 Greetings, mobile accomplishers. Welcome to the Verge Mobile Show. This is episode number 72, and we've put it together with string and duct tape, wire, gum, a couple of safety pins. I'm Dieter Bohm. Hi, I'm Vlad Sevov. I'm Dan Seifert. And I'm Chris Ziegler. And as you can see, the three of us are here together in a beautiful room in New York. Vlad is not. But that's okay. It's actually all a beautiful illusion. I am not here. I'm in Chicago. I'm being holographically projected into the room. Which you can do, because there's internet in Chicago. It's true. Yeah. We do have internet there. We invented it there, in fact. Amiratek. Yeah, so we're only a couple minutes late, which I'm really proud of, given how much effort went into making this happen, but you know, welcome. And I have no other banter to speak of. Well, we're coming to you from a secret, I don't know if I'd call it like a bomb shelter or what, but let's just say that this is a room inside of our office that is not known. I mean, if you tell them it's a secret room, it's really no longer a secret. No, but they still don't know where it is. Like if you walked into our office, you would not be able to find this room. Let's just put it that way. This is true. And I don't know that we're going to get out. It's true. We're going to die in here. Another thing that's strange about this room is that there are literally Xbox Ones and PS4s piled. They're just like scattered side to side. Apparently Polygon used this room quite extensively for their reviews and testing. Yes. And after what we've done to it, they are never going to be able to use it. So, actually, we've got news, big mobile news just today, just a couple hours before the mobile show started. We've got new Google Play edition devices. We've got a white Nexus 7. We've got a white Google Play edition LG tablet. What's it called? The G Pad. G Pad. G Pad 8.3. And the G Pad, it's just like kind of a big ugly Nexus. I don't know what it is. No. I actually have the non-Google edition G Pad back at my desk. It's sleek, it's metal, it's kind of like, it's not as nice of a build quality as you get an iPad Mini, but it's a lot nicer than a Nexus 7. It kind of sits in between. And it's got an 8.3 inch screen, so it's a little bit bigger than the Nexus 7. It's fairly lightweight, I guess. But the biggest problem with the G Pad was the fact that it ran LG's god awful software. So the fact that they are coming out with a Google edition is kind of exciting if you ask me. And the price isn't bad. I think it's $350. I wish there was an option for LTE though. They had an LTE model for like $50 more. I'd be like way excited about that. So the question is why would you buy this over a Nexus 7? Yeah, well that's the problem. Because for the same price you can get an LTE Nexus 7. And I think honestly, not having used the Google Play edition G Pad, I think that you're better off spending the $350 on the LTE Nexus 7. So I'm on board with you, but if I'm going to get an LTE Nexus 7, I want a Verizon LTE Nexus 7. And god knows when that thing is actually going to be released, if ever. Okay, no, no, no. This is completely unacceptable. You guys are complaining? If you have seen my… It's the Verge Mobile Show. Listen, Vlad. There's going to be a whole lot more complaining coming over the next hour or whatever. I spent a half an hour mock complaining about VSCO Cam. That's true. We enjoyed doing it. That's true. I just feel like I'm just looking at my calendar now and it is actually December. I went into my local mall recently, which is a terrifying experience for me. And I saw the Christmas-y stuff and I was like, oh god, they've brought out early again. And then I realized, well actually it's December. I should stop complaining. It's kind of acceptable by this point for them to bring out Christmas trees and stuff. But to the point about US people complaining about any of these Google Play Edition devices, just don't stop. Because if you look at my Twitter feed, it is so depressing because everybody is like not available in your country. This Google Play Edition device is not available in your country. So all of us European folks, UK folks, maybe it will get to us eventually, but the Google Play Edition Geopatics 1.3, nope. So any of the Google Play Editions available in the UK? Previous ones I believe so, but the brand new announcements, I went and checked and it's just not available in your country, which just annoys a lot of people because these are global brands, global news, global announcements. Everybody gets psyched up. Everybody is like, hey it's Christmas, I'll go and buy myself something or whatever. It's a new year for the atheists out there who want to celebrate some sort of novelty or excuse to buy themselves a new thing. Yeah, the festivus. And then it's just not available. I was talking to Dieter about this this morning. There's this huge and really frustrating and annoying arbitrage opportunity for Nexus 5s. And I think this was true for Nexus 4s before, where you buy them for $3.50 on the Google Play store in the US and then you sell them for $500 anywhere else. And it's just like a free $150. And I'm assuming that a large percentage of that gap comes from moving the devices to other markets like the UK. I mean there are international tax and customs duties that people are supposed to pay for. Not the way I do it, Wayne. So there's also a second Google Play edition device, the Xperia Z Ultra. Which is, if you don't recall, it's got a 6.4 inch screen. Not big enough for me. I like a bigger phone. Honestly I don't know what a Google Play edition of the Z Ultra brings to the table. That doesn't have Sony skin, plus you get the worst camera interface ever. I'm trying to wage Evan. So Evan Rogers, our producer, is the biggest Sony phone fanboy on the planet. And I'm trying to gauge his attraction to the Z1 Ultra GP. I think Evan is on my side here. Because you know, these crossover phablet devices, the one thing that redeems them is that they have software customized for their size. At least, especially in the case of the Note 3, there's software that takes advantage of the bigger screen, it's got the stylus input, etc. And when you strip all of that away and have a Google Play edition, you just have stock Android on a bigger screen. And it doesn't run tablet apps, it still runs phone apps. So it's just big, ganky phone apps. It's not like having a Nexus 7 or a G Pad or whatever. So I just don't exactly know what this brings to the table. What it brings to the table is, you know, if you don't want an S4 and you don't want the camera on the HTC One and you don't want the camera on the Nexus 5, which we're going to talk about at length, you can get Google Play pure Android experience with a really good camera. No, the camera on the Ultra is terrible. Really? Yeah, it is a crappy 8 megapixel one. It's not like the Z1 which is the... What it brings to the table then is clearing out stock from Sony's warehouses, I guess. And you can actually draw with a real pencil on the Z Ultra. It's not available in the UK, Vlad, it's a Z Ultra. Wait a second, wait, rewind. You can draw on it with a real graphite pencil? Yes. Yeah. What does that mean? Why would you do that? Well I mean it's what you have in your pocket. Boom, instant stylus. But won't you just end up... I'm confused. Won't you draw physically on the device if you do that? Probably. Vlad is so bitter that these aren't coming to the UK. And everything is a one word answer. The point is you can do it, man. The device will register it. That was one of the things that Sony did. They didn't give you a good stylus, they didn't give you a stylus silo or anything like that in the device, but they made it really compatible with anything you want to poke at it. I bet if you apply fire to the Z1 Ultra it'll get hot. Wow, deep insights. The more you know from Chris' Z-Power segments. So there's this white Nexus 7 too. Yes, which is awesome. Who cares? I mean I don't care. No, because look at the white Nexus 5 is a POS. Exactly. The plastic on the regular Nexus 7 is fine. No one has given me a thorough and proper explanation for why the white Nexus 5 is a POS. If I had a white Nexus 5 here. Hold it. I've been using it for a day. Bring it up here. It's not a POS until you compare it to the black one. That's when it's like, oh wait, the black is so much better. This plastic, it's just glossy. It's very badly textured. It looks great. The rails on the sides are glossy and flat. It looks exactly like the One X. The white One X, which was great. The black got dirty. The black is the awesome. That's what I was going to say with the white Nexus 7. Plus it has the zit for the speaker. Yes, the zit. I am going to get you. Your phone has acne is what I'm saying. For Christmas I'm getting you both white Nexus 7s and white Nexus 5s. Okay. It could do worse. It is not a zit. That actually, the little earpiece, speakerphone thing happening to white Nexus 5 is really quite handy because it's quite a symmetrical device. The so-called zit actually tells you where the top is. I actually like that. I'm flipping my phone around. It makes me feel like a ninja. I would do that. The black one looks so much better. You could still do that. I mean, I've been using the white and I've been happy with it. Obviously a bad idea for me would be to go and check out the black one and then feel like I'm losing out. I don't think many people are missing out. That my friends is an awesome transition to the Nexus 5 camera which we absolutely need to talk about because I just managed to sideload the update today, 204.4.1. It's 441 and then 442 followed hard upon. Now it's 442. I've actually got the update waiting on my Nexus 5. I got to say the fact that we're on 442 on Android means that until they bring us 443, I'm going to have Jerry was a race car driver in my head nonstop. It's a fine automobile. Because the line is… Well, you know, if it's anything like between 441 to 442, you'll enjoy it for like four days and then 443 will be up. And there is no car called a 443. I have no opinion on the Nexus 5 camera. Really? I think it's great. Okay, I think the update is great. I think that it's still… I think a lot of people are debating between a Moto X and a Nexus 5. I think that we're still… Easy. That we're still in a world where we do not have a Nexus with a great camera. It's better. They fixed the shutter lag problem which was the biggest problem. They've fixed mostly the problem where it was just completely inconsistent and bonkers in dim light. So anything other than ideal conditions, you just had no idea what it was going to do and it would take forever to find focus and snap the picture. So in terms of like straight usability and getting a shot, like radically improved. In terms of like actual picture quality, it's, you know, I don't know. I honestly think it's kind of a wash. It's not that much better. But I prefer the Nexus 5 screen and the overall like feel of the device to the Moto X enough that I am with our updated review. Go check out that I… This is the Android phone that I recommend to people who are looking for Android phones. You cannot beat the feel of the Moto X. Yeah, I'm going to have… I'm doing it right to the point here. I disagree. I think the Moto X has a better feel in the hand. I think the software that Motorola has actually put on top of Android is genuinely useful. Yeah, no, you're right. And I think for the vast majority of the consumers who do not buy $350 unlocked phones from a website powered by Google, that they walk into a carrier store and they buy the phone on contract when it's time for their upgrade, I think the Moto X is a better choice. And you can get whatever color you want. Dan's got it. The more time I spent with the Moto X, the cheaper it feels to me. That's because… It just feels kind of plasticky. You are a trite man. Hang on, back up. How much did your shoes cost? These were dirt cheap. These were like $40. Oh, okay. But Chris did have some gold shoes in his shopping cart there. I did. I almost bought gold Cole Hans. But I just want to say about the Nexus 5 camera, I fully agree that it's overall greatly improved from when it launched. It launches faster which is huge. But I found a lot of times it would just miss focus and then go ahead and take a picture with, even after the update, in good lighting I would be trying to take a picture of something that's sitting still and it would like focus, focus, focus, miss focus, take the picture and it's just a blurry mess. And like I've never had another smartphone camera do that as often and like just make me be like I don't know if this is going to be in focus or not, better take 15 shots. Isn't it funny that both the Moto X and the Nexus 5, which are the consensus best Android phones on the market right now, have required like urgent camera updates? I think it's, I mean I don't know if this is the same with the, I don't think I could say this for the Motorola but it feels like with the Nexus 5 that it's just like an example of a beta product that Google pushed to market. And they're like we know this isn't great, we know this is broken and I mean if any of them tested the Nexus 5 as it launched, they would realize how bad the camera experience was and they were hinging so much on this is great for taking photos, this is great for capturing images. It was like a really big pitch of the Nexus 5. And then the Nexus 5 takes really bad photos and then they hurry out a software update that corrects at least 50% of them. It's like well why didn't they wait two weeks and launch it with the better software? Dan, I have to disagree with you. They did test this because if you recall the very first leaked pictures of the Nexus 5 were on the Google campus of people holding the phone up on a big basis taking pictures of the Google statutes. But like the fact that they tested it, I mean unless they're just incompetent testers, these issues would have come up pretty quickly when testing and they still pushed it to market. Right, but I also feel like… And then you're just like you buy it and then you're waiting for them to fix it. I also feel like these particular camera decisions fluctuate a lot and ultimately somebody makes them very near the release and that's what doesn't get tested. So they might have been testing the camera preset to a different standard, to a different shutter speed, whatever, whatever and then just changed it right near the end. That's exactly what happened. None of them are like no camera engineers at Google or they didn't talk to any camera engineers that would have been like you know what do people take pictures of with their smartphones? That's a big assumption that there are camera engineers at Google. So maybe there are but they take pictures of their pets and they take pictures of their kids and they're always running around indoors. You can't lock the shutter speed at 1.15th of a second. Any camera engineer is going to be like that's going to result in a blurry picture every single time. So this… I want to get to what Chris mentioned that the Moto X and the Nexus 5 both had like dire camera updates that had to be issued right away. I went on this rant a month ago that like everybody who works on Android phones needs to stop everything and focus on nothing but the camera for a year. Like yes, still apply. Why is nobody except for Samsung making a good truly great camera on an Android phone? You know what's better than everything we've talked about? The iPhone 5S. Right. None of this angst applies to the iPhone 5S or the iPhone 5. I will say that Sony finally did with the Z1 but it's had very limited availability. It's kind of expensive and obscure and it's a Sony which doesn't have like widespread adoption. Well in the US anyway. Yeah in the US. Right, the issue with the Z1 is also that Sony overcooks the processing. So they have a very good sensor but then they also overdo it. So their decisions aren't universally to the good. But actually to bring it back to the Nexus 5, I mean I feel the same way with Nokia had that similar issue when it launched the Lumia 920 I believe. Which was the first peer-reviewed branded device after the 808 if I'm not mistaken. And it had amazing performance in low light. But also Nokia went a bit too aggressive and slowed down the shutter speed because it had optical image stabilization and it was like we'll open up the shutter for longer, we'll take longer exposures, we'll get more light into the pictures, we'll blow everybody's minds. What happened is that you couldn't get steady focus because it was opening up for too long. And that's how I feel with the Nexus 5. I mess around with it today and what I'm seeing is a heck of a lot of noise. Much more so than before the update. So it seems like Google has cranked up the ISO a bit. But I'm also seeing a ton of the out of focus photos whether it be because of motion or because of the camera fading to focus just being fixed and actually focusing okay. Like Dan says, I don't think it's been fixed altogether but what used to be a disaster doesn't stink anymore. So I wonder if testing camera and doing last minute tweaks, the people that you need to actually test and use the camera and verify that it is good and what you should be releasing to a mass consumer market are the people that know the least about how to describe what's wrong with the camera. The people that actually know how to use a camera are the people that like maybe are unconsciously adjusting for the camera's limitations and so they're like oh yeah, this is what this camera is and I know how to take pictures. They can send it to me and I'll tell them. I'll try to take a picture of my toddler and she runs around the room and it fails and I'll be like this doesn't work. Smartphones are the most popular cameras in the world. People take more pictures with smartphones than any other device ever and you know, they take pictures of family and pets and things that move around and it's like in bad lighting or you know, selfies in a bar and it's like these are not easy situations for any camera company to take good pictures and even the best cameras can have trouble but a lot of it has to do with how they approach it and what they prioritize. I'm installing 442 right now. You know, the other thing is when I've been comparing the iPhone cameras, what Apple does is what Google has just done with its update. So what Apple tends to prefer to do is pick up a lot of noise but have the shutter speed right so you're not out of focus because honestly, if you're out of focus with a photo, it doesn't matter if it's noise free. It doesn't matter if it has a lot of light in it. It's not a good photo. So what happens with the iPhone when things get bad, you get a lot of noise in the picture but that's kind of okay because nobody is really using the megapixels and they look decent when they shrunk down in the Instagram to like garbage resolution. I think that's kind of the direction that Google has gone with the Nexus but also, I think these guys know exactly how we use smartphone cameras which to Dieter's point really gives them no excuse for why they're not fixing it. There was this advertising campaign with Ed Norton for Verizon where he's having this misadventure for 48 hours and one of the sequences in it, he's at a doctor and there's a key in his stomach and he's like, I want to take a picture of it and he does this flipping the phone around. It's droid max. It's a massive phone but he does this flipping the phone around his hand like Dieter was just doing. I'm not a skilled to demonstrate that but he just flips the phone around and he's like snap, took a really quick picture, boom and he's got a photo of the ultrasound of the key in his stomach. It's like that's what people want. They want to flip out the phone, take the photo, not worry about it. I'd be like, was that quick enough? Did I focus? Did the camera focus? Do I want to take a redundant shot like Dan was saying? You just want to take one. But rewind for a second. We still need to acknowledge the fact that that gesture for taking a photo is stupid and Motorola should be ashamed of it. No, it's great. You dodged. It's the worst. I think once you nail it, you just turn the screw. In that case, it was just him showing off. He was like the guy flipping a coin on his knuckles or whatever. Samsung years ago had one where you would like turn the screen on and then hold the camera up or hold the phone up and then rotate it horizontally and it would supposedly launch the camera and that was so much more ridiculous and cumbersome compared to just pulling it out of your pocket and going like this and taking a picture. You could do it in the same move, boom. How about just a button or better what the iPhone does which is just slide up from the bottom of the screen. Slide up from the bottom? Yeah, that's all you do. Doesn't that bring up command center? No, not if you do the lower right corner. Oh, from the one corner. You can do that on Android. Which is why you don't need the gesture. You can do it from any app with the Moto X. It never works for me anyway. I sit there going like this and nothing happens. They're just trolling you. It works for everybody but you. I need you guys to send me a Moto X. I've never had one for a long time. You guys have the G over there. Same thing. It looks the same. Shut up. I got a funny story about my Moto X because I broke down and I bought one during that sale last week when Motorola finally got its sale right. They were supposed to deliver it to me yesterday but because of this massive winter storm that's been sweeping across the country, it's delayed. They said that it would be guaranteed by 8pm tonight at my door and it was in Memphis, Tennessee at noon which is like an 18 hour drive from my door or a 5 hour flight in what is still a winter storm. I don't know if I'm going to get it or not. That's my really funny Moto X story. Well if you don't and you no longer want it because it took too long, let me know and I'll buy it off you for 100 bucks. That's a good deal. People are just side-chaining me like madmen. You held up a phone earlier and I think we should talk about it. This is the LG Flex. LG is not a phone unless it's got a G in its name. LG G Flex. I know I'm kind of far from the camera but I think you can see that. Banana phone going on here. I am jealous. Don't be. Listen Vlad, we'll send you one of these. Can we make it self-heal live on the air? The G Flex is one of the first phones on the market with a curved display. And it's got a 6 inch AMOLED display, 720p resolution but this one has a, we said banana phone earlier and that's really the easiest way to describe it. It's got a curve lengthwise. Somebody please explain this to me. This is a Korean model and so it's got an antenna for Korean TV. This would not be in the US version when it comes to this. I like to think of this as being a cell antenna. An aerial. But yeah, so it's got a curved display and it actually is legitimately curved. It looks like, to me it looks like the original Galaxy Nexus, just like more so. The curve is more defined and the curve is bigger. You can actually flex the device a couple of millimeters and it will bounce back but because of the other components in there you can break it, you can go too far. And so you know the curved display is like, LG says that it minimizes reflections which actually does happen and it aids in when you're watching video and things like that because you have fewer reflections. But otherwise it really feels like a gimmick at this point and it's not a great display. It's really big and not as high resolution as others. And then the other thing is this, the back of the phone, which Chris is desperately trying to break. I just want to get the battery out. Yeah, so the battery inside is curved to match the curve here which LG developed. But the back of the phone has this finish on it that's supposed to be like a self-healing thing they call it. So everyone's been calling it the Wolverine phone. And it will recover from light scratches. So if your keys bang into it, if you scratch it while putting it down on a rough surface, it will heal pretty quickly. But we tested it with a pocket knife I think and I think we put some permanent damage in it. Nice. Oh yeah, I can feel it. And no amount of time has recovered the scratch on that one. Actually to that point, that self-repairing thing might be helpful because on my LG G2 I've managed to get a whole series of small scratches on the screen. What's stupid is the camera lens is still exposed so that's got to be a hardened sapphire glass to prevent scratches. I mean, I guess it's all for the best. Yeah, but you only get that from Virtu, man. Hardened sapphire glass. You get that from Virtu, nobody else does it. No, the iPhone is sapphire glass. When are we going to get a curved Virtu? Yes, Vlad. When is the curved Virtu coming? You know, it's a very good question because I was just looking at, I had to do a witty tweet about the downfall of Nokia and how it was predicted by the matrix when Neo drops is awesome Nokia banana phone. And I understand the device that Nokia released alongside the banana phone that was in the movie was like the first series 40 device. Am I accurate there, Chris? I think that's too old to be series 40. That would have been, I don't know, I don't think it was called series 40 back then. Did you get the back off? No, I can't get it off. I mean, it was probably related, Vlad, but I don't think it was called series 40 at that time. Fair enough, but that just got me thinking. If Virtu would actually do one of those banana phones, I would just love it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, modern series 40, I mean, if you look at the very latest series 40 Asha phones that Nokia sells. You just said modern series 40. It's a very different thing than like, it's been so long since I've used a series 40 phone that like what's in my mind's eye of what series 40 is, is very different from what Nokia is actually selling, right? Like they're selling like a phone that looks and feels. It's not from what Nokia is selling, but not from what Virtu is selling. Those guys are using ancient stuff. No, isn't the latest signature a touch screen with a keypad below it? No. Oh. I'm pretty sure it's not. I don't want a signature anymore. I was about to spend 10 Gs on a signature, but now I'm not. The screen is so small, if you put your thumb on it to try and use it as a touch screen, you'll cover the entire thing. By the way, I was telling people in the office yesterday, Vlad, that when I do get my Virtu, I'm going to have them custom make it out of human skin. Wow. I think that's the plan. Because you know, you can get custom leathers on it, right? Just make sure that they put the lotion on before you. Yeah, put the lotion on first. God, LG skin is so bad. LG skin is the worst. If you have not used a skinned LG phone, you're in a world of hurt. How do I get to, oh that's how I get to multi-net, oh my god. It really does feel like a scaled up Galaxy Nexus though in the hand. Yeah, that's exactly what it feels like to me. So this is different than the, what's the Samsung one called? I'm like totally blank. The Galaxy Round. The Galaxy Round, right. It's the other one and that curves the other way. So instead of a banana phone, I don't know what you'd call that, taco phone? And so, that's exactly, well, I don't know. I think that we can't, we can't because of the N-Gage. Yeah, we can't call anything the taco phone unless it's the N-Gage. Right. But it's got a curve along that axis, which is the opposite of the LG's axis. And I haven't used the Round yet, so I don't know if that's a better curve or not. No. I haven't used it either and I can tell you that it's not. Well it just doesn't match the face. Like unless you never use it for calling. I mean, it's so big though that I don't think the curve really presents much of an issue when you put it up to your face. Like, because it's like this wide. Right. Yeah. Honestly guys, I really feel like both of these devices, Samsung and LG, they're not doing justice to the idea of a curved phone because when Dan picked up the six inch G-Flex, the first thing that struck me is just that it's a massive phone. Not that it's a curved one. And that's the annoying thing. If you have a curve or something like the G2, and by the way, the antenna isn't unique to the G-Flex. The LG G2 for Korea also has an antenna. They just have different priorities to us. If you have that curve put on an ergonomically sound device, something that is actually a phone, curved like the G-Flex, I mean, I don't want to pay a massive premium for it, but it just feels to me. I like it. And particularly if it does actually flex and it has all those self-healing properties and whatnot, I think that's a step in the right direction. Well like I said before, the real end game, the holy grail for what they're trying to do with these devices is not these devices, but it's the ultimate goal of creating flexible phones, right? Which are still a few years off, but the step one in that is making flexible displays and flexible batteries. You need a flexible glass layer. Like, where is this plastic on top? I don't even know. Yeah, I mean they have a lot of work to do. And flexible cameras. I mean, there's so much more before you have a phone that you can roll up in your pocket. Right. Yeah, like Nokia had that prototype a couple years ago. So can we talk about AT&T's new plan? I'd like to, but I have no idea. It's a complete mystery to me. No, literally, I mean this happens every time any carrier comes out with a new set of plans, Dieter, myself, and Dante D'Orazio, who wrote our post on this, get on the phone for a full 24 hours and try to figure out what is going on. Yeah, no, it's the worst. So, I mean, like the short version that AT&T wants you to hear is they're finally not charging you the subsidy once you've paid off your two-year contract on your phone. Did you hear what I said? Yes, you're right. This is the message AT&T wants you to hear. Right. And I think that's great because yeah, why should I be paying you an extra however many bucks a month if I'm not under contract and I want that separated out. I mean, I think you've got to give T-Mobile credit for like getting that idea more widespread acceptance and appeal in the US. And so, not digging too far into the details, like just on like the face of it of is AT&T doing the right thing by trying to separate out subsidy cost from like device cost. I think if you look at it on the very surface level, yeah, that idea is the right thing to do. Yeah, so kudos AT&T, next topic. But if you look at what AT&T actually did, A, they're not discounting you as much as T-Mobile. So T-Mobile gives you $20 off per phone whereas AT&T gives you $15. And if you do the math on that, that's not the subsidy discount. And B, they've made it more expensive for other people who are still in contract, so they kind of just move this money around. And then the other thing that's really stood out to me is that 80% of AT&T smartphones sold their iPhones. I would bet probably $10 or more that 95% of those iPhones sold on AT&T are on contract. So the amount that this affects AT&T's actual bottom line is so infinitesimally small that they can just do this as PR goodwill and not see a blip on their earning statement. If anything, it will make people like them more and they'll earn more money. And by the way, you're not actually getting $15 off per month because in doing this, they quietly also raised the monthly payment plan price on the iPhone by $650 I think. So really you get half of that. If you – is that with the – Or $750. The next plan? Yeah. Yeah, so that's if you're part of the next plan. But the thing is like even if – so for me for example, I'm an AT&T customer. I've got one of their mobile share plans and I've got three smartphones on it with 6GB of data. My plan is going up because they've raised the cost of each smartphone on – they lowered the cost of the 6GB data bucket but they raised the cost to have each smartphone and so it works out in AT&T's favor. And if I got 8GB or if I added another smartphone, it would work out further in AT&T's favor. So it's like they just kind of moved this money around. They didn't really advertise any of that of course. And it's just – Yeah, I mean let's be very clear. For every quarter that AT&T makes it rain on its investors basically, they are not going to make any moves that jeopardize that profit margin. So every – like when AT&T comes out with a series of plans that seem to suggest that you're just going to magically save more money than you used to, you really need to ask yourself well where is that money coming from? And there are people that will save money, it's just the number of those people is so incredibly small. If you bought a Nexus 5 and you're out of contract and you're an AT&T customer, A, why are you an AT&T customer, B, you'll save a little bit of money. But the other people that are paying more per month are paying for that money that you're saving. So it's like – Can I also add an analogy here which I think is really fitting? By all means. It's when you get a message from your ISP or your broadband provider saying we are conducting upgrades in your area. What that means to you is you're going to get downgrades, outages, etc. for at least a short period of time. So this is exactly the same thing. AT&T announces opportunity to lower your price plan, your price cost, whatever, and then guys like Dan are like well actually my bill just rose. So it's exactly the same thing. We're doing upgrades which actually means downgrades to your service at least for the interim. But honestly I totally agree with you guys. Anytime I hear one of these announcements other than T-Mobile, my eyes just start glazing over because I know you're going to essentially need to do enough research for a PhD to really understand what the hell is going on with these supposedly simplifying plans. Oh yeah, no. I've actually coined a term for this. It's the science of obfuscation of value. They want to make it as unclear as possible what is happening to you. And they succeed every single time unless people like Dieter and I and Dante spend an entire day trying to disambiguate the plans and sometimes even we fail. We find out that there's a math error somewhere. So like… Marketing is the obfuscation of value. That's the whole industry there. That's absolutely true. And then you know, the bottom line is that the average consumer, especially if they haven't done their research and I don't blame them if they haven't, doesn't stand a chance. They're just going to see… I'm sure AT&T is going to have an ad campaign for this and as Stan pointed out, there are people who are going to save money on this. It's just not a very, very large demographic. So here's an alternative and you're going to have to hear me out here. Why don't you guys, Americans in general, so like all 300 million of you… Yeah, partially, you know, rebel, go against the system. Here's why AT&T can turn the screws like this. I thought you were going to say here's why there's not going to be a revolution. The reason that AT&T can turn the screws and it's not going to affect its bottom line is because at the end of the day, I get better service that's more reliable and faster in AT&T than I do from T-Mobile or Sprint or any other whatever carrier that I can save money with. Unfortunately, for me, that means I'm stuck with AT&T and they keep raising the prices and I just kind of have to keep forking the money over because it is a significant step down in service, at least for where I live and where I use my phone, it's a significant step down to move to T-Mobile. Now we should clarify, you don't… they didn't force you to the new plan. They didn't force me to the new plan but I don't know what's going to happen the next time I get a new phone or add a line or something like that. That's always kind of the big mystery or whatever. Essentially, the plans that they're offering now are more expensive than the plans they offered last week. Right. And that's the bottom line. You know, I've said it before, like to be very clear, no one is arguing that AT&T should match T-Mobile's pricing dollar for dollar because AT&T does have a significantly larger footprint and offers LTE in way more places so it's just not an apples to apples comparison. Like you're paying more to get a more ubiquitous service and that makes sense. The problem is that AT&T is playing 10 times as many pricing games as T-Mobile is and that's the frustrating thing. If they would just be straight with people and say, yes you're paying a little bit more for a higher quality product, then everyone would be fine I think, including us and we would not be going nuts over it. But the fact that they intentionally make it difficult to figure out what's going on is what upsets me. Or when their profits are like record breaking every quarter and then they raise prices. Right. So, is anyone interested in my alternative proposition? By all means. Yeah, let's hear it. No, yeah. I said it's a rebellion. I didn't say it's a revolution. What you want to do is come over to the UK, get yourself a contract with free, get yourself a ton of data, voice, minutes, whatever. I guarantee you it's going to be less than half the price you pay with AT&T. Then jet back over to the United States where you'll be able to roam with your UK data on free. The problem arises when people ask me for my phone number. And I'm like, oh, we'll just dial plus 440144926348926. Do I get LTE? Does free LTE work in the US? Although Google Voice charges for international calls. Yeah, you can't do that. Yeah. I'm not sure that it does that. But I will have a very detailed breakdown of this come CES in January because myself and Aaron from our London team, we're already on free and we're bringing our allowances with us. I mean, this is my really, really roundabout way just to congratulate free on letting people use their data and their allowance outside of the UK. They've already done it with quite a few European countries. Denmark and Italy I think are on the list. And recently they just added the United States, Hong Kong and some other places. Is this like what T-Mobile offers with the international roaming? No, it's not 2G. It should be 3G at least. Cool. I don't know about LTE. Does 3 have LTE in the UK? It just turned it on apparently. I haven't seen it yet which is saddening for me. But it's going to roll out. Things are looking up. Also on the plus side in the UK is Tom Warren. He's with Vodafone and he has had pretty atrocious signal at his house for ages with Vodafone. But they've recently also turned on 4G and now that he can get 4G signal at home, that actually improved the signal dramatically. Yeah, but it's in… Things are picking up. But he's not using Volte, right? So that doesn't affect… No, of course not. So that doesn't affect call quality, just data quality. Yeah, but then again, guys like myself and Tom, we only really call our mothers and grandmothers on occasion. Everything else is data, man. That's true. I don't know, do you guys want to talk about iPhone stuff? They've got iBeacon. They signed a deal with China Mobile finally. So the iBeacon thing… Yeah, Chris Welch went to a couple of Apple stores here in New York City on Friday when it launched to check it out. And the concept is they have these low power Bluetooth beacons installed around the store and as you approach those areas, you'll get notifications or pop-ups on your phone saying hey, check this out or check that out. Which you can see if you're at an unfamiliar store, especially a big store like Macy's where they're trialing this, it may be making… I mean it's pretty awesome. You never actually have to talk to a human being. If you can go into an Apple store, walk around, get notified on Apple Store, you can go into an Apple store, walk around, get notified on your phone of what cool things there are to look at, then you can pick the item up, pay for it with your phone and walk out of the store without ever having to talk to somebody. I'll tell you what, I did that with my case for my 5S and it definitely felt like shoplifting. Even though I paid for it. Because nobody was available and I wanted to talk to somebody to buy it and finally I'm like screw it, I'm just going to pay for it with my phone and I just walked out and I'm like I considered running. You walked out, it's in your hand, you've got no bag. I was like waiting for the security agent to tackle me but nobody did. How do you think they track that? They must be looking at the cameras to see if you're using the app, I don't know. It's the only way. Yeah. I mean I don't know. But so anyway, I beacon. Chris went to the Grand Central store first which is a huge sprawling one level store in Grand Central Station and it didn't work. And he talked to the agents and they were saying yes it should be working, he couldn't get it to work. So then he went over to the cube, the iconic cube on 5th Avenue and he kind of got it working. I think. And he found one. Yes, yeah and he found the actual unit and it's this metal box mounted underneath the shelf. So they can just put it wherever they want to attract customers' attention. And so you can totally see how this would be valuable in a big store that you've never been in before. No. It's awesome. You're not into it? No. Yeah but you're also not into commercialism, capitalism, spending money, materialism, buying things, items, objects. You're not into any of that. So of course you're not into that. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I was with you all along until you said items and objects. Items and objects. You don't like any of those things. Look. Brad disagrees with the concept of physicality. Yeah, I mean there's a distinction between not liking materialism and not liking the material world. It's a concept. Look, I'll just keep it very simple. It's like I like the idea of a chair but then I dislike the idea of like a golden ruby, you know, encrusted throne. You would prefer to handcraft the chair out of found materials. Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay then. I would probably use the rinds of like winter squash to make it really rustic. I'm sorry, I had a thing. Would you wait until they were dry? Just squishy squash. No, that's the point. Winter squash is really hard rind. That's why it's winter rather than summer. Squishy stuff is summer squash. Can you put marshmallow on the wood to squash? Would it actually have legs or would it just be like a solid base? Like a plug or would it be able to support your weight? That would depend on the design and development process. I mean I would have to iterate. Obviously, I can't tell you in advance. That would be just guessing. That would be foolish. If you had to eat that much squash in order to not only make a chair but be able to design and iterate on your design of that chair over and over again. I mean you'd feed it. I got to think that would play havoc with your digestive system. Digestive system? Yeah. But you'd feed the squash to your livestock which you're going to slaughter for protein. Good point, Chris. I haven't figured it out. I mean I feel like if I have a squash, a cabbage patch and a few chickens, that would be it. That and a broadband connection. And maybe a chicken. And maybe I'll see you. I'm really like… If you feed the chickens, you won't have a few chickens for very long. More than a few. I'll go more than a few. I'll go for the eggs primarily. But they would be reproducing chickens. Like they would have smaller chickens. Yeah, I would have to have a cock as well. That would be mandatory. It's the word, bro. Bring it back to shopping. No comment. Yes, back to shopping. iBeacon, please. Somebody talk about iBeacon. It's tough to me. I think you had a great coop with iBeacon. You would know when you walked in the Bluetooth thing when the egg goes through. Yes, a Bluetooth low energy enabled egg. No. As a person who hates going into retail stores to buy things, which I occasionally have to do despite Amazon existence, I think iBeacon is a great thing. Yeah, if they implement it properly. Let's stop talking about it as iBeacon as if Apple just invented us. These are Bluetooth… This is just using Bluetooth. And Qualcomm has just announced pretty much the exact same thing with… I don't know what they call them, gumbo beacons or whatever it is. So they're essentially doing the same process. To me, what I don't like is all this kind of unnecessary technology that is coming into the retail process. I don't know. Like I said, I'm just not a fan. These aren't really things that you need. I can see totally the benefit to Apple and anybody else who's using that technology because they can track the hell out of you. There was a few months back some controversy about a US mall tracking people by their cell phone, tracking people's location without letting them know. You start using iBeacons and what not and if they get popular enough, then everybody will know exactly which store you're going, which aisles you're shopping through, the fact that you might have an unhealthy obsession with vegetables, etc. I mean, it's kind of circumstantial information that people can pick up about you. No, you're right, but I've said for a long time and I understand many people won't agree with me on this. I want companies to track the hell out of me. I want to be targeted. I want to see only the ads for products that are going to appeal to me. I want to get coupons and special offers for companies that these marketers know that I'm going to shop at. I don't want to get ads that are of no interest to me. Please, track the crap out of me. No matter what, no matter how much you get tracked, I'm still going to send you Dunkin' Donuts coupons so you're still going to get coupons that you don't want. Damn it. You know what else is kind of depressing to me about tracking and things like Google Now is the issue that most of the time I'm actually just at home. So looking at Google Now and it's location tracking of me and just seeing this big growing dot where I keep staying and not moving instead of like a varied map with my varied life and whatnot, it's kind of depressing also. So you're basically just saying that you're not an iBeacon fan? Not much of one, no. I think that this kind of technology is here to stay. You know Shopkick, which I believe Macy's is partnering with for their iBeacon implementation, Shopkick has been doing a variation of this for a long time but using audio. Sorry, those of you listening to the podcast edition, not watching the video, I just banged my microphone with my beer and then called out in the middle of it. It's not going to get edited in post because I've called it out here. I've interrupted you. Where are you going with this? I think I'm just apologizing. Deeter's a couple beers deep. Look I'm saying that Shopkick had been doing this using audio. They had a big... Oh yeah, I was going to tell you that nobody cares about Shopkick at YU. Look please, I'm too far into this story to abandon it at this point. They had an implementation going back at least four or five years, maybe less, I don't know, but a while with Best Buy where if you installed the Shopkick or Best Buy app, one or the other, when you walked into a store, the Best Buy store had this silent audio playing that the phone could pick up. It was really creepy. It was like a dog whistle basically. And then using that tone, the phone knows which store you're in. It's really messed up actually. You find that creepy because there's a silent audio tone that only the phone can hear. Yeah, because they could be reprogramming my brain. But the actual tracking of you, you're totally cool. Through silent radio waves and GPS. I've already been tracked enough in my life so that the special offers I get via email and the ads I see on sites are pretty on point. I see at least one ad for a BMW a day and I'm totally okay with that. Please just track me. How many gold shoe ads do you see? Actually there's an uptick in that since I went to GoHan site. So yeah, I'm just not creeped out by it. I think if it, you know, there are probably going to be implementations of this that aren't helpful. If you read Chris' report, he didn't find it necessarily too helpful at the queue, but it was day one. This is still considered a trial. They don't have the final implementation of it. It could get better. But you can imagine there are situations where it could be helpful is all I'm saying. We've talked about it, I've been talking for way too long. Yeah. Fair enough. However, let me just point out that Chris, you just presented yourself as a completely unreliable witness in this insofar as information coming into your phone is creepy, but everything about you and where you're going and what you're doing coming out of your phone to some disembodied corporation that might do whatever it wants with that information, perfectly fine. Yes. Right. See, this is great. If you're going to like jury service selection, this would be like, yeah, I don't think we're going to have this guy on. Well, good. I don't want to do jury duty anyway. That's what I'm saying. It's really instructive to like show people that you have no internal logic whatsoever. I have no logic. I have no sense of like what is right and what is wrong. I have none of that. So you're never going to install CyanogenMod because you don't want to deal with their by default encrypted text messaging to other CyanogenMod users because you want to be tracked. Transition alert. That's really good, right? It wasn't bad. It's funny, Dieter framed it as deal with it. There's nothing to deal with. I think this is actually like one of the best implementations. Just to set this up, CyanogenMod announced that it's by default encrypted text messaging between CyanogenMod users is coming to its platform. So if it's using Open Whisper? Yes, I believe that's the name of it. If somebody's using CyanogenMod and they send a text message to another CyanogenMod user, it's automatically encrypted and it's using really high level single use encryption and stuff like that. It's really great stuff. The thing that makes it so good and smart is the fact that the user doesn't have to do anything to set it up. They turn on their phone, they set up their phone like they normally would and boom, all their texts between CyanogenMod are encrypted. The analogy for me is iMessage. Overnight Apple had insane saturation with iMessage. This is going to be the same situation but for Cyanogen users. You don't have to think about it, it's just there. Now of course if you're using Cyanogen to begin with, the odds of you seeking this out are naturally higher anyway, but it's still cool that this is going to be the default option. It's a first step in maybe something that more mainstream platforms could adopt in the future. It's cool, I guess. If you're worried about encrypted text messaging. Actually speaking of messaging, did you guys see Ellis' report on this startup called Layer? Yes, yes. If you're not familiar, the guy who created XMPP and Jabber, the guy who created Google Voice apparently have the same bug up their ass that I do, which is I'm tired of iMessage and Hangouts and WhatsApp and Kik and whatever else. They're trying to create a universal messaging protocol and they're going to let anybody who wants to embed it into their app so you can add messaging to your app. That's like the candy for developers. The vegetables are, if they can get enough adoption of it, maybe they can replace or get other people to plug into that, we can actually have interoperability again. It's a beautiful, beautiful, totally going to fail impossible dream. You realize that Vlad interpreted what you just said the opposite of the way you intended. He likes the vegetables and not the candy. I was experiencing a bit of confusion, yes. Everything on paper here sounds pretty good. They're not going through the standards bodies because they're all completely seized up and unable to move a standard forward because they have no power and there's too much politics. It's being put together, the protocol and the spec for it by people who understood XMPP and made that moderately successful in its time and know what the problems were with it and are fixing them. I just have no faith that it's going to work. The big hurdle that they have is developers adopting this and baking it into their apps, right? We already have WhatsApp. You could build a WhatsApp competitor in a weekend is the idea. Or you could write an email app and be like, you know, I'd like to add messaging to this plunk and you've added messaging to it pretty easily. Then it will talk to all of those other apps. It's possible we could see a snowball effect here, but one, they actually have to execute on their plans. They haven't released anything yet. And two, we need to actually see if people will adopt it in a meaningful way. And critically, none of the incumbents are obviously going to adopt it. Yeah, so the question is not only does this have to take off, but it has to take off in such a way that it becomes inevitable and we will start yelling at Apple and Google and Microsoft for not interoperating with it. FaceTime is going to be an open standard. Dude. But I mean, think about a player like WhatsApp, which controls an enormous percentage of the app, if they got to the point where there was pressure on them to adopt this, they would literally no longer have a business model. So they won't ever. So we're still screwed. This problem is never going to be fixed. Look, tell me how it's going to be fixed, Vlad. It's going to be fixed by what? How? Like, an open spec gets created? Like we're going to have a new spec for messaging interoperability. It's coming out this summer from these guys from Lair, from the dude who invented XMPP. He's putting it out there. An open spec. And it's like we just talked amongst ourselves and decided it's not going to get fixed. So then how will it get fixed? Maybe Microsoft will win with Skype or Apple will win with iMessage or Google will win with Hangouts. Like, okay, that makes things slightly better because at least we can all talk to each other, but it's through this protocol that is controlled by a single company. And depending on the company, it is accessible to the NSA. There are problems here. And none of those examples that you gave really offer everything that you'd want in a chat protocol. And they don't need to for whatever reasons, for their own personal reasons, even if you want them there. So like, you use Google Hangouts for its specific reasons, use Skype for its specific reasons, iMessage is baked into the iPhone, so it's used for those reasons. But like, in some ways, Hangouts is a lot better than iMessage and Skype is a lot better than Hangouts, etc., etc. It's just like you're not getting the best of all of the options together. Everything that's broken about Hangouts could be fixed by just taking it away from Google+. I don't know about that. I'm trying to decide if I want to respond or just give Dieter another ramp up line so he can keep renting. No, I mean, I've ranted about this so many times that I don't even have the heart for it. But you like expressed a glimmer of hope that we would have a way to talk to each other that wasn't controlled by corporations. And I wanted to make sure I smashed that down. Because I do not want there to be a beautiful little flower growing out of the cracks of the concrete in the desolate wasteland of our messaging future. Because it's not going to happen. Really, the only one that we have right now that even comes close to that is email, which is like so depressing. Yeah, email is great. To be fair, it was the 70s. We knew how to build things. What I expressed was like the hint of a glimmer of a distant shimmer of hope in somebody's twinkling eye. I wanted to burn that to the ground. But here's the point. I feel like this is an issue which we can solve on an individual basis. So you and your friends, your actual friends can just decide you like using Hangouts, use Hangouts. You know, coordinate a little bit. Do a little bit of actual social, well engineering is kind of a terrible word. It has bad associations. But yeah, engineer your social circle. Do that. The problem is while you're going out to engineer your social circle to get everybody to standardize on Hangouts, somebody else is doing that for iMessage and WhatsApp is spending money to promote WhatsApp. And I don't know, man. No, sure. But okay, come on. You can still tolerate a couple of messaging apps on your device. I just feel like this is an issue which... No, I cannot tolerate a couple of messaging apps on my device. If I want to send you a message, I want to think about you, Vlad. The handsome, handsome man that I want to type something at. I don't want to think about what messaging app does that handsome man use. I want to picture your face, not an icon. Because it's a pretty face. Well, my face is an icon. Well, you know what that has become for me is Twitter. Because I know everybody's Twitter handle. That's a very good point. And I know that I can get a hold of them by DM. Are you the guy that app messages people? Oh, DM. But if they don't follow you, you're hooped. I only talk to people that I follow. Who follow you back. And follow me back. And I only read the verified list. Yeah. So can you talk to the FCC for us? I can. I can DM the FCC right now. Get my boy Wheeler on the line. Wheels, I call him. And this is where the FCC unfollows. If anybody wants to communicate with Mercedes Benz USA, I can get you in there. Anybody interested in talking to Chili's restaurant? You talk about Chili's? Let me know. Damn, really? That's a good hookup right there. That's at least one thought. So I just have to share how this happened. Because it's really funny. One of our video producers, Jordan Oblinger, I don't know if he's trolling or if he legitimately loves Chili's. But he checks in at various Chili's across the country on Foursquare all the time. And I favorited one. And then like 20 minutes later, Chili's follows. That's amazing. I don't know who my most influential follower is. I have no idea. President Barack Obama? It's probably Z-Power. For me it's Wheels. Is it Wheels? God. Tommy Wheels. Ladies and gentlemen, that is Suburge Mobile Show. No, no, we got to wrap, man. Two things. Two very quick things. No. On the Cyanogenmob point, I just want to say the 10.2 stable version for the LG G2 got released recently. And it's very nice. I've been using the nightly build. It became stable. It's been stable for weeks. Evan Rogers is nodding unknowingly as you say that. I can't tell if he's nodding that he wants you to finish your two points or if he's nodding at me saying no, no, cut them off. We're ending the show. I have no idea. I'm pretty sure he's nodding at the fact that Cyanogenmod is out for the G2. Well, and it's good. It's good things. Yeah. And second point, 20 seconds. Qualcomm just announced the Snapdragon 410, which is its first 64-bit processor, which doesn't matter at all. But it has LTE and it's targeting sub-$150 phones. It's primarily for China and emerging markets. But basically it's the Moto G processor or system on chip with LTE. It's coming somewhere around the middle of next year. So good news. I mean were you not expecting there to be a Qualcomm chip that was cheap that supported LTE next year? Is this a shock to you? No. Okay. Oh, dude, it's on the warpath. Oh, this is a sick burn. I'm really sorry. That's why it's a tech on at the very end. I mean, heck, we could talk about all C if you want. No, but I do want to talk about something related to the Snapdragon 410. Is Tegra, like does Tegra even matter anymore? No. So it's just Qualcomm at this point. I can't think of a significant device that has been both like impressive to us and commercially successful that runs a Tegra processor. Yeah, I mean like Qualcomm is the Intel of mobile now. Like fully. Oh, Intel of mobile. I thought you meant like Intel, like the way Intel is a mobile. No, Texas Instruments is the Intel of mobile. The Surface 2 runs a Tegra. NVIDIA is the Intel of mobile in the way that Intel is successful in mobile. Yes. Right. Yes, you got it. I was just saying the Surface 2 runs Tegra 4. I can't think of a single phone off the top of my head that runs Tegra 4. Shield runs Tegra 4. Shield, not a phone. Not a phone. No, but you should be able to taco talk on the, side talk on the Shield. Well, in NVIDIA's defense, next year they are going to have an integrated LTE and Tegra 4 chip. They're only two and a half years late. Yeah. So wait, there won't be a Tegra 5 in 2014? No, there probably will be, but I'm just saying Tegra 4 and LTE is coming next year. They'll probably have a Tegra 5 without LTE for, you know, how well they're doing. They really got to solve that LTE problem. It's embarrassing. I'm embarrassed too. I'm embarrassed for the way this show is just going on. You want to follow us on Twitter? You certainly can. I'm back on. This is DC Seifert, Dan. Chris is zPower. Vlad is Vlad Savov. We are all at Verge and next week, are we back? Probably. We hope you are too. Thanks for watching. Ciao.