 So in college finals week, you'd have to write all these papers and you'd stay up all night studying and go to take tests and it was the worst. And you'd spend all this time working for what you're supposed to do for your job, but really what you really just wanted to do was party because you were almost done. Well, this week is basically finals week in the mobile tech news world and instead of actually working, we're going to party and that party will be the Verge Mobile show. So stay tuned for the Verge Mobile show. Hi, I'm Dieter Bowen. I'm Vlad Savo. I'm Dan Seifert. I'm Chris Stigler. And it is episode 22 for the week of October 22nd, 2012. And yeah, we're midway through this insanity. I think the insanity is just beginning. I think we're very much in the thick of it. OK, so we're not midway through. We're like, we're at the beginning of the beginning, the beginning of the end, the end of the beginning. We're all going to be bloody corpses by the time this thing is over. And then I really don't know who's going to host this program. We'll find like a squirrel or something that can host a squirrel. That would be good. Yeah, we can find talking if we can find a talking squirrel. I really don't think that putting him on the Verge Mobile show is the best use of his time. I think that we should, you know, go around the world showing off this amazing creature and make millions and millions and millions of dollars. I just think there is a better way to use that kind of novelty. And then we can keep Nokia float. Yes. Yes. That is the the cure for all of Nokia's troubles. Train a squirrel to talk, put him on a tour and profit. You know what? There's so much there's so much insane news this week to talk about. This topic list is huge. I'm just going to go ahead and take Vlad's lead here and let's just start talking about Nokia at the outset. Because what the heck? The Lumia 510 has launched. Yeah, I'm trying very much to care about the Lumia 510. Can someone convince me that I ought to? I'm sure it'll be huge in certain markets. I'm not sure it'll be super relevant to us in the West, but where it's launching, it's very important because it's got a very important price point. And it kind of Nokia has been very successful with its Asher line in India and Asia and markets in the East. So the fact that it's putting in a really entry level Windows phone is kind of a smart move. Yes, me. Right. But the question is like, go ahead. Just the thing that I was going to mention. First of all, Dan is completely right, because just before we started the podcast today, Dieter was talking about having a Galaxy Note 2, an Optimus G on AT&T and Sprint and a Galaxy S2. Life is so hard for Dieter. And he was complaining about the fact that he does have a good enough Android device and he's just stuck and doesn't have a good choice. So, yes, I don't think the Lumia 510 is going to have a massive effect on that kind of an audience. But to try and answer Dieter's point about why we should care, the whole reason Nokia is still kind of creeping along and not completely sinking is actually a symbiont. It is a Windows phone yet. Nokia is still selling more symbiont devices than Windows phones, which is kind of amazing. It reported its latest financial figures. Lumia sales have actually shrunken. And we should be surprised because of the Osborne effect where Nokia and Microsoft announced, you're not going to get an upgrade to Windows phone 8. And Windows phone 8 is going to be so hot. They should just wait. So that was predictable enough. And the future is going to be more interesting. But again, as Dan was saying, the Azure line and the Symbian line are the things that have been selling for Nokia. So going with the Lumia 510, dragging down the entry price point for Windows phone, admittedly Windows phone 7.8, it's probably a good play for the company. Yeah. What would you say the picture of Nokia's financials is going to be much clearer once they launch the 920? It is a pretty dark time for Nokia right now. Yeah, I mean, to me, and maybe I'm being overly dramatic here, I really think as far as the company's long term survival goes, it needs to win with the 920 and potentially with the 820, which also looks like a really solid phone. Like if those don't work out, I don't see anything within like six, nine months a year when Nokia can again say, OK, here's the big reboot. Here's the big new flagship. Like those are the flagship devices that need to work right now. Chris, you're going to jump in before I interrupted with my terrible joke. I was just wondering what Symbian devices Nokia still sells. I mean, they can't possibly be making money off the 808. Who's buying the 808? No. I think that's exactly right. I think it's the Asha phones. Yeah, Asha phones are definitely keeping the company afloat. But there are no Asha Symbian phones. No, they're all S40. So I'm wondering what these Symbian devices are. Well, that's the thing, Chris. I think this is the case where we're really lacking in our coverage of the Indian subcontinent, because if we had somebody based in India or in Singapore and those markets, I mean, you know, RIM launched one of its Blackberries not too long ago and it was like, Singapore is our first market. It's such a huge market for us. And those are the places where these phones are selling. Wasn't there a riot when that Blackberry was launched? Like, I think they were handing out a few at a store and like thousands of people rioted. It's crazy. Yeah, in fact, one of Blackberry's executives in the region was arrested over that incident. And I can't remember what happened to him. I don't know if he got sent to prison or what the story was, but he was blamed for inciting the riot. I love Elop's quote from the call. Having spent most of the quarter explaining to the US population about the great innovations that are coming in Q4, one could reasonably expect that would impact sales in Q3. That's like an underhanded, like, swipe at consumers. Not even underhanded. It's just a straight up swipe. Yeah, that was the whole beginning of the sentence, Chris. We spent a whole quarter explaining to you people why this thing matters. This is how long it took us. Three months. Okay, so I'm looking right now at Nokia's list of Symbian devices that they currently sell. They sell the C5-03, the C7, which was discontinued on T-Mobile like two years ago. The E7, which is the basically the, the NA with a QWERTY keyboard. It was the one that it was the last phone that, that at sorry, not at sorry that ANSI Vanioki like pimped before he left Nokia. Yep. And, and I remember very, very well, I was at that Nokia world and he was so fired up over this phone. He's like, I can't, Dan, were you there? No, I was not at that. Okay. Yeah. No, he was like, he was like insane at this over the phone. He's like, you know, oh man, I'm going to have to go back and watch the keynote again. Cause he was just, he was insane. He was like on cocaine or something. So, so then they still sell that Nate, they sell the 700 and they sell the 808. That's the extent of their Symbian range right now. By the way, you can pick up an N eight for just three 39 99 unlocked, which is not, I mean, if you can get past Symbian, it's actually not that bad of a deal considering the camera that you're getting and the construction. It's a very, very well built phone. Uh, but there is the Symbian issue. Also, you can get a, a C five dash three for just one 29 99 unlocked. Uh, I don't know why I'm, why I'm devolved into Chris scanning Amazon for what Nokia phones are available. I'm mocked. No, I know Nokia's site. I'm actually looking at Nokia.com right now. All these prices match on Amazon for what it's worth. So I mean, okay. The, the Lumia nine 20 needs to be a flagship phone for Nokia. It needs to do really well to help turn the company around. Uh, my question is, uh, you know, in the U S, uh, will it be able to do that? Um, or do they need to depend on, on sales internationally? I mean, uh, we know that, uh, AT&T's got, uh, exclusivity for the nine 20 and there's a rumor that it's going to be a six months of exclusivity. Um, and then best buys pricing it, I want to say at one 49 is what we saw. Um, and I mean, you know, it's not like the 900 was, you know, AT&T's singular massive focus. I don't expect that it will be, uh, the nine 20 will be their singular focus for the holiday season. They're going to be pushing a lot of stuff. We know the iPhone does really well on AT&T. Um, so I guess I'm just wondering, it seems to me like, you know, Nokia is going to get a little bit of a foothold in the U S market, but it doesn't seem to me like they should be assuming that the U S market is going to lead the charge for whatever comeback they're going to get that what they really need to do is, uh, kill it in Europe. Uh, and you know, they need to be here in the U S but I don't think that if they're depending on AT&T to turn them around with a nine 20, I think that's not going to happen. Well, yeah, but at the same time, I kind of, I kind of feel like Nokia's actual strategy is unlike the strategy that we want Nokia to pursue. Uh, and what I mean by that is that we want Nokia to go for older marbles, try and seize real market share, assert itself, be bold or dangerous, et cetera. Whereas what Steven Elob seems to be doing is be very focused on the bottom line. So he's got an exclusive with AT&T, which obviously earns Nokia a bunch of money. The reason Nokia went with Microsoft and Windows phone instead of Android does have something to do with the fact that Nokia gets a billion dollars from Microsoft every single year. Right. And also Nokia just, uh, recently issued, um, new bonds, uh, which is basically just financial instruments. It's debt. Uh, so it's taken on new debt for 2017, uh, to the tune of another $1 billion in order to solidify its liquidity, its financial position. So really and truly, I think what Nokia is actually trying to do is lock in some gains in terms of just pure money, just in terms of pure cashflow, uh, before its launch happens. Like that doesn't really express much confidence in the final product. It has to be said. Uh, but, you know, as a CEO, uh, as a CEO of a company that's losing and hemorrhaging money and which actually has a lot more employees than it needs, right? Because like it still needs to trim its, uh, wage bill and its facilities, which it's doing, but it still needs to keep shrinking because it basically was a massive, massive company built to sell massive, massive phones. And it doesn't do that anymore. And the two things need to be realigned. So like the cold harsh reality is that Nokia is just going for the sure thing, which is going with these exclusives. Um, and the same true also in the UK has an exclusive with EE, um, 4G carrier for the 920. Yeah, just the 920. I don't think it has it for the 820. Which again is a limited term exclusive, but it's not going to be on every single carrier, which is kind of unusual. Now it's been a couple of years since we had a true flagship phone exclusive to a single carrier. I think the question here though, is Vlad, you mentioned going with the carrier exclusives as a safe thing. Uh, how safe really is it though for Nokia? Um, with the 900 on AT&T, we could see that it definitely, uh, didn't pay off. Um, what was, what was the total sales of the 900 on AT&T? Was it 600,000 or something in that ballpark? So, um, I would assume that the 920 would sell more. I think it's a more higher profile product. It's obviously much more competitive than the 900 was. Um, but at the same time, uh, AT&T is a carrier that sells like more than 75% of its smartphones or iPhones. So, uh, I don't know if that's really the safest bet that Nokia could have made. Yeah, I'm just saying it's kind of a more of a short term strategy. And what I'm saying a safe bet, I'm saying take AT&T's money because AT&T is going to pony up the exclusive money upfront, presumably. Right. Um, so, you know, even if the product flops, AT&T has paid up the exclusive money. Uh, EE has paid up the exclusive money. And again, like I say, this doesn't really seem like Nokia is all that confident in its own product, which is kind of weird because the 920 is still the most exciting thing, at least for me, uh, when it comes to the new Windows Phone 8 ranges. Yeah, so, OK, we're going to get the official unveil of Windows Phone 8 on the 29th. Um, and we'll finally like get to play with the phone with the lock screen turned off. Um, I honestly, I want to believe that they've got something crazy and amazing up their sleeve, but as much as I want to believe that, I pretty much don't think that's the case. Does anybody think that Microsoft has got something shocking and like game changing that they're going to be showing us with Windows Phone 8? Uh, I hope so. Well, I hope so. For their benefit, I hope so. Um, I don't know what their ace in the hole is at this point, uh, because you can't sell, you know, the developer focused capabilities of Windows Phone 8 that Microsoft was selling back at their, their event earlier this year really can't translate into something that consumers can't do. Consumers can or want to understand. I mean, you can say things like multi-core and, you know, there's been enough marketing push for, for terms like that. You know, consumers generally know that bigger numbers are usually better, or at least that's what they've been trained to believe. So you can say things like that, but, um, but otherwise they need a, um, they need a lot of whiz bang, I think to really get this thing to, I mean, they've already tried the trick of, of blowing out these phones at surprisingly low prices and that hasn't worked for it with the Lumia 900 debuted at 99 99 on contract. Right. So, and that didn't work very well. It was, yeah, it was 99 99 then it was very quickly free when it didn't work and Nokia had to scramble. Right. So I think it's going to be a tough sell to, to, to say to consumers, this here's a phone that looks almost exactly like the Lumia 900 we were selling six months ago, but it's $50 more. And it looks generally the same, like the software looks generally the same. Uh, here are these two new features. Uh, and by the way, it has two cores now, like that's a, that's a really tough sell and I don't know if they're going to be able to pull it off. Not only that, as far as Apple pulls it off with the iPhone. Yeah, but that, that's Apple lives in its own world and it has the luxury of playing by its own rules. And that is the luxury that Nokia nor any other company in the world has. And, uh, to follow up the difficulties that Nokia will have to selling this, it will be the 920 on AT&T will be there sitting right next to an HTC 8X for $50 less that arguably extremely similar runs the same software. Uh, is, you know, uh, I, I did probably just as quick. We haven't really tested them to be honest with you. So we don't know that for a hundred percent sure. Uh, but it's, you know, a thinner, lighter version of the 920 in most people's eyes. Um, so, uh, they've got a lot of challenges ahead as far as getting that message to the consumers as to why they should buy this. I mean, look, this is the thing that I was complaining about, uh, what is it now? It's going to be two months ago. Wow. Two months ago, like September 5th, when Nokia had this big blowout event for the Lumia. 920 and 820, it was, where's the release date? When is this thing happening? I want one now because that was the time when everything was novel and everything was fresh. And this is the thing, you know, I've been kind of banging on about when Apple does an event, it's either ships today, pre-order today or pre-order within a couple of days, a week's time. Apple doesn't waste time. I mean, look, Apple's whole secrecy thing is just gone completely to crap this year. We knew pretty much everything about the iPhone 5. We learned pretty much everything about the iPad mini. I mean, everybody pretty much called it an iPad mini event, even though Apple called it a special event again. Um, but that tradition that Apple has of here's our announcement, here's when we reach out to mass market, here's when, you know, the big news corporations like the BBC, for example, was covering this on radio and television. The Apple event that just happened this week. Um, this is when we reach out to the mainstream and then immediately after you can go and get it. Now, Nokia's big opportunity, a big chance to do that same thing was September 5th, and I think they had a pretty good presentation. I think the whole thing of being able to sell the 920 is a phone that you can use with gloves is nice. I mean, honestly, that's like a it's a major feature. I mean, particularly we make fun of it, but people in Nordic countries, people in Finland, people in New York City in January. Yes, I've been in New York City in January. You guys are not right. But the point is that happened nearly two months ago and now Nokia essentially has to reheat that exact same message. And that's the issue that is facing, you know, talking about October 29th is you've given people the sales pitch and I have to redo it. Well, and to Chris's point, they've given people the sales pitch, they have to redo it. But the sales pitch isn't all that different from what the sales pitch was for the 900. Right. It's not it's not it's not a radically different message. But I think I also depend, like we've been saying, on Windows Phone 8, like we need to give Windows Phone 8 a chance. We need to find out exactly what it is because Microsoft itself has been keeping a really tight lock on it and then find out how it compares. I mean, personally, my anticipation of it is that I'm just way too much of an Android. Like I've built up way too many habits around Android, around the native Gmail application, YouTube application, et cetera. And that's the thing I was mentioned before the podcast. It was funny that previously Windows Phone was saying it's lacking because it doesn't have a proper YouTube application. Its email client isn't as good as the native Gmail client on Android. It doesn't have Google Maps. And now those exact same things were actually the same complaints we can have about iOS. There's a very important difference, though. There's a very important difference, which is that Google offers its own YouTube application for iOS and the Web view of Gmail on iOS works extremely well. In fact, it's my primary email client when I'm using an iPhone. And that's something. Yeah. And that's something that that Windows Phone does not have to this day. If you if you navigate to I think I mentioned this before on the show, if you navigate to Gmail on a Windows Phone, you get the Web view, which is designed for like a flip phone from 2003. It's embarrassing. And I think I think it's a combination of I mean, I'm sure it just has to do with like IE nine having like quirks or IE eight, excuse me, in seven five, having quirks that that Google just doesn't like. Like there's not enough scale for Google to bother dealing with that. Maybe IE nine in Windows Phone eight will be different. I don't know. We haven't tried yet. So my fingers are crossed. If if they if they have a functional Gmail Web view in Windows Phone eight, that could be a game changer for me personally, because that was honestly when I was using a Lumia when I was trying to use a Lumia 900 full time, that was the only thing that was really stopping me was the lack of any acceptable Gmail experience. I can make it work on iOS. It kind of sucks, but I can do it on Windows Phone. It's just a non starter right now. I'm trying really hard not to complain about my iPhone right now, but now I brought it up, I'm going to say if you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen that my iPhone five has randomly and inexplicably started just uploading or downloading or doing something with massive amounts of data. I've chugged through six gigs of data in the past two weeks. Don't know why. Don't know what happened. Don't know which app it is. I, you know, I started looking at the console stuff, but it's really hard to like figure it out after the fact. I'm really unhappy. I'm deeply unhappy. AT&T has been great. You know, I called them up. I talked to them. They're going to give me a call when my bill comes in to talk about dealing with it. And they are still swearing up and down. It's not suffering from this bug that the Verizon version suffered from. But I've seen reports for AT&T seeing it and like Rogers and a few other carriers getting it too. So it's either the podcast app or like might be like Dropbox going crazy or it's just a huge iOS six bug. But I'm pretty unhappy. Could it be iCloud backups? Could be iCloud backups. Well, I'll say I use iCloud backups and I haven't seen this bug myself. Yeah. The way AT&T shows data is they show it as like. I'm sorry, Vlad. Dropbox, they did an iPhone 5 compatibility update and some photo size stuff. So the Dropbox application for iOS got updated recently, but I don't think it's been two weeks ago. So it probably isn't it. Yeah. No, I think it might actually been Dropbox, which is a voice recording application that was trying to upload some crazy stuff. But I don't know. Like, I genuinely have no idea. I thought that was just a vocal typo that you did there. But yeah, seriously, apart from troubleshooting Dita's iPhone, I do actually want to switch us over to the Android segment of October 29th because Google has scheduled an event happening then as well. And I'm actually kind of scratching my head because I physically scratched my head for no good reason. It wasn't itching, but I'm scratching my head about exactly what Google is going to do because we've anticipated multiple Nexus devices for a while, multiple Nexus smartphones. But then that's kind of cooled down that rumor, hasn't it? What do we actually expect it's going to do? Yeah, we haven't heard that rumor. I don't think we've heard that rumor since the original. Was it Wall Street Journal rumor months and months ago? But there's been a lot of bubbling of other Nexus devices, whether they be tablets or various size tablets. So maybe that's what that will morph into instead of it being a multitude of Nexus phones. Google presents a big tablet, a revised Nexus 7 or something. Well, we know a 32 gigabyte Nexus 7 is coming. That's pretty much all been confirmed at this point. Maybe one with connectivity built in, cellular connectivity. And then obviously this LG Nexus 4 that we've seen up and down for the past few weeks. I want a new Nexus Q. That's what I want. Yes. Can't forget about the Nexus Q. You know, the Nexus Q2. What happened to that thing? It's just gone, right? Well, no, it's not gone. It's sitting right there on my desk. If you bought one, Google paid you for it and you got it for free. And Google was like, we're going to try again, but we're not going to tell you when or whatever. Yeah, we just know this is not working right. I'm very jealous of American manufacturing anymore. Well, yeah, I mean, that might be part of I mean, it was it was a very noble experiment on their part. But there were so many complaints about the price to capability ratio of that device. That's that. I mean, that's going to be if manufacturers continue to try the American or, you know, just Western experiment for manufacturing. This is going to be this is going to keep coming up for many, many years to come. I love that you start the podcast by going through and listing off Symbian phones from Nokia. And now we're trying to talk about Google's event. You're trolling us by talking, bringing up the Nexus Q like you just it's my job. Everybody knows Chris just wants to podcast entirely. All of our listeners know that I am only here to derail what you guys are trying to talk about. That is my function. Like everybody has a function. Everybody has a role on this show. My role is to interrupt you and make you talk about something that nobody cares about. So anyways, so, you know, the 29th in our little mobile world is probably going to be the most insane day of all the insanity that we're dealing with for this past week. Because as we were just saying, we've got the Google's event is happening in the morning on the East Coast in New York. And then later on in the afternoon on the West Coast, Microsoft's doing its big Windows phone event. So and in London and in London. Yes. How can I forget? Of course. And I might go to that. He said, let me of course, they'll let you. Why wouldn't they? You know, we might actually see this is completely unconfirmed that I'm just guessing here, but we might actually see the Samsung achieve as far out. What the ultimate vapor. Yeah. The ultimate product render. Yes, that one. You know, one thing I don't think they're going to address, but I want to address it here is a jelly bean updates for existing phones. We've had just a raft of bad news. Sony's not updating anything from 2011. They're not going to get their jelly bean updates until next year. Motorola listed the phones that aren't getting jelly bean and confirmed which ones. But they also offered the hundred dollar update. Samsung did confirm that four point one is coming to the Galaxy S3 in the US, but not until the quote coming months. I just I we talk about this all the time, but I just don't I'm tired of like being outraged at this point. I just whatever. I'm just going to use a Galaxy Nexus. Yeah, I'm kind of out of outrage, too, although I feel like Motorola has set an important precedent with this like reimbursement thing. And Sony should seriously consider doing the same, because if I'm not mistaken, correct me if I'm wrong, I think Sony was part of that ridiculous, meaningless update pact that Google announced at at I.O. in 2011. And they just completely ignored that or have reneged on that. So they owe it to themselves and they owe it to their customers and their future customers to show that they are going to support these guys in some way. And it continues to baffle me. I mean, this is like one of the very fundamental differences right now between Android and iOS is that when you buy an iPhone, you have a very, very safe assurance that you are going to be supported with software updates for a minimum of three years, which is well beyond the end of your contract. That is not something you don't have an assurance that you're going to be supported in three months with an Android device, much less three years unless you've got a joint bionic. They're bringing four point out of the joint bionic. Well, I want to talk about Sony for one more second. So this really surprised me with Sony because Sony was one of the most aggressive manufacturers with getting I.C.S. onto its older phones that were already on the market. It released beta after beta that users could go download and install if they unlock their phones. And then, you know, it put out I.C.S. on virtually its whole line of Xperia phones that were available. And now for it to be like, well, we're not going to do anything beyond that is a little bit surprising for the 2011 phones, of course. Yeah. Nobody else. Yeah. No, it is surprising and disappointing. I mean, what surprises me is, you know, I always had the impression that that jelly bean, you know, shouldn't have been that hard of an update. But apparently maybe it's something, you know, with with Project Butter, apparently it's more difficult for manufacturers to implement than I anticipated. But also, I was just thinking about this, if somebody like Samsung is saying you're going to get a jelly bean, but it might be next year or, you know, whoever. I'm sure LG is promising jelly bean in like 2016. That also kind of deflates the expectation, at least for me. I was seeing an Android 4.2, another, you know, upgrade to the OS. I don't know if I agree with that, Vlad, because when Android 4.1 was announced, there was less than like 5 percent of Android phones on even Android 4.0 at the time. So I don't know if Google is using that as a way to slow down its development of Android in the least. Yeah, OK. I'm not entirely sure, but it just kind of seems like one of the excuses, if you like, from my perspective for not loading up Jelly Bean is to say, well, Android 4.2 is just going to hit in a few days time. Let's just go ahead and jump straight to that. 4.1 was the difference. We'll integrate it with 4.2. But then if people, if companies are promising you'll get it at such and such time way off into the future, then it just kind of seems less likely. At the same time, you know, this is kind of a predictable thing with Android and a sad thing, really, because that's something I'll also be thinking about. My favorite Android phone seems to be changing every other week. Yeah. And that really isn't a good thing if you're actually spending your money on these phones. If you if you're, you know, messing around and reviewing them and getting a new one every two weeks, oh, Android is the best. Android is just like, oh, yes. Oh, here's a new one. Let me let me tell you about the curvature of this phone. And nobody who's actually spending money cares that much about the curvature of the phone as I do. But that's just because I see a bunch of phones and I like to play with them. But as a buyer of a phone, you just can't have a set of situation like either you have to track everything like an eagle and be like, OK, now finally this phone and this OS, they're a match. And you'll probably get the update like Peter says that most likely be a Nexus device anyway. And it's just kind of a rubbish way to treat phone buyers, to be honest, because everything kind of just keeps getting upgraded in a really incremental way, in a subtle way, but still a desirable way. For example, right now, my favorite Android phone is the G from LG. These are my not necessarily agree with that, but that seems to keep happening. You know, it's the latest phone has the nicest specs. And actually, as far as LG is concerned, I think that's the best Android smartphone companies done by far. I think it's the best smartphone companies is incredible. It's one of my favorite smartphones. I love the screen. I love I love almost everything about it. It's just that I'm an AT&T man and AT&T did a number on the software on it. And I'm not a big fan of the skin on it. But I mean, to your point, the you know, just how consumer hostile the upgrade situation is. Did we talk about last week the Motorola quote that we got from when they were when we got the the Razer HD stuff that they are going to try and do the right thing and get as close to base Android as they can? I can't remember. Yeah, I seem to recall the quote was like, stock Android is a nice halcyon gold to have, but we're not going to do it, basically. Yeah, basically, like it's because carriers have, you know, they push the blame on Verizon. Yeah, you wrote this piece. Yeah, he didn't. They didn't specifically name Verizon, but I mean, you know, it is what it is. And and so I guess the reason I'm bringing up Motorola is one, I want to start talking about the Razer HD, but two, like, I'm sorry, you're owned by Google now. And I know it takes a while to get your products out of the pipeline that you had already been developing and blah, blah, blah. But remember when, you know, before this had gone through, I had this I claimed that if they just were to announce on day one after the purchase that if they just released stock Android for all their phones that I would buy like a million razors. I think I said it by 100 razors or something. Luckily for me and my bank account, that didn't happen. But if there's any company that should solve this problem of, you know, Android manufacturers offering steady updates outside of the Nexus program, it should be Motorola. And even though they're not doing it. Yeah, it's incredibly disappointing, especially in the case of Motorola, because of the close access that it does have, regardless of how much Google likes to talk about how Motorola is being run as a separate company, and so forth. The truth is that Google and Motorola has the closest access to Google's resources. And, you know, that's borne out in the software that ends up on its phones. The version of Android 4.0 that's on all of its phones is the closest thing to stock Android that you can get from any of the major manufacturers. But it still hasn't translated into Android 4.1 being on all of its phones, as we would expect it to be at this point. Yeah, and Chris wrote the piece from their earnings call that we've inherited an entire product pipeline where harbor business cycles are typically 12 to 18 months. So, like, we keep wondering when's Motorola going to act like a new Motorola that Google owns. And apparently it's like next year or a little bit after next year. Yeah, I think that, you know, when they bought Motorola, they inherited a stack of contracts that had already been signed with Verizon. And there's nothing they can do to get out of those contracts other than grit their teeth and push forward. And once they get past that, maybe we'll see Google start to exert its influence a little bit more because, I mean, bear in mind, I mean, the Nexus program exists for a reason. And that's because Google wants an outlet for its own vision of what Android is supposed to be. And if they don't take advantage of their ownership, they don't ultimately take advantage of their ownership of Motorola to push that agenda, then I don't know what they're doing. Well, what kills me about these contracts is they don't they couldn't change them. Like, you know, the contracts for this 12 to 18 months not only included phone design, but also, you know, all the software that went on it and whether or not Google's allowed to offer updates in a timely fashion. Like, it's bonkers. The point I was going to raise is that the original reasoning for Google's acquisition of Motorola was Motorola's patent portfolio. I think Google has been talking up the fact that it takes a defensive position, defensive stance, whereby it acquires patents so that it doesn't get sued and doesn't get bogged down into these, you know, protracted multinational clashes. The way the Apple and Samsung are doing at the moment. And it wants to support the Android ecosystem, etc, etc. We've had that conversation already. We've heard that narrative. And then Google was like, well, it's only going to cost a couple more billion to acquire the home of Motorola. We might as well. And since then, they've been trying to keep operating them at arm's length, which fine, whatever. But again, I kind of feel like you can explain those things to investors and maybe you can explain them at the corporate level. But to the consumer, they're just weird. You know, because because the conversation that teenagers are going to have when they discuss these things, it are things like, OK, I don't have teenagers actually. But, you know, I say teenagers today, these crazy kids because their cell phones, because when you think back to the decades ago when all of us were teenagers as well, right? Things were a bit simpler and in a simpler world. The case of the matter is Google owns Motorola. That means Google can build Android phones. And what we're seeing is derivative relative to Motorola's older hardware designs. You guys can talk more about that with the Razer HD derivative designs. And still we're seeing skins and still we're seeing carry interference. And nothing is changing. Nothing is improving. I mean, that isn't really impacting on the actual sales because Android just keeps growing. But I don't know. Well, I mean, these new Motorola's not selling a whole lot of phones, except on Verizon. Yeah, well, yeah, but Motorola is still losing money for Google each quarter, too. So well, let's let's talk about the Razer HD and the HD Maxx. You reviewed him, right, Dan? I did review them. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, I think I gave the HD a seven point six. I gave the Maxx a seven point eight, the nod for the extended crazy battery life that it gets. And, you know, it's it's like the they're very similar to the Razer's that we saw last year. The big difference being that it's got a bigger screen with a higher resolution. It is now 720p screen at four point seven inches, as opposed to the four point three inch QHD screen that it was before. But it's not a perfect display. It's got the same issues that we've seen on every Motorola display. It's Pentile. It's extremely oversaturated. So it's it's actually quite harsh to look at. So it just definitely does not look like a top of the class or top of the line display in this kind of price class that this this phone is sitting in, especially when you put it next to like a one axis, just no competition. And then, you know, I said this in my review, the if you're looking at the Razer HD, which translates to the successor of the Razer from last year, the Razer when it was released last year was like, wow, that's thin. That's incredibly thin. That's like a Razer. That's what a Razer smartphone should be. And Motorola and Verizon really played up on how thin it was. But then this year, the Razer HD is actually thicker than the last year's model. And it's not like thinner than any phone on the market. It's it's thicker than most phones that have come out recently. So it's like totally lost. It's a lore for me as being like a crazy thin device. And, you know, then it kind of just makes it like another humdrum Motorola device that, you know, it the styling of it is kind of, you know, a take it or leave it, I guess it depends on on your preference. Personally, I don't think it's very attractive, but, you know, others might feel different. And it just makes me kind of disappointed in the whole thing as a whole. And then the other thing here is like if you're going to go for the Razer HD, why not go for the Razer HD Max? In my review, I noted that the Max gets a very good battery life, kind of as we expected. And, you know, you are buying into that for the battery life because you're not getting the best display. You're not getting the best camera. You're not getting the fastest processor. You're not getting the best build quality. Really, what the buy there is is for the battery life. So you might as well go all the way up to the Max. So, yeah, I mean, a quick question, but DZ, you're going to be talking about the Razer, so I'd rather we carry on with that. But just let me ask my question later. OK, I like the Razer Max, the Razer HD Max. Is it Razer Max HD or Razer HD Max? It's Razer Max HD, which drives me nuts because I think it should be the other way. But I like it despite myself. I think that the idea of like screw everything, I'm going to have a phone that lasts forever is actually pretty compelling. I like the skin a lot because it's so lightweight. They added the little quick setting things on the left. They did get rid of the cool little pop up which I guess is fine. I'm going to disagree with you. I'm going to disagree with you there about the settings page because the settings page is actually the least usable quick settings page that you can have because you can't access it from within an app. Like the way LG does it and the way Samsung does it by putting it in the notification bar allows you to access it from wherever app you're in. You can like swipe down, click your Bluetooth on or click your Wi-Fi on or off or whatever it might be. But with Motorola, you have to go back to the home screen and then swipe over to access it. So it's really, you know, you might as well just access the settings button from the notification menu. I mean, you've got you could do widgets or notification talk or whatever. But yeah, you're right there. But I mean, other than that, I mean, you know, the skin isn't too bad and it uses the on screen buttons and whatever else. So like, yeah, the camera is not the most awesome. And I know that a lot of people think the screen is remember, I think it's way oversaturated. But if I were on Verizon and buying a phone tomorrow, I would probably go for the Razer Max HD. Is that crazy? Am I nuts? Over the Galaxy S3? If you were, you know, going for an Android phone? Yeah, because I mean, the Galaxy S3 has a better camera. I think the screens, whatever. But I mean, the battery thing is super compelling to me. I am you know, I am I would love to like think about plugging my phone every day and a half, you know, I think, you know, treat plugging my phone in the way I treat plugging in my tablet like, oh, yeah, I guess I should charge it, whatever. Like that would be nice instead of, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Am I going to make it through the day? I don't know. That's what now I would just buy you a dock for the Galaxy S3 or a second battery since you can swap it in the Galaxy S3 and you can't on the Razer. OK, that's fair. I mean, just all right. I take it back. I was thinking about buying BlackBerry, so we know that my judgment is not to be trusted when it comes to purchasing phones. Dude, I'm going to be interested in those BlackBerry 10 devices like RIM is completely missing out on this holiday season with its new devices and is betting the entire house on whatever's happening in the beginning next year. So I'm going to be very interested. Like we've been bashing BlackBerry for a long time, but I'm going to be very interested to see what comes out of it because I also think much like Nokia now with 920, there are no more walls for RIM to have his back up against. You know, it's seen this company has his back up against the wall. It really needs to make a success out of this. We said that about the Lumia 800, we said about the Lumia 900, but I really feel like Nokia is facing that with the Lumia 920 now. I definitely feel the same way about RIM with its new BlackBerrys next year. But that's next year. This question I have is for Chris, providing he's still alive. And it's a quick one. Do we actually have any examples of companies going through just a massive tumultuous period, whether they're being taken over by another company, whether just completely switching around strategy the way that Nokia is done with Symbian to Windows Phone. And I'm also thinking of HP taking over Palm and things like that, where that massive change has actually turned out for the good. Because I don't seem to recall any such examples. Apple. OK, do you want to expand? Well, I mean, Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy multiple times over the course of its history in the 80s and 90s. Then, of course, they they brought in Steve Jobs in what was it, 98, I think 99, somewhere in there. And they switched their focus to consumer products. And of course, the iPod very famously and the iMac. You remember the original Bondi Blue iMac, which I was in college at the time. And every single dorm room in college had at least one Bondi Blue iMac. And I think the rest is history. I don't need to explain where Apple is now. So Apple would be, I think, the most obvious example of that. But you're right. I mean, there aren't terrible. I mean, I think that what Nokia and RIM are going through right now are somewhat unprecedented. And it becomes more and more difficult by the day for us or for financial analysts to look at what they're going through and say, you know, there is a viable way for these companies to come out of this unscathed and in one piece. We'll have to see. You know, you can't you can't make that call until it actually happens. But I don't know. You know, I can't. I personally very much like the 920 in the limited time that I've had with it. And I'm always optimistic when a new version of Windows Phone is announced. And I very much like the tweaks that they've made. I love the new home screen. But selling that message to the average consumer, like I said before, when you're going from 99.99 for the Lumia 900 up to 149.99 is. And as Dan pointed out, the Lumia 900 very quickly fell to free. That is just not a message that they're going to be able to convey very effectively, especially when you have this. It's what? Twelve point something millimeters thick sitting right next to a seven point whatever millimeter thick iPhone five for one ninety nine. It's it's a very, very tough sell. Yeah, I mean, the reason I was asking this as well was to relate it to Google's Motorola takeover, just because it kind of seems to be tracking along the same way with HP and Palm where it was all where we need to integrate. We need to integrate with big companies, et cetera, et cetera. And then the months just kept passing and passing. You didn't see anything truly innovative. I mean, if we recall, Palm was still kind of bringing out devices that still very much look. I mean, the palm pre was palm free to rather look almost identical to the palm free, if I recall correctly. But a shining ray of hope and light is actually the novelstake over the thing about brand. Yeah, we put our minds so that that actually worked out more or less. Well, somehow I'm not sure, Vlad, that the comparison of HP and Palm to Google and Motorola is quite apt just because HP and Palm ran such a very separate and different businesses when HP bought them. I know HP had its little smartphone line, but it was really HP had no presence in the mobile space. And it really didn't know what to do with Palm. And that became apparent, very, very obviously apparent. But where Google and Motorola is like, you know, they're both companies in the mobile space. They have what one would assume to have very similar interests as far as getting their product out there in the hands of people. So for Google to not quickly take advantage of the fact that it's got a massive phone manufacturer and device manufacturer at its disposal, it's like we mentioned before, a little a little bit mind boggling, especially to a consumer. Speaking of companies on the brink, we got a look at the HTC J butterfly, which is oh, my God, I want to say this. I am not a fan of five inch phones. I've said this before, but this thing looks absolutely amazing. And I really, really, really, really, really want to play with one. It's I mean, the the macro shot of the screen compared to the iPhone five, like, yeah, like, so text text so sharp it will cut you. Yeah. What's the what's the PPI on this? Like four hundred and forty. Is that exactly it's that's. You know, that's that's a our friend Paul Miller, pixel density enthusiasts like absolute dream. I want to say a five inch phone would be his absolute dream. I think I mean that kind of density is. But yes, yes, it's it's it's great. It's crazy. Just treat it like a tablet. It's a thousand milliamp battery going to be enough, though. It's using the S4 Pro, so that's definitely going to be easier on the processor around the battery life because it's a pretty power efficient processor. But I would worry a little bit about that. Yeah, I think there's a lot of things to worry about. There's a lot of unknowns here. It's like you mentioned, the battery is a big deal. That's actually kind of small relatively at this point, which is insane to think. But especially for something that has such a large display with such a high pixel density and resolution to be pushing around all day long. Yeah. And then we've got rumors that it's coming to Verizon. We've seen it as the DLX. And then also today, I had a leak that had it showing as I believe the droid DNA. Which I much prefer DLX if that stands for DLX. I much prefer that it doesn't make me call the droid. I mean, that's what I much prefer. I much prefer that it not have droid branding. No, I'm with you. I'm with you there. But it also kind of makes sense because if you recall last year, HTC had one of the very first 720p phones with the resound. Might have been the first in fact. And now it's kind of shaping up roughly around the same time frame to release one of the very first 1080p phones. So it makes sense. I will say that if they do go with the droid branding, maybe that's a good thing for HTC at least because then Verizon will put some real marketing behind it. Which we know that historically they have been, sorry, I'm just paging through Sam and Jeff's photos of the HTC J butterfly right now. Anyway, traditionally Verizon has not put a ton of marketing help behind HTC stuff. So that I guess is a good sign. Yeah, I mean, this thing is going to be a giant phone. But if the battery life is good and the screen in person is anywhere near to what it looks like in these photos and what we've described in our post, then we'd be really excited for this phone. And we can be pretty confident that it will not have this software that we saw on the J butterfly, which is very much of a Japan, I think, was it KDDI? That's very much their custom software, which is like the rhyme from last year if you remember that. So that will very likely not be on it when it does make its way into the US and we'll be looking at since 4.1 or 4 plus or whatever HTC is calling it at the time when this arrives. So there's just a couple of quick points here. First of all, we also got a report out of Korea to say that Samsung and LG and Pantech are all planning to do 1080p smartphones themselves next year. I mean, LG has already shown up a five inch 1080p panel, so that's no surprise there. So this HTC is going to have competition is just going to be next year. But the second point is I'm really curious to know what happens if you just chop down this 1080p panel, make it a 720p one. What sort of screen size do you get? I mean, it kind of seems like it's probably going to be like 4.6 inches again. It's not going to be that small, but it was so awesome to have a 720p panel at 4.3 inches. A really high quality one. So it would actually be if you chop this down to 720p, it would actually be smaller than that because the resound, as you mentioned before, is a 4.3 inch 720p display. And if I remember correctly, that had about a 346 PPI. So you would actually might actually be in the range of four inches or even like 3.8, 3.7, 3.8. I'm sure if our chat wants to do some really rough, quick calculations for us. But, you know, that would be utterly amazing if you just kind of cut the screen down and then put it in a 3.7 inch phone. Well, 3.7 is actually going to be too small, but I'll settle for a really weird resolution in the middle. Yeah. And around 4.1, 4.2 inches. I will settle for that. But seriously, though, if it kind of bugs me that I mean, maybe it's just mass manufacturing reasons, but all these 1080p panels that are being produced, I mean, they're overkill. And the five inches overkill again, other than, you know, people with really small hands using them as just a proper tablet. So just something a little bit smaller, a little bit scaled down with the same pixel density. That is going to be a really sexy phone. None of these 1080p ones are. I'm just going to say I think our chat, someone in our chat is saying that 445 PPI would be on a 3.3 inch display. Someone in our chat also would like to point out that Dan Sievert likes his calculations rough. Yes, I like them rough and 40 shades of math right there. Wow. That's defy. How do you pronounce this defy gravity? I don't know. I have nothing else to say about the J butterfly other than I can't wait to see it in the US. We should talk about Sprint, though, before we wrap the show. Yeah. So, OK, they have gone back and acquired a majority stake in Clearwire again. How many times are we going to write the story where Sprint is or is not investing in Clearwire or putting it at arm's length or taking it back into the fold or dumping Clearwire stock or acquiring Clearwire stock? It seems like every six months they do something different with Clearwire. And I know that things are different now because Softbank is like a bunch of cash and they're trying to, you know, go back to something now that they're in more of a position of strength in terms of cash on hand, I guess. But like, just decide, guys, acquire them or don't. I'm tired of this like, do we like Clearwire or don't we like Clearwire? Do we need them or don't we? It's exhausting. I think I'm sure Chris can speak much more intelligently to this than I can. But I think Sprint actually and Softbank to that matter actually has zero interest in Clearwire as a company. And it's just using as a pawn to access the spectrum that Clearwire owns the licensing to. Yeah, I think that that move was driven entirely by the Softbank deal. And that's something that's a move that they wouldn't have made had that deal not gone through. And that was probably just a situation where Softbank was like, you know, we want to acquire you on the condition that you up your up your stake in Clearwire to be a majority. The fact that they, I mean, Sprint already had a majority. And like the fact that they sold down just enough to not have a majority is kind of weird in the first place because they lost all those voting rights for a little bit of money. It was weird. So, yeah, this makes a lot of sense to me. It's like they were living paycheck to paycheck, basically. Right. And then they found their sugar daddy. Yeah. In the short, Jeff, we should we should mention that we did a profile. I'm going to bring that up. Thanks, CEO. Whose name I'm going to struggle to pronounce now. Masayoshi Son. Wow. Very good. Nicely done. That was excellent. I spent many, many hours editing that piece. So I'm well acquainted with Masayoshi Son at this point. Yeah, he seems like a really interesting character. Like if you haven't read this report, you totally should. Because it's like it's one of these things where like, oh, wow, there is like he's like. I don't know. It's like a cross between Bill Gates and I want to say Branson. No, I don't know what I want to say. It's like, I don't know. It would be really cool to like see him start talking about sprint in the U.S. and bring, you know, be like the opposite of Dan Hesse in terms of like being like a, you know, person that isn't totally laid back and chill all the time. Well, because the opposite of Dan Hesse in terms of height. Yeah, in physical size. That reminded me of the Bill O'Reilly debates against Jon Stewart. Because I never realized the difference in height between those two dudes as well. And Sprint also has now hit 30 markets with LTE, which I have yet to see it in anywhere I've been. Is there in Chicago, Wichita, Massachusetts, McPherson, Kansas? It's clear that we need to be clear that it's not in Chicago proper or Chicago Metro. It's Chicago suburbs. So I don't even think Chris could access the LTE network here where he is. If I had a device that was even capable of it, I used it once upon a time. I had a Sprint Galaxy Nexus review unit, which I might need to get back. But but other than that, I do not. Yeah. Didn't you use that Nexus review unit to drive out to like Kankakee and see if the LTE network was alive at that point? And you had. Yes, I was. I was so stoked that I was going to be. I was like, OK, I have this key advantage over every other tech reporter in the world and that I live in Chicago, not New York or San Francisco. And I'm like, you know, it's drivable for me. Right. So I put my car in the middle of the night, drive out to the middle of nowhere and and try to get service. And I drove that entire frickin town. I spent like four or five hours driving every street there and was never able. I kept rebooting the Galaxy Nexus, never got a thing. So I don't know if that was just a bunk rumor or what happened. But it like it came from Wall Street Journal. So there was some basis in truth to that. But it's just you know, it might have just been that the engineers had the network turned off at that point because it wasn't official. I wouldn't even call the soft launch. I think they were just turning the signals on and off, you know, to test it internally. And they, you know, they didn't intend for actual consumers to be using it. So, yeah, that was that was a bust. But I did I did still manage to squeeze a report out of it, even though my test was a complete bust. I'm very proud of that. Your efforts were not totally in vain. Right. So, well, I'm going to Wichita for Thanksgiving, so if if I can, I will go and test more Sprint LTE when I'm there. It'll be fun. Yeah, that's right. We should wrap up. We would like to thank you all. I just want to raise a couple of quickies. Do it if I can. First of all, this morning, T-Mobile put up the Galaxy Note 2. It's available to buy in the US now for $369.99 on contract. And my report from this morning was that pretty much every one of my US colleagues, as soon as they came on and saw that were like, what? I believe that's exactly what I said when I jumped I jumped in our chat at like seven in the morning and I'm like, what are they thinking? It's the first thing out of my mouth. It's not. The thing is, AT&T has the same phone for $300 on contract. And Sprint will as well. So does Sprint. Verizon is going to get it and probably have the same price. I'm not perfectly sure about it. And T-Mobile just decides, you know, we're special, so we charge $70 extra. And this is after a mail-in rebate. So that's adding insult to injury. So you have to pony up more. Is it more than $400 in the store? It seems like it's $420. You have to pony up over $420 in the store on contract for the Note 2. Now, it should be noted that this is not any different than what T-Mobile did with the Galaxy S3. The Galaxy S3 on T-Mobile is more expensive as well, for whatever reason that might be. Oh, really? Yes. Yeah, it's either $30 or $70 more. I can't remember exactly. T-Mobile is very averse to... They're trying very, very hard to get away from the subsidy model. And this isn't just like a rumor. They regularly talk about this as a business priority for them. But I would argue that the way to get away from the subsidy model is not to charge people $370 on contract. There are other ways to approach that. Just go ahead and charge them full MSRP and not have them be on a contract, because that's kind of a pathetic subsidy. I agree. Yeah. I mean, it's a weird business model. I was just going to say, if you haven't read it, you should go read Vlad's review of the Galaxy Note 2. I've been playing with the T-Mobile version, and we put up a little update to the review, but the update is essentially T-Mobile's version is just like the international version, but there's also Wi-Fi calling. If you want a big tablet and you want to spend a ridiculous amount of money at the outset, it's really good. I mean, wow. That's a great point about the tablet. You can get the new iPad Mini for less than you can get the Galaxy Note 2 on T-Mobile with a two-year contract. Well, to be fair, the price of that iPad Mini does not include cellular connectivity, right? Right. Okay. But then even if you do tack on the LTE option, you're looking at something like $400 something again without the contract. Right. And it's a bigger tablet. And it runs on LTE, whereas the Galaxy Note 2 on T-Mobile will not. Right. Yeah. On that deprecating note, it's the Verge mobile show. We have to end on a down note. If you want to follow us on Twitter, you really should. I'm at Backlund. Vlad is at Vlad Savov. Chris is at ZPower. Dan is at DC Seafurt with an EI in the middle of it. We are all at Verge. And we'll be back next week. Which day? Who knows? We'll have to check the Mayan calendar and see if we can figure it out. Thanks for watching, everybody.