Gadgetory

welcome to top shelf my name is David Pierce and this week we're talking about Google so Google's biggest announcement is coming up through Motorola in the Moto X later this week but a lot happened last week two from motorola and verizon and google itself so before we get too far in let's take a look back at what happened last week we figured this week was going to be the big one for google it's getting ready to launch the Moto X which appears to be the first motorola phone made with lots of Google's input but last week may have been even more significant it started on Tuesday an event where no one really even talked about google it was motorola and verizon launching three new droids the droid ultra of Max and Minnie are relatively normal droids but they came with some hints of what Google's up to and what's coming the new droids are always listening to you always ready for your commands just say ok Google now to wake up your phone and ask it a question they have always on displays to showing you notifications or the time without you ever needing its power button the horribly named droid zap definitely won't be a standard Android feature at least not with that name but it's a neat way to share photos of people around you the three phones each have a reason for existence one has long battery life one is super thin one is just the right size could Google and Motorola be working to make the Moto X all three in one phone we'll find out soon enough one thing we know for sure is that whatever comes next will run Android 4.3 google announced the new version of its OS still called jelly bean at an event on wednesday android 4.3 comes with a few new under the hood features but also shows what the Android team is clearly focused on games and tablets there are more multiplayer games more ways to track your achievements and scores lots of new tablet apps in their own section of the Play Store and a new tablet to play the model the Nexus 7 was Google's first great hardware play a year ago and it announced a new 229 dollar version this year as well but that wasn't even lose most interesting hardware that designation goes to the chromecast a little dongle that sticks into the side of your TV and brings YouTube Netflix in your browser from almost any device to your television it's like airplay except it's $35 to buy and the details are still really fuzzy it's actually maybe more like the Nexus Q except it's hopefully not terrible so a few things are clearer Google is clearly focusing on games it's focusing on tablets and its really really focusing on your TV and it's not google plus that's the spine of everything it's chrome chrome unites all your devices and Google is hoping to unite even more chromecast but there's still a lot left for Google to do and a lot left for us to find out like whether or not chromecast is any good or why on earth the droid ultra and Droid Maxx both need to exist and are there even any surprises left for the Moto X will find out okay so big week lots to talk about so here to talk about all of it and more with me nilay patel managing editor of the verge and some call him the david duchovny of Technology I want to believe that's fine we're just gonna risky keep right on going ah let's talk about motorola let's start with them so they were like they preempted all this google stuff at like you were there with me it's like let's do some deep section alisis of this event is the weirdest event ever truly it was more like a like a wedding or a Bar Mitzvah than a film launch it kind of was there's like round tables the guy got up there like six minutes he was like cell phones and that was that uh I don't know I honestly cannot tell you why some of these new droids exist when the Moto X is coming out yeah because some of the the overlaps are enormous I think the droid maxx i understand why that exists that's like two full days of battery life yeah like your mark and there are some serious compromises to get there right i mean it's a very mid-range phone right it has a dual core processor has a 720p display but two days battery life so get it and that the max would i think was a very popular product for motorola and verizon um but the droid mini i don't i don't know the droid ultra phone I feel like everyone somebody wants that phone but nobody wants that but that put them the new Moto X especially the same size so like I don't there's a lot of like how are you gonna sell these phones how they're gonna be different and and they've even like shifted the droid brand right because it used to be like d android brand and now Dave Dave so used to be defined in flagship verizon and to their credit it worked right i mean it was until Samsung decided to throw money at galaxy marketing that that was the Andhra all over the place literally all of them I mean they're they're one of the biggest advertising / sensors on the base advertised in the world not you know one brand in one carrier in one country can't compete with that global scale so like it makes sense but I think it's interesting to verizon motorola have refocused it not to compete with the four knots right with one in some ways not even compete with the iphone 5 even the specs are kind of the same but to be much more mid-range right even the price points are the same for the same time it has some of the I don't I feel like some of the coolest Android features i saw this week we're not from google they were at this event so i don't know if that's motorola or if it's verizon that can't be Verizon Verizon can't put decent software there's not I will you know but at this it's like this relationship between motorola and google increasingly confused they don't talk to each other I mean I've talked to people at Google I'm like do you know what's going on motorola I don't know anybody look I know you literally just they don't know each other so what happening so as motorola advancing android with you know there's the droid zap which is the worst named thing ever but there's also know your foe that sits there and we'll show you notifications interrupts turn it on yeah and you can talk to it and say okay Google now right I mean that stuff is cool where's that coming from I think that's coming from Motorola I think that's them trying to desperately trying to find ways to differentiate their friends from Samsung and HTC and LG and sony and whoever else and it's funny because what they've bet on is what we've been asking phone manufacturers to bet on which is leave android alone like add in where it makes sense and build great hardware and now i don't know if Motorola's real great hardware the more i think about these phones the more particularly the ultra at the glossy back it's yeah it's pretty it's pretty boring the oat the max god these things are terrible the max is a thing altra the fact that the max is better than the ultra he has no sense to me no no um and the here's the best phone and the mini exists and like they all have the same spec so if they're all 720p they're all dual-core processors motorola made this big deal out of how they have a new 8x computing platform and then just like told some wise and there's no there's really no getting around it they just like told some lies about it um I mean it's basically an off-the-shelf processor that it's an office or and a processor and every frame pretend is a thing and so I think they're pure on played this game where they want to be really high end they can't be on and I and I have this other phone this other flagship phone which we've been talking about for a year yeah and then they come out and they're like here's all these other phones that you that are probably hablas on five because this other ones coming out as huh and yeah so the event they said it will be like why are you doing all this and the answer was it will be very clear at the moto accident what the plan is like why the Moto X is exists but yet they're doing it you know they're owned by Google and yet they're doing it on a now outdated version of Android chance for to Jack well you know what is it it is it listen sits off for three this is this is for three years I do what I do cuz you love Bluetooth smart I do so alright so that's what we'll get to this but this is the nexus 7 I've had it I reviewed it I completely think I'm crazy I think you're crazy we'll get to this let's let's check out the review real quick fine this is David at the verge and this is Google's new Nexus 7 last year Google's first Nexus 7 immediately became the best android tablet on the market but in the last 12 months it's become plotting Lee slow and buggy and just outdated so Google's back with another this time for 229 dollars bringing the device way up to date it starts with the hardware made by a sous the new Nexus 7 has a 7.0 2 inch 1920 x 1200 IPS display that is way better than the last model or even something like the iPad Mini it has fantastic viewing angles and gorgeous color reproduction and it's just insanely sharp at 323 pixels per inch it's good enough that you can even read tiny text I could actually read a book through the screenshots in the play store and everything from movies to books is just more pleasant to look at the screen gets incredibly bright and absolutely destroys the battery when it's turned all the way up but its overall one of the best tablet displays I've ever seen maybe be best even while improving the screen Google managed to make the nexus 7 a little bit thinner and a lot lighter it's a little taller now and it feels a lot taller the bezels on the sides are thinner than last year's model but the top and bottom bezels are still big and fat it makes the device feel kind of asymmetrical which the office in our camera lens on the front doesn't help either but the Nexus 7 is even more comfortable and usable in one hand than ever it's still soft touch and comfortable but it feels much more grown up somehow I could see James Bond using this nexus 7 Google and a suits also added stereo speakers which are great no matter how you hold the new Nexus 7 you get genuine stereo sound that's pretty loud and pretty clear there's a new 5 megapixel rear camera as well but it's not very good or very interesting for 229 dollars you can only expect so much but Google did make bigger promises this time the new Nexus 7 runs on a faster processor and a GPU that google says is more than four times as powerful there's double the RAM now too which is a big upgrade and it's fast other than the fact that Google has somehow not figured out how to animate scrolling properly there are basically zero performance issues with this nexus 7 games look great even intensive ones and the operating system flows smoothly part of that is definitely due to the fact that the nexus 7 runs Android 4.3 it's still called jelly bean but it does bring a few new things to the table restricted profiles basically just gives you parental controls for the tablet you can pick and choose which apps certain users can access it's a future lots of tablets have had though it's just now baked into the OS one genuinely cool new feature is play games which is essentially a not hideous game center or xbox live for Android it tracks your achievements and high scores shows you what your friends are playing and so on Google's talking a lot about tablet apps and how many of them look good and work well on the Nexus 7 there are definitely signs of life for the Android ecosystem here apps like Flipboard and Evernote and pocket work great on a 7-inch device and Netflix can now play in gorgeous 1080p but there's still plenty of examples like Rdio which is just a blown up phone app and looks pretty bad particularly for game players to there are just many more great apps on iOS than on Android but for most things androids caught up and on a 7-inch device even the blown up phone apps don't look quite so terrible the new Nexus 7 is far more powerful than the old there's no question about that but I'm still a little nervous in our benchmark tests it's raw numbers are much better but relative to the competition they're about the same as the nexus 7 was a year ago I was hoping for insane crazy power so this tablet would be able to hang around for years but that may not be the case I guess we might just be stuck paying 229 dollars a year forever which does make the more expensive models like the 32 gig model for 269 dollars or 32 gigs plus LTE for three hundred and forty nine dollars a much shorter cell battery life is another thing that was odd about the old Nexus 7 at least the 1i bought it was great for a couple of months and then basically fell off a cliff for now the new model easily last through a full day of pretty heavy use even with some gaming and movie watching and it burns almost no battery on standby which was not true of the Nexus 7 i bought a year ago I'm hoping that holds up so yes I'm still a little worried about the future but in some sense such as the price of progress and the Nexus 7 has such good build quality such a gorgeous screen and finally such a good selection of tablet apps that for as long as the processor can hang around this is going to be one of the best android tablets on the market Apple may well come out with an iPad Mini with Retina display and it may well continue to have a big ecosystem advantage especially for gamers but if you want to tablet the great for reading watching movies browsing the web and checking your email the new Nexus 7 for all of two hundred and twenty nine dollars is pretty much unbeatable okay so I like this tablet a lot and you don't or you think I you don't like as much as I do on the inside this is what I did it look like the david dakota new technology right there right there look look I think it's a great piece of hardware I think Google is built a great piece of hardware i think the screen is spectacular yeah i think present something to me this more of as i was putting up the reviews i can't believe a su speed Apple to a 7 inch Retina tablet right is true and it's like you know if Diana disagree on the software but the screen is great I think the bezels are stupid just ridiculously stupid and I you know I have a real issue with on-screen buttons I've decided I've decided like yeah I think that wasting actual display space for buttons is not useful so you'd rather the buttons be down at the bottom right yeah I'd rather have that at the news fours content and I hate the fact that androids on-screen home button is under the spacebar but then every time claims about how the buttons are like capacitive and not on the screen that's like the pure Android way yeah that's just made up like those people are crazy okay is Android a good tablet OS and I say yes and you disagree I why do you discreet I think it's a good tablet OS if your your tablet is this big because then it's a phone OS that's kind of big that's the thing is this is this big but it's so this is a giant phone it's like it's like they can't build a tablet they can build a pretty big phone and then like kind of get there and they can like half step their way to that and I just think all of these apps are like big phone apps I actually think the browser chrome on Android like it's really close to being the best browser ever but it's not there it makes a lot of mistakes it doesn't rent it certainly better than safari it's sometimes pilot it I disagree well support mean I suppose router Safari on iOS is still leaps and bounds hood it just doesn't do very much but it does it's right now chrome does all the cool stuff right they does all the sinking it's like all the stuff that it does but as a browser in terms like being fast and running page as well a dad and that's like I mean those are those are big deals and so like I think on a phone android is great and I there I keep saying over and over again the only things that lock me into having an item I found it I Tone Loc me into having an iphone a full-time our airplane I message right and the apps are like they're good enough on android phones where I'm not like constantly waiting right right but I mean you just I suppose it's just a big phone but this is just a big phones I think why do I got I just have great because the goal of establishing me to be your primary computing device not just like here's a bigger screen believe they just fit but that's like that d adds the aspirational goal of a tablet so like you i think so i think that's the aspirational goal of motion ipad i don't think they even the iPad Mini is trying to be your primary computing device I think a lot of people would would tell you that the ipad but it could be because it runs all the same applications and that's incredibly powerful i think if you are all right oh the people ask me what they what tablet they should buy are really asking me like what should my main computer be when I let go home and like do computer stuff like I think nerds have a lot of answers a question wrong yeah well it depends on you're talking to but the people were asking me like I think about my friends and family who have iPads most of full-size iPads yeah and they do not use other computers in their home they just don't they like have laptops they don't like using them but sit have Windows PCs and like using them but I knew just arguing against 7-inch tablets in general or no I mean I understanding the ipad mini can like serve that role for a lot of just because it has the same because as st. absence of powerful and the ecosystem is built out and it's the ipad ecosystem not i OS the ipad ecosystem is building towards this can be a computer right now I think everyone and I think where the Android ecosystem is building towards the best we can do is a pretty big phone if you're any other android phone manufacturer and you don't have like a PC line or something that you want to go already shrinking you have to stay the hell away from this because it's going to eat away your phones and I think that's like the truth about android tablets wait I mean business decisions aside it's a really good device like I don't care no it's whether they're absolutely that's a really nice screen I still don't know what your lock pattern is it has a really nice screen uh definitely gonna just erase his phone I got you I just call it a phone look it has a really nice screen and that's it that's it it's it's really thin and the most expensive one is what 32 gigs has LTE yeah and it's three and its twenty dollars more than the cheapest ipad mini and I think that is incredibly that's yeah I think it's in credit like that's all great but I think too it's a mistake to say that that Android is competitive on tablets when tablets spans a range of a bigger screen that i watch netflix on to I'm gonna replace my computer with this and a mini can configure ethically do both i bought i ran out last year about a nexus 7 yeah that last year yeah it was last year Jesus time time flies uh which is now a piece by the way it's a piece of junk yeah and I never really said I mean the only thing i like about is that the back has a like dimpled leather pattern that's nice um what do you tell people who are got burned by that experience uh that I mean ultimately that's like the price in progress an apple does really well I said this my review Apple is the one company that does really well supporting it's all products yeah and I hope that this is good enough and even if it's not it's still okay how does the criterion for watching how is it the price of progress I mean you're any phone from a year ago is crap now that's just how the world works it's sort of unfortunate but that's how it is like every day last year of your phone contract you hate your phone unless you i have an iphone like that's the rules it's all right so lets rule so the other thing they announced actually this is in a way more interesting business is the chromecast sure so you spent some time to grow i am very fond of the crown and you which is interesting cuz you said the the airplay and I message are the two things that keep you on iOS yeah and theoretically the chromecast is supposed to fix that so you reviewed that we're gonna watch that real quick and then I have questions this is the Iowa the verge and this is Google's chromecast the chromecast is a $35 hdmi dongle that lets you stream video from laptops tablets and smartphones and it works across max pcs Android and iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad the only complicated part of setting up a chromecast is getting it power and even that is pretty simple almost all tvs have a USB port that you're not using on them and the chromecast can just plug right into that if you don't have a USB port on your TV there's a small power adapter in the box all in all it's a tiny little bit more cable other than you might expect but it's also one of the simplest setups out there the only thing left to do once you've plugged in the chromecast is either open the Android app or the setup page and chrome on your PC give the dongle a name and configure the Wi-Fi connection which takes just a couple minutes you'll also be prompted to install the google cast extension in chrome on your Mac or PC the first time through but I get the feeling that we'll all be built in a chrome very very soon once you've got everything set up which took me just five or ten minutes using the chromecast is ridiculously simple supported apps and services will display a little icon when they see the chromecast on your network and when you hit it it'll tell the chromecast to connect to that service and stream the video using chromecast and apps like Netflix and YouTube is almost perfect since the chromecast is streaming video directly from the web and not your phone the video looks great and you can switch to other apps and tabs on your phone or pc and keep working while the video is playing there are some glitches I found it pretty easy to confuse the netflix app on my iphone and occasionally you find yourself sort of lost while the video is playing without any obvious way to control it since you've closed at a verse which taps it's not the end of the world but Google would be smart to build some basic controls into that Android chromecast app and released a similar iOS app the other problem is that right now the list of apps and services that support chromecast is pretty short it's Netflix YouTube and Google play music and TV on Android that's it compared to something like Apple TV and airplay that's a pretty sparse list google has a long way to go and convince and content companies to support chromecast directly although I imagine Google's working pretty hard on that and I imagine those content companies are pretty interested in supporting chromecast since it's at this point the only viable competitor to airplay but you don't have to wait for Google really you can also just stream any tab from the chrome browser on Mac PC or the Chromebook pixel that means you can stream pretty much anything to a chromecast I tried the Verge's home page vimeo Spotify Rdio ESPN whatever I wanted really clicking full screen on a flash video makes that player full screen on your PC and on the TV the only things that didn't work we're video players that rely on quicktime which is built by apple dragging a video into chrome from the desktop that played using quicktime sent video but not sound streaming video from a tab isn't perfect though there are some clear stutters the scrolling lags way behind your finger and the audience especially in bad connections but it works which is important and google says the feature is only in beta so I'm really hoping it'll get better and that's pretty much it the chromecast does what it says it's going to do and it does it really well it's the first device that's made it easy and desirable to put a web browser on your TV and while there are definitely some glitches in places where Google needs to fill in the gaps it's pretty good for thirty-five dollars in fact it's probably one of the best impulse purchases you'll make this year so chromecast is kind of airplay minus a few things is that a fair summation okay it doesn't do audio only yet it it local file streaming is a little like interesting ya hear rumors that Plex is super interested in doing stuff yes there should be super cool I mean look it's $35 I think people are gonna buy them they're selling out so fast I to cancel their own netflix promotion yeah I got him you got nailed it yeah it was like the last person to get it hi I don't know if I but I look I just think like they're gonna be a lot of them out in the world and people are going to interesting things with it and right now at this moment it actually works which is for Google and a 1 point 0 product service that's pretty impressive for so all right so prove it so we have a bunch of devices here and a chromecast yo it's I mean it's basically as simple as like just pushing a button right so he has the same as airplay so we have this with the nexus 7 review which is nine-point-oh hundred percent correct what a smart guy whoever wrote that genius really um so we can do that and it starts playing and then there's literally just a button and it just does it and it's just appears right this is that so what what you've done is you've told the chromecast you haven't sent anything from here you just told the chromecast to go get that YouTube so the chromecast is essentially it's Chrome it's just running a browser it's running it's running YouTube now ok yeah so that's cool so if you stop that the in here's where it gets a little wonky is I've noticed that chromecast gets confused a lot this is remarkable by the way is that it works across so works across that's the thing about forms and I think you're gonna see a real like API war between Google and Apple because I think apples gonna really want on his google talked about theirs are they gonna open it up and get yeah i mean that's me necklace i've been wanting likes an iOS right now um and it works like there's a chromecast it's like a really spill its instant queue going on over here yeah Curious George my niece and nephews with my netflix account so let's let's do I know here's a rest about it so I'm just going to press a player s development on my phone here and it's going to be slow because arrested villains that's fine so I just push the button in the corner and there it is and there's our chromecast it's just playing YouTube I've never actually tried to do this before chromecast is called verge cast by the way which I'm a bit yeah and I just switched over so she's not jacked mine completely yeah just app so that's interesting I'm gonna make your life hell Pierce let me suss it out its loading netflix straight from the web and the phone my iOS device is turned into a controller and it's going to take a minute I've noticed netflix takes a minute longer than you so then theoretically should i be able to control netflix on there with yes if you open netflix well no because that's a different count right okay but if we have the same account we have the same on this device and would pull it from there okay so now this is playing out still me Jaime and I can just like hit pause it'll take a second this is gonna start and Paul like a lot of a lot of a lot of wars yeah actually positive just gonna have notice of stuff up there goes and then you know I can just just threw some you can I breaking bad place oh let's watch an eye out so like this is all very cool and really what's happening is the chromecast is doing most of the work right it's going out to the web it's getting the contents requesting it I'm basically what it's doing is it's running chrome and Netflix at this point like it has apps baked into it and it's well it has your chrome right okay so it's like it's doing acrobatics right yeah without the browser chrome and the dried stuff what it is missing is the other soft hair play can do where it's you've got an mp3 of your house you just like stream it to the rent that stuff isn't there yet now it can do google play stuff but that's still hitting the web in a way and it can stream tabs from your computer which is still in beta and we this can it's buggy like we say trying to get this computer to work we'll just we'll just cast it yeah that goes and we'll see so now it's plenty Netflix it's I think that my options are cast this tab stop cast yeah something should have that it went black that's either good or bad oh look at weren't Sammy worked right so is you know it's like there's a little bit of like hours behind but it works and so like you for thirty-five dollars for all of that to just have just worked yeah kind of on the first go and for us to like monkey with it as much as we do yeah I think a lot of people are gonna buy the comcast I think just to be able to do this to be like hey I have this picture on my thing I want everybody to see it and just pop it on your team is pretty cool I'm so look as an airplay competitor I think it has has a way to go so where they have to yet what do they have to do they've got to get there they've got a cuz that what kind of wins cuz it's all Apple right so I'm just so if you're building an iOS app you're going to put in the app store and fit this place video does audio people may wear that was airplay right so the demand isn't adding airplanes as I understand basically it's baked into iOS right if you're a Mac Developer you know in Mavericks there's gonna be a lot more airplay support so I apples like using this they've known for a long time and they've been pushing people towards airplay since they watched it which actually airplay started with just itunes and the airport express and like well like years before the iphone came out so like it's understood it's there Google's in that position right they've put out a thing they've got a dongle that works and they've got to convince all their developers across Android and you know pretty much every web app that touches chrome to start supporting it and that's the fight they have if they can if they can get there that's like really powerful stuff yeah and if they can get you know Samsung and LG and pioneer and whoever else and Sony to build chromecast directly into TVs which they were talking about doing that is like that's something else I don't think you google something that problem I think Google's all those companies make android phones anyway it makes the android phone better like it sneaker system at work so I I think comcast is home potential I think for $35 I think I there you can buy three of them for the price of what happens right well I just hope this makes Samsung and everybody else stop trying to make smart TVs like no outside it won't put it or at least you know put less emphasis on it because what this does is all of the things that I need my smart TV to do or at least this is sort of where it's headed if they get you know they need more content that's the big thing they need I'm Amazon and Hulu and whatever else but once they get that it's just I'd rather use these as the remote and then just pop it on the TV like that's what we've wanted forever right I think I think what we've learned is that you need to keep the processor in the UI as far away from the TV as possible and just send stuff the TV and like I'm sitting here with my phone watching TV all the time anyway I don't have a problem using my TV as a remote oh so that is the one thing you can with the ground fast you can definitely end up in a weird world where it's doing stuff and you have no idea how to make it stop yeah like you said it a video and you hit close and like what the hell boy do you and like it's there you can do you just have to click on the right icon do it but it's not intuitive and there's no direct control of it and I think that that's like a problem for them to just figure out how to solve like a chromecast app on your phone that just like here's what the hell I'm doing you can tell it to stop like I think that would be really useful all right Neal I thank you so much I my chromecast is coming I'm excited it's gonna be great probably good all right that's our show thank you so much for watching we will be back next Monday and we'll see you that Oh