 Greetings, mobile accomplishers. Welcome to the Verge Mobile Show. This is episode number 69 for the week of November 18th, 2013. I am Dieter Bohm. I am Vlad Sevo. I'm Dan Siefert. And I am Chris Sigler. You had a long pause. So I'm in a different room because I'm in New York, where I live now, forever and ever, at least for a while. You had an opportunity, Dieter, to say that you were anywhere. You could have said anything in the world and the listeners would have had no option but to believe you and you decided to just go with New York. You could have said… And if he had said Chicago, nobody would have believed him either. That's not a very good troll. You people aren't even trying anymore. You're just like all I need to do is mention Chicago and it's an automatic troll. No, put some effort into it, Dan. At least I'm not in Poughkeepsie or whatever. Poughkeepsie? How is it pronounced? Poughkeepsie. No, it's not. That's a lie. Yeah, it's Poughkeepsie. Poughkeepsie. Right. Yes. Right. Which, you know… I have no retort because frankly, there's nothing really great to say about it. Poughkeepsie is like a game that Winnie the Pooh plays when he isn't sharing his toys. Listen, when I was in elementary school, there was many sections in first and second grade on spelling your address. Right. In any case, stop looking for Poughkeepsie, man. Rural lands are good for people. All of this urban environment stuff is what leads to depression and whatnot. Actually, speaking of urban environments leading to depression, we need to have a long, deep, heartfelt discussion about how bad all of the cell phone carriers, all the wireless carriers are in the city. I thought this was supposed to be like a metropolis. In fact, metropolis is based on the city and there's supposed to be civilization here and connectivity and things working. But no, AT&T is dropping everywhere and there's phantom data and Verizon recently, like it's come out that they're struggling. If you don't … I'm just going to get lucky enough to get a file. You are screwed in terms of getting internet connection. What's going on? I don't know what to do because I get no AT&T signal at all in my apartment. However, I need to have AT&T signal so I need to get a micro cell but I don't want to pay an AT&T bill so I don't know if I can just get an AT&T micro cell without an AT&T account. I pretty much can't. So I pretty much have to pay for that but it's really not going to work because it's dropping the other places that need to go. I don't want to get a Verizon account. I'm all about switching to T-Mobile but I want it to actually work outside of the city and apparently it doesn't. So basically, I am giving up. I'm quitting smartphones forever. That's the only option that's left to me. Awesome, so now you can run around with Lumia 1020. Get some brilliant photos of those urban environments with other graffiti. I would just like to point out Dieter that you mentioned that Metropolis is based on New York City as if that means that it's supposed to be a wonderful place, a perfect utopia when in fact it's a dystopia. So I don't think that's a very good analogy to make. I think Metropolis of Superman not Metropolis the movie. Oh, well Metropolis the movie is also based in New York. Okay. I don't know what's up with Chris. Is it that New York got more Michelin stars in the recent ratings in Chicago? Is that what's going on here? Chris is tired of us trolling him about Chicago. It's also just not, I mean of course New York has more Michelin stars. The city is three and a half times as large. So? That's not even a troll. But the key metric is per capita. The key metric is per capita and I believe New York beats Chicago per capita as well. Am I right Chris? In 2014 they're actually I think about even. In 2013 New York was ahead but in 2014 they're about even. Chris, it's just funny because you know man. You shouldn't know that. The reason I know that the per capita metric exists is because of you Chris. If you don't know all the cities, or excuse me all the restaurants that are Michelin star rated in your city, you are not doing your job as a human being. How many Michelin stars does Sbarro's have? They're not even Bib Gourmand. They're not in the list. Anyway please, let's go back to talking about something remotely phone related. What do you guys recommend I do? So Dieter, part of the reason that all of it kind of sucks in New York City is because it's a metropolis, the big buildings and whatever. But no I agree with you. It's supposed to be this mecca for awesome cell service and what not and it's really not at all. It's funny because people ask all the time, what cell phone service should I get in Midtown Manhattan? And frankly none of them really work that great. Our office is located in Midtown Manhattan and you can walk a block and lose all your signal and walk another block and get all your signal back and then walk another third block and it's all gone again. I don't mind losing signal, I just want my signal to be accurate. The problem that I have with AT&T in Midtown is it'll look like it's fine. It'll show me four bars of LTE and everything's awesome but really no, there's no data. Yeah there's a Chipotle restaurant a couple blocks from our office and well I say restaurant with a very loose definition. But you can stand there and my AT&T phone will say that I have like five bars of LTE service and I can't like move any data in and out of that phone. It's just complete dead zone but the phone claims that it's got full service. Well so this is exactly what HetNets are designed to solve right? I mean like the dream is that in the future, in the not too distant future, AT&T will have thousands of small cells deployed across Manhattan and this will cease to be a problem. Yeah. Because I mean you can imagine how like trying to accurately and completely cover urban canyons like you have in Manhattan with traditional cells is extremely difficult for pretty obvious reasons. Not to give AT&T a pass but you can understand why it's hard. Yeah no and I wish that you know like it was – they should be giving out these micro cells like candy. I should just whisper micro cell and they should have a truck at my door with one. They should come in bubble packs like at Walmart when you check out a prepaid phone, you just grab a micro cell to go with it. They should replace phone books with micro cells and just have them piled up at your door getting wet from the rain instead of the yellow pages. I've been thinking about micro cells for a long time and I think that they present a huge PR challenge for carriers which is why none of them talk about the fact that they have micro cells. They're not micro cells, nano cells or whatever, the Pico cells. The reason they don't talk about them is because the fact that they exist is an admission that the network isn't perfect. So the only way they can offer them is very quietly and without advertising them and without talking about them. So that's why you just never hear about them. Well yeah, but I mean everybody who uses the damn network knows that it's imperfect and that word of mouth particularly when it comes from such erudite mouths as Dieter Bones has an effect on people and it might influence you to go and look in with another carrier. What I would say from my limited experience in New York is exactly what the guys have been saying is that it's extremely spotty. So for example, there was one instance last year when I was there where we had Verizon SIM cards and LT on Verizon when it works and when you have good connectivity was just amazing. It blew my socks off. It was like faster than what I get at home. But at the same time, if you can't get that consistent, if you can't rely on it, then it's not that much of a comfort. What I would say is that London is rather the same way and it has a lot less of the excuse that New York does with the tall buildings because London doesn't have that many skyscrapers. But it's just as spotty with coverage and that includes both 3G and 4G. I mean I'm with the free network here and I have the equivalent of the femtosecond that you guys are discussing but AT&T. But I do have a question and Dieter is the man that's ideally suited to answer it which is how does New York compare to San Francisco in terms of coverage? I mean we can kind of guess but… So AT&T has completely, not completely, they have come a very, very, very long way in San Francisco to the point where it's probably the best network out there overall. It's better than Verizon in my experience in San Francisco and T-Mobile is not that great. So it's actually not quite 100% flipped because I don't think Verizon is superb in New York. But I wasn't expecting AT&T to fall down as hard as it did in the places where I need. Now that said, when AT&T does have signal in New York, it's fine and fast except for those phantom things. So it's mostly a coverage and getting around the buildings issue I think except in like really, really densely populated areas like Midtown. I don't know, I'm going to give T-Mobile a try. I'm going to give the Microcell a try. The other thing that sucks is like the perfect solution is I should just port my number to Google Voice and then like whatever week I feel like using something and I get angry at somebody else, I can just bounce around. But no, Google Voice says that there's no number porting available for my phone number. I don't trust Google Voice anymore. Like there's no telling when they're going to spring clean that thing. They promise it's going to get built into Hangouts which maybe that's another reason not to trust it, right? I can't wait until that happens and then you have like one phone app and you've got your like regular phone calls and your Google Voice phone calls and like they're not like mesh well together. I don't know how it works now. Yeah, but like they did with Hangouts with SMS and Hangout chats and they tried to put them in one phone app or one app and they didn't talk to each other at all and ugh. Yeah, I mean they've got to fix the multiple account problem. You know Dieter, the other option that you have on AT&T and T-Mobile is CellFi which was originally launched with T-Mobile but is now available on AT&T as well. And it's like a booster but a little more clever. It's also a lot more expensive than a regular booster but you have a remote unit that beams the signal wirelessly to your base unit that rebroadcasts it. But in order for that to work, your remote unit has to have a lick of signal, right? It's got to have a little bit to work with. Right. Well that might work and that one is nice because it'll just work and I won't have to actually like set it up a GPS located account with a carrier or whatever. And it also doesn't rely on your internet. The problem I have is that when my Comcast dies which is about once a week, I lose my phone too. So will a CellFi work across T-Mobile and AT&T or do I have to buy one for each? I think they're different units. Yeah, that's what I thought. Just before we wrap up this topic, I do want to mention that Sprint exists. Oh, so speaking of Sprint and we'll talk more about this later on Republic Wireless but… Let's just talk about it now. Sure, we can talk about it now. So I tested the Moto X on Republic Wireless which you know, their whole deal, Paul Miller did a big piece on Republic a couple of years ago when they first launched in beta and their whole concept is that they offload as much voice and text traffic to WiFi as possible which is you know, more valid of a concept now than it ever has been because hotspots everywhere. You have WiFi in your home, you have WiFi in your office. So 90% of the time, you're just connected to WiFi and you don't even need a cell signal for anything. And then for that other 10% of the time, they offload you to the cell network and their plan pricing is from $5 which is actually just WiFi only. You don't have any cell access up to $40 for Sprint voice and LTE unlimited across the board and they have a, I want to say it's a $25 plan that's unlimited voice texting and 3G data and then a $10 plan that's unlimited voice and text but no cell data which is kind of unusual and interesting. So you can see how that's a really good option. You just want, you know, and also the $5 option, the WiFi only is great if you just want to have a phone to take overseas because then whenever you're in WiFi access anywhere in the world, it just acts as your regular phone, with your regular phone number. And the Moto X is priced really aggressively too. It's $29 off contract, locked to Republic but it has its own ROM. It ships straight from Motorola. They don't like cook it themselves and then like re-bundle the phone and then ship it out to you. Motorola is actually making it in their factory and shipping it straight to you with the Republic ROM. And it worked really well but what I wanted to say vis-a-vis Sprint is that they use, the only cell network they use is Sprint behind the scenes and Sprint's vocoder is like a national embarrassment. Can you define vocoder for people who are not, don't know what the hell you're talking about? Yeah, it's the algorithm that they use to turn your voice into bits. My man, pin drop. And vice versa. Well no, so the funny thing, it's funny you mentioned the pin drop. One thing, one really curious thing about Sprint's vocoder, it's extremely low fidelity. It's like, I don't know how many kilobits per second it is but it's definitely, it's audibly way lower than what anyone else uses. And one of the weird things about it is that when no one is talking, it shuts completely off to the point where you think that the call dropped. So I found that I kept putting the phone down to my face and saying, is the call still on or not? Oh yes it is and then I put it back to my ear. Because like, with a normal vocoder you can kind of hear a little bit of hiss in between talking. But with this it just goes completely dead. Which is kind of unnerving. So and then when people are talking it just kind of sounds like Charlie Brown's teacher. So it's like, it's completely worthless. Not completely worthless but moderately worthless as a calling device. The irony is that like Sprint is, was the first carrier in the US to offer any HD voice option and there's so few that's, I mean T-Mobile does now. They still have got a little bit of a lead in HD voice. Well it's device specific right? Yeah that's the thing. And if you don't have a device that works on it, I don't even know what the latest phones that work on it have. Actually you know the funny thing? So when we went to this last Sprint event when they were talking about their crazy spark with the super fast, sorry I just bumped the microphone, the super fast internet speeds with the three different bands that they use. Which is actually in New York. Right. So they were talking about HD voice and apparently HD voice gets encoded differently depending on the network hardware. So like I forget who's where but like Ericsson is in one corner and like Alcatel owns another like the southwest corner and like somebody else does the northeast corner of the US. And they'll get HD voice rolling but it will only work within the network so it will only work between like Alcatel networked calls and then it won't be until next year that they actually have HD voice working across those different networking systems. It's completely screwed up. Yeah, I mean it's not Sprint's fault, that's just how it works. But it's insane to me that high quality voices is that complicated. I would say it is Sprint's fault for demanding that there's a standard. Like when they laid out the network they should have said the only way we're doing this is if this is interoperable. Well that's what they're doing now with their new little boxes. You can't just like turn on any Sprint phone and call it any Sprint phone and get HD voice. I know, I don't know what is different with the implementation with T-Mobile but as far as I understand it is not device specific. And it's also only within Sprint. You can't call anyone else and I don't know about you guys, I don't know anyone, oh no that's not true, I know one person with a Sprint phone. So like there actually isn't anyone you can call to experience HD voice. It's like it's kind of a non-existent feature. The chances that the person that you know that has Sprint also has a phone that is compatible with it and is also in an area where it actually works are like you know, the Lions will win the Super Bowl before that happens. Speaking of things that are completely impossible, somebody explain to me why. Somebody explain to me why. The first like other than like the Nexus 7 or whatever, the first like big mass market phone to get Android 4.4 was on Verizon and it was a Motorola phone. The Moto X on Verizon KitKat is rolling out for it right now and it beat everybody else, it beat the Nexus 4, it beat the unlocked Moto X, it beat like everybody. It beat the Google Play Edition of the H61 and the Samsung Galaxy S4. The only explanation I can come up with is that Motorola and Verizon have been pretty cozy for many years but that still doesn't really explain it because Verizon is notoriously white-assed with firmware updates so I don't get it. When I talked to them about the Moto G, I was like why don't you have KitKat? They were like well it just got released. I was like yeah but you guys are in the PDK, the PDK is the platform developer kit where people like HTC and Motorola and Samsung get to look at it early. They don't get special treatment. They're like look yeah we get to look at the stuff early but it's not until the day that they actually release it that you can really start building on it and it's not until – you also have to get all the chip makers on board too so there's always going to be a lag time but we're working as fast as we can. I was like okay well you know, that makes sense, it's still stupid but it's fine I understand. So I was expecting it to be a little while but they blasted that thing out and then it's just up on Verizon of all places. I don't know what to do about that. I need someone to explain to me how to think about the universe now. I suspect Chris has nailed it insofar as Verizon might have put pressure on Motorola to make that effort. I feel like – well hang on there. I don't think Verizon would because – No but if you're Verizon why would you want Motorola to put out the awesome software update on its branded phone when you could have it out on your filthy, loop grade droids that you make more money off of. Lest we forget that the Verizon Galaxy Nexus which is actually listed as a Nexus phone with all of the factory images supplied by Google and everything is still on Android 4.2.2. It's never going to get Android 4.4 but it doesn't have Android 4.3 which the other Galaxy Nexus devices have. So there's just like so many things here that do not add up to why this happened the way it did. Okay, we are speculating at this point anyway. It's not like Verizon is suddenly awesome because they're still playing games with the Verizon version of the Nexus 7. It's not out yet. They said they were waiting for KitKat which is bonkers. So it's not like Verizon is all of a sudden like pure as the driven snow and like super consumer friendly. It's just like this weird confluence of like I don't know what to do. But that's my point and like I said to Dan, this is speculation. We don't know. But if you're looking for motivation for why Motorola will prioritize one over the other, I would think well if you go and buy Google Play edition, who is looking after your interests? It's just your phone. If you go and buy the unlocked phone, again it's your phone. Nobody is going to Motorola and lobbying on your behalf. Whereas Verizon in a rare moment of insight might have decided okay AT&T had this lead on us with the Moto Maker. We can kind of steal some thunder back with the Moto X by having the KitKat update first. That might be one reason why they might have pushed for it. Alright, now that you put it in terms of politics and trying to screw the other guy, now it makes sense to me. Okay, yeah. But at the end of the day, hey if you're a Verizon Moto X customer. I had to translate it into American, you're right. At the end of the day, if you're a Verizon Moto X customer. And if you're not a Verizon Moto X customer, you can be one for 50 bucks on contract. So Moto Maker is available for everybody. I think that expired. It was 50 bucks. It's crazy how cheap that got fast. Yeah I mean it's now 100 bucks which is still a great deal for the Moto X. But this past weekend they ran a deal which it could still be going on. I could be crazy but I thought maybe it expired by now. I actually wrote the article. Yeah well I mean it's going to be 50 bucks again soon. I'm sure that there's going to be all sorts of holiday deals for it. Yeah, come Black Friday it will probably be free. So you know, it's a great value and the fact that not only is it a great phone that we've proven time and again through our views and our experience with the device. It's a great value and it's got the latest software from Google. So nobody cares, it's reportedly only sold 500,000 units. And yet nobody's buying it. I don't get it. I don't understand why the Moto X is a retail flop. It has all the hallmarks of what a phone needs to succeed. You can't tell me that people are going into stores and saying I know Samsung, I want a Samsung and I'm going to buy nothing but a Samsung. I mean maybe they are. I think a lot of people are and I think you know, a lot of the people that work in the stores, the actual sales reps are very familiar and very comfortable with selling the Samsung devices. And you know, when it comes down to it, when the people come in and they're like what phone should I buy, I could totally picture a sales rep being like buy a Samsung or you know, buy whatever their favorite phone is. I guess it's something that you need a few generations, a few iterations of a device from a company for people to develop a comfort zone with it. Because the way that I feel right now, the LG G2 is the best phone that you can go out and buy. It's the phone that I'm using and I make no apologies about using CyanogenMod on it until LG straightened out their skin. You do have to apologize for using the backlight. Guys I'm sorry, there's some breaking news here right now. This is courtesy of Mike Isaac. If you go to Twitter's blog post, they've got new search filters they're announcing for their app. But more importantly, if you look at the Vine for it at about the two second mark, you can see some of the accounts that they've got that are set up around the Twitter office. And one of them is Twaffus Shitter, which I'm pretty sure is the Twitter account for bathroom at Twitter's headquarters. Wow, and it's not verified though. No it's not. All right, I'm sorry. You were talking about the G2's back button and I had to interrupt you because I can't ever hear about that again. Okay, so I'll just face it forwards and not face it back. But seriously, I just want to mention. No, no, I challenge your point because you just said that it's the best Android phone that you can buy and then you're just like I have to install software to fix it because it's broken out of the box. Like that's not the best phone that you can buy. This is the best phone that you can buy. And I'm not alone, Paul O'Brien feels the same way and he's Paul O'Brien of Motocop and he's the smartest guy in England. So there you go. Wow. But the reason I raise a G2. Wait a minute, doesn't Stephen Hawking live in England? I think he lives in the US. Is he in the US? Okay. I think he does. He was in England for a while anyway. But the reason I raise a G2 is because to me the G2 and the Moto X are pretty unique in just how crazy small the device is compared to the screen size. I haven't seen phones like them, any other phones quite like them. And if you were to tell me that I would love using a 5.2 inch phone, I would just say that's crazy but right now, having used the G2 extensively, I literally cannot go back to using an iPhone 5. The storage size is too small for me and there's the whole Gmail app fiasco which is still not improving at all. But my thinking is people might go into a store, they might see a G2, they might see a Moto X and they might say that's pretty nice hardware but I don't trust these guys. They haven't done a good phone for months or years or however long. Or they go in and they're like my mom or my kid doesn't own a G2, my kid doesn't own an LG, they don't own a Motorola. Or like the example that Deater had. It doesn't have the Tegra, right? That was me? You know when you're in the store and there was some old couple. Oh yes, that's right. Man, I got the brain on Vlad remembering that anecdote. That was like six months ago. Pretty soon we're going to be talking about legit pandas. It's been a while. Wow. I think that actually predates me. Oh, that was before you. You were here for all of our triumvirate and for… We educated somebody. Somebody on Twitter said that before us he didn't know what trifecta meant. No, no, Troika. Oh, Troika, that's right. And hopefully we educated some other people about Quadriga because that's what we are now. So let's talk about big phones then. You don't want to talk about the Moto G? Oh yeah, I got the Moto G. A lot of stuff happened last week. So yeah, the Moto G is probably the best phone I've ever touched that has a retail price of under $250. If they don't use Nothing But A G Thing as the song for the commercial for this phone, they have missed out on one of the most amazing opportunities for… There's so many places they could go with it. They could pair up with 50 Cent and market it as a G unit or Nothing But A G Thing. I mean, there's so much. That was good. That's a good go. That's good, Dan. Yeah, I know. I don't know. And associating it as like the hip hop phone, I don't know. You're kind of limiting your audience. Yeah, but those songs are like, you know, they span all time and space in genre. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that 50 Cent's song was number one on like all of the billboard charts that it could be on for quite a few weeks. But then there's the other thing. The Moto G is intended to be sold in areas that might not have a billboard chart, right? Because that's what Motorola is targeting here. Hip hop is cross-cultural. I bet they know. It's American. It crosses boundaries, man. It's just everyone's American now. Like that Rammstein song. So the Moto G is an unlocked phone that is actually, it's kind of like a mid-range device that Motorola is selling at an entry level price. In the US you'll be able to buy it for 179 bucks for an 8 gig version or 200 bucks for a 16 gig version. But not until Q1. But not until Q1, right. But Motorola's really not pushing it hard here in the US because this phone is designed for emerging markets and areas that smart phones don't have the kind of penetration that they have here in the west and in developed markets. So people can actually get a really good experience on the Moto G for not a whole lot of money. And it's actually like really surprising. The screen is 4.5 inches and it's a 720p display. In many respects it looks nicer than the 720p display on the Moto X because it's an LCD as opposed to AMOLED so it's got great viewing angles, great color, it's not as over saturated. It's got a quad core Qualcomm processor so it's got like a real processor in it. It's responsive, the build quality is just about the same as the Moto X. But mention the two things that are missing. The two things that are down, it's missing LTE. And it also has a crappy five megapixel camera. Yeah, the camera is not that great but it takes pictures. I mean if you compare it to other $200 phones, it's a much better camera than what you normally get on a $200 phone. You've got to figure this thing is going to be priced against the Lumia 510, the Firefox phones and then whatever… Samsung Galaxy Ace, whatever. And those are like terrible devices. Yeah, they're really bad. So the – well, the Lumia 520 is pretty good. I guess that's a rare exception but it's not an HD display, it's not a quad core processor, it's a lot of other things that it's not. I was totally with you and I still am that this is a pretty remarkable device for the price. But a bunch of people when I was tweeting about it were talking back to me and a couple of the DMs too that it's actually not that remarkable a device if you look especially in China, which of course the Moto G isn't going to China. But a bunch of phones in this range are being sold around this price. It's just we're not seeing it here because none of it is coming to the US market and a lot of it is located in Asia. And the main thing is that the margins on phones have distorted our sense of what they cost. Maybe. Well, I mean my retort to the Chinese phone argument is that I can't say for sure how the level of quality that those phones that sell around that price bracket in China are, but I imagine it's not as nice as the Moto G. I've actually like having used and touched the Moto G, it's actually really well put together, it's a really nice screen, it doesn't feel like it's going to fall apart in your hands. And then none of those Chinese phones have access to the Google Play Store, which the Moto G does, and I honestly think that that is a value quotient right there. Which makes it more valuable to me and I think many other people over like a Lumia 510 for that matter. So yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of phones that we never see here in the US. I don't know how many are actually hitting these marks that the Moto G hits. That's all. I was just going to say, there was that top end Asha phone which was quite cute and fun in terms of the design and using it. So I mean the competition isn't absolute garbage. I would totally agree on those Galaxy A series. Nothing has a 720p display. No, of course. The Asha phone is maxed out at what, WVGA? And then most of these things have QHD displays at best, and they're not good QHD displays. Yeah, all I'm pointing out is that if you're not going to be all that bothered about the camera or OT connectivity and things like that, there are well designed phones in that price bracket. They're not all completely not the garbage. But something else that kind of stands out to me is how, and maybe this is to Dieter's point about the chips being cheaper than we might think, a quad core Snapdragon processor in there. I mean first of all, Qualcomm is just owning the entire market right now for chips. And it seems to be because they're pricing those chips aggressively. Because I am surprised. I am surprised to see that kind of power in something like the Moto G. And you guys are speechless at surprise. Well as you know, it's great to see agreement. Snapdragon 400, which is Qualcomm's lower end lineup, but it's the first one that we've seen at least here in the US or that I've seen that has a quad core version of that processor. We saw the 400 in the One Mini and in the HTC First with a dual core chip and it was okay, it was passable. But the quad core is actually noticeably faster and maybe it has to do with the fact that the software isn't as heavily themed and things like that. But it just works well. Just the One Mini doesn't have the Snapdragon 400. First choice was the 600. No, it's a 400. The One Mini is definitely a 400. Dual core 400. I reviewed it man. It kind of been a 400. I think it was. I could be wrong. Then HTC just slipped down by me in that case. Let's talk about the Lumia 1520, the giant phone. Which also, this is a watershed device because I believe it marks the first time that we have written the word phablet in an article without immediately apologizing for it. We broke down and did it. That's the term now. They're called phablets. We've accepted that big phones are here. We've accepted that Note 3 is a very good one. We've accepted that the Xperia Z, whatever it is, is gigantic. It's just what they are now. They're big and we're just calling them phablets and we're not sorry anymore. Evan puts that it's a Snapdragon 400 into the One Mini. I was wrong. Did Edwin? It doesn't happen very often. Can someone explain to me why the Chronic is not on Spotify? I just want to play nothing but a G thing. How long have you been looking? For like 10 minutes. They're like 20 covers. Just go to YouTube. I would say every other mobile show Chris, you disappear and are focusing on something. I assume that you're working because I know stuff is going on and the business of the version never stops. Sometimes I'm doing that too but most of the time it's you. But really you're not working. You're just cruising Spotify. No shame in the game. Don't hate. I can segue back because I interrupted by mentioning the Snapdragon 400 and the Lumia 1520 if I'm not mistaken has a Snapdragon 800 inside it. That's correct. It's the first Windows phone with a Snapdragon 800. It's got two gigabytes of RAM. It's really really fast. It's definitely the fastest Windows phone that I've ever used. Windows phone typically is not slow to begin with. It's a very responsive user interface but the Lumia 1520 is noticeably faster when you are opening apps and switching apps and things like that. At this point it really just feels like the Windows phone animations of constantly opening that fan and closing that fan to do things is what slows you down more than the processor. So that's kind of a good thing to see. The screen is tremendous. Here I have it right here. That is big. Oh god I'm really holding back. It's really bright. It's got great viewing angles if I tilt it to the side here. It's actually really really bright outdoors as well. So it's really awesome outdoors. It's got all of Nokia's tricks for polarization, clear black, it works with gloves, all that fun stuff. So it's a really great display. And then the build of the device is pretty much if you're familiar with the Lumia 720 and then you put it on one of those medieval stretcher things and stretched it out. It's that design. But yeah it is a six inch display and it is very much a very very big phone. It is pretty much impossible to use one handed and I'll open up the on screen keyboard here. You can just see how massive that on screen keyboard is. It's actually the on screen keyboard is taller on the 1520 than it is on a next to seven which I find highly hysterical. That kind of just gets to my point of Microsoft did the bare minimum to optimize Windows Phone 8 for a device this big or a screen this large. They optimized most of their core apps right? Well they say they did. You can see on the screen here I've got three columns going so I can have more tiles in one space. It makes for a bit of a jumble and a lot of stuff going on so it's a bit intense. You can see they're all flipping and all that fun stuff. So I don't have to scroll as much which is nice. None of the tiles can be stretched out to the full width so you are still limited with two columns. But that is the biggest noticeable difference between this and every other Windows phone. Microsoft says that it optimized the core apps but it did the bare minimum. In the email app I can see about half of a more email in the list. I can see one line preview more on the contacts. I can see maybe like two contacts and on the app list I can see four more apps before I have to scroll. But that's about it. And that's what it does. Any difference there? No, browser is exactly the same. And so when you compare it to like, here I've got the 925. What are you comparing to that amazing massive tripod in the background? It's like here's a huge thing and here's another huge thing. When you look at how much bigger it is than say a 925 which is not really a small phone to begin with, you'd expect to get far more out of that giant screen real estate and I think they didn't really do much of it at all. So it's just like bigger for the sake of being bigger. The fonts are giant, the icons are giant, everything is giant. I thought the 925 was an iPhone when you first brought it up next to the… Oh yeah, let's compare it to the iPhone if you really want to. Can you hold the iPhone horizontally so we can see if it's wider than the iPhone is tall? Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm trying to keep the screen on but I keep, you know, obviously it's a giant screen and I'm touching it as I move. Yeah, so you can get an idea of how big that is. So it actually doesn't fit in my front pocket. I can't sit down with it in my front pocket and in my back pocket of my pants, it like sticks up by about half an inch. So this is why you need a Galaxy Round or a G Flex, right Chris? The only pocket that I can keep it in is in like the inside pocket of a Blazer. Otherwise it's just far too large. It also doesn't fit in my American sized cup holders in my car. Another point about the inside pocket of a Blazer which people might not appreciate, I had an HC1 Max in that exact position and what would happen is that my jacket would start to tilt in the direction in which the phone is. I'm not even joking, like it would just be leaning. It's heavy as well, you know, Nokia phones aren't really light to begin with so you know, the size of massiveness is heavy. And so you know, the thing that I have, the issue that I have with it is that there's obviously a market for these big phones. I think Samsung's proven that. You know, there are three iterations into the Note line. It's actually a really good device if you want a phone that's really giant, you know, the Note offers a unique experience. The problem is that Nokia and Microsoft aren't offering a unique experience with this and the software gives you the same experience you might see on a 1020 or a 925 without like really any difference as opposed to the extra column on your home screen. How close is this thing to just like, you kind of just wishing that you had Windows RT on it? You know, who wishes they had Windows RT on anything? Windows RT has its own issues. But you know, it's. I think they need Windows 8. I think yeah, that's what I was about to say. Like I think a more fair comparison is to say like at what point do you wish it was just a Dell Venue Pro or Venue 8 or whatever they're calling it. Or like here's a comparison to a 2013 Nexus 7 and you can see that it is nearly as big as the Nexus 7. The difference obviously being that the Nexus 7 has real tablet software on it. So you know, I think that the 1520 gives us a lot of preview as to like what the next Windows devices will be like with the awesome processor and awesome screen. But man. You know, never once in using any Windows phone have I ever said gee I wish I had more CPU. Like. Yeah, never. It's just not an issue for that platform. Right, right. And I mean, unless you compare them side by side, you know, your 925 or whatever if you happen to own a Windows phone is not going to suddenly feel slow unless you compare it side by side with the 1520. It is a tick faster in animations. It's just a little bit more responsive. It's scrolling is a little bit snappier. But you know, like you said and like I said, Windows phone has never been wanting for more power. So I mean the good thing is that it's now a 1080p display which the older phones were not 1080p displays and this has no issue pushing around the 1080p display. So that's good to see. And it's the typical build quality is great from Nokia. The camera is kind of average. I think that's one of the bigger disappointments. This is a, it's a pure view camera. It uses the same technology as the 1020 but it's a 20 megapixel version so it's not as extreme as the 41 megapixel one. But it is not as good in low light as the iPhone 5S. It's definitely not as good in low light as the 1020 and it's just slow. It takes a long time to open, a long time to take a photo and a long time to save that photo so it's kind of a bummer. No. That's terrible. That was my little silver lining that I was hoping would be the truth with the new CPU, the new processor. Exactly. And that's what Nokia said would happen. They said you know this new processor will let us do a lot of photo things faster and things like that but it's slow compared to you know comparable iPhones and Android devices. So really it's an issue with the software rather than the hardware. Yeah I think they can probably improve it software wise. That's the feeling I get. Did you try any of the, did you try taking any raw photos? Is that compatibility available yet? It is. It shoots, so when you normally take a photo by default it will shoot a 5 megapixel image and a 19 megapixel image and save both of those. And that's really where it slows everything down is when it's saving those files. The 19 megapixel image lets you recrop and do all those fun things with Nokia software. The other option if you go into settings you can have it save a 5 megapixel JPEG and a 20 megapixel DNG file which is a raw format that is kind of universal. When you do that you lose all of the ability to recrop and play with all the fun stuff on the phone. So it's pretty much you know if you just want to throw it in Photoshop and tweak it from there. I didn't actually spend a whole lot of time doing that because the last thing I want to do is take a photo off my phone and tweak it in Photoshop. But if you want to do it it's there. I think you'll have more fun with the 1020 doing that though because it's a better camera. So yeah totally. Dieter is prepared to own the 1020. I think that's going to be the overwhelming theme of our podcast today. No listen I mean I'm still just like dealing with the fact that like I've accepted that phones are this size now. Yeah so I have the One Max with me as well so you can see. The 1020 is about the same size as the One Max which I think we said was too big. And then the Z Ultra is here and this is actually bigger. So that's 6.4 inches. These are phones. You can put them up to your face and make a call. Those are things with phone like features and capabilities. And you guys are never going to convince me to say phablet. I'm soon going to quit and say phablet. I mean like I just kind of throw my hands up in the air because it's either use a lot of words to describe this or just say one word that I don't like very much. What's the one word you don't like very much? Oh phablet. Just say it man. Phablet. It's a fabulous day with your phablets. Instead of this I think I just want the Porsche P989. Are we seriously talking about that thing? Oh yes. That has one. I am going to do a live unboxing. Wait did I get the numbers right on this phone? The P989. What's it called? The P989. P98982. That's right. P98982. I got it right. Yes. So to get the unboxing started I would just like to say that the outside of the box is a very fine texture to it. We need to let people on Twitter know that we're doing a live. Are you allowed to put this thing out there? Are you under any sort of embargo Vlad? A little late now. Well if I had any shame I would just like not do it but yes I am allowed to put it out there. Okay I'm just asking. Just on the topic of the world I don't want to live in, I am unhappy that today we heard that Samsung has actually shipped 800,000 Galaxy Gears and Chris enlightened me about the Moto X only selling half a million. I know one is sales, the other is shipments but still the fact that even retailers are willing to commit to 800,000 of those atrocious watches. When do you think they made those orders? How many Best Buy warehouses does it take to hold 800,000 Galaxy Gears until Samsung takes them back? That's a good question. So Kwame our weekend editor here at the Verge, he did actually point out something worth noting which is we were all joking and making fun of the original Galaxy Note. Now I'm not saying that – no stop, just let me finish. We were, everybody was. Yes we were. But I'm not saying this is the same thing. But I am saying there is an interesting parallel there that maybe, just maybe we could have a better interface when the shipments turn into sales. The key difference between the Gear and the Note is that the Note isn't actually a good device. It's a good product. And the Gear is like fundamentally not. It might be at some day if Samsung actually updates it and makes it better but the one that you buy today is not a good product. Absolutely. So that's the key difference. Yeah, I do not expect any egg on my face with regards to the Galaxy Gear. Well you don't need eggs so how would it even happen? We're not even going to go there. The egg – okay. Wait do you eat eggs? The egg is like the perfect food. And that's not me saying it. There's a Duke professor who is like the PR guy for eggs because they have like the perfect protein breakdown and they give you all your necessary fats and all of those good things. Anyway, I do eat eggs. I make amazing omelets. You should come to my house. Okay so the phone. All right. Wait, wait Vlad do you eat cheese? You're making an omelet without cheese. That's a travesty. Okay, carry on. I do make omelets without cheese. But yes, the Porsche design – It's just scrambled eggs! Sorry. Dude, there are French people who you just offended. I mean there's a whole country you just offended. There's a lot of – By the way, France just issued a travel advisory against its citizens traveling to Chicago so I don't care about offending the French. Why doesn't France want people going to Chicago? Because of the crime. No, I think it's because they're going to be swindled into eating something that they think is going to be pizza and it's not pizza. Wait, wait, wait. Chris, don't react to the trope. Is that for real? Yeah, yeah Chicago Tribune published it today. Wow. Okay. I mean they thought about – I was going to try and make a surrender joke but I couldn't come up with anything so let it go. Okay so, BlackBerry, the reason I am showing this box is because like the very purpose of this thing's existence is in the accessories and in your imagination. So you have to imagine the fine texture of this box. So then we open it up and there's more blackness booting up the anticipation and then there's these two things. This is a low point for the original show right now. It's really fitting that there's two things here in the foreground because one of them is the phone itself which has steel and – It looks kind of nice to be honest with you. Well it's real leather which might piss a lot of people off, you know animal rights and whatever. Also BlackBerry tell me it's real Italian leather made of Italian cows. I don't know if that matters to you. But anyway – It has a chin on the bottom right? No it doesn't, it's flat. No but it's got like a little – instead of being straight across it like has a little chin, chinny chin. Like a Z10 doesn't go down as far on the bezel underneath the screen is what I'm saying. I was thinking chin like with the HC – No not like Bruce Campbell chin. Not one that protrudes forward but just one that goes down. Yeah it's got a little bit more, that's the stainless steel part of it. But seriously even the BlackBerry guys who were showing this thing to me, they were struggling to come up with differences from the Z10. So it's the same internals, same processor, same screen, all that jazz. Yeah it just has 64 gigs of storage. Why didn't they go with the – I mean the cool thing about putting it in the 981 was their crazy keyboard and going metallic and it didn't fit with the other BlackBerrys. They should have totally just done the Q10 instead of the Z10. I mean is it really going to affect sales the same way or the other? Honestly when you look at this thing, the P9999A2, it's just a Z10 with the top and the bottom of the P999981. I could have done this in a minute's worth of work and I don't do design. Now Vlad, with the original Pananana, the BlackBerry customized the software so it had like special Porsche icons and things like that. Is it any different with this one or is it the same software? You get a unique BBM pin. Wait, wait, wait, that's important. Let's get through the trivia first. We spent like 10 minutes on this. Wait, there's a Porsche theme ringtone on this thing. It's a Porsche theme ringtone but it isn't actually an engine noise. And boot up and shutdown animations have that PD Porsche design logo happening and from what I understand the Porsche design guys are just like this other group which is licensed to use the name basically. They have nothing to do with the actual Porsche designs. But anyway, not that that matters to the people who are interested in this. Here's what matters. This is the other hugely important part. It's a credit card size thing which makes you a literal card carrying member of an exclusive club and you have a unique pin. Now what I'm going to say is that exclusive club is going to matter to some people and not going to matter to the rest of the population. It really depends on how you define that club. That's it. Whether you want that phone or not. Price tag also is worth mentioning. It's $2,400. Totally worth it. Yeah. Well if you want to justify it in hardware terms, they do have a charger adapter for every single region in the world. And one of the tiniest freaking batteries ever. I mean I look at this battery and I'm just embarrassed on their behalf. Seriously. Somebody did a calculation and they said you could get something like 1,016GB Moto G's for the price of one of these. I mean the reason this phone exists is because it's profitable. They sell it in two regions where everyone is a billionaire and they'll sell them. And I mean the phone costs marginally more than a regular Z10 to make. And they're selling it for 10,000. The stainless steel, that's the other thing. The only premium material here is the leather. Right. Right, that's what I'm saying. It probably cost them 10% more to make. Oh fantastic. And the Z10 version with only 500 being made. And I can still see them. And 300 of those are review units. The funny thing to me is that the people who buy, if I actually saw someone who owned this, I'd be like dude this just means you couldn't afford a Virtu. It's the poor man's Virtu is all of it. Wow. Is it like the Acura phones? Is that? It's a decent way of putting it. I mean you just offended everybody who's listening to us who owns an Acura, but sure. I would buy it. I would be grateful if I could buy an Acura. I would be super happy. Not in New York you wouldn't be. Well no. Alright, we should probably wrap up pretty soon. I do want to take a brief moment to say that new FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is not, at least in his first couple of weeks, week, however long it's been, the super pro carrier tragedy that we were all expecting. That will come later, but so far Chris, he seems to be doing okay. He is not the worst person on the planet so far, which is encouraging. I think that he, honestly, I mean this might be a little overly optimistic, but it almost seems like he was motivated by the amount of momentum that Clyburn generated and he's trying to keep that up. He actually just circulated moments ago a memo on how he wants to take action on moving the country toward an all IP infrastructure, which is code for ripping out the landlines. There are many, many forces at play in that conversation and it's still open for debate whether that's actually a net good thing for consumers or a net bad thing. So the jury is still out, but that literally just happened. So he's moving very quickly and he's using, in every memo I've seen of his, he's using very strong language. He's saying, you know, we got to do this right now. We got to act. He actually put a time window on that memo he sent to Steve Large and President of CTIA. He's like, I want this resolved by December with the phone unlocking stuff. So the dude is looking to move. We'll just see if he can keep it up. And what's this drama today, Chris? I know that you don't have any strong feelings about this cell phone unlocking thing that's happening. Oh, yes. Oh my goodness. So there's this story, I believe it originally appeared in the New York Times, about how carriers are pushing back on a proposed requirement to load phones with software that would allow users to remotely lock them if they're stolen. Carriers are allegedly pushing back because they're worried that's going to cut into insurance profits because the insurance plans, which are very popular, are also very profitable, which is why every time you go to say a Best Buy and you buy a $3 CDR, they're like, do you want to insure that for two years for $25? And so, yes, I agree in principle that remote lock and wipe is great. I think that this is kind of bizarre and misguided and a little backwards for a few reasons. One, I can't think of any other physical object owned by American citizens where the government requires that they be modified in some way to disincentivize people to steal them. We don't mandate alarms or low jacks on cars, which are obviously very heavily stolen things. And secondly, carriers just took action late last year on a national IMEI blacklist. So there is a way to prevent these phones from being used after they're stolen, but ultimately the question becomes, I think it's a bridge to your point. Well, hang on, a national IMEI blacklist doesn't solve the problem because a lot of these phones are getting shipped overseas. So you actually need to disable the unit itself. Right, but that gets to my last point, which is that regardless of how you approach this, you're still not solving the problem of a shady guy coming up to you and taking your phone. They're not thinking about whether, oh well, I wonder if maybe this phone is going to be remote lockable. They're just like ganked and then they walk away. Yeah, but I mean the idea is that if it becomes known throughout the world that phones will be disabled if they're stolen, there will be less incentive to steal them. Well, that has certainly worked well with Lojax. I don't know, I just think that this is an example of people having their hearts and minds in the right place, but it is not the right battle to be picking. And believe me, there are many, many battles to be picked with carriers. I don't think this is the right one. That's all I have to say. On that note, I think it's time to wrap up the Verge Mobile show. If you disagree, then I'm sorry. If you want to follow us on Twitter, you can. I am at backlaundan as DCC for with an EI. Chris is ZPower, don't call him Zpower. Vlad is Vlad Savov, don't call him Vladwick. We are all at Verge and next week, we'll see you guys. Thanks for watching. Bye. Transcribed by https://otter.ai