Gadgetory

ah welcome to top shelf i'm your host david pierce and this is our weekly show where we bring you the best brightest craziest and pixel dentist of the consumer electronics industry coming up we'll take a deep look at sony the company is trying to reclaim its position as a premium consumer electronics brand across a number of different categories but is it working we'll have verbs managing editor nilay patel and polygon managing editor Justin McElroy on hand to argue this week's episode is brought to you by virgin mobile but before we go any further let's talk about Mobile World Congress last week phone makers and carriers descended upon Barcelona for the world's largest mobile conference mwc was in its largest than you ever this year but it was surprisingly more subdued there's actually been a lot of mobile news recently but most of it came from outside of Spain HTC and Samsung did their own thing for their big announcements and Microsoft and Google pretty much avoided the conference and tyrus here's what we did learn while Nokia didn't announced a tablet like we'd hoped CEO Stephen Elop told us quite confidently that it can compete with Microsoft Surface Nokia did expand its Lumia lineup with two nice mid-range devices the 520 and 720 and now after more than 10 Lumia launches it's really up to Microsoft to make Windows Phone more appealing we also got a chance to see a few of the first Firefox OS devices which will come to market in the next few months they're both they're not very good but these phones are going to be really inexpensive Mozilla's targeting the low-end smartphone market as well as developing countries and that's something carriers seem to enthusiastically support all over the mwc show floor phones are getting bigger and they're converging in this odd middle ground between phone and tablet Chinese companies like huawei and ZTE are leading the charge and they're using these phablets to stake their claim on the global market so yeah it was a pretty slow conference but we did see the walking cane at the future which was a thing and that's awesome but slow show or not we love Mobile World Congress because part of the allure is just Barcelona itself our own dan seifert took along the wild new sony cyber-shot rx100 trip around the city to capture Barcelona in all its glorious detail check it out and we'll be back with Nilay Patel with cameras that are always trade-offs the best images require bulky DSLRs while the most compact point shoots are lacking in both image quality and control that is until now enter Sony's rx1 the rx1 is an unassuming camera that's roughly the same size as Sony's NEX line of interchangeable lens cameras it has a full frame image sensor something that's usually reserved for those super high-end DSLRs both friend sensors offer much better image quality shooting with the rx1 almost feels like cheating low-light bad light no light all of those things that are difficult to manage with most cameras just disappear when you're shooting with the rx1 it's also littered with control dials including three control rings on the lens it's a system that requires some setup but once you're set with it it works really well the rx1 isn't without its limits though the sheer compact size of it means it doesn't have the ability to change lenses and it doesn't even have a zoom function but the carl zeiss lens nearly makes up for those limitations the lens is incredibly sharp edge to edge even when open to its maximum aperture and it doesn't have any vignette e in the corners or problems with chromatic aberration images are contrasting it vibrant and the lenses manual aperture ring clicks along with a satisfying feel the manual focus ring is well damped and precise which is good because autofocus kind of sucks and the battery life is pretty disappointing as well and then there's the price the rx1 is nearly three thousand dollars and you'd be a fool not to buy it with the electronic viewfinder for another four hundred and fifty dollars it's definitely more of a luxury camera the arcs one isn't perfect it's not for the faint-hearted or the beginner but if you do have deep pockets and a love for photography the rx1 is the one to beat so Sony's actually been doing really interesting things in cameras for a couple of years now and they're doing innovative and cool things that really no one else in that space is and actually think that's the case across a lot of product lines for sony but here to disagree violently with me is our managing editor nilay patel well though so you're wrong I think okay all right I'm to talk I'm gotta go no so I think Sony is in this interesting place where there they kind of get it now it seems like with with Hardware especially so the Xperia tablet Z to me it's like the best example of this where I had a meeting with them a few weeks ago where they showed off the tablet and we're talking me about it and I asked what the price was cuz nobody ever leaves with the price which i think is sort of hilarious unless it's like eight dollars and then it like here it is is that it's eight dollars yeah see you later shut up um but so I asked and they're like it's four hundred ninety nine dollars and I laughed I was like that I think you were like shut up basically and and he was like why are you laughing uh and I said no one other than Apple has ever sold a tablet for four hundred ninety nine dollars and pulled it off yeah and he showed it to me and it was like he was like it's Finn our screen is gorgeous we have all this cool technology behind it we have an IR blaster and I like we can fill game over everywhere mean ir blaster yeah there there's five cent parts in 1973 no but he's right in the tablet they made the point over and over he was like whee sony used to be a company that made premium products for a premium price and they're like unabashedly back towards that that's fine but I think Sony's problem is it's not that they're doing a new thing for sony right that they have the same problem they always have which is they make tremendous hardware great beautiful some of the best engineered best design best-looking hardware in the market and their software still crap and it's it's they haven't solved look here's a CLE a from like 2003 this thing is beautiful and I reser I wanted one it has a jog dial and as a high resolution screen in a 66 megahertz processor it has a memory at 64 moneyweb memory card that looks like a stick of gum like only Sony pulls off this right but it ran palm OS and I was a failure and when the world moves on from palm West only had nowhere to go and it's kind of that case right now with the tablet see right should have android they've skinned it it's an okay skin they've got a bunch of weird apps that aren't very good right um but I don't know where they're gonna go with it i don't know that people are clamoring for sony software and our world is completely dominated by software right but but my thing is i think i don't know that i totally agree with that anymore i mean it is but in a sense that we've i think people are willing for the first time in a long time to pay real money for really good products and we've seen it with you know the windows laptops are getting more and more expensive and people are still buying them and like there just aren't or any crappy laptops anymore i think i think people I think Sony makes really beautiful hardware and i think that the mark of a good product is hardware plus software plus like integration with services I think that's why Apple's products are successful for example I think windows products are successful because the vast majority of them are cheap and they're getting more expensive and i don't think that like the Ultrabook revolution is like taking the world by storm and i think all the weird windows 8 stuff is just weird and I don't think that any of its gonna book your sonís weird Windows 8 what's this one called this is the vaio duo 11 this is the vaio duo 11 which is great it's a weird tablet not a good name it's 16 by 9 which is a bad form factor for tablet and it does this to turn into a laptop and this is great this is like a classic Sony thing that it does only Sony builds something that does this as beautifully as this doesn't right and then it does it and you're like oh this is useless right I don't want this instead of a trackpad it's got this weird optimal thing of the space bar and these buttons run by my place so it's like great Sony did a great job executing this idea in the world of hardware products only Sony does this in any way that is beautiful like this one is right but this isn't I don't think that this is what people are clamoring for and I think they're they're putting the overwhelming power of their Hardware might behind these kinds of designs but they're not they still haven't learned how to build software right so well at SOI agree i think Sony's not Apple yet right but I think they're I mean yeah I don't think anybody's arguing that but i think that the big first step is we have to have things that people want to buy sure and and I really do believe that people want I mean you're seeing with everything from tablets to smartphones to laptops two TVs like people want pretty things and will pay for pretty things like Samsung has those tvs with no bezels No features they just don't have bezels and they're selling like crazy and they're insanely expensive so people will pay for fit and finish in design and good I think that that put look sony makes I'm I completely agree with you I think Sony makes some of the best hardware mark and it has to be room in the market for more the damn stuff and I think that now that like Android is a commodity right everybody else runs android right and windows phone is still relegated and blackberry still relegated to third player um great so you want an android phone you want the best one are you looking to Sony are you looking to Samsung and I think most people are still looking to Samsung because they're everywhere they're out there they're producing these phones are marketing these phones and they're still there nautic thing that the galaxy s3 is like not expensive anymore it's been subsidized to nothing right the s4 i started expensive to go down sis first for sony to stay way at the top end of this market they have to offer something else and they could write they could say we've got the best image sensor right as we make really great cameras they could say we have playstation which they don't say like they have this idea that they're gonna be one sony right then saying it over and over and over yeah and they're not there so what i think is really interesting is the tablet z is like kind of unrelated from the Xperia Z phone and it why like they're right there one's just kind of a bigger rare even their name the same thing right but one comes out of Sony Electronics one comes out of sense mobile and I have no idea why and it's the same for the computers its name from the tvs that I think the IR blaster in the tablet it's really good example right it's why is that there so it can talk to televisions right why can't sony tvs in the tablet talk to each other better than that but like in in that case wouldn't you rather i feel like i would rather have something as opposed to what apple has which is super tight integration but only if you buy it's stuff like I I like this idea that sony says hey you might own an LG TV and I don't think Sony likes that idea at all well no they think they hate that idea but but I'm not it'sit's they have to be realistic about it where Apple is just like oh if you don't own all of our devices sucks for you good luck but you that's what that's their goal I mean like right fundamentally the reason Sony can make all the great harder in the world but until they learn for all of their like warring divisions to talk to each other and for every sony phone to be a playstation phone they're never going to get anywhere because that's the thing that's the like the network affected buying all of their stuff that makes a company successful so you you actually interviewed Phil Molineux Sony's I think he's coo yeah Sony Electronics Tony okay um but so you interviewed him about some of their new products and they brought out in this event all of their products and all their competitors products and they're like here's why we're better right in and was was any part of that story like we have a better system because we're Sony and we make all this stuff and that's great so here's our is really interesting about that event they had the tablet there a tablet see which is beautiful now like it's thinner than the ipad mini it is really gorgeous hardware it is and everybody should let in yeah you know if you're gonna buy an android tablet maybe you should buy that one yeah um but the only that was the only product they didn't have the comparison so like they had their TV and LG's TV will they a tape over the LG logo in case in case you liked it better me but like we don't wait to know it is and it but then they had their tablet and they did not have the ipad right and i thought that was very very telling why why didn't dan the ipad i mean like their whole just because larrison doesn't hold up right why not though I mean if they're if they're doing just a pure hardware comparison in that case like their thing from the beginning was like it's thin and it is thinner and it's lighter and you can hold it in one hand and like I would think they'd want to show that especially if you only get yeah but I think as soon as you click on that App Store icon I think bad things happen for android tablets and this is their problem they don't have ownership over the core part of what they do which is they make it the tablet is a computer right and they don't have ownership over how good that computer and inherently will be because the tablet apps on Android aren't there and that's like it's just Sony's problem they've run into a wall because it can't solve their software problem but like ultimately what was interesting to me about interviewing fill that day and seeing Sony on that day was that they did not talk about the ps4 which is I think arguably the most important product that they have it's the key to this like big ecosystem network effect where you get the ps4 and all of the promises that they've made about it or true then you will want to buy more sony products because it is the the center of that experience we should get into the ps4 but to do so we've brought Justin McElroy polygons managing editor to talk to us he has probably more violent disagreements with both me and Nia life that's possible so Justin what do you think is Sony it's only gonna win this console race this time it's a little early to make those kinds of calls we don't even know what uh Microsoft is is working with if indeed they release any console at all there's been no news that would be great if Microsoft is like now what we're out this was fun we quit yeah man ps4 mystery but we can't compete with that listen we got zune we got Bing a lot of profit centers we are cool we're golden it's over and we're games for us yeah but so what did you think about this this Sony event and they really did kind of build a ps4 as not only a gaming platform but like the center of this whole universe and ecosystem that Sony is really trying to build I don't know it doesn't seem like a broad-reaching strategy for me to try to make it the set I I mean have we not gotten past that point I mean are we not past that white whale of like the the interconnected set-top box that does everything and yeah I don't I don't think I think people want more for lack of a better term fiddle eNOS that provides you know I think people are always gonna have their own devices and they're not going to want a walled garden where there's features or they're missing out on because they're not using a certain Sony device so um I think it's gonna be hard for it to be too uh valuable to have that sort of integration without excluding people who are missing out but it's the market for just a pure game device there I mean aren't they gonna get crushed by the ipad in like kids like parents buying their kids at 329 dollar I've had many instead of a four-hundred-dollar ps4 I'm not sure that the metaphor is necessarily there for a an iPad versus a gaming console like I I think that um it's the same metaphorical leap as like why would you want an ipad when you already have an iphone i mean it that's the Gulf we're talking about um i don't think so i think the leap I think the metaphor is money what are you gonna spend your three hundred dollars on and I think for a lot of parents are gonna say well i think has games the games for that thing cost three dollars but the iphone has games and they're still selling I think that's crushing the console market too i think that i think that's a tidal wave of problems for sony right i think that people still want to play a game with a controller in a box that is that you put disk into a think that metaphor is not going away I can absolutely see I mean like I think the future the in-game I think for video games is a phone in your pocket that connects to a controller that rests on your living room the phone pushes video to your TV or your you know your your receiver or what have you the controller communicates with the phone in your pocket like I I think that's the DEP that's the future as far as I'm concerned I don't think we get there this generation I think we've got at least one more console generation in the way that we've come to think of it and for me as someone who puts video games above other forms of of tech just because my you know my career at my what we saw for the ps4 event was super encouraging from that front I mean to your point about software they didn't hit the box very hard it wasn't a presentation about technical specifications the person you had doing the thrust the presentation with mark Cerny who's like a video game guy I mean dude made marble madness you know crash bandicoot he's worked on basically every major Sony gaming franchise for like you know 20 years so to me the message that I got is that there they note that they're putting that first they're putting software first at least that was the message i got from cerny being the lead architect and the sort of spokesperson they're pushing their but so but that sounds like the ps4 will be this like silo game experience I mean this is the other part of my argument is it Sony is and integrating its stuff together so you know sony has a music service that like may or may not like show up on the ps4 right they are gonna they have a bunch of tablets and computers so like may or may not work with the ps4 why wouldn't they want why would they want to build a siloed experience for games when they keep saying they're gonna integrate across the entire company what's the I mean I guess I don't see what the value of that of like what it what it what is the busy experience that that is not there I guess is I don't understand like the ps4 and really the xbox 360 also for Microsoft are kind of the gateway drug into these ecosystems right so in the same way that like the ipod touch is what gets you into apple I feel like Sony kind of like you said they have the music service they have they'll sell me video stills like they should be able to move all my stuff around and let me use all of my things on my various devices and Microsoft is being smart with SmartGlass and stuff like that there try and well right there they seem to get it I don't know if they're taking all of the steps they need to but they seem to get it but it seems to me that Justin I kind of think you're right in the sense that Sony the games were going to be what sell the ps4 but I think Sony could make the ps4 what sells its other devices the ps4 to be what sells Sony right right and I but and so what well actually what I'm very cute more fierce ask us Austin is do you think the games are there to sell the ps4 I mean I wants that event I didn't see a bunch of like awesome games I saw a lot of explosions I saw a lot of ideas about games that I've seen before and I can find myself wondering like is am I gonna buy this because the explosions are better or am I gonna buy this because it has new kinds of interesting games I want to pray so I guess if I had a problem it was the fact that like I didn't see a lot of you know experiences that I wasn't that I'm not currently getting on my current console so yeah I mean absolutely if they had a failing it was like I didn't see that um that moment that was like I have to own the system I mean obviously I will have but but you know what it's also going to be harder this generation I think maybe even harder than any other generation before because in the when you go from ps2 to ps3 or xbox Xbox 360 you're really making this leap in the high definition and like you it is not going to be that sort of jump like they're not going to be able to do that graphically um so it's not going to have the impact impact there um I'm really hopeful for e3 I'm hopeful that we're gonna see some really interesting like gaming experiences that you can't get anywhere else because I mean I agree with you the number of sequels was like really upsetting I mean there are these big studios that like I I would love to see what else they could do sucker punch for example yeah rather than like another infamous game okay I mean I'm sure that'll be that'll be really good but I'm you know I you kind of think of a new consoles like the place where these developers get to stretch their legs you know and not make another Killzone game boy you know was another what was funny about that event was they kept on saying things like and we're proud to announce that kill zone 25 will come to the PlayStation I was like where else is it gonna go like is hey we're bringing it to the Genesis what are you why are you so proud of yourself I forget who said it but someone said that um Killzone fans are so our Sony's a analogy for the Canadian girlfriend no no you guys you good if she was here she's really gorgeous okay I think you saw so to show exactly enough they enough to get people talking enough of these features that are almost gonna be accepted in the next generation like obviously they that we have to have these features and they're going to look like innovators when microsoft also has these features i mean they're gonna look like oh yeah we've also got a you know like a safe state or streaming or whatever and it'll look like it's gonna get the opportunity to look like they came up with it so Justin do you think have we seen enough to be excited are you excited about what Sony's up to do you think they're moving in the right direction or are we still in kind of wait-and-see mode until you three absolute at listen if I had if I had seen um the same sort of arrogance I saw on display when the ps3 launched I would you know I would be sizing up for coffin but I I think that what you saw at this event was someone who is knows they have markets here to reclaim that that has someone out front like mark Cerny that communicates like hey we care about games we want your business you know we want to draw people in Sony right now looks like it for the video game perspective looks like a company that that has it is is ready for a fight and like I don't know I don't know or that where that leaves Microsoft and a fight and if I got a terrible fight yeah they will have a fight I mean Sonny look like a company that's saying the right things that understands the message that they needed to send to reconnect with people that hopefully has learned from the sort of like almost um you know bullheaded nature the ps3 that is sort of pushes forward and expects users to deal with the multiple weaknesses that that system had five six seven years ago and continues to have to this very day alright Justin McElroy thank you very much we really appreciate it an exquisite pleasure having me thank you so much oh that's such a pleasure to be here the pleasure there was pleasure all around so it's enough so I tend to do you take notes for your nose yeah so I tend to agree kind of with what Justin just said which is that Sony gets the right things and this is kind of what I got from the tablet Z and the whole conversation I had with them which is that like they get it they get what they need to do they get where they need to go um but i'm i'm curious what you think like I agree that Android is kind of their biggest problem like android and windows are standing in their way because at some point both of those things are kind of commodity software yeah and most people are just gonna be like well they both runs windows let me just get the cheap thing that runs windows yeah so how does how does sony solve this problem you know anything it's funny cuz that they've been trying to solve it in televisions for years and failing right in televisions are even more of a commodity then phones or tablets or laptops right you just buy when you put your hey walks into it and Samsung's eating their lunch and I think that the problem for starting right now is that Samsung is dominating the phone landscape aside from apple and they need to find a way to get back in that game and I think the Z is a really good product and that in that line of things and I think the tablet ease are really good tablet but I think they need to find a way to tell people that beyond hardware beyond just having this in your hand and being prettier than other things it will be more useful and more integrated in your life and that's always like you know you know how Sony saves everything saves the world dying twins the electronics industry and our hearts forever how's that IR blasters I think you're fired I think that's fair you're fired anyway that's our show thank you so much for watching we'll be here next week and every week talking about more cool stuff thanks for watching tennille hype sale for being here thanks to dan seifert and Justin McElroy I'm David Pierce and catch us next week and every week you