Gadgetory

greetings mobile accomplish ERDs welcome to the verge mobile show live from New York and another city in New York and also London I'm dieter bohn I'm Chris Hitler why did I go right after you I said my cadence is off like Peter said something that I just jumped right in I was feeling it I'm sorry Vlad and dan I totally stole your look look sometimes you just feel it like you feel a really good slice of pizza that you can get in New York don't even start with me i'm dan seifert by the way and I'm completely out of wood so obviously a full blast that is a that is a luxurious beard you're sporting and its various and compulsory Vietnam that's right that's right by legally binding agreement so if you guys aren't familiar Crigler started a change.org petition to prevent Vlad from shaving his beard and it worked how many signatures did we get 110 110 signatures it the thing to remember is it only takes a hundred and ten people to do something meaningless and trivial on the Internet to make flat do anything look I can be sent a petition to make Vlad permanently follow me on Twitter well I don't think wait that was what I would call a thousand I'm sorry that's it that's a real stretch go right there so Vlad real talk are you gonna keep the beard people have spoken well I can't let them down and I think I think I might have to trim it because it's like covering my lips now and it's just getting really terrible yeah yeah and I mean I'm not a big professional like you Chris so I'm completely out of habit of eating with so much for my face um I wouldn't call me a beer professional there are people in our organization who are a beard professional evan rodgers has been known to sport a really really lovely beard ah but you know you know who that's the best i think in our organization at least out of our new york office christian maza one of our video producers it's like the perfect beard it's an experience yeah this is a virgin mobile show where we talk about verge staff that you may or may not be familiar with now you should be familiar with all of them though because they're all lovely people this is our octogenarian episode steps number 80 and we are in the week before Mobile World Congress and it is sort of the calm before the storm although there have been a bunch of leaks and rumors and a very well sourced reports on what we can expect out of Samsung and the obvious thing is the galaxy s5 we're starting to get dribs and drabs of what to expect with that I'm hearing 5.2 inch screen we've already talked about how the interface should be a little bit chiller and now there's a rumor that there's going to be a fingerprint sensor holy cow no I am apparently it'll be used to unlock your phone launch apps authenticate yourself yeah because we haven't seen that idea before no it's completely original like apparently at one point people thought it would be behind the screen which is insane and now it's like the rumor is it's going to be on the home button but it's going to be a swipe which that worked out really well for the atrix guys well it works out really well on what was that the one max the but the position of the sensor on the atrix was insane yeah well yeah well yeah it was pretty insane also it doubled as the power button which is completely ridiculous I thought it was kind of awesome it the theory of it was awesome but it was hard to press like the theory literally the theory about everything with the matrix is awesome and the execution fell apart in on almost every front like is that the first dual core android smartphone it was had the Lap Kok thing that was awesome and had the fingerprint scanner it was like on paper gonna be the most awesome thing ever and then it wasn't fuzzy OKO by the way well gee Pete it I don't think you could buy the LG in the US yet what it was first one of the first one of the first by the way I just want to point out the deed and I literally look like hostages blank white back on it's like we're being treated well uh yeah we hope our government works uh what do to secure our freedom I mean this really does look kind of scared we need we need a decoration why didn't we put the camera that way with the cool poster yeah we have a great eboy poster we're in a Josh's office right now actually and he has a beautifully boy poster on the opposite wall it's great yeah when I think I should see it it's amazing unfortunately it's pretty of his from your background that you in the interrogation position opposite Josh I'm sure they froze actually he's standing right there he's glowering at us he's very mad at how a professional this podcast tests and I can't blame him honestly yes yeah so s5 I mean what else is that that's pretty much everything we know like I think it's gonna look the same no no at one time there's rumor there's gonna be made of metal this time right yeah but that's not going to happen maybe I mean they can't just put out another phone that looks like a gs5 urging why not Chris there's i would i would like to introduce you to a copy called Samson well yeah but consider this and i know that that Samsung does a very good job of siloing their different divisions but if you look at their televisions and how much they've evolved in the past five years they're their ID originally they were just a black a thick black bezel and now they they've moved like this insane like transparent like one millimeter thick bezel with like little like aluminum thing at the bottom that says Samsung on it so they know how to iterate ID they haven't done it for a couple years now with the galaxy s well dear no I mean in that respect they have the the bezels on the galaxy s4 are like the smallest like they made the galaxy s4 the same size as the galaxy s3 but increases screen size so like they're shrinking the bezels just like they've done on the TV's um but you know it still has that greasy slimy plastic bag I think that it's more likely that instead of a maybe a metal phone they'll probably apply some sort of idea of that faux leather back that they do on the galaxy note and those new tablets and they even released a version of galaxy s4 and Korean Russia with that faux leather back so I'd be surprised they're not be surprised with galaxy s5 had that yeah I mean I I am unreasonably excited for the s500 just feels super iterative but I mean I'm using a nexus 5 as my android phone am using an iphone as my main phone right now and I mean I've seen the rumors for what HTC is probably going to do and I'm not super excited by that I know LG doesn't have anything in the pipeline that really gets me excited so when it comes to like android phones that are going to like float my boat get my heart racing it seems like for the next while the s5 is kind of going to be at the top of the list but you're kind of achieving your excitement by process of elimination well I say no everybody else thinks so let's hope Samsung does I mean can't you just be content with the Nexus 5 uh you know I can be content with the nexus 5 especially if I had the Vermillion one but I don't is that the official name of it no it's officially red but I think you see officially it's officially hey guys I'm red it's officially a few red is what I think it's called I can't be excited about the nexus 5 because the camera is terrible we're stuck right but you know that's uh doesn't really eat the one thing we know nothing about with the new Sampson GS Phi which is the camera right and as a big mystery at us I think that might be in fact the deciding at least hardware component for this new device the big speculation for this year in general with smartphones and Android smartphones typically the spec wise is that they will switch to quad HD or qhd or whatever the spec is for resolution which like 2560 x 1440 so a 5.2 inch Galaxy s5 with that sort of resolution seems reasonable and likely particular photo for the time span that we're looking at be announced let's say a week from now and then maybe launching a mum from there but i don't think that display resolution is going to be anything like i say that floats people's boats or when he differentiates it from the older devices thinner as me potentially excited is samsung reinvesting in the camera because i know with galaxy s2 and galaxy is free those it was real differentiating feature for me you know that is the thing that made us stand out because if if we all remember the galaxy s2 is the spot where Samson really took off and split apart from HTC up to that point it was really either samsung is in the ascendancy or HTC in fact HC and you know those are the strengths on which samsung built eunos great popularity is having an awesome camera having its own exhales process etc so we can see a processor upgrade because here's green upgrade I don't think any of us particularly optimistic about Samsung doing an industrial design upgrade that is really special or unique so really the thing that leaves us hopeful is the camera yeah which is the thing we're not laughing about Sarah well I yeah I mean I'm the last couple iterations of the the galaxy the camera has been like not bad it's been fine has been pretty good but it hasn't been ambitious or risky and I would love to see Samsung try and do something ambitious risky I mean I said no they've added a million features but I like to just like with the core camera technology in the core image processing yeah i mean everything the samsung did with like the galaxy s4 camera was in the software and there's all these weird software features that i mean i don't know how many people use them I certainly never used them really when I reviewed I tested them but beyond the review I never really found a place for them in my personal life but the galaxy note 3 has an excellent camera um so you know I think Samsung actually can do cameras pretty well it'd be great I don't think Samsung's released the camera with like an optical stabilizer or some of these other technologies that we're seeing the other companies do so it'd be cool if they integrated that yeah so the other thing that we are expecting out of more bold Congress from Samsung thanks to interpret reporting by our very own crazy glure is not just one but multiple galaxy Gear's this is the rumor I'm looking at my post right now to familiarize myself with the post that you wrote 15 minutes ago Chris am I going to be able to buy a galaxy gear for each one of my limbs well so that I mean maybe it is Samsung the rumor yeah the rumors multiple new galaxy Gear's might my gut is that they are going to release do they're going to turn galaxy gear into a portfolio prop of products right and this isn't just going to be about smartphones my guess is that they might do a you know a FuelBand type thing they might do a clip who knows but I don't think they're going to just release a bunch of smartphones I mean it's give me smartwatches what about a ring why not again it's Samsung so the other rumor with the gear is that instead of running Android it could run Tizen which initially I went yeah come on no way but then I kind of think maybe they could do that because why not well if they can optimize it better than Android for low battery and uh let themselves have a smaller battery on it yeah then not only am I like do I not care i'm kind of pro Tizen I am I think I over Tizen I'm saying it right I'm Pro tising I think that would solidify it as only compatible with samsung devices like I I mean it's already there like the the galaxy gear only works with Samsung phones but if they actually do move it over to a Tyson platform that pretty much guarantees it will never work with it with other android phones yeah what does it no I mean I must say I with everything yeah they would have to release an app that would make it talk to everything and I don't know I mean if it chooses sales maybe maybe they would write I mean the problem with anything Samsung dozen wearables is that they obviously have a large enough product and app ecosystem so that they have no interest or need to make their products compatible largely with with operating systems they can just make them compatible with specifics and products which is what they've done with the galaxy gear and I have no reason to think that these will be any different but but regarding the tysons which I mean we've been reporting for a long long time that Samsung is at risk of wresting control of Android from Google right and I think that that day as real as ever and Samsung continues to try to make Tizen happen and I'd like to flash the mean picture stop trying to make Kaizen happened it's never going to happen but so here's the day on on a SmartWatch it sort of contained you want a SmartWatch to be simple and to do what it does you want it to be like the pebble right sure so if if Tyson gives them the ability to have a smaller battery and just do things and not crash because they control the whole stack and they understand how the whole stack work so they can cut out extra croft more easily than they can an Android maybe I'm not crazy to say I don't hate Tizen but is there is their first whole journey is there any indication that Tyson is easier on battery then then Android yeah uh so we'll see I mean I mean frankly it doesn't need to be either like this all yeah it does why I mean it was the sort of wearables we're talking about they could have some really basic tailor-made software yeah they could do bacon do basic tailor-made software but I'm saying like it's got to be easier on the battery than Android sure that the galaxy gear is right now is this yeah it needs to be better than the galaxy Gear's now for battery life right and the right place yeah frankly I just think if this is correct and again there's no reason to doubt it's as I'm reading on the verge and there's this chris sigler guy who wrote it I mean spreading the galaxy gear name around to me is like a terrible idea of samsar you you've picked up a reputation which is pretty poor I mean I don't know how it is with the normal humans but at least among the people interested in technology Samsung has kind of being laughed at for the galaxy get because of its failings and because of its gimmicks and it's half day battery life and all of these shortcomings and its price um so trying to stretch that out across your wearable portfolio I just I think that's particularly sage idea like you kind of prejudicing people against whatever else you're doing which might actually be good you know like I mean I don't know that the galaxy gear is a very young device at this point it's only been six months since it launched yeah it came out there's a lot of things wrong with it and you know we panned it pretty hard in our view as many other people and many other reviewers um but it's not like it's been established for multiple years as a brand I think you know it's so it's more established as a brand than it is as a product so the fact that we've had it like in AT&T stores and invest by stores like being advertised is almost as important as it people buying it in terms of the ability of them to sell it in the future and so when they these new gears come out assuming they're better you know people oh yeah I've heard of that oh it's the new version okay maybe I'll try this one because the first one was too nerdy for me he could actually help to have it out there even though it was not very well reviewed and you know didn't have sales that lived quite up to Samsung's original expectations and I'd wager that most average consumers don't really know the gear name oh well they know galaxy very well and so they might say I want that galaxy watch just like they say they have a galaxy phone instead of an android phone um bread but I mean unless you are really in the thick of things you're probably not calling whatever SmartWatch at Samsung releases a galaxy gear it's a galaxy watcher right or a galaxy fitness tracker galaxy smart ring and so nokia will be there they've got the announcement were they byrdwhistle decks pretty loudly do they know that motor will use that name already everybody has used that name there's a HTC One X yeah moto X and now nokia X apparently there's already look at X 7 that's true that is a completely irrelevant phone what we need is a new alphabet with more cool-looking letters agree agree agree creek is yeah nokia lambda i buy that i would buy the hell yes uh so what do you guys think I mean row rubber meets the road what do you guys think about this product u Rho Rho yeah I i think i think i might have mentioned this last week but tom warren tweeted that you know if you don't care about nokia's show line up right now you're not going to care about the nokia X phone and I think that's exactly what it's going to be like that everything that has leaked and all the stuff that we've seen point to this being a very low-end device with 512 megabytes of RAM wvga display is single or low-power dual-core processor or something uh it's not going to a WVGA yeah yeah what is this 2000 just 2,000 I mean it to be honest that's a step up from Asha phones so if it's if they're going for that market and which it seems to be that's very much what they're going for this would be a step up but for you know us who might be thinking of this being the Lumia running Android it's not it's not going to be and it's not going to be better tailor interesting and something let me know how as a concept of Nokia producing an android phone very interesting as it device itself not very interesting this is this is how the announcements going to go Stephen Elop current CEO of Nokia future whatever the hell his title is going to be at Microsoft now that he's out of the CEO race there because Microsoft has a new CEO he's going to get up on stage he's gonna kind of Mark out well guys the bunch engineers made a thing whatever it is SIA do you remember it'll just amble off the state that's that's how I want this announcer oh he just walks out there's like yeah whatever here you go and the leaves you guys what I want you guys remember the Lumia 1020 event when we couldn't tell for like ten minutes whether he was really there or not yes no Sundy yeah I was live blog I'm like look at this projection of him realize city right next to me he's like that's actually him I hope he does that again oh yeah there's like this period of time where it's like is it a phantasm of Stephen Elop or is it the actual food well the thing is that is the least likely thing that Stephen Eva forever to the scenario the detail ain't it because this dude is spent the past however I was feted is made for years actually since februari 2011 you know trying to paint a pretty picture or an upbeat picture about a company that has been struggling so mightily but to bring us to the device if it really is that low spec and low end is then describes it I am going to be just angry because to me it feels kind of like sabotage or like intentionally ruining the dream right to me it feels like when you had a century ago when you had the race between electric cars and oil powered cars you no longer the century ago somebody would produce an electric car and just do a really terrible job of it and say this is why we shouldn't have electric cars alright so to me this is what the nokia X would be if it's really okay if he's really terrible specs and it runs like garbage it's gonna be like look if look at when Android it would have looked like this and you would have hated it was anything that would I i think i think the dream you're referring to is the lumia android phone and that dream just doesn't exist like that's not a real thing exactly like nokia would never produce that microsoft would never let nokia produce that and never let it sell a lumia android phone and long saida lumia windows phone and have them compete head-to-head I mean that's just kind of like not never gonna happen might as well get that out of your ideas now I mean it's not today's really you know I'm talking about something that we wanted to see previously you know quite a long while ago so the apartment the problem that I have or the thing that this nokia android phone reveals is a interesting failure of Microsoft to build software because the whole point of this phone is to target the low end and to make the phones cheap and haven't run on low spec hardware and you know sell gazillions of them across the globe for next to nothing Microsoft should have tried to do that they did try to do that with with Windows Phone and they that was one of the point was the 78 update where they tried to trim the fat yeah and push it down into work on the low end yeah i mean if if nokia microsoft score hardware partner on a track to getting acquired by them doesn't believe that microsoft can push windows phone down quickly enough in order to work on those lower end phones you know it's either microsoft made a strategic decision that they would try and make Windows Phone more high-end and they wouldn't bother trying to reduce the software down to there again or they tried and failed a nokia said you know what we're doing well considering that some of Microsoft's biggest wins with Windows Phone have been in emerging markets my belief is that this project started as an exploration by Nokia to as a plan B if if the Windows Phone deal fail right and uh it you know parts of that project continued on to this very day and we're ending up with an usher replacement I so I you know I I think that this has been a constantly shifting exploration for a very long time inside the company but I don't think it started as Nokia saying well we need something that can push lower than Windows Phone can that needs to succeed Asha I don't think that that's how that my gut is that that's not how that that conversation started we all know nokia is not very good at canning projects once it started yeah Vic to the engineers that work on a project will work on that until there's a product on the market and then they'll give up or until I or until they suddenly find themselves working at a company called yawa 12 all right so let's talk about the Nokia Lumia icon the new phone that's out on verizon which is the successor to the this is the 925 I believe that right sounds right or is it 2899 28 and then the there it is the horrible ugly version of the 925 which is the beautiful amazing well-designed feels great in the hand feel solid feels like it's like of this age or slightly ahead of its age phone and nokia can make great phones but as David Pierce said in his review instead of making a great phone they made this can someone explain to me why it's like an inch thick first that why it looks like the battery has bulged like exploded it all either the camera button actually shakes and why the the plastic back came off of its clips go yeah this is the worst no it's what's the worst about it is we know that no keep can do better right and there's good can you pull your laptop screen down it's like you're just hiding it right yeah the cameras far away but like the worst hand model it's pretty bad what I'm doing and discussions is he likely they tried I guess you could say they tried to keep the industrial design of their last phone but it was not good well to me to me what this reeks of is verizon medley exactly no this this has verizon written all over it literally multiple times yeah and you know it's it's a shame but they essentially oh my god you know the the phone is hovering mysteriously in front of the camera so you can see those you want is going on there's this floating hand I think that's actually my hand I'd like my right hand to rise and saw nokia maybe thank you everybody evan rodgers our steam producer I think Nokia saw our verizon saw nokia released a 925 with this beautiful metal band and this gap design and stuff like that and they're like we've got the 928 can you put a metal band on that and and make it a new phone and throw some more logos on it yeah I take away some features like everything if the phone looked good and wasn't so heavy and brookie no you stop right there don't continue that sentence any further no you would not buy it no one would buy it it doesn't matter if it looks good that's Windows Phones problem right now that could be the best looking phone in the universe and you know how many people would buy it three I wasn't gonna end with by I was gonna end with good phone but okay yeah the data that they know you're like if it wasn't this phone it would be a good father I just wanted to say earlier run which respected nokia and microsoft dragon witness phone down I just wanted to agree with Chris because it was maybe not this so maybe the previous summer where one of Nokia's developer Chiefs was saying Microsoft isn't being quick enough dragon windows phone down into the price but we're disappointed that was a quote from him by the pace which Microsoft is doing this I absolutely think the Android the experiment let's call it has been an ongoing investigation exploration like crystal saying it isn't something that just got sprung up in the past few months and as then we'll say you know this invested that much time the company and its phone division is going away they might as well put something out there I'm market I mean I think what solidifies that is the fact that you know you can buy Nokia Lumia 520 unlocked in the US for like sixty nine dollars yeah like that is a low-end Windows Phone and it's you know it runs like every other Windows Phone pretty much you know the camera might not be is good and it might not be as quite as fast in screen is right wvga but that's a $69 unlocked smartphone that's about as low end as smartphones are today and you know another point I just wanted to make in terms of Vermillion or red phones I have a red 720 Lumia 720 which I don't use because windows phone but that is one of the most beautiful phones ever like is it I was thinking about the red nexus and I remember the red diamond 720 and to me that is so much nicer and it just shows nokia like dt were saying nokia is no problems with design it only screws it up when verizon tells it to right and that's a disappointing thing you know because that said its way with a nice camera battery life and android you know forget about it i'm gonna be interested in phones for a couple of years if i had one of those well nokia is hurtling pell-mell to its purchased by microsoft which is moving along just fine and uh you know Saachi nadella is gonna fix everything sounds good of course of course i can't believe how thick this phone is it's outrageous like this was acceptable in like two thousand eight so uh before the show started I had pulled this out of a drawer it's it's a nokia trios I mean a palm treo 650 from 2006 I believe diener can correct me if I'm wrong I I don't know and uh it is really headphones then it's probably thicker than my headphones yes uh but you know it's not that much thicker than the icon ahaha come on so I mean if you're on verizon and you want Windows Phone then it's your only choice go to town and and you'll wake up you'll suffer through the brick eNOS of it but you know apps are way better and windows phone and the screen i think is fine the camera is totally passable you know it's the solid nokia camera that does all the most most yeah all will say all the nokia tracks all the ones it's not like the 1020 map it says it's the same cameras of 15-20 as far as I yeah which is and of course it feels fast because windows one always does so you know just have fun carrying this around sorry just don't pocket if you're gonna go for like a massive cook you know crazy nokia phone just go for the Lumia 1520 at least that thing is amazing too bad you cake without icing throw yeah if you're on verizon this is your only choice yeah yeah I forgot about your caps illest ways and okay sorry deal with it yeah um okay so HTC is not expected to launch their next phone at mobile world congress but they have announced when they will announce their next phone which is with a save the date thing for march 25th yay yeah this is almost exactly one month off to samsung's galaxy s alright that's it so it's a while after this is always a chess match between those two like at well i don't know that it is but like i can only assume that it is like I think it more of a chess match for HTC I think yeah Samsung does it stay in HGC right who's right the most disappointing thing is that this save the date invitation doesn't have anything any hints that we can like try and parse out it's just the date uh no it's on the twenty-fifth okay two and A five so yes it does two cameras I'm like and a 5-inch screen and maybe you know uh it's going to be called to HTC one two and and because it's in March marching is like walking which means it'll have like some fitness features in it dude half life 3 confirmed right there wait how much do confirmed dan what was what was that thing you you tweeted this morning about I pretty much just said it March 25 25 to two cameras five inches no no no you had something about like a new movie or something oh it was it was a half life 3 yes yes that's what I was reciting it quoted them but you know what this thing is gonna support PlayStation mobile I I mean Saudi and support at least possible because HTC already do that's what I'm saying look you guys told me with this I had too bad to have something that's fair better but guys you know it's cool here they can call it I mean the rumor the Bloomberg report from January which actually pinpoint to the launch will march and I think that Bloomberg report is basically as factual we've had and it mentions the Geo sensor camera that said there's basically record the AC one again what I'm thinking is good literally we called the one again cuz that would be amazing please tell you what again bhiwani acabo again see I would actually like if you ever if be the chair ever has a yellow moment I would love to see that happen you know just again but what they can do is they can call it the HTC One squared right I'll put the dude now in superscript after the 10 because 1 squared is 1 Justin like yo that's really ah journalists all the time I like it glad you convinced me that's a really good idea yeah yeah you see or what about our names what by a subscript 2 yeah what is that dice mathematically not give them the ideas because I'm gonna have to write about this phone no one crying I don't want to have to put oh yeah right and prescription subscripts into every article that I wrote about oh wait then you will have to you have to because all of a sudden now there's a trend happening because Samsung's Galaxy s5 teaser had everything to the power of five and it's very possible that Samsung's branding is going to be galaxy s5 is a superscript on top of the S which like how the hell do you write that in an article you just write us five but at the same time lgb pre-announced one of its embassy launches which that's gonna do the l-series that mid-range android not a series of handsets and it's called the L Series free where the three is in Roman numerals as a superscript of the series assistive roman numeral with amazing yeah Annie will me just kill me now but guys other than 10 words in these own names like we've moved ahead we're approaching the point where there's going to start pulling an artist formerly known as Prince we're like it's it's a completely unpronounceable if yeah yeah that's where we're going we already had that we had to smile the smile that's great you guys won so yeah it was in the US only I think yeah they made it samsung smiley is literally the smiley emoticon it was the name of the phone so the other thing disappointed out of here I'm sorry guys the disappoint up I do feel like we need to give LG and Samsung a bit of a break because they don't use the Latin alphabet the way that we do right so when they decide to get let's call it creative with your placement of you know Roman numerals in whatever to them I guess it's just more artistry with the language which we are uncomfortable with with it but then they're more flexible with because it's forward to I go back to my earlier point that we should start using Greek letters yeah I'm you know what you can't use alpha and beta because that denotes things about the quality of the product but from there on man I would buy the hell of a samsung gamma yeah think about it exhale everything and do it seems like a lot of dude the LG Delta come on I like hey I like it um I look like nice free lambdas oh my god why never makes it was my free of them that's that's that's that is a great joke if you guys have nacho kudos to you nerds um yeah the Greek alphabet is that there's going to be a bunch of masters could be like no no that's being used for something else we already using that for yeah yeah butBut trademark law doesn't apply to mathematics as far as I know maybe does maybe you can trade market a digit trademark laws all like screw you math nerds yeah the other thing that HTC they just announced this thing called advantage which is us only for six months after you buy an HTC One if you crack your screen they'll replace it they'll they'll even do like send them unto you ahead of time and and and you send you a broken one back for rice brio with the fee is they're committing to using google drive to get free storage I think it's max get 50 gigs the other guys get 25 gag and the third part of this is they're promising pinky swear pinky swear that they're going to update Android for at least two years on these models autoplay HTC mamas I mean how many times have we heard that excuse me regret just regarding the the capacity promotion yet as a the cloud storage this is interesting timing because HTC's promotion with Dropbox with the I believe is the 1x there was it the one is the 1 X 1 X is just now expiring from there's a two-year deal where you got 25 gig if you buy 2 1 X so those people are going to start losing that storage now they're moving to Google Drive yeah the screen replacement thing is clever yeah it is i mean it's a nice like free like add on the six months number is a little like kind of random yeah but still it's a really good because it you know every single day in my life i'm walking on the street I see somebody holding a broken iphone with the broken screen yeah so people are breaking their phones left and right this is a good a good way to like kind of encourage people move over to HTC HTC needs to get creative right like they're not getting the market share that they need so I think we're gonna start to see more and more of these kind of creative solutions to the problem yeah but I mean honestly do you think that this is going to sell a single more extra phone it might only because uh broken displays are such a huge prop don't know this is a global problem or if it's just Americans who can't hold their phones but literally every day I see smartphones on the street with broken yeah displays and it's a major problem you can cut your hand up these things so there might be people who say you know what I dropped my phone all the time I'm now going to get HTC because in this promotion I mean it could happen cannot be a I just wonder what ever you casio commando man okay i planned every where you're going with no good you know i was wrong yeah the g'zone the jizz one okay um no I wanted to take the opposite position where the guy said that this offers clever and seda is completely analytic though right because it creates a moral hazard like I'm gonna buy your brand new phone I'm gonna use it for five months in 29 days and then just gonna whoops drop it no it doesn't run you yeah it no it doesn't work that way in practice because you get all you get in return is a refurbished one that is no better or worse than the one that you had before right and you're out a phone for a couple days so you're just an inconvenience in yourself okay fair enough fair enough but still it kind of makes you breakfast you you said you'd have a six month insurance for any weird damage that you do I mean unless you drown I don't know it's no different than the insurances that carriers have sold for years except that you get a free for six months I mean that's like you can buy you could pay verizon or whoever eight dollars a month for the same type of insurance and you know they'll replace your phone if you drop it and break it you probably have to pay a fifty or hundred dollar volt ductable um right but they're just offering this for free for six months exactly because it's free people are more reckless with it there's more of a moral hazard even if you only spend like eight dollars when your verizon insurance you still kind of feel like you spent mine so i don't know i mean look to me I think that's a good gesture positive gesture if you're gonna try and get people to use your device's this is really a useful bit of security you know hardware security and you know people invest money people who don't review phones every day actually spend money on them so I appreciate that I'm just say that every time we see companies do this kind of forgiving thing the end result has tended to be the company really just hemorrhages a ton of money because people you know exploit it I don't think that many people are would explain it to be honestly I think that's a fringe case and there will be those people that do that sure but the vast majority people aren't going to bother with that I mean I'm hopeful does the case I would be happy for everybody does this you know give you six months of security that you won't you won't just you know loser your money down the drain when you crack your screen should I care about the LG pro LG G pro 2 at all it's up to a 5.9 inch display now it's a little bit thinner it has a cool like metal mesh back but it's just I have a really hard time going oh yeah I can't wait for this to come to the u.s. something 55.9 inches is like ever I've actually unfortunately handled or reviewed a number of 5.9 inch phones already and it's just like it's at this size where it is nobody can manage this size and not call it unwieldy well I mean so if you're going to have a phone that big like Samsung handles are really well with a note that's just unapologetically like a little kind of mini tablet and they put a stylist in it and they like customized software that the software customizations that LG seems to be offering is an option to literally shrink the display size down so that half the screens on you so you can reach stuff with one finger seriously yeah yeah yeahs note nobody sees that and thinks maybe we should try making smaller devices sometime nope I i think these devices are made for a very specific market and that market demands bigger screens okay well i don't think they're made for western markets at all mg for a little bit i have heard a rumor and I can't for the life of me remember where of a g2 mini and the you know what I sizes are going to be there going to be enough I think LG itself said that that they will be announcing a g2 mini at Mobile World Congress well then exciting because if it's like the experience everyone compact rather than you know the Samsung gal this crap minis uh that is something that exciting except it'll be running LG software which is like abysmal which we can fix n I'm writing about the answer too bad software come on oh it always is it always is good because there's good people of it could do this stuff for free I quote them angels you know what I would like I would like for Android to not require you to have to root your phone in order to do this kind of customization or just you know I would really like for manufacturers not to release crap software that needs to be exile you know what I can deal with it guys I'm feeling much more a bit impulsive about this then you go because Android is still pretty kick-ass like the things that we can do to phone nowadays are crazy yo just compared to a few years ago and we are actually moving fast we're looking at the nitty-gritty detail and as usual kind of lose track of how much things have advanced but you can do a ton of things with Android and you know we having to flash the entire rom I mean isn't that kind of nuts I'm trying to cram in West reference here guys because you'd have to do this on webos it you could just patch stuff directly well you still needed to break out a command line though no you didn't really you do not all right you had to do up down left right left right yeah you type in the konami code or the launch date and then there was a app for mac and pc that you just load on the on board software preware and then you would just browsed you know the galleries the repositories kastoria one of which I built that's the thing with technology and this is this is a rare example I'm gonna hear the nikon DF right oh it's it instead of my face yeah every time I pick up a nikon DSLR particular the professional ones I have to go to remind myself how to get it to use all of its focus points so this thing is 39 focus points it only uses the center one by default so I need to find the setting what I can tweak them I'm running around the menu I can't find it anywhere i'm looking around the google and finally i find it and here's how you do it you have to get at you have this little switch it between also a manual focus you have to press the button there and then use the toggle here to switch between focusing modes which is like there is no way too into it that there is no way to guess that to me is exactly like economical either you know whether you don't write or you read like the instinct menu so a lot of technology has these yeah cuz routing a routing an android phone installer custom rom is way easier now I'm not saying it's easy what I'm saying is a lot of technology has these really weird hurdles that we have to overcome but at the same time would I use a nikon pro DSLR so I feel like the t4 or the DF of course no I'm just saying these are things i do it that's why i don't like using icons because they're such a pain to use I feel like I feel like that whole uh sidebar Vlad was really just an excuse to brag they haven't yet you know what and I respect that what I'm saying is that this is friction in our interaction and relationship with technology and absolutely we need to get over it we need to move beyond it but the important thing is that these things are adding good things to our lives like as far as I'm concerned android is far and away the best operating system that i can have on a phone i get iOS i'm just broken up when I was until somebody fixes a ton of things with it and when this phone hasn't grown up so Android is so much stronger than everything else and LG just does really good hardware and that that would have to wake thing screw you guys I love it so if energy does another really nice phone makes it smaller and keep those fangs I will deal with the you know it's better than you double tap to wake flat is when you pull your home in your pocket and it's already awake like with the motorola okay yeah the Moto X has good things come on me so the last thing I want to talk about today is this catfight between the CEO of t-mobile John ledger and well I don't know it's a really John ledger it's now not really it's just t-mobile and they brand promotion get a new phone if you have a black these 10 blackberry users because they're obvious targets to upgrade their phone and the blackberry community got very unhappy about this and it escalated to the point where the new CEO of blackberry John Chen has written an open letter to tmobile wherein he like thanks his customers for tweeting angry things at their CEO and I can assure you that we are outraged to what puzzles me more is a tmobile did not speak with us before or after they launched this clearly inappropriate and ill-conceived marketing because she has nothing better to do like I don't understand this like he's a CEO of a company that's like in a tailspin don't you have like more important things to do then like worry about this promotion this like limited time promotion that t-mobile tried to sell it its own customers a phone and it doesn't sell any blackberry phones so it can't offer them blue blackberry phones like I mean wait t-mobile doesn't sell any blackberry only blackberry phones that you can buy on t mobile's website right now or refurbished models interesting I it's just such a weird move like finally to t-mobile I would like to remind you that our long-standing partnership was once productive and profitable for both blackberry and t-mobile I hope that we can find a way forward that allows us to serve our shared customers once again notwithstanding the current challenge we remain very excited about BlackBerry's future like you know what would help is okay t-mobile needs to sell the punana 982 yeah and then yeah everything will be good to go hey you uh blackberry curve 8300 blackberry what does their low-end curve was like a 9320 or something like that uh we think this would be a really great phone for you it's twenty-five hundred dollars the new panada with my guard with our with our t mobile flexpay program it's only seventy nine dollars a month I predict if I ever win the lottery if I ever get you know some random person to invest in my mobile starter if I ever get to make a phone it will be called upon uh no no no or something one you get to the power of two did you guys realize that blackberry still sells seven blackberry seven models yes it sells more blackberry seven models in it sells blackberry 10 every quarter from mark oh god it's so sad so it's the like every quarter that it releases self smartphone sales figures it sells three times as many BlackBerry seven models as it does for blackberry time can you still give this d30 from what is a verizon so yeah I mean why isn't blackberry mad at Verizon Verizon won't even stock the z30 in its storage can only order it on yeah the the thing that John Chen CEO blackberry needs to do is grit his teeth take his lumps and move on and not let his in Slyke the insane people that are mad at t-mobile about a little promotion have him writing an open letter to another company like this like this is you get on the phone you called tmobile ago dude seriously dude yeah t-mobile goes yes sorry my bad and then it's over right but instead it escalated other they're opening with a major US carrier and it's just very last person Kuras like glass newport ever and it's like still has even under a new CEO it's the same company i'm just saying the last CEO on the planet that you want to start a public fight with his John ledger that's true like he is not going to take this quietly and it's going to be kind of amazing I just the fact that John Chen is stretching the definition of current challenge to its absolute limits the challenge we've been facing since 2008 yeah I mean look just it just kind of try and play devil's advocate and present his perspective maybe from BlackBerry's point of view it feels like has a very low community of followers and users and by putting out this open letter it's giving them a collective voice it shows that is on their side etc etc and maybe he considers that part of user engagement yeah that's fair and that works for those people but it's not a good look I mean we'll never know the answer to this but I would wager that more people bought new iPhones based on this from then there were a number of people that complained about it publicly ouch ouch yeah but right but that's not it's not a good look for blackberry no it's not that's that's kind of my point yeah might draw attention that's why even acknowledge it as black right mo because advertising costs money dan and this is cheaper why why did ever know a blackberry version why not never knows people to say notes and yes my vision is already of the blackberry hub yeah I might have him is HTC's two-year promise for Android updates if HTC is you know at the sort of desperation point where we all kind of think that it is and we're struggling so mightily I think it might as well make these folk promises because within two years either the company was trading this out and it will be able to support devices or it won't and it would have failed anyway so I kind of feel like libraries in the same position it's like you can just talk trash you can do whatever you want because ultimately to fade above these companies HCM blackberry seems like it's going to be resolved over the next year or so yeah I think I'll sustain the weather they've been going for much longer than that no blackberry is gonna be in a very similar position but with less cash in a year from now than it is today I don't think that blackberry is gonna fold that quickly writing they like their I mean their sales are going to continue to decline but like they're gonna be chasing after the new strategy and they're just going to keep chugging along and they fill up a ton of cash right there like two billion or so yeah they're bleeding through it very quickly though and like every quarter they're bleeding through a lot of that I I mean I think it's gonna be very dire in a year for them but I don't think that like I don't think the cliff is around the corner I don't think it's like next month right it does feel like they need to I didn't mean to turn this new blackberry podcast but it does feel like they need to do something a little more drastic than what they're doing right now which is just re doubling down on concrete phones like oh hello it's the right thing to do I mean I'd like to see him do some more drastic but I mean we need to we need to lower our expectations of blackberry that's that's the thing that like by going back to qwerty phones and talking about enterprise so much there's they're basically saying hey guys don't expect us to be so awesome any more like we're gonna be this size combative method for company delivery I think that and that's like that's a message they had to deliver and I also think it's a true message like we you shouldn't be disappointed by blackberry anymore because you shouldn't be expecting so much from that right if I guess maybe we're going to retrench to the enterprise the way to doubt it yeah they're kind of quietly pulled out of the consumer market after it failed which was very disappointment to me because and this is an opinion that Neil I shares with me downs hardware designs on their windows phone and Android phones what the venue venue pro really nice actually now the show some progress yes yeah the story of blackberry is the story of the coach who stops yelling like when Coach yells at you you feel really bad and then pulls you aside of snow he yells because he cares but what's when he stops yelling that means he's written you off like it's time to stop yelling at blackberry and just let them do their thing yeah well that's all well and good but that doesn't translate into profit right like I mean just because we can all agree the blackberry should be awesome there might be awesome doesn t they can survive that's that's the next trick is how you you know there were a lot of very drastic ideas over the past 18 months from spinning off various divisions like BBM and and you know that they're they're secure back-end and all this and none of that panned out of course now they're still one company Kennex I think orc UNIX every was pronounced if you were to take that as a separate unit I think it's still profitable on its own yes but that I mean add the bling down the rest of the curve that the rest to come anyways down in UNIX oh yeah who knows them they need other playbook is what Thank You Man just ultra burn right listen and they need to realize every two hours over ah yes yes they do they need to bring back here's what the need to do just is okay men's wearhouse needs to bring back a George Zimmer uh and and and blackberry needs to bring back lettuce to a bottle round on stage and talk about amateur hour being over and then you can pull out a new playbook that's that's the key to my great success I've solved all all gems problems on this podcast that ladies and gentlemen is a virtue if you want other sterling genius pieces of advice like that you can follow Chris on Twitter he's Z power if you want less sterling piece of advice you can follow the rest was too i am back lon dan is TC seifert with an e I Vlad is vlad savov we are all at verge you can leave a comment on the post in which this podcast peers you can also hop into our forum so you can shoot a sea mail all kind of stuff next week what World Congress who knows if you'll see us it's it's maybe it's mystery but it will be fun so keep an eye for live coverage live blogs live video all kinds of stuff until then thanks for watching GM