 Hello, welcome to the Verge Mobile Show. This is episode 82, I think. It is March 4th, 2014. We are back from Mobile World Congress, at least those of us that went, and we're back where we live. My name is Dan Seifert. I'm Vlad Seifert. I am actually where I live. The other guys are in the office. We guys all live there. I am Evan Rogers. Now, Evan, I'm Chris Sickler, by the way, and actually I'm going to pop my can of soda right now. Oh my goodness. Just FYI. Those levels. But Evan, I have to ask you, is this your first time actually being introduced as part of the regular hosting staff? Did that just happen? I think that just happened. Wow. How does it feel? You know what, it feels like an honor. Feels like an honor and a privilege. How does that closet you're jammed into right now? I mean, you know, you do what you can. Evan and I are both in kill rooms, just for our listeners and viewers. So you're aware, we are both in specially designed kill rooms at Verge headquarters here in beautiful Midtown Manhattan. So if we do suddenly disappear or the screen goes dark, it is because we have been murdered. This is true. Yeah, so as you can obviously tell, Dieter Bohn is not with us this week. He lost his voice, but you know, I've learned that since he lost his voice, he's remarkably good at shouting over email. So he's still drilling fear into us. You know why he lost his voice? It's because he vapes. He's a vapor. He's a serial vapor. He is a serial vapor. I think there's a relationship there. Like I understand it's not supposed to be as bad as cigarettes, but something about vaping that I think might be affecting the voice box. That's my theory. That's my medical opinion. Hmm. Hmm. And you are a... We should put a quote apart to provide... Yeah, you are a professional doctor, right? I'm not, but I play one on this podcast. Okay, okay. As long as you're in character, I mean that's totally cool. Okay, so Dan, what are we talking about this week? So you know, what happened in the past week? So I guess the biggest thing that's happened since the last time we spoke was Apple finally launched its iOS in the car thing, which they're calling CarPlay, which I find hysterical. But it looks like we're finally getting a decent in-car entertainment, navigation, and management system, which is really highly ironic because cars are packed with technology, but they've had these terrible, awful user experiences for a decade or more now. And we're finally seeing someone fix it, though I'm not sure this is really gonna be that great. I would just like to get a consult from Dr. Ziegler right now because Dan is suffering from a weird bout of optimism. This is completely uncharacteristic of the Verge mobile show. This is why we need Dieter back. We're lacking the beard presence from Dieter and the pessimism. All right, well, you know, if you really want me to go negative, Vlad, it turns out that iOS in the car is powered by QNX, which is owned by Blackberry, which means it's eternally doomed. Well, so... Thank you, guys. Hold the phone. Hold the phone. So, first of all, QNX, Kinect, however it's pronounced, is the shining star in the black hole. I don't know if that's even astrologically possible, but if it is possible, it is the shining star inside the black hole that is Blackberry. They are super important in the auto industry. They count, I want to say, the majority of the world's global automakers as customers. There were rumors recently, I believe they were confirmed, that QNX is replacing Microsoft's software stack in their cars. So they're a super big deal. And their software is running in just all sorts of big name automobiles. So when you hear that QNX is the backbone of CarPlay, that shouldn't, A, be surprising, or B, be concerning. Because regardless of what happens to Blackberry, QNX will survive. It's a profitable and very important unit inside the company. Absolutely. And just to take a more serious note, the reason I'm jumping between optimism and pessimism is that we don't really know that this is necessarily going to be a solution to the problems that Dan set up. We were having this conversation, our European team, this morning. And the thing that came to me is that technology integration, not just technology in general, but integration and making things fit together and be seamless is very much at its rudimentary stages both in the car and in the home. You take your phone, you're at home, and okay, now you have AirPlay. And AirPlay works. AirPlay is great. And I guess that's the thing that gives people like Dan optimism is AirPlay works well, Apple has implemented it well, now has CarPlay, which kind of completely breaks the metaphor because you're not transmitting via car, you're transmitting via lightning cable, whereas AirPlay transmits via the air. But anyhow, I mean, what we've seen, we've seen a few demos from the Geneva Motor Show of Apple's CarPlay, and the thing is it integrates with your dashboard. So all of your knobs and dials and touch screen, and there's even a specific button to activate Siri and to activate voice commands on the steering wheel. So that's really the only modification that the car manufacturers are making. It integrates with what you already have there, but that's not a good thing in my book. Or at least it doesn't really advance things because the touch screen responsiveness and the quickness of the UI is exactly as you would get from an infotainment system. It's not iOS 7 quickness, it's car infotainment quickness, which isn't quick at all. Yeah, it's actually surprising to me that, I mean, considering how strict, for lack of a better word, Apple is about those kinds of UX parameters, it's actually surprising to me that they're going through with this. And to be honest, I think that that is probably a large reason why we saw such a delay between the launch of iOS 7 and the rollout of iOS in the car, which is now CarPlay. But it's weird. I don't understand, for the life of me, I don't understand why it is that auto makers have such a hard time producing responsive hardware and software stacks in their instrument clusters and in their dashboards. It doesn't make any sense to me. My first question is, A, whose engineers are working on this? Is it exclusively Apple's engineers, or is it Volvo's engineers? Well, so, okay, so let's just say, you know, the announcements that they've made, they're partnering with new Mercedes, new Volvos, and new Ferraris. Which are, and you know, if you look at the cars that they have been showing off at Geneva, a Mercedes in-dash entertainment system uses different components and different things than Volvos, and they both use different than Ferraris. So it seems to me, like, to answer your question, Evan, it seems to me that it's the car manufacturers, engineers that are producing the hardware that goes into this and stuff like that, and then they kind of just like, it seems to be interfacing with an API to the iPhone through the lightning cable so that, you know, it's like a, whatever you just, a projected image of whatever's on your phone. Gotcha. Well, like, I don't know, the question of like, why are car manufacturers using QNX? Like, or QNX, I have no idea how you'd describe it, but it is, it's a real-time operating system, and like, there are just not that many real-time operating systems out there that can be bought and adapted for like, any kind of product. Usually they're used in automated like, CNC milling machines and that sort of stuff, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that a lot of these automakers are also using Tegra 4 chipsets. I wouldn't say a lot, but Tegra 4 is definitely becoming, it's not just called Tegra 4, like, they have a specific, you know, they have certain part numbers that they're using in cars. Audi made a big deal out of it at CES, but it's certainly not all. Gotcha. I don't think that a lot of the processing side of things is happening in the car. I think a lot of it is happening on the phone that's plugged into the car. Here's where I disagree with you. Like the, in terms of the actual infotainment and like, the data, like, the phone is serving as like, a data source, but in terms of like, the hardware, like, I just think it's a combination of Tegra chipsets and a real-time OS is really interesting, because Tegra chipsets are one of the few chipsets, like I said before on previous shows, that actually support like, true OpenGL and they have lots of like, transistors to support hardware acceleration. So the question of like, why aren't car manufacturers building like, responsive stacks of software? Like, I think they're definitely trying. That's why they're adopting like, this kind of hardware and this kind of software. But at the same time, they're throwing in like, these really crappy, resistive touchscreen displays that you get on like, a Walmart Android tablet in your, you know, $250,000 Ferrari. No, they're moving toward capacitive systems like Cadillac Q and… But the ones that they're showing off in Geneva are like, resistive touchscreens. Really? Are you sure? Yeah, that's what everyone's been complaining about. That's really bizarre and inexplicable. Well, yeah, I mean, the auto industry has historically been anywhere from, you know, two to seven years behind the consumer electronics industry in terms of technology and just, you know, mindshare of what's important, the kinds of technologies and apps that are important. And I think that a big reason for that, I mean, this is something that they've acknowledged. I talked with executives at Ford and CES and they're just very open about the fact that, yes, they know that they're way behind. One of the reasons for that is the insane regulatory environment that the car companies have to deal with that is far beyond… That's an excuse. I mean, these guys are behaving like email was just invented last year. No, no, no, you're right, but they, you know, it's kind of a moving target. NHTSA and other regulatory bodies like NHTSA are smack in the middle of determining, like, all sorts of very specific parameters around, like, how long the driver should be allowed to look at the center stack, what kinds of things they should be able to do when their hand is on the screen and they're driving, things like that. And so there are lots of moving parts. And you're right, that's not an excuse for the system to be unresponsive at all, but I do think that they have their intent divided than, say, the intention of, like, just a smartphone maker that was just trying to pump out a smartphone. I believe that for, like, manufacturers like Ford, which are producing these mainstream vehicles, they've got to produce however many hundreds of thousands a year and they have, you know, cost is obviously a major factor in every decision that they're making. But when you talk about, like, Ferrari, where everything is hand-built and cost is really not a factor, they'll just raise the price of the thing and people will still buy it. You know, it's, like, inexplicable that they're just so stubborn. Well, so the reason for that is that Ferrari in particular, I mean, all of these high-end automakers, but Ferrari in particular uses, I mean, all of the electronic components are outsourced to one of these major, like, auto electronics conglomerates, like Denso or Delphi or, you know, Visteon. And so, those are the same companies that are supplying, like, Ford and GM. So it ends up getting all up at that level anyway and then they just get, they basically get the same crap that everyone else is giving. It is getting, it might be packaged a little differently, but, like, the underlying operating systems and the display and all that are basically the same thing. I mean, like, look, if I'm driving a $450,000 Ferrari, if I'm driving an F12 Berlinetta, odds are I have a Vertu anyway. So, like, this whole CarPlay discussion in a Ferrari is a little ridiculous in the first place, in my opinion. So this is what I want. So to bring this back to mobile, like, can I just ask what actually happens when you don't have the iPhone? Well, you just have your regular in-depth system. The whole point here is just connectivity with the iPhone and improving the interplay between the stuff you have on your iPhone and the dash system. But I just wanted to make kind of a side point building on what Chris has said. I do feel like there is some super advanced technology in cars, like, particularly the CES. We saw those laser headlights in whatever else the Audi was doing. I mean, there's some really in-depth, advanced, intelligent stuff. I know Volvo, they have these amazing brakes in trucks that are demonstrated where you brake in, like, I don't know, inches on rain. They have these really intricate, awesome systems which show that they have engineering. They have technological advances and knowledge and all of that stuff. And that just really reminds me of cameras, particularly DSLRs. So these guys will get everything right. They will do these amazing autofocus systems, really intricate systems, and then they will just kind of screw it up by just not bothering to do human usable UI. It just seems like there's this hurdle that they're not overcoming. It's addressing the user and addressing the user's needs as opposed to just being really good at engineering and the technical side of things. Yeah, so that's a good point. So this is what I want in my next car. I don't want whatever Ford or Mercedes or whatever I buy, I don't want their stupid hardware in my way and I don't want their entertainment system. I want a dock that I can put my iPad in and launch an app and have my stuff that I want to use in the car. Like, that's all I want. Like I know Sony announced this thing at CES, which is like an in-dash car unit that you can like dock an Android phone in and it'll interface with that and stuff like that. I want that. That's what I want. That's where we should be going with cars. Take it out of the hands of the car manufacturers entirely. They obviously don't know how to do this stuff and just like let me use the thing that I already know how to use. Yeah, I have mixed feelings about that and I think it's a very complicated subject. What car companies, the road they were starting to go down, and I think they pulled back from this, but GM certainly was doing it, was they were saying, okay, well on the low end we will just have you bring your own phone and you'll plug it into our system and you'll use your phone through, well like CarPlay. And so they launched that on the Chevy Spark and a few other like ultra low end models. But then they said on the high end, we want to control the experience and make it like a really integral part of the car so you end up with something like Cadillac Q, which is just pervasive throughout the entire car. Where I think you get into trouble, there are two places where I think you get into trouble. One is with physical controls. I still think, don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for how usable Tesla made the Model S's giant touch screen, but still at the end of the day I think the physical controls are a better idea for cars. And so integrating those in a smart way with something like an iPad that you dock in the center stack is a challenge, right? And then two, car companies are starting to move away from the center stack and they're doing really cool and intelligent things with the instrument cluster, which is a different story altogether. So you're not going to dock an iPad in the instrument cluster. So how do you manage that? Okay, fair enough. But then with the radio… To address, I see where you're going with the instrument cluster and yeah, that's a fair point. But to address the physical controls, I mean if you give me a dock for my iPad, I can still have physical knobs, sliders and buttons for my HVAC system. And then all it needs to do is give me a volume knob, which it can interface through the lightning port or something like that. So that's the extent of physical controls that I really need when I'm driving. And the rest can be done through the touch screen or voice or whatever it is. So let me actually pull us back to CarPlay because we've discussed it for quite a few minutes but we haven't actually discussed the specifics of it. And the core of it really boils down to Siri voice commands and Siri reading information out to you and Apple's maps. And this is the reason why I personally am not too psyched about this. Apple's maps is probably the weakest part of its software portfolio and Siri just doesn't have the same sort of high quality voice recognition that Google does. So honestly, the two strengths that Apple is supposed to bring with CarPlay are the strengths that Google has and Apple is iffy on. I will say that Apple Maps is definitely not as good as Google Maps but it's a lot better than it was two years ago when it debuted and had all these problems. I mean they've been iterating on it a lot. I've used it a few times and really didn't have a noticeable difference between that and Google Maps. Still no integrated transit directions which I find very annoying. That's just total malarkey. Especially since they bought a whole bunch of companies that do transit. And as far as Siri goes, actually from my own personal experience, I have this little doc set up in my car where I put my phone in and I can see it there easily. It's held right in front of my face. And I was using Siri just last night to send text messages to my wife and it was great. It worked just as good as the Moto X which I've done that before. And it doesn't have – it's definitely not as good for doing web searches and things like that but for the things that you need to do in the car, navigate home, send a message home, call so and so, Siri works just fine for that provided you have a good wireless connection. I was on LTE, it was fast, it was reliable, things like that. If you have a sketchy cellular connection then you know it's a different story. Right. Yeah, I just – It's a very different story if you don't have a car at all which is actually my case. So are you – are you suggesting that you won't buy a Ferrari just so that you can use CarPlay? Is that what I'm hearing? That's correct sir. Mostly also because I would probably buy one or two or three Android phones before I consider an iPhone. I'm just so broken up with that OS until they fix the Gmail software. Oh my goodness, I could not be in the most opposite position right now. That's terrible. I just got a – I just got a Z1 Compact and – Show it off. Okay, okay. It's good. Evan, this is – for a lot of people this is an audio podcast. So just saying I'm in the opposite position and sighing doesn't really make your point. Okay, so I'm holding up a Sony Xperia Z1 Compact model D5503, 16 gigabyte model black, BK monitor. I wanted this phone so bad, so bad, and as soon as it arrived on shores I went down to my local importer. I got it. I was so excited. I've had – as many of you know I had been using a Z1 for a very long time, but when – but I've been wrapped up in this like terrible return process. The screen – or I'm sorry, the rear glass just cracked in my pocket. I sent it back. They sent it back to me with a completely defective camera. And so in that time period I have gone back to the iPhone. And man, man, when this – you know like the Compact I was super jazzed about last year at CES. It's got everything I could possibly need. Like it's fast, small, has an SD card port. The screen is way better. The camera is just as good as the Z1. But getting back into Android like oh god it's gross. It's the worst ever. Everything is choppy. It's just like – That's pretty harsh. But okay – No, okay. So no, the thing is – The point is really that it's the quality of apps. It is the quality of apps. So like the pervasive jerkiness is not in the OS. Like Sony's done everything they can from an OS standpoint to make the actual operating system like very smooth. But once you get into those apps like the experience is not as good for many of them. There are apps that I love like the Transit app for example. Bringing it back to Apple's like you know complete lack of integrated transit directions. Like the Transit app on Android is gorgeous. It works really fluidly. It's really made for that interface. But you know like Evernote for example like that is a completely just horrific experience that you're coming from the iOS version. This is a super played topic. I think you were very frustrated this weekend and you had a really poignant tweet about you know people complain that the Android app experience isn't as good as iOS. But a lot of it seems to come down to the fact that these companies like Evernote and whoever it might be just aren't putting the resources into the Android app development that they are on the iOS side. So you're going to get a lower quality app and you're going to get people not interested in buying these apps or paying for these services on Android because the experience kind of sucks. Well let me ask you this. Like where are the barriers to entry? Because you know Google has an in-app purchasing system right. So developers can't use that as an excuse anymore. And you know the SDK has evolved a lot. You know I know people still complain about programming in Java. But you know Objective C in Xcode is not necessarily a beginner's language. You don't just walk into that either. Yeah no I don't think it's that. So I think there are two things. One it's uncertainty over form factor and resolution. And two it is, and this might be a complete myth at this point. But there is definitely a stigma around conversion on paid apps right. Like there's a perception that iOS is the more premium platform where users are more likely to spend money. And that you know two and a half, three years ago there was definitely evidence to suggest that was the case. I don't know if that's still true. It may not be but regardless that stigma I think is still there. Yeah I mean when you're making long term business decisions it does make sense to look, I mean the resources you have available are two to three year old studies on who is spending what on apps. Right. But the thing is is like two to three years ago look at what Android, look at both what Android as a platform and Android phones as a hardware platform were capable of and everything has changed completely. Also let's see here. Well you just said everything has changed completely but at the same time you're describing Android as pretty much the same as it was three years ago. Everything is too jerky and yes I'm good enough. Android as an operating system has improved significantly. What I'm saying is the investment by these companies in Android is something that that has not changed. And that is a problem. Can we get back to the Z1 compact for a second and just note that it is like the hardware is just not good on that phone. I could not disagree more. I think it's inspiring. I have three specific comments about the hardware. One it is like shockingly heavy for its size. Like you pick it up expecting it to weigh a certain amount and it weighs like twice that much for some bizarre reason. Two it's thick. Like I don't know what the dimensions are but it feels and looks really thick. Three it has a ridiculous bezel on it for no apparent reason. Like that screen should go to the edges especially like we live in a Moto X world. Like it is not acceptable for there to be that much bezel on a phone of that size. Okay I will give you the bezel but I will not give you any of it. The hardware is phenomenal. The aluminum ring or the aluminum chassis that this is made out of is gorgeous. I don't know what I can do for you in terms of the weight. Why is it like 14 inches thick? I mean like honestly because that's the size of the camera. The camera is that thick. What's the problem? It is the problem. Also there is one thing, I'm looking at the questions right here in the side panel for Google Hangouts. And let's see here. There is one question that I would like to address and that is choppy. And guys like I have them both like right here. I can notice the difference in what you would call lag. One of them is five hours ahead of the other one. That's a lot of lag. Oh goodness, anyway yes. So I mean like lag in Android is a thing. Like it comes down to hardware compositing. Okay well I'm just going to do something unusual because sometimes I agree with two people disagreeing with each other and this time I'm just going to disagree with both of you because you're both just wrong. You just jumped to both extremes. I don't think the Z1 compact hardware is phenomenal but I also don't think it's trash. So Chris is right. So far as there is the industrial design just has, it lacks refinement to it. So the sides of it can be quite rough. The edges or the corners rather are just too sharp. Those are things that Sony could have softened up a bit, done a bit more of a curve on them. It is a thick and heavy phone but also I would say if you can use it in an Nexus 5 which is really really light for its size, that can kind of realign your expectations. Like honestly if you compare the Z1 compact to like an older phone, one of the Nokia's from the early 2000's, it would be just perfectly fine. Nothing wrong with it. Also the thickness wouldn't be a problem because again by those standards it's not particularly thick. I just don't really consider those major problems but as I said I don't really think that it's amazing. Yeah I agree on the bezel Chris but at the same time let's not forget how much stuff Sony has jammed inside it and the biggest strength with the Z1 compact for me was the battery life and in order to fit that size of a battery you pretty much need that size of a case. So maybe we could have done a bigger screen perhaps but the case is fifth to the brim which the weight testifies to. That's fair. Also it's waterproof which factors in a little bit to the design. That is the bomb. What are you people doing to your phones? Like I have never had a waterproof phone in my life and there's never been a situation where I was like gee I really wish this phone was waterproof. Like I don't swim with my phone. Wait wait wait, when you can have your phone in the hot tub with you it's pretty good. If you're in a hot tub and you're just thinking about using a phone your priorities are all screwed up. I mean sometimes you do need to use a phone. And Vlad what's your answer? Okay the answer is very simple and it's something that I realized again while I was reviewing the Z1 compact in the freezing miserable London weather. Is things like glove friendly touch screens. I think the waterproofing is exactly the same in so far as it's an absolute gimmick until the first time you really need to use it. And then you're like dude I feel so good about the fact that I can use this phone with gloves on you know. I feel so good that I can use this phone near the pool for example. You know not in London, not in the UK. You never get pool worthy weather but in a nice country like Bulgaria people go to the pool. And using your phone next to the pool without needing to wrap it up in a towel and things like that is fine. It's a good thing. It's an advantage. And like I say it's a gimmick to most people until you come to use it and then you just start to feel smart because everybody else is either freezing their fingers off or just not using their iPhones. So there you go. Well to be fair there are quite a few phones now that have glove compatible screens right. I know I mean it's only been an event. I'm just saying as a feature it's anybody can make a waterproof phone. Panasonic made one and then they quit smartphones for whatever reason. I really like those to Lugafones. I think more people should be doing it. And Samsung is doing a little bit of that with splash proof Galaxy S5. So I just think it's a good thing. The Galaxy S5 is just as waterproof as the Z1 compact. No it's not. That's not true. Isn't it? No. Now these guys are IP. It's IP67. Right but the Sony is the way to do IP57 if I'm not mistaken. And they get to call themselves waterproof whereas the Galaxy S5 is water resistant. Either way IP on my phone and it will be okay. That's the important takeaway here. So moving on to things that actually happened in the past week. HTC's next generation one kind of got the full tour before its announcement. Probably some kid out in the horrible state of Illinois got his hands on this. Very slick Dan. Very slick. He got his hands on what very apparently appeared to be his parents copy of the M8 as it's known or the new HTC One and gave it a really really really rough to watch video tour. Kind of showing it and comparing it to the current version of the HTC One. And you know assuming that this is final hardware, this is what we're expecting to see when it's being announced in like two, three weeks. It looks very similar to last year's model. Which kind of lines up with the renders that we've seen leaked and stuff like that. Right. So there's a few subtle differences. One thing actually one of our commenters when we covered the video was just really really psyched. He's like wait the headphone jack is at the bottom of the phone? Take my money. I mean no lies like that's a big deal. That is a huge deal. Like going back to how I was saying. You guys are going to have to explain to me. So I'll do it right now. Going back to how I was saying how I have this dock in my car. So I have this dock in my car that I put my phone and then there's a wire that comes down to charge my phone which goes into the bottom obviously. And then I also plug into an auxiliary jack in my stereo because Bluetooth is an awful experience. And so on the iPhone I can have both wires coming down from the bottom. It's really nice out of the way. On something like the Moto X or the Nexus 5 or whatever I've got these like I've got one wire on top and one wire on bottom and I've got this like messy nastiness all over the place. So I like having the headphone jack on the bottom. Also just the pants experience. The pants experience is totally different. Like the drawing it out of your pocket. Think about how much less you have to turn it over. Yeah it just makes more sense. I hadn't thought about the pants experience I have to confess. Always be thinking about the pants experience Vlad. Like that should be the top of your mind at all times. I'm just not going to keep this going. But seriously about the phone. So I mean that's one of the small tweaks. Headphone jack moved from the top to the bottom. There's a looks like plastic black panel at the very top of the phone. Which actually to me looks really slick. It's like a really slick design element that got leaked in a press picture earlier and now basically this video seems to confirm it. And the size, exactly the thing that I was saying that Sony could have improved with the Z1 compact making the sides just that extra bit curvier, extra bit softer. That's what seems to have happened with this new HT1. So I mean the company is pretty proud of the One design already. And a lot of people loved it. So it doesn't see the need to go and change it too much. I agree with you there. The One was you know it's a great design phone. You don't really need to fix what's not broken. But what kills me about this new one is it uses on screen keys like a Nexus 5 or Moto X will. But it still has that stupid plastic bar or glass bar below the on screen keys that serves its only purpose to show HTC's logo. And so like they could have like made the screen bigger or shrunk the bezel or whatever because the screen or the buttons have now been moved on screen. So that kind of noise. I can't say that I've touched it in person. I haven't used it. I don't really know how well that works in usability but just from an aesthetics point it kind of bothers me. And then you know on the back of the phone it's got this new camera sensor. Our wonderful leaker apparently had no idea what that camera sensor was for or how it functioned unfortunately. So he can't say what it actually does. But it's been rumored that that is going to provide some sort of light trail like functionality I think so maybe some sort of refocusing abilities and not 3D photos to the dismay of many. Well it's obvious that the sensors are asymmetrical right so that would certainly lend credence to the notion that it isn't a 3D camera. No. TC is going to be so hard broken about this. The fact that he won't be able to buy another HTC 3D phone or Sprint. So we've made fun of TC one of our news editors here for a long time because of how much he loved the Evo 3D. But you know he said something to me today when I was teasing him about it once again and he's like the reason I love that phone was because it had that awesome shutter key for the camera. Like he didn't care about the 3D stuff. It was that killer shutter key and I was like you know yeah you're right. For me what made that phone so awesome was the fact that it had the green hornet built in. That really was the killer feature. So here's what's tragic about both the 3D and any potential like Lytro functionality that might come in with this camera or Lytro S functionality. It's like you know there were who knows how many of those they sold but like they all took 3D pictures and where are those pictures now? Like do they still exist? Can you still view them in 3D? If that's the case is it like Lytro where you have to have some kind of flash plug in to view them in 3D? Like that's not like in terms of sustainability like I've got pictures. You view them on your Evo 3D. Well yeah once that camera is gone or once that phone is gone what are you going to do with that? You buy another Evo 3D? That's terrible. Like I have iPhone pictures from a billion years ago that are still in my accounts and in my galleries that I really like but you know how can you refer back to them if like HTC drops the support for their flash plug in or flash goes extinct altogether and etc. These novelties like sure maybe it's another line item but at the end of the day like a really high quality picture is something that's going to last you. There's a couple of ways they can go with this and yeah you're right the 3D pictures are a real pain to view outside of a 3D camera or whatever. I mean if this thing comes past that it has a refocusing ability it could be used to like you know you take your picture, you have your app on the phone that can do the whole refocusing thing and then you refocus where you want it, you save it as another file and you can share that file and then you can go back and save it again. So like maybe it's not like the interactive ability to change your focus all the time isn't preserved across devices and things like that but you still have a photo captured that you can view anywhere. That would be dope. I just really hope they put in a great camera. That would make sense at least. That seems likely then and also it's something that we saw with the LG G Pro 2. I think it's going to be part of LG software in general for smartphones which is that it takes a burst of I don't know six photos or whatever. And it's very much like Nokia's refocus. It's software based rather than hardware so it takes them at various distances and you can actually notice that if there's any motion in your picture so that the thing that's focused furthest away from you is like half a second after the thing that's focused closest to you. And a lot of companies are doing these things. I think exactly as Dennis is saying when you're able to refocus photos that might be something that is an option in the phone and then you can just pump out general JPEGs, standard JPEGs with all the rest of your photos. But I mean I just need to have a moment to remember the Evo 3D and like you guys were saying the fact that you could take pictures with it and then view them pretty much explicitly on that device. And I had such a struggle looking at the lenticular like display and trying to convince myself that there's a 3D effect going on. I mean that was such a train wreck. I just don't have anything else to add to it. It was just pretty sad. So I mean the HCC has already told us they're going to announce this thing on March 25th which is just about three weeks away. So I'm sure we'll have plenty of more leaks to see until then but we'll have a better idea of how this actually works when it's actually announced. But moving on, so today it was actually revealed that this company is planning to release the first dual booting Windows phone and Android smartphone this year which begs the question of why. Well you know, why ask why. So if I, go ahead. I can definitely see a situation for myself and maybe for others, only power users certainly where Android is the, Windows phone is the operating system you want to use but Android is the operating system you have to use just because there's some esoteric app that you need or really not so esoteric app, just an app that isn't on Windows phone. Or you know you have a Google services situation and of course the support for Google services is pretty weak on Windows phone right now. So I mean I can see that, I get it but the use case is so narrow that three people will buy one of these and I will be one of them. So do you think, okay so do you guys think this will be an actual dual boot situation where you can dual boot from one to the other and maybe share data which seems hard but or is it going to be something like you start up the phone for the first time and you can choose which operating system you would want. Well no, it makes sense that you would be able to switch between the two. I mean that's a dual boot device as opposed to like make a choice once and you're stuck with it. I don't know. I just don't know how they'd be able to share data especially like Windows phone is very much like iOS in that it silos things pretty hard. And you know at least how it used to work with SD cards, you used to specially format them and things like that. I have no idea how it would be able to share data between that environment and Android unless we're talking about like a virtualization or something like that which sounds horrifically nightmare. Honestly I am with Chris on this one. There's just nothing for us to talk about here. I mean as much – you kind of have to imagine yourself in a situation that 99% of the global population just aren't in. You need to feel some compelling reason to want Windows phone ahead of Android at least in some circumstances, which for most people just isn't the case. My biggest, best and most sincere consumer advice is if you have a choice, go with Android. I mean we can have the discussions, we can have the debates with everyone with iOS and all of that but Android versus Windows phone is like what does Windows phone have that Android doesn't bring? I mean there really isn't anything. Like maybe responsiveness of the UI but you can you know dance around the UI and then you end up with crummy apps that aren't serving your needs. I mean that was my experience with the Lumia 1020 like the hardware and software look beautiful and then the whole experience is really fluid and like pretty gorgeous. Like I can see myself in an alternate reality where you know everybody had adopted Windows phone but the apps right now not there. Although I will say like maybe this dual booting thing is totally outside the spectrum of the normal user. I think what's more interesting is that Microsoft relaxed their licensing requirements to allow this. At the same time Microsoft, I mean okay Microsoft hasn't taken over Nokia. Nokia is still an independent entity, yada yada yada. But at least behind the scenes you have to say that Microsoft allowed the Nokia X to happen as well. So it's kind of facing up to the fact that it needs to play forward Android in some respects. Don't you guys think? Yeah and also keep in mind that at least in theory if this OEM is playing by the rules, this device will effectively be paying double to Microsoft since Microsoft makes a significant royalty off every Android device sold. So there is actually you know there's a good monetary reason for Microsoft to be okay with this. There's also little incentive to stop it because it's such a niche product that like you know it's a good point. I mean we haven't mentioned the company name yet because we don't remember it. We're not talking about Samsung here, we're not talking about LG or HTC or any of that. We're not even talking about Huawei or CTE. This is a company called Carbon. It looks like they're based out of India. So they apparently are appealing to a very specific probably very narrow market for this. I wonder if these are also dual SIM. That'd be cool. That'd be like having just two independent phones. That would be awesome. I think that would be amusing and it would be kind of a cool thing to tell your friends about but functionally and in terms of usability and again it just I don't know. To me I don't know how to describe it. I don't know if it's a train crash or whatever but it just doesn't make any sense. It doesn't really add to your life. Like at the moment. I'll tell you what it adds to your life. Hang on a second. Hang on a second. At the moment I'm boot camping Windows on my Mac. There is one reason why I'm doing it and that is to play Dota 2. So gaming. It's kind of the classic reason to want the other OS. Everything else, OSX now not Mac OS, takes care of. For the most part you do come to… Okay, what I'm trying to say is you have the best OS for your needs and if you try and dance around and switch between OSs to do a variety of different things what really ends up happening is you spend too much time managing and jumping between operating systems or whatever. I'm only boot camping for one extra reason and it's a compelling enough reason for me to do it. But if I need to use Windows for something and then Linux for something else and OSX for a third thing then the best advice is actually to try and consolidate things and just use one OS. The one that gets most of your things done. That's really the cleanest way to do it. So speaking of getting things done, since we're still on the topic of Windows Phone, this week we saw the first look at Microsoft's apparent answer to Siri and Google Now which is being called Cortana and it's a voice based personal assistant. It supposedly has a personality just like Siri does and apparently it's named after something from Halo, is that right? I heard my wrong. It is indeed from Halo. You're spot on but it's just the ignorance you're displaying is so cute. I also believe it is pronounced Cortana. Whatever. It's a terrible name, if they bring it to market with that name it's terrible. Listen, it has a female voice, it doesn't mean it has a personality. Well Siri has a personality. I mean Siri will talk back and you know. Siri will sass you. Yeah, Siri will sass you. Will Cortana sass you? Okay, yeah actually that's fair enough because I'm looking at one of the screenshots that we've procured and it says I'm absorbing the entire internet, won't take long. So Cortana is you know. By the way, this is tangentially related but I need to get out there because I don't think I've complained about this yet and it really bothers me. So Siri, this first came up for me at CES this year. I was using my iPhone as my alarm in the morning and I would say, you know whenever I use my iPhone alarm I set it using Siri. I say set alarm for 5.30am or 5.15am or whatever. And if you set an alarm time for before 6am, sometimes randomly it will say don't wake me up. Like it will respond don't wake me up and it's supposed to be a joke but I read it as like well are you refusing to set the alarm or are you making a joke? And then like I don't know if I'm going to be woken up in the morning or not. Now it turns out that it is just a joke but still like you need to set boundaries for when Siri will sass you and those boundaries are not set yet. So I mean voice recognition, it's like a major part of every OS now. It's definitely a requirement. Well I want to be clear, Windows Phone 8 does have voice recognition already. You can dictate to it and things like that. What's significant about this new thing that's coming with 8.1 apparently is this is going to be a personal assistant in the same way of Google Now and Siri and you know Microsoft is pulling in all this data. You are supposed to give Microsoft this data, it's supposed to scan your inbox for calendar appointments and package tracking. That's going to go into something called notebook right? Yes, it's got this component called notebook which adds all your data. They are partnering with Foursquare for location stuff. But you know I think the same problem that essentially Siri has with Apple, Apple has a Siri, Microsoft is going to have with this. Is that you know for most people the company that has this data already is Google and Google has you know most of your online activity already and it makes it Google Now that much more powerful. It makes it smarter and more predictive and things like that whereas Siri just has you know maybe your calendar that you have stored on the phone and you know it's able to send text messages and make phone calls and things like that but it's not predictive in the same way that Google Now is. And I think you know Microsoft is probably going to run into the same kind of issue with this service you know except for the people that are fully invested in Microsoft's ecosystem. Well just to say I think from Microsoft's perspective this is a universally good move. What I'm reading again from Tom Warren who seems to just have a copy of Microsoft roadmap. He tells us that this is going to replace the Bing search and one of my favorite jokes is something to do with the fact that okay the joke I don't remember but it was about the fact that Bing is like the most underused physical or capacity button on a phone ever. Like nobody ever reaches for it. Nobody ever uses the Bing search on a Windows phone. So you know overhauling that, sticking this personal assistant on there and branding it with Cortana which you know for guys other than Dan who again is super adorable with the fact that he's not familiar with Halo is going to be a really cool thing. And you can set a nickname for yourself so your phone can actually start calling you Master Chief. So if Microsoft really wants to harness the good will that it has from all of these Halo gamers and from its you know it has a treasure trove of fan loyalty with Xbox. So it can do a lot here. You know to just give you a phone where you're like this is like my Xbox and you know try and bring some synergy between them and talk to your phone and it's like the character that like your sidekick or your assistant or whatever in the Halo story and it calls you Master Chief and you can kind of live a little fantasy there. So there's a hook there. At what point during the podcast did you start just smoking tremendous amounts of crap? I will tell you when. I will tell you exactly when. It was when Evan took us into the weeds with OpenGL. I was like I was seriously discussing Nvidia's OpenGL performance with respect to in Dash entertainment system. That's fair. So look there isn't a single human being on the planet who is like oh I played Xbox, oh I've heard of Cortana, I'm going to buy a Windows phone now. Like that's the argument you should be making. That is absolutely not it. You totally do not understand the mentality. I'm not talking about people who have heard about it. I'm talking about people who are like deeply invested into it. You're talking about the fan children. Yes and they exist and they're real and I'm one of them, not of Halo though. Because I am that way with Dota 2. Like if you made a phone where my favorite Dota 2 hero could be like a really fundamental part of it and I could kind of interact with it and stuff. I mean I wouldn't tell my friends about it. I probably wouldn't tell people about it on this podcast but I would use it and I would probably smile about it. I mean this is the same strategy that you know HTC has with its Hello Kitty phone right. Like there's these diehard Hello Kitty fans and they're going to buy the Hello Kitty. This is the same strategy as TomTom had when it did the Darth Vader voice over for turn by turn navigation. It is actually cool. That's the distinction. Hello Kitty is not cool. Darth Vader is giving you turn by turn navigation. For a large number of people, Hello Kitty is cool though. I mean it's just like when you do things like that, obviously with the HTC that I mentioned it's not a flagship device that they're trying to sell to everybody. There's a market for that. But like when you're targeting something like that, you're targeting like segments and if that's the strategy then that's like a very small strategy right. That's not a way to take your platform mainstream. That is actually a very good point and it reminds me of something I've been thinking about recently and that is specifically the fact that we can't find a perfect phone, a perfect user experience precisely because everyone is trying to do something that's just universal. Like they all want to mass produce the next iPhone. They all want to mass produce something that will sell in millions and millions and millions and it all looks the same. And the thing is that's hard to do with hardware. I think it's even harder to do with software. Like the software that really delights people is one that is at least in some way customized, at least in some way altered from this standard cloth that everybody gets. And that's the thing that bothers me is the fact that particularly with wearables, everyone says the word wearables but everyone is really thinking about a smartphone wristwatch. Everyone is thinking about a wristwatch with an arm processor in it and some smartphone like functionality in it because that's what everyone thinks will sell the most. And the thing that I'm thinking is if you do more niche things with wearables, you have the technology to make them really excellent. Again maybe it won't sell to everybody but it will be useful to humanity which is completely not a capitalist thought but there you go. I think you're absolutely right Vlad. If there was one thing that like, the thing about Google now and the thing about Cortana is like you can only feed it, like Chris said, you can only feed it the information that's available on the phone. But Vlad I think that if we're ever going to get to products like the kinds that you're talking about, like you need pervasive like data awareness from someone's life. And like the unfortunate reality is that really Google is the only one who not only has access to that kind of data but has had the foresight to kind of like organize it and deliver it in ways that they can capitalize on their apps. Vlad really just wants, Vlad wants Samantha from her. Well I mean I also want Samantha. I haven't seen the movie so please don't spoil it. But you know I think this is actually very telling of what Microsoft is now realizing which is that you know they have a chicken and egg problem which is like they don't have users and they don't have apps. The only way to get apps is to have users. Like apparently in order to drive the investment you have to have user base. Nintendo is like dealing with the same problem right now with the Wii U. But where Microsoft is really not like has historically not been very talented is in terms of like vendor and service lock in. And Google is so talented at that and Apple is so talented at that. But Microsoft has kind of like played the sidelines but it's really interesting to see the Nokia X come out and focus completely on services. And I think this is Microsoft realizing that if they're going to establish long term vendor lock in they have to hook people on these services, get them using them for a long, long time. And you know once you are in those kind of like loops then not only can you derive like data out of those services that you're offering but you know people will stick to your platform longer. The unfortunate thing is that they've ran that whole screw Google campaign so if they ever do try and mine information out of your email it kind of looks, it's a bad look. It's a bad look indeed. So on that note I think that wraps up the Verge mobile show for this week. This has been episode 82. Again today is, we're recording this on March 4th. Perhaps you're listening to it tomorrow or another day or whatever. We thank you for watching and tuning in and listening of course. If you want you can of course follow us. All of us are at Verge. You can send us email. You can drop comments on the post. You can follow us individually on Twitter. I'm DC Seifert. Vlad is Vlad Seva. He will not follow you back. Evan is Evan Rogers. Chris is Zpower and hopefully Dieter will be back with us next week. He is at Backlawn and we hope him Godspeed on getting well and getting his voice back. But until then, see you guys later. Bye.