 So the mobile show is a little bit difficult because we're all in different places and when Chris or Vlad are talking, I don't know, do I look up this way? Do I look up this way? Do I just stare at the camera like a goon? Do I look down? Do I read ahead? It's awkward. It's weird. It's this weird, you know, Brady Bunch thing, but we make it work. It's okay. But this week we're going to try something a little bit different. I think we've got a solution to this whole problem. Stay tuned to the Verge Mobile Show. Hi, I'm Dieter Bohm. I'm Dan Seifert. I'm Vlad Seva. I'm Chris Ziegler. And this is the Verge Mobile Show episode 15 wherein we blow your minds by being in the same room. So, Dieter, walk our good audience through how we planned that gag. I think it was really brilliant what you did. It was all Brendan. Wait, Brendan suggested that? Yeah. Brendan, the producer who you can't see because he's behind the wall, suggested we do that. So we did it. That's the whole story. I don't have anything else. You really could have spiced that up. You could have been like, we were having dinner and after our third drink we were like, you know what? Let's hoodwink our listeners. Actually, what happened was I recorded that just a few hours ago and then I got on a plane and flew here. We didn't think of it last week. We just now, today, decided to get together. That's our dedication to you. Yeah. Yeah. And just like we do when we're talking on Skype, we're going to talk over each other. We're going to interrupt each other. That's because we're on a time delay. We only hear each other for a couple of seconds. Actually right before the show we were debating whether to wear headsets and it would have been a little silly since we're all- Although, speaking of equipment, I am the only one who's brave enough to actually do this show without a laptop in front of me. A true professional. Well, that's not brave. That's just lazy because that means that you need to rely on other people to tell you what the topics are. No, no, no. No, the topics are just going to organically flow. Pretty much. Pretty much. Also, there's the mystery of what is in my cup today. It's water. Vlad only drinks water. That's not a mystery. Anyone who follows Vladwick on Twitter knows that he only drinks water. All right. I've had enough of this Vladwick. Can someone explain Vladwick to me please? I don't even need an explanation. Let's not mention that name again because I'm pretty sure this Vladwick character on Twitter is stealing followers from me. And that I'm not having it. At some point, I mean, at this point, really, I need to get in touch with Twitter and get validated. It's gotten to that stage. You should. It's really gotten to that stage. You should. I don't think you can ask. I think they just bequeath it unto you. Yeah, I think that's the case, but at the same time, if you- You want to get bequeathed. Yeah, I do want to get bequeathed. And the thing is, you don't get bequeathed unless you ask for bequeathment. So we're loopy because we've had a crazy insane day. Yes. Life. And it actually works out that we're a day late because we actually can talk about the things that happened on this crazy insane day. And first and foremost, no matter what Motorola says, the main event today was Nokia. Big time. I want to say it was Nokia and Microsoft, but I can't say that because Microsoft was there. They showed a little bit new, but this was Nokia's thing. Two new features. Yeah. Whoa. For Microsoft's sake, let's give Microsoft credit. There is now a screenshot feature on Windows Phone 8. So let's get psyched. It was a big deal on ICS. I'm sorry. Joe Corfiore took 20 minutes on stage. It was a big deal on Windows Phone 8. And he was like, and when you press the power button and the home button, whoa, it's a screenshot. And I'm like, okay. And what else are you going to say? So we're going to talk about the 920 in depth. Don't worry. But the screenshot thing is important because iPhone users have been depending on it to send random stuff to each other. It has become a consumer feature, not just a nerdy developer feature. Everybody uses it all the time. My Instagram feed is always half screenshots. Yeah. Right. No. Listen, I'm being snarky, but I totally agree with you. And I also think Windows Phone immediately gets the advantage over Android because in Android some devices do it one way, some devices do it another way. With some devices you can press the power button and the home button and you get a screenshot. With other devices like Samsung's Galaxy range, you have to rub the palm. It's the worst. What part of you? It's the meaty part of your hand. Yeah. I mean, you have to rub flesh across the display. It's the worst. In order to get a screenshot. While not actuating the display. Which is like, in terms of natural gestures, you know how Samsung loves to talk about inspired by nature? There is no gesture in nature where you rub your palm across something and you get a screenshot. That gesture is a gesture of, oh, God. To be fair, meat is natural. Meat, hand meat across the screen. That just pointing out, it is in violation of their... But yeah, okay. But the reason I'm being snarky is because on reflection, when the event's actually happening, everything kind of feels super exciting. Because it's just kind of coming at you so quickly that you just can't absorb it quickly enough. But on reflection, when Paul Miller, he was asking about the event and I was asking him, well, Paul, what do you know about today's event? Seeing as you can't be on the internet. He's like, well, I don't know. And he started asking me questions about it. And I started trying to pick out the highlights from the Nokia event. And Paul asked me, well, what about Windows Phone 8? What did Microsoft reveal about that? And then it struck me how kind of silly and granular it is that Microsoft brought Joe Murphy around on stage. And the only thing you could tell us was we can now do screenshots in Windows Phone 8. Well, there was the camera lens thing. Yeah. Which are definitely cool. Well, actually, the camera lens thing would have been cool if they had announced Instagram support. So if you didn't see, one of the new features of Windows Phone 8 is app developers will be able to integrate into the camera as quote unquote lenses. And so when you launch the phone app, you can either launch the standard stock phone app or you can launch some custom camera app that has particular filters or better settings or whatever you want. It's a really clever feature. It's a really smart idea. And it's really it fits with the Windows Phone ethos of tying stuff into hubs. So they don't just have an app on the screen that ties into the rest of the ecosystem on the phone. So it's like that feature was designed for Instagram. And no dice. Regardless. And Microsoft is a buddy buddy with Facebook. It should happen. Well, Vlad, to your point, though, I think it was very I mean, even if Joe, if Joe Belfiore got on stage and didn't say a single thing, you just stood there and smiled for the camera. It was important to have him involved with the event because it was presented from the get go as a a combo Windows Phone 8 and Nokia event. And I don't think that anybody really expected major Windows Phone 8 revelations there. You did? Well, I mean, not in the past couple of weeks, but I expected Windows Phone 8 would have had a big unveiling by now. Like there's no room to have a big Windows Phone 8 unveiling now. There's nothing because it's all. No. What are they going to show? There's a point. There's a point. It's all trickled out. Small. Yeah. You don't know. Dude. But I think that's exactly the point, Dieter. The fact that Microsoft has been doing exactly that trickling out. OK, there's this feature. Now there's this feature. And we have this event. We're going to let you know about Windows Phone 8. We're going to let app developers know what they can do and what potential they can find. And now it's kind of, I mean, the indications we're getting is that essentially Windows Phone 8 is going to launch alongside Windows 8 for the desktop and tablets and all that madness. But then Microsoft can't really have a big blowout event because, like we're saying, it just trickled out all the features. And now what's going to happen, apart from Dieter grimacing for Chris's... Dude, you're using a Galaxy Nexus. That's embarrassing. Let's take a photo. Well, I mean, I don't have any other options on me at the moment. I find it really hard to believe that you came to New York City with one phone in your back. Two. Only two? Wow. Yeah. This and a Lumia 900, of all things. Roughing it. Ouch. Boo. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. But yeah, I mean, my point is, and it was really supposed to be more of an aside about Microsoft is that the Windows Phone 8 launch is kind of confused. And also to Chris's point about this was supposed to be the big event. Honestly, the way this was built up, it was... Here it is. Like Nokia, you're getting the flagship Windows Phone 8 device. It's happening. It's been announced. And I mean, we still haven't even touched on the 920 itself, which is a fascinating device. It has its features and its assets, but there's no release date. Or price. Or price, right. Actually, price, I don't care about because prices tend to fall within sort of ranges and... And it's on a market by market basis. Yeah. Exactly. But that was, I think, a really amateur mistake, especially after the amount of heat that Microsoft got over the surface announced. You think that they would have said to Nokia, hey, maybe we should talk specifics here. I think the reason they didn't is that Windows Phone 8 is getting pushed. I think the 920 is ready to ship. Yeah. I think they're waiting on Windows Phone 8. Right. Which also partially explains why Microsoft isn't showing everything that they're doing in the platform. I mean, that's a frustrating thing. Most of the demos were hands off today. Right. That is completely aggravating. And when you did get a phone in your hands, it was... Somebody was over your shoulder all the time and they were like, I need the phone, I need the phone. And you're like, okay, do you want me to talk about this phone's capabilities? Do you want me to tell the world that Windows Phone 8 is great? Or do you want me to tell them I saw the home screen, it looked like the home screen they showed a month or two ago and they didn't let me touch the rest. And this is a frustrating thing. The build up was, and the delivery should have been, Nokia announces Windows Phone 8 device, tells us it's out in two weeks. Microsoft tells us Windows Phone 8 is out in two weeks. This is the thing that Samsung was trying to steal thunder from by announcing the Ativ, Ativ, Ativ S. I just did all the pronunciations. It's Ativ, unfortunately. I kind of got it wrong. I mean, we've established Beta is Beta, but I think it's Ativ now. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's Ativ. I thought when Samsung pre-announced their Windows Phone 8 device, they were trying to steal some thunder from this event. So, well, you know, Nokia made a big deal about how, you know, we're showing the first working Windows Phone 8 device on stage as opposed to Samsung, which just announced the Ativ and didn't show it. But really, Nokia didn't really show us any more than Samsung showed us because we still don't have that release date. We don't have a price and we couldn't take an actual deep look at a working device in hand. Right. Yeah. And to that point, I mean, let's just shame Nokia straight up. Let's get right into that. Well, hey, we need to talk about the 920. Now, we'll talk about the 920, but this is actually more important because we crack this. And this is for... And by this, we mean Nokia's sense of pride and self-worth. I guess. But, okay, let's give credit to TC Sotic from our news team who spotted that Nokia's demo video showing the PureView technology and the optical image stabilization, which is built into the 920, which again, we can discuss a bit more detail in a second. Nokia was showing that off. Yeah. If you haven't seen the video, there's a girl, she's riding a bike and then her boyfriend, some guy that she met on the street, whatever, is riding next to her and he's holding up the Nokia phone, filming her, and they're showing off their image stabilization because the lens can actually float inside there so that it's got actual physical image stabilization, which is really cool for a phone. And so you look at the video and then you see it stabilized and you're like, oh, well, they just showed video from the phone. But TC noticed a reflection in the window of the van behind the girl that showed a DSLR camera. And hands. And hands and lights and whatever filming it instead of just the little camera. So they faked it, which is amazing. And the thing is, that's fine so long as you have the little disclaimer at the bottom saying we're simulating it, but Nokia never did. And the really amusing thing and the thing that I don't need a laptop to read, Chris, is that Nokia then went to Nokia Conversations and they issued a full apology saying we're really excited about the capabilities and what we've done is we've only simulated the capabilities of optical image stabilization in a PV camera in the 920. So I mean, somebody commented and you... Here's a video. We got it up. So you can see it shaky. Until the DSLR comes in. Oh, yeah. When you use the DSLR in a van and use your own special light. And a full rig, yeah, full suspension rig and whatnot. And when your girlfriend is an actress. Oh. There it is. What's up? And lights. That's beautiful. And also, we're completely trolling Nokia. Of course, in hindsight it's 2020, but we should have posted a disclaimer stating this was a representation of OIS only. This was not shot with the Lumia 920, at least not yet. So look, let me just talk about the 920 hardware for a minute. It looks like... Whoa, dude. I know. I want to talk about the hardware, not you. I wasn't like, so look, let's have Dieter talk about the hardware for a minute. I want to talk about the hardware. I still love the design of the 900 and I love what they're... They seem to be evolving their idea a little bit. They're moving toward glossy. Lame. Except for the one color. Or two colors. Well, I'll get to that. And that's going to be... I'm going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about that for 20 minutes. And I'm going to get so angry about it that I knock the mic right out of the... You should have just thrown it on the ground. It's not going to be the first time I do that, or the last time. While you're adjusting your mic, I want to be on record that glossy is stupid and it was a mistake to do that. No, it is. I agree. Thank you. No, I totally agree. But there's a very easy reason why glossy is stupid. Yeah, they're stupid. No, it's the polycarbonate construction. It is why we have the white glossy Lumia 800 and 900 and it's why the brand new lipstick red, is that what they call it? The yellow? I'm a big fan of the yellow. That's why I think Lumia 920s are glossy because doing the matte finish obviously just isn't possible. It isn't feasible. And that's why there's the black version, which is matte. Building a phone out of complete and solid titanium presents design problems. You just choose not to do it. Building phones is hard. Designing phones that look good is really hard. And they just chose to take a flyer. I mean, maybe they think glossy looks better. I think it looks stupid. So I think that there are some colors that maybe benefit from glossy. And to Vlad's point about the specific colors requiring glossy, I mean, I think that's definitely true with white. When you look at the 1X, it gets so dirty so fast. Same with the white 808 PureView was a matte finish that got filthy so quickly. Come on, my 1X is still white. Well, that's because you're clean as a whistleblower. It's whiter than this supposedly white cup. So but anyway, let's turn the attention to what I think we really all want to talk about, which is the lack, the distinct and very obvious lack of cyan on the 920. This is like, this was, it's a tragedy. Like I'm not, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this was the single biggest mistake that they made with this phone because there is such an indelible bond between that color and Nokia now that they've cultivated over two generations of devices now. And they've just thrown that away. And I don't know why. And just to support your point, today, the red carpet outside of the building was blue. When we walked in, the carpet inside was blue. Yes, it's Nokia's color. The lighting everywhere around us was blue. It's Nokia's color. I was shooting the live blog photos, and I was thinking, people are going to look at these photos, and they're going to think I've screwed up my white balance because everything around us is blue until the presentation started, and they normalized the colors. But yes, not only Nokia's colors, it's Microsoft's color. If Microsoft can be identified with any one particular color, it would be blue, right? For the most part. I mean, most of the Windows unit would be white. I'm sorry. We do not need to be talking about these colors. I really derailed this with my little eyes. No. I'm sorry. No, it is a big, no. Look, I wrote a 750 word report on this today. I get to talk about it for 20 minutes. You've got 750 words talking about cyan? It may have been closer to 700. I can't remember, but it was up there. Point being, no, I think that this is a big deal because they have an entire cyan ecosystem now. They have the cyan headphones. Yes, they do. At Nokia World last year, they debuted monster headphones in cyan, which everybody was wearing, Dan remembers. I do. They have that, what do they call it? The Luna or something? The NFC Bluetooth headset in cyan. Play 360 speakers. Yes. And so that was the other thing. JBL came out with a new cyan speaker that's compatible with the wireless charging on the A2920 today that they showed. Oh, yes. It has wireless charging. Yes. And they showed it working with a yellow 920, which was just the ugliest color. It was offensive that they demonstrated this cyan speaker with a yellow 920, demonstrated with the black or the gray or whatever, or really demonstrated with the cyan that doesn't exist. Chris. So here's my theory. Wait. Here's my theory. What I think is going to happen is this. I'm so mad right now, I'm going to knock the mic out again any second now. They are going to end up tying the cyan version of that phone, which I'm convinced exists, to a specific carrier. Right. It's going to be a carrier exclusive. I don't know if it's going to be AT&T or what, but we'll see it. That's what I think is going to happen. OK. Wait, wait. We need permission to talk from Chris. Yeah, no, I'm done. I'm done. Ran over. I was just going to point out that the cyan and the yellow go really nicely for the Swedish audience. Oh, that's true. That is a good point, yes. Why do you hate the Swedes? You know that. That's true. Also, just I've still got an HT1X standing up here on the table for those of us who are just listening. And you guys can use this as sort of instructive image for what the size and shape of the 920 is. Not so much the shape, but in terms of size, width, and height, it is almost a perfect match for the Lumia 920. Which actually, the HT1X has a 4.7 inch display. It has a bigger display. The Lumia 920 has a smaller display. No, I think they're the same. No, it's 4.7 versus 4.5 inches. OK, my mistake. So just in terms of physical dimensions, those resolutions are pretty much, as Chris says, just 48 lines worth of difference. And also, it's worth mentioning that the 1X is still the best display that all of us think we're seeing on any mobile device. And I have to say, the 920, in the, again, brief time, short time that I was looking at it, was close. I can't say immediately this is as good as the 1X. But I had them side by side. I looked at its viewing angles. Again, looking at the freaking home screen all the time, because that's when Microsoft and Nokia let us look. It's just a really good looking display, is what I'm saying. So when I take the 1X and when I take the Lumia 920, I just think both have really high quality display. So give credit to Nokia for that. And also, another comparison with the 1X. This is something that I did myself and tried it out. And it was very much true. Nokia had this dark room where they had a bouquet of flowers, I believe it was, in a dark room. And there's just a bricked out hole in the wall where you stick your phone in, you take the photo, and then you bring it out. What? I mean, it's creepy. I know. Oh my god. But the premise is it's a big thing. Can I say what that is on the podcast? What that? No? OK. I think people can guess. But the premise is it's a dark space. Craig's really, really mad at me right now. All right. The point is it's a dark space. You take a photo of the darkness, and then you see what the product is. And this was all done in auto mode. So I had a 1X with me. The demo guy wouldn't let me freaking touch the 920 with a head on him. And again, no flash enabled, all in auto mode. So I'll try and show this to one of our cameras. That's not going to work. Yeah. I mean, it's a really dark image that I got with a 1X. But on the Lumia 920, it was almost like it was regular lighting. It would go crazy. It's going to assist us. But yeah, the 1X image is dark. Whereas the 920 was just amazing. You could basically see all of it. Well, I mean, look, other than my unreasonable complaint about the glossiness and Chris's unreasonable complaint about the lack of a cyan color, does anybody have any real genuine complaints about the hardware? Like, it looks great. No. I mean, my complaint in quotation marks is I'm still somebody who loves 4 inch to 4.4 inch devices. This is just bigger. I don't want a phone that's the size of the 1X. I'm using the 1X right now, and I'm not that happy with the size. I want a smaller phone. That's my complaint. But then you also have the 820, which again, has a couple of compromises. But big time, I'm impressed with the optical mystification that Nokia has come up with. I was one of those people who thought branding this new camera, which is an 8 megapixel sensor, as peer view was kind of sacrilege on your own. Because peer view, let's not beat around the bush. Nokia can say whatever it wants to say today. But peer view was oversampling, massive sensor, take 41 megapixels of data, bring it down to 5 megapixels, blow people's minds. That's what peer view meant. It was about the oversampling. Then yesterday, Damien Dilling, Nokia's camera chief, is taking to Twitter and spent the whole day saying it is not one specific feature. Peer view is just out branding for great pictures. But in this case, I'm fine with that, actually. It's kind of like Apple's retina display. Retina tells you it's going to be really high density. I don't really care about this if you hold it such and such distance. I don't really care about the technical definition of retina. I care about the fact that if I go and get an Apple product and it says retina on it, I can expect high density display on that device. With Nokia, it's true. If I get a peer view device, I can expect high image quality. I mean, again, you need to test it. You need to review it. But it looks like it's going to be a really kick ass camera. It's going to be one of the best cameras on a smartphone. Yeah. But the same issue remains. When is that going to happen? Right. I mean, back to the camera. I'm really excited to try it out and stuff, because the camera on the 800 and the 900 was just so utterly disappointing. So I'm excited to give it a test and give it a run. I really hope it lives up to Nokia's claims that they made today. But we'll find out. We'll find out when we actually get to use it for an extended period of time. And as a thing, I'm just going to jump in here and steal the awesome segue, which is something a whole bunch of people have mentioned, which is that today's two events, Nokia and Motorola, just seem like in some degree, in some respect, desperation moves to try and preempt the upcoming iPhone. And we know the upcoming iPhone is this time next week. Yeah. So I mean, tell us what Motorola announced. The main event, dude. The main event at the Motorola event was for like 45 minutes before it actually started. They had a band come out. And these guys are perfectly good musicians. They're brothers. They're very, very good looking guys. They wore skinny jeans. They played music. It was good. But the name of the band was The Kin. They lead off the show of New Phone coming to Verizon with a band called The Kin, knowing that they had just bust a whole bunch of people over from a Microsoft. So what you're saying is that Motorola has spent $500 million to book The Kin, and then in six months, they're just going to drop them, and they're going to disappear. It's like, was it a subtle dig at Microsoft, or was it just like complete tone deafness? I have no idea. That's just crazy. Yeah. And so they're playing. And I'm like, you know, live-blogging them playing, which is really surreal. And then they're trying to get the audience to join in. And then they need to get off the stage so that executives can get on the stage. And so they're walking in the crowd and singing. And I'm standing right here, sitting right here. And they're singing along, playing guitar right there. It was terrible. Weren't they trying to get you to sing along as well, I believe? Yes. It was. And did you? No. I did not. But it set me up to dislike what came entirely. Which, OK, so it's the Razer HD. And the Razer HD Max. Two phones that should just be one phone, but whatever. And it's an iteration of the Razer. It's a bigger screen, higher resolution, gigantic, massive, huge batteries. I think it's 2,500 and 3,300. Yeah, the big one is 3,300. Yeah, just huge. And the Max isn't that much thicker than the regular one. Just the way it is now. You can definitely feel the extra weight, but that's about it. And Pentel displays. So Avi Greengard, who is an analyst that is a good friend of ours, said on Twitter today something that I thought was very interesting. And that's that he thinks that the only reason these two phones exist is because Verizon wanted one at $199 and one at $299. No, this is what I've been saying all day, that the reason that there's two phones is they wanted to hit the two price points. And it's, is Verizon calling for it? And then they announced a third phone hit the third price point at $99, which is the Razr M, which is basically a Razr with a S4 processor, although they're not saying what the processor is. We actually got one of those. Yeah. And it's just like a thick little Razr. I mean, it's Razr Max. Yeah, so it's a little bit thicker than the original Razr by maybe a millimeter. Let's see if I can get a profile shot. Yeah, it's $99. But it is really tiny in your hand. And it's got this tiny little zero bezel screen. And look, people have been saying all day, I mean, there's been a lot of vigil sort of levied toward Motorola in the past few hours. And some of it is fair, I think. But I mean, these are very iterative products, right? Right. But the Razr Max is one of the more loved Motorola phones in recent memory, apart from the display. And while the Razr Max HD doesn't fix that entirely, it does make it better. OK, so it makes it better because it's 720p. And so the text does not make me want to die. It's way better. But they started this trend. I want to say it was with the Atrix XG. It might have been a little bit before, where they decide that they're going to win on color fidelity. And Motorola's definition of color fidelity is to blow out all the colors in just maximum saturation. You look at the green, and my metaphor was there's this green icon for text messaging. And it was basically like, hi, hi, hi, hi, I'm green. Hi, hey, over here, I'm green. I'm green. No, really, look how green I am. Green, green, green. It's terrible. It looks bad. It's too green. Yeah, it's way too green. Can we keep going with your interpretation of the Motorola UI? So let's talk about the UI. Because the UI is very light, which is great. It's a very small, limited manipulation of Android. But what we're looking at is Android 4.0, which I find totally insane because one of the big presentations at the beginning, they showed a giant slide behind the executive said, jelly bean. And they say, and they're launching with ice cream sandwich. And we're going to get jelly bean, promised at some point. But you have to give most of the credit for some crafty phrasing. Because they said, we're launching these phones with jelly bean by the end of the year. And you know what else? I was busy writing up some of the Nokia stuff coming out of the Nokia event. But at the same time, the livestream was going on, and I was kind of keeping a third eye on it. And Eric Schmidt was doing a presentation. And I was like, whoa, hang on a second. If Eric Schmidt is here, maybe these guys are going to do something more serious. Maybe there will be some more Google info. That is something that we should talk about, though. Because I really believe that the firewall that supposedly exists between Google proper and Motorola would prevent someone of an Eric Schmidt caliber from presenting at a Motorola event. I thought that Woodside would be the top level executive that we would ever see at a Motorola event. Eric Schmidt was there to basically introduce Woodside. And they got Marty Cooper, father of the cell phone, to come. And so he caved this historical, isn't it amazing, the world we live in and how far smartphones have come? And isn't the Android ecosystem awesome? Excuse me. And he dropped the standard, these are the Android activations per day. And I forget the number. 105 million? 1.3 million per day. And I believe there's 480 million devices. Right, and 70,000 of that 1.3 million is tablets. So just to be absolutely clear, my 105 million was completely out of my imagination. Just a little bit. So those numbers always come from Schmidt or somebody high level. So that might have been why. But the thing that I took away is actually kind of the opposite of what you took away, is that the firewall between Google and Motorola is fully there. Because the fact that they are launching with ice cream sandwich and couldn't get Jelly Bean done in time shows that they didn't get any early access. Like they had Jelly Bean running on the demo units for the Razer M and the Razer HD. And the first ones I looked at didn't have it. And then we heard they were across the room, so we went across the room. And the Razer M is pretty close to being good to go. Like I played with it, it's pretty close to ready. But the Razer HD's implementation of Jelly Bean is not at all. Like it's stuttery and jittery. Like it's just straight up not ready yet, which means that Motorola straight up hasn't had time with it yet. I think that these are probably, my guess is that these are the last Motorola devices we'll see that were too far along for Google to have significant input before they were released. I think that by 2013, we're going to see a very different Motorola. You know what we're going to continue to see though, is skins. Like Motorola, I don't think Motorola is going all stock. I really don't. It's getting closer to Dan's point, though it's getting lighter and lighter and lighter. They added one thing that's really clever. If you swipe left from the first home screen, because their home screens go horizontally and it starts at the leftmost position. If you swipe left now, there's a settings menu there. So instead of putting quick settings in the notification area, or make your own widgets or whatever, they just put it all the way to the left. You know what this evokes is the swipe UI on Nokia's N9. And I was swiping the whole screen over, and you're getting that cool quick settings menu. Please don't say that. That's not fair. That hurts. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Vlad. To anybody, anybody who cares about Nokia's future, rather than Nokia's glorious past, that hurts. I mean, the other thing we need to point out here is Razer HD and Razer HD Max. No price. No release date. But you can pretty much guess the price. It'll be $199, $299. But I mean, I don't know. What are they afraid of? Are they afraid they're not going to launch it in time? They're just said before the holidays, which is like great, December 20th. I don't understand either them or Nokia or Microsoft holding these events. I really don't. Because I can relate to the Nokia fans. But what this event will build up for a Nokia fan is anticipation, yes, but equal amounts of frustration as well. Right. But they're not doing it for our benefit or for our reader's benefit. They're doing it for that five second soundbite on the nightly news where it says, Nokia unveiled its next generation phones today, running Microsoft's new operating system. They're doing it for the two second mention when they talk about the iPhone on the news. Oh, Apple announced blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, these other things were also going to compete with these things. But at the same time, we're supposed to be the savvy ones who follow this industry, rather than the ones who report about Nokia launching Windows 8 phones. Because I'm going to start naming and shaming people. Financial Times yesterday, check it out. Nokia is launching Windows 8 phones. And I'm like, yeah, OK, I'm looking forward to that. Wouldn't it be amazing if we did? There was another video by another combination that did the same thing. Windows 8. No, but these events going, like they rushed to get these events out before the iPhone. And not giving a clear launch date or price, or letting people touch the phones, it's so transparent. It's like you might as well have worn a sign saying, we did this thing that you suspect us of doing, of rushing to get out before the iPhone. It's like, let's hold an event. Hey, you're not wearing any pants. Nah, I don't need pants. But there's a point. A lot of people might not immediately pick up on it, or at least consciously pick up on it. But then you kind of subconsciously get the point that this company isn't giving you substance. Yeah. Because people are, you know, I don't know how to put it exactly, but our minds are smarter than our conscious minds, if you like. So somebody's called a touchdown, I think. So we've got the SB Nation crew hollering over there. But yeah, let me take the glasses off as well. Yeah, people pick up on the fact that you just held an event. You just spent an hour or whatever breaking down, talking and talking and talking. And then at the end, it's like, where is the substance? And frankly, again, coming back to Paul asking me about the highlights with these phones, the 920 and the 820, I mean, one of the big things is, well, the 920 comes in these bright new colors. And then you have to kind of start picking things out. You have to give people the fundamental details. This was a consumer-facing event for Nokia and for Motorola. And you're not giving consumers the details that they want to know. It's like, I want to sell you this. And a lot of people, as far as Nokia goes, and I'm sure there's still Motorola fanboys knocking about the place, are like, yeah, I'm buying what you're selling. Let's get the pre-orders flowing, right? Whereas Motorola is the only one who gave us a pre-order. And it was the M. Yeah, exactly. The M, the one that has the old display that nobody actually wants. But at the same time, let's not just be whinging and moaning. I want to give credit to somebody who did it right. And that was actually Sony. Because back at IFA last week, Sony introduced the Xperia TX, the Xperia T. One of those is? J and the V. Just by saying that. OK, hang on. Hang on. Hang on. I was booting up the caveat in myself. Explain what they did right. That's what I'm saying, man. It takes a while. It takes a while. Work with me here. OK, so Xperia TX, Xperia T, disastrous naming scheme, because one of those go into Germany only. The other one is going all across Europe. And Sony was key to say that they're really not that much different in their release. Isn't the T that's going to Germany for Teutonic? Yeah. That's awesome. That's so much more logical than whatever the hell Sony's thinking. And then there's the Xperia J and the Xperia V. They should have called it the Xperia Teutonic. That would have been the better way. The naming scheme is nuts. But what Sony got right, and got so right, is these are, again, as Chris was saying, incremental devices, incremental upgrades. But they're coming out in two weeks. So it's like Sony is saying, here's our latest phone. It looks like the old phone. But we've improved the camera. We've improved a few things. The design is sweeter. It looks fresh. We're shipping it with not the latest version. But you know, Jelly Bean is coming. It's the same thing that everybody's saying. And you know what's a feel good story about that is that historically, Sony Ericsson was one of the worst offenders where they would literally have a press event in February and launch the phone in like October. It was really bad for a long time. The X1. The X1 is a perfect example. So that's good to see. Well, I mean, I guess we should yell at Samsung. We actually haven't podcasted since they had their crazy event with magicians and wands and stuff at IFA. They didn't give us a price release date for the Galaxy Note 2. They never do. Yeah, and that's the thing. With Samsung, we're like, yeah, they'll ship it. But that's the thing. Here's the big difference. Here's the big difference for me between Samsung and Nokia. Because there will be people who say I'm too forgiving of Nokia, and then there will be people who say Vlad is an absolute not a Nokia hater. He wants to destroy the state of Finland. He does. Right. The distinction for me between Samsung and Nokia is Samsung delivers the phone while it is still on the bleeding edge and while it is still the most desirable freaking thing. And it has unique features. Nokia doesn't. And the thing, I mean, I wrote up a report about Nokia starting over and published it about an hour before we got here for the podcast. And in that, I pointed out the N8. And when the N8 was announced, that was one of the most exciting devices back in 2010. It was the first device with a 720p video recording. It had an amazing camera. OK, it ran Symbian, but you can't have it all. And then it took, I don't know, six months to get to market. And by that point, the evil 4G had just completely stolen that phone, completely. And this is Nokia's track record. And this is why Nokia's going down and why Samsung's going up, because when Samsung releases, it still has unique features, whereas Nokia has this really nice touch screen that we mentioned that you can use with gloves on. But it's made by Synaptics. What's stopping HTC beating Nokia to market? HTC is going to do, do we have a date yet? We have another one. 19th. Is there an event? Yeah, it's coming real soon. 19th or 18th. HTC is going to launch its Windows phone device. That's what we presume is going to happen. So what if that device has the same touch screen, but then adds some HTC magic on top? In terms of the hype cycle, remember we debated this a couple episodes before, the fact that some companies seem to think that scheduling an event before an Apple event is the best way to steal their thunder. I was saying that I think the best way to do is to schedule afterwards. So now we have companies trying to do it on both sides. I don't think anybody's trying to steal their thunder. They're just trying not to get soaked by the rain. Right. Nobody thinks they're really going to. Right. Yeah, you're right. You can only hope to not get drowned by Apple news. But you know what else? I also think that there's something to be said for those old sayings that are recited about the pioneers of the American capitalist industry, Henry Ford and those guys who were like, take care of the customer's needs, the profits, and the finance will take care of themselves. You know, that kind of thing. So if you actually do your business properly, if you stop trying to negotiate the Apple behemoth and just start trying to produce good, solid phones priced at a reasonable spot, something that can appeal to people, something that makes sense to people and gives them reason to buy. I mean, a perfect example that we keep reciting is the Xperia Mini Pro. It was just a good phone, made a ton of sense, and it was just so cheaply priced. I don't know if I'm being a Sony fanboy here, but I just really like. You kind of are. I just really like the way Sony said, didn't make a huge deal out of these new phones. I don't think they should have had the free phones, obviously. Didn't make a huge deal, just gave us a release date and said, we're pushing them out. And this is the opposite. Sony has learned and gotten better at that. Motorola, they threw a huge event and had this band playing. And they tried to get me to sing along with them before they presented the phones. And these phones are good. But if you're not going to give us a release date, send me a review unit of the Razer M and let me look at the other two. Right, that is the key thing. You don't hold an event for an iterative device, period. Unless you're the iPhone. Otherwise, you just don't do it. Well, and it's like, this is the new Motorola. Well, thanks. Did they say that? Yes, that was a big part of their presentation. The new Motorola. You know what else? Samsung said that the Galaxy camera was inspired by nature as well. And I cringe. I honestly cringe. It's like, the Galaxy camera, it's a point issue. That's not inspired by nature. It's a point issue. Stop saying things that mean absolutely nothing. So Motorola's like, we're going to give you upgrades. We're going to get upgrades right. We promise to get better at upgrades. And not all the phones made in 2011 are going to get upgrades. No, but at least they're doing people. But they're doing people. So they'll give you 100 bucks to buy a new phone. Yeah. If your phone isn't getting upgraded to jelly, which is to say they'll collect a whole heap more than 100 bucks. Right. Give you 100. But it's still a total Google move. Like, you know, they that's something that Motorola as an independent company, I don't think really could have afforded to do. I mean, they just kind of fronted that money. They won't tell me the list of what phones will and won't get updated. They refuse. They don't know. Or they're not telling me. I know what one won't, is the flip out. Flip out owners, you have 100 bucks coming to you. I think it's only 2011 phones though. Yeah, it's just 2011 phones. Flip out is 2011. No way. 2012 phones, I mean. No, 2011. Since 2011. OK. But again, like, we hear these upgrade promises all the time. If you want to be the new Motorola, then don't have an event and promise me again. Because have you ever heard we're going to get better at upgrades and gone like, oh, yeah, I believe you. It's going to happen. Well, that's you always go, yeah, OK, whatever. That's that's a key difference between Motorola's event and Samsung's event last week. The Note 2 is launching with jelly bean on board out of the box. There's no upgrade wait time. There's no better Android you have that you can be jealous about. Samsung has so much more software work to do than Motorola does on this stuff. But I mean, the point I was raising with Sony was just that if you do your work properly, that will become noticed. Whereas what we're dealing with here today is a whole heap of promises, both from Motorola and Nokia, and a whole heap of, you know, really just marketing material. Like, we had to wade through all this marketing material. And then it's like sand. Like, where is the substance for what we get? And it's Nokia says, we promise you amazing phones. Motorola says, we promise you amazing updates to software which is already available in the Galaxy Nexus. And it's like, stop giving us promises. Start doing things right. And also stop making attack ads on Apple because they're amusing for us. But they don't do much to help you sell more phones. And if your company is just like focused on doing their business correctly, I just think it will just float to the surface. People will notice. People will start buying good devices. It's always the case. I mean, the reason Android has become such a dominant force is because it offers you a good user experience. Like, it's an evolving user experience. It's an imperfect one, but it's a good one. And the same is true of Apple products. I mean, the reason we have MacBook Air is because these are the best laptops for our kind of work, specifically for our kind of work. I mean, mine is hidden, but yeah, I'm using the MacBook Air as well. It's just the way it is. And it isn't because of the hype and the marketing and who does the speech and whatever. It's because it's just good. And we're just being trolled here on the mobile show. Our managing editor and our other European are both here. I don't know. It's a good thing they don't actually watch the show because we would be so fired for what happened earlier. Did I really? No, no, he didn't. I didn't hear it. He said fired. I said fired. Fired. It would be so fired. I mean, fired is an F word. I may have said it. It's been one of those shows. I think you're doing a great job so far. I can use Neela as a segue actually. No, we've got a segue to the two As. Oh my God. You are... Can I just complain about the Razer screens? They're terrible. Dude, the Razer M is terrible. You haven't seen the Razer HD. It's terrible too. It's terrible too but in a completely different way. Can I just replace Chris' hands? I'm from Chicago. Into the mic. I'm leaving. Look, I don't care what you say. Pentile is a terrible technology that should be removed. I'm going to go watch football in the other room with the sports pros. Who's winning? Would you tell them to quit yelling? They're sports pros. They don't know how to not yell. Two of them are... I think Neela is a few drinks ahead of us. That's my theory. I know. Zero drinks ahead. Zero drinks? He just psyched about that freaking Amazon smartphone. We got to talk about the Amazon smartphone. That's what I was trying to get us to. Wait, no. Dude, we skipped right past Samsung. No, we didn't. We're done. What else do you want to do with Samsung? We talked about the Galaxy Note 2. We didn't even say the word Ativ once. Yeah, we already did it. I said it times. Bless you. I said it in every pronunciation available. Yeah, like the beginning of the show. Vlad said Ativ. I said Gesundheit. We're done. I want to talk about the Ativ S. No, you don't. There's nothing to say. We don't know anything about it other than it has a hairline metal design. We're done. We just say one thing about the Ativ S. Oh, please. He's going to cry. Let me just say one thing. See, in person, the emotions just flow so much more when the mobile show is in person. Samsung makes me all emotional. No, look. I just noticed one thing. I don't know why this didn't occur to me before. Maybe one of you guys mentioned it in one of your live blogs. Forgive me if you did. But the Ativ S does not have the 1280 by 768 display, which is interesting for a very important non-Samsung reason. This suggests that Microsoft is moving away from the chassis model that they've been pushing since Windows Phone 7, right? If they're allowing their two main OEMs to diverge that little on screen size, that tells me that they're giving these guys a lot more freedom and leeway than they had before. Okay, that's fair. Yeah, but didn't they already specify that their major display specs are going to be 1280 by 768 and 1280 by 720? Microsoft did? Yeah. Yeah, the Windows Phone 8 reveal. I think the Windows Phone 8 got revealed for the first time. Forget everything I just said. Craig, if you can cut that last bit, that'd be appreciated. No, please don't. Please don't, because that was really emotional. I thought I was saying something really important there, but apparently not. But still, why would... Okay, let me parlay that into a different point. Also incorrect. Why would Microsoft specifically specify that two screen sizes that are so close to each other would be part of the official specs? Because Nokia got a good deal on these other screens. Yeah, it could be as simple as that. It could just be as simple as that. So do you think that we're going to see any other OEMs do a 768 phone, or do you think that's going to be Nokia exclusive? I don't think those extra 38 pixels matter. 48. 48. Now it's a game changer. Now, yeah. Do you guys remember back before the Lumia 800 was announced, they were showing a Windows Phone. I can't remember...was it called the Shark or something? They had the...what was the code name? It was a fish. It was like... Sea Ray. Sea Ray, yes. And it was just a Windows Phone. See, this is the pro I hate. Do you know what we're going to talk about after this? You know what we're going to talk about after that? Boats and Sea Rays. I'm just saying. Dude, do you think we had a list for what we're going to talk about? I don't know what we're going to talk about. Windows Phone has never had a soft menu row, and that extra 48 pixels could facilitate that. The Sea Ray had a soft menu row because that was an N9 chassis, which didn't have the capacitive keys. And they disappeared. We never saw them after that. Yeah, I mean, they definitely had different aspect ratios. I'm making a lot of really unimportant points right now. But can we move on to something else? Let's talk about...okay, so we...just before the podcast aired, we exclusively confirmed that Amazon is making a phone, and it's possible they'll show it at their event tomorrow alongside the new Kindle Fire that we exclusively revealed and the backlit Kindle eReader that we exclusively revealed. So, I'm going to leave it at that. But I just want to say that I...in fact, I just retweeted it a few minutes ago. I tweeted like a year and a half ago that this phone was coming. I said, mark my words, within two years, Amazon Phone and... Did you retweet yourself? No, I retweeted somebody retweeting me. Yeah. That's what I was thinking about today. Like, can you retweet yourself? I checked. I actually had to check today, and you can't. But that's the way to do it. Get somebody to retweet you and then retweet the retweet. That's called an RT2. Really? No. I just put that out. That is just meta on a whole new level. Yeah. Wow. But yeah, I mean, this makes a ton of sense. The question is, does it happen tomorrow? Does it make a ton of sense? Does it really? It makes so much sense. What does...okay. Have we talked about this before? I'm sure we have. Like, it makes sense for Amazon to sell some more Kindle books and TV shows. I don't think it's about Kindle books at all. I think it's about...I think that when you take it down to that... It's not about winning the smartphone wars. No. It's not about getting market share. No, for sure. Like, what defines success for Amazon for a phone? Like, I really like, why do you need a phone? So I have two...I have a few different theories, but hear me out. One, Amazon Wireless is a huge online mobile retailer that they can leverage for this. Two, I think that they're going to be... It's not much of a theory. That's actually just fact. Fair enough. But two, I think that they're going to do some interesting things with subsidies slash discounts, and I don't really know what that means, but it's Amazon, so who knows. But things that you don't traditionally see with subsidized phones. And three, I think that in this form factor, it becomes less about Kindle and more about Amazon as a shopping destination. Why do I keep hitting this mic? Brendan, this mic is just not working. So here's the thing. Amazon as a shopping destination, maybe some people buy it so they can buy stuff on phones, but unless it's just so they can make some money selling phones and whatever their profit margin is on selling phones, there's nothing about Amazon that makes me think they wouldn't be better served just making better software for the iPhone and Android and making that compelling. But isn't the answer to your detail... It's like, why does Facebook need a phone? Well, they don't, as long as they can get on everybody else's phone and become essential to everybody else's phone. Does Amazon not think that they can't do that? I remember this conversation we've actually had. The distinction between Facebook and Amazon is that others can't afford to shun Facebook. Whatever Apple decides to do, Apple can decide not to support Flash. Apple can decide not to use Google Maps. And most people had a little dig at that about Apple deciding they didn't want the native YouTube app as well. Oh, sorry. I had another map hint, but continue. I'm sorry. But yeah, on that point, Apple can't decide to shun Facebook because Facebook isn't just the biggest social network. It's the biggest social network by a scale and a margin that is frankly hard for us to even fathom and understand properly. So everybody needs to be with Facebook. Everybody doesn't need to have the Amazon App Store on their device. Everybody doesn't need to have the Amazon shopping app on their device or the Kindle app. I mean, to me, the reason we have the Chrome browser is so that Google search could be spread out. The reason we have the Chrome OS is so Google search can be spread out. The reason we have Android is so that Google search can be spread out. And the reason Google search needs to be spread out is so Google can sell ads. So it just comes down to all these basic business points. So where's the part where Amazon needs a phone? I'm waiting for that. Well, it helps to distribute Amazon's content distribution, movies, music, et cetera, that store. So I think what we'll see here is, should Amazon do this, Amazon has full control of the content distribution. It would have full control of the content distribution on its phone, which it doesn't have right now on iOS. If you open the Kindle app, you can't buy a book in the Kindle app. It bounces you out. And there's a workaround to get your books from Amazon into your Kindle app. So all I'm really saying here is that no matter how dire things become for Amazon, it can at least rely on this theoretical smartphone and the Kindle Fire, which has been a success so far, to push its wares out because Amazon is about- I think that, I mean, the Kindle Fire, you maybe, I don't even think you can make the case there. I mean, it is a pretty good shopping experience, but do you really think that a phone is essential to Amazon's future in the same way that mobility is essential to the future of Microsoft or Samsung or even Facebook? Well, the Fire wasn't essential either. Let's not get ourselves- No, this is a fun side project to make some extra cash on the side. Right, that's the thing, right? For Amazon, now that they've gone so far- They're doing it because they can. Right. They took the time to build out the app store before they even launched the Fire, right? They started it as a sideload thing for other Android devices. They took the time to do that. Then they took the time to fork Android and do the Fire. At this point, it's like, why not? They have the hardware contacts to make this happen. They have the software expertise to make this happen. There's very little disadvantage to them going out and saying, hey, let's do some cool things with the phone and experiment with our business model, which I'm sure they're going to do. Yeah, to Chris's point, I don't think that we necessarily need to make the argument that a phone is fundamental to Amazon's future. But then to answer what you're saying, being on mobile internet is something that everybody needs to do. It's a massive cliche. I know that much. But the facts and the stats back it up. Just recently, the BBC iPlayer application and the BBC iPlayer streaming service, you can do it via the web, you can do it via smart TVs, et cetera. They report stats about just how much growth there has been in requests from tablets and smartphones. We can see the same thing with websites and how much traffic is shifting to requests from mobile devices. But having your batch of services, which in Amazon's case is enormous, you can buy pretty much anything from Amazon. I'm pretty sure you can buy cheese, you can buy clothes, you can buy books, physical ones, digital ones, et cetera, et cetera. Having something that you're just in complete control of and having it be a successful device, that's the thing that's going to be critical. No, it's not going to be a successful device by any standards that we care about. That's why I'm saying what's their metric for success. If their metric for success is we sell a couple hundred thousand phones and people use it to buy some crap off of Amazon, then go for it. More power to you, I'm really excited. But if Amazon's getting into the market to try and own 5% to 10% of the smartphones, that's hugely ambitious and I don't think they have it in them. Doesn't the Kimify already own a big chunk of that on the tablet space? Well, we don't really know because Amazon has never fessed up to actual sales. Yeah, they claim it's 22% of the tablet market, right? I think 22. Yeah, I would say something like 20%. Yeah, there's some numbers that float around around that figure. I mean, our anticipation, our expectation is that Amazon won't be ready and won't have a compelling proposition for people, but then do we really see the Kimify- Our jaded expectation. Yeah, I mean, you know what? They're jaded because they're justified by history. Right. But then do we really see the Kimify coming at that price point? I thought we all pretty much expected that to be $200. Was that a shock? Which device? The Kimify. I can't remember what expectations were. I don't think anybody expected it to be super expensive at all. Well, the thing is at the time that it was announced, there wasn't another compelling $200 tablet on the market. That's for sure. I mean, there wasn't even a compelling $500 Android tablet. Oh, Android, yeah. Well, there still isn't a compelling $500 Android tablet. I was going to say, there really is not at all. I would buy two Nexus 7s. That's true. You could. Yeah. What's up? Creighton wants a flyer. Hey. Creighton is trolling us with a flyer. If you could get Jelly Bean on a HTC flyer, I would totally be compelling. Oh, yeah. Let's see Jelly Bean on your flyer, Creighton. Yeah, show us Jelly Bean. Yeah. Show us your Scribe pen. Yeah, your Scribe pen. Yeah, Scribe pen. We're not going to agree on whether or not it makes sense for- It doesn't. It's not. I don't care about Amazon. It's not that it makes sense, it's that it doesn't not make sense. There's no compelling reason for them not to have it. It doesn't hurt them. Right. Yeah. It's a write-off if they also- Right. Yeah, I mean, so say they announce- I hope they call it the Kin, then. Just like, screw it. Say they announce two flyers tomorrow, which I think is the common belief right now. I mean, when they went to their hardware partner, they could have just been like, while you're at it, make a couple hundred thousand of these for us. Make those four and a half inches. Yeah. And you know- Right. And to your point, Chris, RIM kind of did that with the BlackBerry Playbook. I mean, that was one of the most epic flops ever. They wrote off, I think, 400 million in one quarter because they just had unsold playbooks that were just going to give away. Yeah. Or refund retailers. I think retailers had bought them, and then just to keep good will with retailers, RIM had to buy them back. HP did a whole lot of that. And look at where RIM is at, too. But this is the point. RIM hasn't been selling phones in any particular... I mean, RIM's phone sales have been shrinking, and that company's still surviving. So even while RIM is doing every single thing possible wrong, and writing off so much of a loss, what we're saying is an unsuccessful product hasn't been able to sink RIM. So an unsuccessful product in a smartphone isn't going to sink Amazon. Yeah, it won't sink Amazon, but- I mean, we're not going to be talking about Kindle phone versus iPhone in the smartphone war. You know what? You're too jaded, man. I am. You should have a shave and see if that changes anything. Vlad, I hate to do this, but I have to completely shoot down you. You too, man. Just have a shave. You look so good with your Soul... When you had that picture that you tweeted- Can we get an image of Vlad up with the Soul Patch? Yeah. We would close on- He looks so good. Or the mustache, if there's a mustache photo. There's a mustache photo. Yeah, mustache with the Soul Patch. What's the term for that? There's a name for that. Mustache and Soul Patch together. Help us out, chat. Mustache plus Soul Patch. I don't know. I love that I was reading the argument and just derailed it into facial hair. I really had something important to say to you. I think I derailed it into facial hair. Oh yeah, no, no. So I'm going to derail your argument. Yeah, let me get ready for this. Really hard to concentrate right now. RIM... So the point that you were trying to make is that RIM... All RIM does is phones, and they still can't profit on phones. Or no, they aren't being sunk by their unsuccessful phones. So Amazon won't be... No, I was saying the PlayBook was a thoroughly unsuccessful device for RIM, and it was a move into a new market. Let me take this off because it's serious. But it was RIM moving into a new market, which is what we're proposing Amazon should do with a smartphone. Yeah. And RIM wasn't sunk by its attempt to enter a new market, even though it was completely... Yes, that was it. It's a Van Dyke, by the way. Van Dyke. And a beautiful Van Dyke at that. Chat, tell us if you think that Vlad should grow that back. The answer is yes. Yes. Good luck with that. Vlad, right? You're still in democracy, man. Okay. I mean, I take your point that RIM survived the PlayBook. I'm not saying that the phone is going to undo Amazon. I'm just saying it's going to be a sideshow. No, of course it's going to be a sideshow. Everything. Everything that Amazon does on Amazon is going to be a sideshow. Right. Until the end of time, Amazon's core business is going to be the world's largest and meanest retail distributor. I mean, they're decimating the brick and mortar business, and they will continue to do that until every single big box and small box and tiny box is out of business. Chat says, yes, you must grow the Van Dyke. Yes. Yes, he needs to do that. Even the fire, even the E Ink Kindles, all that stuff is a sideshow. Amazon has always been about content. They don't care where you buy the Kindle book. They don't care if it's on this. They don't care if it's on an iPad. They just want you to buy the Kindle book. The Kindles that they make are just a means of distributing that content. They're making them at or near a loss. The final thing I'm going to say about Amazon is, to me personally, the company has surprised me with its hardware, particularly with Kindle 5. I didn't expect for that to be such a compelling product and for Amazon to see that much success. I think Amazon deserves credit because that was a completely unexplored area. It went in and it found success. The same is absolutely true of smartphones. I choose to be more optimistic about Amazon because the other thing is we know that they have a smartphone coming. We know pretty much nothing else beyond that. Right. It can be- Safe to say it runs Android. Probably. Yeah. Right. It can be a sideshow, maybe, but then look at what the main shows are producing for us. This is the thing that's disappointing me is big traditional companies are supposed to- Yeah. People are psyched about- It's all right. Yeah. Can we get some quiet in here? We're recording a show. Oh. You should drop that first. Yeah. There you have it, man. I love how you countered the screaming outside with an even louder, can we get some quiet in here? We're recording a show. Yeah. That was it. That was it. We need to stop talking about Amazon, except I'm going to get the last word. The interface on the Kindle Fire is boring as hell. If that's what they're doing on a phone, it's going to be a feature phone that runs Android apps and Kindle and sells stuff from Amazon. And that's just boring as hell. I agree. I can't argue with that. Okay, fine. All right. Next week, iPhone 5, we've talked ad nauseam. We've seen all the leaks. I don't even- Oh, dude, let me talk about the one I played with. Oh, yes. That is what I was- Yeah, that happened. Was it sexy? Was it awesome? Was it everything you hoped? Actually, no. The sexiest thing at IFA was OLED TVs. I'm pretty much prepared and willing and ready to get married to an OLED TV. An AK OLED? Yeah. So you played with a mock-up of an iPhone? Yes. We will. I did. Probably, maybe. It's a dummy unit. But here's the important thing, and there's that awesome, awesome video, which a certain big TV network used without permission. What? Yeah. Anyway, but yeah. So I played with a mock-up. This was at a case makers booth. This was first supported by GSM Israel. Let's give those guys the credit for being eagle-eyed. So it's one of those case makers booths. It's pretty much exactly as we've seen with the leaks. The iPhone 4S design just stretched out vertically to a four-inch display. I mean, physically, it isn't all that exciting. But once you turn on the display, I'm sure it will be more interesting. It's thinner. It is thinner. Slightly thinner, yeah. But the industrial design is probably the same. There's that two-tone back, and presumably, it will be aluminum. And there's this smaller dock connector. I mean, again, these are details we discussed at length previously. What's actually fascinating was that, speaking to those case makers, they said they're beginning volume production to ship next week. And they said this to me before Apple announced the 12th event. This event on the 12th was known by people who apparently seem to be able to keep their mouth shut, aside from these case makers. But also the things that I heard were that they weren't alone in having these mock-ups and having these dummies. Guys like Incipio and who else was there, Belkin, all the other case makers apparently had dock rooms where they had the exact same dummies. And when somebody is proposing to do business with them, they will sneak them into the dock room, get them to swear on a Bible, Quran, and all sorts of other religious objects that they won't speak of it, and then show off their designs for that particular dummy mock-up. So really, I can't imagine this not being what the real iPhone looks like. I don't get it. So there are two different theories, right? One is that there are enough leaks coming out of the factories where the case makers can get the information that they want so they can prepare for the phone. That's theory one. Theory two is that Apple is feeding companies like Belkin and CaseMate ahead of time the information they need to prepare accessories. I refuse to buy that. I think that that theory is a non-starter because Apple, it doesn't, I mean, yes, obviously it's like cool for consumers if they have accessories on day one. Apple doesn't care. And guess what? You're going to buy an iPhone whether you can get a CaseMate case for it. And the other point to support what you're saying is Apple sells bumpers anyway. So it's not particularly bothered or interesting in that. That's part on, but at the same time, these guys who make it their business to know those things have legal and presumably illegal ways of finding out that information, which is, okay, well, probably just legal ways. Let me leave my allegations and they have legal ways that we don't have to obtain that information and keep it on the wraps while working on it. But also another thing which surprised me was talking to accessory makers. They said the new dock connector, they're psyched about it. Oh, of course they are. They're like, dude. Yeah. They get to sell a whole big batch of accessories. We take the bit that plugs into this, swap it out with a bit that plugs into the new dock connector. And sell a new accessory. Sell the same thing. It's new. It's new. New design and new. It's huge for accessory makers. And I mean, the other thing is if an accessory maker, small time can get it right and match the iPhone and have cases available the first week, like it makes the company. It's huge. And so they're willing to take big risks to do that. And we've seen with previous mockups, like stuff that didn't work out. Right? Yeah. And so we... Even with the 4S? With the 4S. When people took a bet that it was going to take a total different change with the design. So I mean, it's worth it for a lot of these companies to take a flyer and take a shot at getting it right. But I mean, here's a question that I wanted to ask, just like wrap up the show, which is basically, is anybody expecting any surprises next week? My answer is like, no, we're going to see the iPhone. I think they're going to call it the iPhone 5 probably. That's kind of a surprise, I guess. But other than that, I'm not expecting anything to blow my hair back or make me go, where did that come from? If I can just interject quickly, just to support my point about industrial espionage, which is probably done legally again. Of course. Nothing but legal industrial espionage. When you see Samsung and LG coming out with things that are just a direct match for each other, those guys never speak to one another. They never send out a memo or a hint. Hey, guys, we're working on a 55 inch OLED. What are you doing? The Optimus Vue is a fast follow and a very poor follow. That's true. That's true. But I mean, the 55 inch OLED coincidence, it just doesn't work for me. Both of them go into 55 inches exactly. And this year at IFA again, we saw three companies coming out with 84 inch 4K TVs, which is sort of coincidence for everybody to look at 84 inches, 4K resolution and roughly the same range of prices. Right. I mean, those guys keep track of each other. Well, that's certainly and even in the mobile space, speaking to LG last year at MWC, when they were rolling out the Optimus Vue, they said, yeah, when Samsung was working on the Note, we kind of knew about it. We actually our code name for the Vue was the Note and we ended up having to change it because obviously Samsung beat them to market. So as much as they're like siloed companies that are blood competitors there, there's definitely some bleeding in between. Yeah. But let's try to answer the question. Is there any surprise that we can anticipate with the iPhone? What do you think? You know, I really, really hope there is. I'm not confident that there will be. I'm kind of like how Dieter feels that we're going to see kind of like what the leaks have shown us so far. Obviously the software, there might be some tricks up the sleeve for iOS 6 that Apple didn't fully reveal, as there always is. But I'm not confident. The phone is going to be the extra row. The extra row of icons and it's going to be a whole new world. I mean, I'm excited anyways because I'm excited to be able to have an LTE iPhone, which we, you know, almost lock, largely expect. And you know, a new iPhone is kind of always exciting for, you know, phone nerds. But we'll see. Fair enough. I mean, that's kind of a, I mean, we usually like a nice downbeat. Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong, like LTE iPhone. I'm super excited for that. I don't want to go back to not having an LTE phone and cause I need it for tethering and the iPhone is super reliable tethering. And you know, it'll be fun to like use an iPhone a lot again cause it's been a while since I've used it as like my main phone for months at a time. I have the sour note. LTE won't mean anything once this phone comes out. Yeah. It's already starting to, we've talked about this. It's already starting to slow down significantly in Chicago. I think because of the GS3, which I see everywhere in the streets. San Francisco, same thing. Yeah. And the iPhone is just going to be that effect times 10. I'm switching to T-Mobile, I guess, in order to be able to get data at all. There's no safe harbor. And you won't have an iPhone either. There's no safe harbor. But look, there's regarding the iPhone prediction thing, I mentioned earlier today on Twitter that I do still hold out at least a sliver of hope. And this is the tiniest sliver, but I think there's some chance that we have just all been completely hoodwinked because look, look, look, no, you're right. Look, you're right. You're right. It's not going to happen, but there is a, there's a chance. A tiny chance. A tiny chance. Tim Cook is a smart guy. Yeah. When he said that he was doubling down on security, he wasn't just blowing smoke. Yeah. His theory is doubling down, which means the next thing I'm going to say is not true. That's what doubling down means. I'm going to screw up on whatever follows after doubling down. Whatever, whatever now and follows after doubling down, as powerful as Tim Cook is, he cannot escape that law of nature. But just think, take yourself away to that special place right now in your mind. Think you're at, you're at the Apple event next week. So you mean where we wanted to be last year when the iPhone 4s was announced. Yeah, exactly. Just, just close your eyes for a second and think you're, you're, you're sitting at your bubuena. He's actually closing his eyes right now. You're in your bubuena and Tim Cook comes out on stage. Oh wait, here comes, here comes, here comes Phil. Okay. They're talking about the device. They show it and we're all just thinking, I mean like, you know, we're ready to post the news that it's an elongated iPhone for us, but no, it's like half as thick. It's got the teardrop design that we, that we predicted last year. I mean, I'm, I'm saying it's possible. It's possible. Yeah. I think that's a great note to end on. That is a great note to end on. Thank you so much for watching us while we were in the room. Apologies for the technical problem in the middle of it. For what it's worth, it's not the fault of anybody in this room or in the room next to us, which is pretty sure. If you want to follow us on Twitter, you can and you should. Chris is ePower. Vlad is Vlad Savov. Dan is DCCFERT. DCCFERT. DCCFERT. DCC for DC, S E I F. Very, yes. I'm at Backlund. We are all at Verge and we will be back at you next week. Thanks man, for watching.