the worst person on the planet so far which is encouraging yeah I think that he honestly I mean this might be a little overly optimistic but it almost seems like he was motivated by the amount of momentum that that Clyburn generated he's trying to keep that up but um he actually just circulated moments ago a memo on how he wants to take action on moving the country toward an all-ip infrastructure which is code for ripping out the landlines I which there are many many forces at play in that conversation and it's it's still open for debate whether that's actually a net good thing for consumers aren't that bad thing so that the the jury's still out but that that literally just happened so he's moving very quickly and he's using in every memo I've seen of his he's using very strong language he's saying you know we got to do this right now we gotta act he actually put a like a time window on that memo he sent to see of large and president of CTA is like I want this resolved by December with the phone unlocking stuff so that the dude is looking to move we'll just see if he can keep it up and what's what's this drama today Chris I know that you you don't have any strong feelings about this cell phone unlocking thing that yes my goodness so there's this story I believe it originally appeared in the new york times about how carriers are pushing back on a a proposed requirement to uh to load phones with software that would allow users to remotely lock them if they're stolen carriers are allegedly pushing back because they're great that's going to cut into insurance profits because the insurance plans which are very popular are also very profitable which is why every time you go to say it best buy and you buy a three dollar CDR they're like do you want to ensure that for two years for twenty five dollars and so and so yes I agree in principle that that you know remote lock and wipe is great I think that it that this is kind of bizarre and misguided and a little backwards for a few reasons one I can't think of any other physical object owned by american citizens where the government requires that they be modified in some way to disincentivize people to steal them look we don't we don't require we don't mandate alarms or low jacks on cars which are obviously very heavily stolen things and secondly auto and secondly carriers just took action late last year on a national imei blacklist so there there is a way to prevent these phones from being used after their stolen but ultimately the question becomes like I I think it's a British well I got a national I me I blacklist doesn't solve the problem because a lot of these phones are getting shipped overseas so that you actually need to disable the unit itself right you right but that gets to my last point which is that regardless of how you approach this you're still not solving the problem of a of a shady guy coming up to you and taking your phone because they're not thinking about whether oh well then I wonder if maybe this phone is going to be remote lockable they're just like gank and then they walk away yeah what I mean the idea is that if like if they if it becomes known throughout the world that phones will be disabled if they're stolen there will be less incentive to steal them well that has certainly worked well with LoJack's I'm just I I don't think I don't know I just think that this is this is an example of people having their hearts and minds in the right place but it is not the right battle to be picking and believe me there are many many battles to be picked with carriers I don't think this is the right one that's idols education on that note I think it's time to wrap up the Virgin Mobile show if you disagree then I'm sorry if you want to follow us on twitter you can i am at Backlund Anna's DCC for with Annie I chris is the power don't call him Zed power flat as wet Sabbath don't call him Vlad wick we are all ad verge and next week see you guys thanks for watching right