 Greetings, mobile accomplishers. Welcome to the Verge Mobile Show. I am Dieter Boehm. I'm Dan Siefert and I am Chris Sigler. Dan and Chris were expecting snappy patter from me before I just dropped my name so that they could get ready with their clever repost. I usually like to take a long drink of whatever beverage I'm enjoying while you're going through your opening spiel and you really didn't give me enough time to enjoy a beverage this week. I'm a little upset about it. Well normally you have more time too, Chris, because it goes Dieter, Vlad, myself, you. Where is Vlad? What's Vlad's story? We don't know where Vlad is. Vlad is, he's busy. He's on the streets of London. He's busy. He's having a hard time. He's flatting so hard right now. There's a werewolf in London, maybe American, and Vlad has to fight it. Yeah. So Mr. Siegler, do you want to talk about the environs in which you're in and how they might change? I am in my bat cave. Yeah. And next week, actually there are some logistical issues here that maybe our viewers and listeners don't care about but I'm going to share them anyway, which is that we don't actually have regular studio time in New York booked for this program. Which is fine because we don't need studios. We don't, but next week I will be doing a studio time in New York. So I'm not going to be there. But next week I will be in New York possibly for a very long time. I might die there. Yeah. It's a risk. It's a genuine risk. Well no, I'm just saying of old age. Right. I might just be there. Well I mean London's got werewolves and New York has… Has Chris Siegler. Yeah, you can't leave. You just die there. Right. Also vampires. Like Hotel California. So yes, I will be in New York next week, which I am a little, shall we say, skittish about having been in Chicago with easy access to delicious pizza for the past 11 years of my life. So this is a… I mean, Chris, if you really get homesick, there's always UNOs. Dan, we already went through this. The UNO in New York and elsewhere in the United States is a licensee of the UNO name. If you want real UNO pizza, there are precisely two places to get… Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What? There are two places to get UNO? Shouldn't there be just one? Ah. Shouldn't it be called, like, it should be called Duo. UNO? Duo Pizza. Dieter, I almost feel like you actually know that the second one is called Due, because it is. Really? Yeah. And you're just setting me up. But yes, there are two original UNOs. There's UNO and Due. They're located… No, it wouldn't be DOS. I mean, Chicago pizza might not be New York pizza, but it's not Mexican pizza. It's Spanish pizza, come on. I mean, UNO means one, right? Yes, it means one. Due means two in Italian. Oh, okay. See, when I see UNO, I think one in Spanish. So… Oh. Well, it's… UNO is one in a variety of languages. Forgive me for confusing that fantastic chain restaurant with fantastic Chicago pizza when I want to eat stuff that doesn't taste good like New York pizza. Welcome to The Verge Mobile Show, where we talk about Chicago pizza. Ad nauseum. If Vlad comes later, we'll talk about carrots. And avocados. Yeah, and avocados. We've actually had requests for more avocado banter. Really? More avocado banter. I hope this is enough avocado banter. The thing about avocados is that they're the ones that aren't stained with blood. There's a lot of bad avocados out there that come from poor working conditions. I do actually think there's an opportunity, a genuine opportunity for a Fresh Foods podcast. Not necessarily hosted by The Verge, but just in the podcast world in general. I think there's probably a good opportunity for that. But anyway, getting back to the original discussion here, yes, as of next week I will be in New York, which kind of changes potentially how we are going to record and present this show to you. And we don't have all those answers yet. There's an easy answer for that. You just need to go to a place where you can record and obviously the best solution is for you to get in the car that you own and drive there. You're trolling me. I no longer own a car, which I also feel very weird about. A lot of weirdness in my life this week. Don't worry Chris, car ownership sucks. It's kind of like home ownership. It's just a big false lie. You guys are killing me. Speaking of dying, Flappy Bird. Yes. Flappy Bird has been around and then it had its glorious moment since we last podcasted. And then it died. Unless you happen to have a phone or went out to eBay to buy the expensive phone that they're selling that has Flappy Bird. Or you use an Android phone and you just Google for the APK. I do not endorse what Dan has suggested. Or you have a Windows phone in which case you're using the clone that is identical to the original game. The kerf that's in the Windows phone store. Yeah. So Flappy Bird was discussed on the Roachcast. I really don't have a ton more to add other than it's remarkable and I kind of can't wait until the next thing to seem like Flappy Bird happens. And also if you had any doubt in your mind whatsoever that there is a very strong correlation to draw between apps and pop music hits, you need to let that go. Because one hit wonders are here. Flappy Bird is the... I don't want to go with bye bye bye. What's a good one hit wonder we can go with? Flappy Bird is never going to give you up of apps. I actually argue this. I think your point is flawed because the developer has like four apps in the top ten most popular games in iTunes. So who's a good four hit wonder that we can talk about? The other ones only became hits because they discovered their back catalogue, right? I don't think so. I think he's had success in the app store before. Not to this extent. No, obviously Flappy Bird is like, you know, Metallica wrote four great albums and then had the black album where that took off and everyone knew Metallica's name. But you know, that's the first example I could think of. As far as I can tell the phrase four hit wonder doesn't appear on the internet anywhere. Wow. You just coined it Chris. Welcome to four hit wonder podcast formerly known as the Verge Mobile Show. And we only have three people here today. How do we not have Vlad? Wait, wait, wait, here we go. Third Eye Blind is a four hit wonder. I coordinate with you. They do the semi-charmed kind of life song. Yeah. And the jumper song. Did you know semi-charmed kind of life is about doing math? I bet you didn't know that. So that's a cool fact, bro. Anyways, I don't want to talk about bad games. I want to talk about Three's because Three's is like the best game ever. And it's actually a really good game and I hate Dieter and Chris because they're really good at it and I'm not very good at it. I'm not good at it. I don't know what you're talking about. Dieter's score is like three times mine. Well that's like ten times mine. Oh my god, Vlad. Oh my god. Four hit wonder. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to talk about Three's. So here's my experience with Three's. I've gone through, I think whenever you have a new strategy game and I'm going to disclaim this by saying that I'm terrible at games in general and specifically like games involving logic and strategy like chess. Anything that is in the same vein as chess I fail at. Like Flappy Bird. No Flappy Bird is not. It's like an action slash platformer, right? Except really simple. I don't know how you play chess but that's exactly how I play chess. How Chris totally avoided Dieter's troll by not buying into it. I didn't. I can only be trolled so much in one show. Anyway, I've gone through phases with Three's where I keep changing strategies. Like first I was like well, the best strategy is to just make sure that you're matching color, you know, you keep tabs on the next tile and you make sure that you're matching colors as much as possible. That was my second strategy. My first strategy was just to push everything into one corner. My second strategy was to match colors as much as possible and now my strategy is just yellow. I basically just like do whatever and that actually seems to work best. That's how I've gotten all my high scores. So if you're not familiar, Three's is a game on the iPhone where you slide numbers around on a board and when they match they double. So you start with three, then six, et cetera, et cetera. Our own Andrew Webster wrote about it and we've all become quickly obsessed with it. The high score amongst the Verge staff has been passed around a little bit. Jay Krasnack has had it for a while. I believe I have it right now. But yeah, it's a good game and it's well worth the two or three bucks. So yeah, I think it's a buck ninety-nine or something. The thing with Three's is like there's a lot of games like this on the App Store. There's a lot of games with great gameplay. There's a lot of games that are addictive and fun to play. But like it's these little things in Three's that just make it like a real joy to play even if you're not having the best game you've ever played. The cards become little characters that say things as you play. Wait, they say things? I've got to turn the music back on. I've been listening to it. The music is awesome. Turn the audio on because the music is awesome. They say things like hello and like bored if you don't make a move for a while. And it's just like these fun little nuances of the game that just make it a fun experience. Yeah. It's good. It definitely reminds me, like there's this entire class of games that concentrate as much on design as they do on gameplay. Hundreds comes to mind. Letter Press. And what's interesting about both of those games is that they were flashes in the pan. They were super hot for like two or three months and then they disappeared. And I suspect Three's will be the same way because if I play more than three or four games in a row, I start to be like this is stupid and then I want to throw my phone. And eventually I'm going to get to the point where I feel that as soon as I open the game. But right now it's super fun. Did you ever play 100,000 or is it a million? I forget what it's called. I can't read how many zeros there are here. It's a really great game. I'm not familiar with that. It's a strategy game where you match symbols and as you match symbols, this dude running across the top kills monsters. It's great. Just trust me. Well whatever you do, don't play Dieter again. Don't play against Dieter in any game. Ever. He will ruin that game for you very quickly. Yeah. Don't add him to Game Center unless you want to be really depressed. Yeah. Although I don't know if I'm easy to add on Game Center because I've switched my Apple ID to a different email address so that it would be harder to have my identity stolen after Matt Honan had his identity stolen via a vector that included Apple. Not that it really saves me but I think just searching for my email address might not get you to me on Game Center. So not a lot of people are pals with me on Game Center. Also, the process of opening Game Center, waiting for it to actually load, hoping it doesn't crash is so painful. It doesn't really matter. Also, speaking of awesome things, this Nexus 5. With the red one. Red, orange. I still haven't seen it in person. Is it as awesome in person as it seems? It is FU red or orange. But in a good way, right? In a great way. It is just shockingly beautiful. I don't understand why they didn't have this from the get go and I'm very mad at myself for buying the black one because now I can't buy this one. Then that gives rise to the important question which is, is his back the same texture as the black one or the white one? Black and the sides also equally as important. Well really, because I had heard the opposite. Okay, well, I don't know. No, it's totally soft. It's not quite as soft touchy as the black one which is really an homage to the Palm Pre in terms of its soft touch feel. Actually technically And there's, ladies and gentlemen, is your weekly webOS reference. Well, if you want to really get into soft touch polycarbonate on phones, the phone that really started it all in my opinion is the Trio 750. It did the best job of proper soft touch. Dieter, just leave the podcast right now. Of course it did the best job in your opinion. Look, we established before the show started that I began podcasting in 2006 and it was the Trio Central Trio Cast. So yeah, if I'm podcasting, I'm talking about trios. That's just what my life is. But we can move on. But honestly, this thing is really awesome and you should buy 10 of them. You guys use Pebbles, right? Or at least some of you do. I don't currently because I am waiting on my shipment. I've got one in front of me and the battery is dead. So here's my question. And Vlad, you use one too, right? That's right. Oh, Vlad's there. Okay. So do you guys have this thing, and it's been doing this ever since version 1.0, where every once in a while the iPhone is like Pebble wants to communicate with Pebble Technology Corporation blah blah blah. And then you have to unlock your phone and then it automatically opens the Pebble app and then everything is normal again. Do you guys have that? I've had where the, so on the iPhone it's got two connections. It's got a standard Bluetooth connection and a Bluetooth LE connection which supports the notifications. And sometimes the Bluetooth LE connection drops and it will ask to re-enable that. Yeah, I think that's what's happening. It's super annoying because it forces you to open the Pebble app. There's no way around it. You can't even just hit pair and then move on with your life. You hit pair and then the app opens. It's insane. Anyway, we're going to have to talk about that one. Sounds like the absolute worst, Chris. It is a- For both of you guys. What Vlad? Sorry, for both of you that applies with respect to the iPhone you're talking about. Yes. Android, it's just straight up Bluetooth. At least the versions that I'm using. I've used Pebble way more with Android than I have with iPhone because you can be, at least with the supporting apps, not, I don't know about 2.0, but you can be way more discriminate about what doesn't get pushed out to the Pebble and you can change it when you feel like it. 2.0 is way better on iPhone. Way better. My problem is I don't want email showing up on my phone screen. I'm uncomfortable with that for whatever reason, but I'm totally comfortable having it show up on my watch. So there's a bunch of notifications that I would like to have on my watch that I can't on an iPhone because I don't want them on my phone screen. Actually, and I don't know if this is a bug or if it's intentional or what, and I've been meaning to Google around on this and figure out what's going on, but for some reason that's exactly how mine behaves. I don't have Gmail set to show on my lock screen but it still shows up on my watch. Well, it depends. I think if you do it, if you set it up inside the app it used to be then it would work because it was a direct thing. I don't know. It's been a while. If you do it through notification center then it follows those rules. Interesting. Speaking of notification centers, boom! Nice. We've stolen 8.1 leaks. Technically it's called that activity center. Do you remember back in the day when Trent produced the podcast and if there was a really good Segway he'd inject the sound of a Segway scooter? Do you remember that? Yes, I do remember that. No, it wasn't a Segway scooter, it was the Jetson car. Yeah, I was going to say, the Segways don't make noise. It's a Jetson's… No, no, no. There was at least one occasion where he actually used like a Segway scooter. I'm sure of it. Trent isn't listening. I don't know why Trent is listening. I'm going to email Trent and ask him about this. I think Dieter's right. I think it's the Jetson sound. The important thing is that I successfully derailed Dieter's pretty good transition. So Windows Phone 8.1 seems to be kind of awesome. Like support for soft buttons, proper notification center, which is called action center, which seems to actually perform or do the way you'd want it to. Slightly improved camera interface. They've changed the way that multitasking works so that apps don't fully quit out. They can still reside in the background but then you can quit them manually by swiping them instead of hitting a tiny stupid little X. Just a slew of stuff. There's improvements all over the place. I haven't seen a PIP update for a phone this big in a while. I guess 7.5 was of this caliber. This seems like a really nice update for Windows Phone and I'm excited to see phones running it. I was talking to Tom about this earlier today and he and I both agreed that this is a lot more than we expected Microsoft to roll out for 8.1 and it really feels like it should be called Windows 9. But I guess they're keeping it in line with Windows 8.1, which lots of signs of this point to Windows RT and this kind of merging together. So that kind of makes sense that they're calling it 8.1. I still don't know what Windows RT is by the way. I have no idea what it is, who uses it, what they use it on. It's not a clue. There are currently two devices that run it right now, the Surface 2 and that Nokia tablet. Nobody else makes RT devices anymore. So it's essentially Microsoft's own operating system for its own devices. But anyways, like Dieter said, it looks great for Windows Phone 8.1. It's bringing a lot of things that we've been asking for for a long time, which maybe should have been there a long time ago, but they're finally coming. I think the word is that we're going to see this around April, which isn't too far away. That isn't far away at all. You know what's going to cause complete havoc? And I'm just going to throw out a completely hypothetical situation here. Imagine if Microsoft says, oh well, you know, the Lumia 1020 is going to get 8.1 and one or two other phones. Yeah, the 920 isn't, all these other phones aren't going to get it. It's going to be Windows Phone 8 versus 7.8 all over again. That was a huge fiasco. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that Microsoft eventually rolled out 7.8 to some phones, but where are they waiting for it for like a really long time and then nobody cared when it finally arrived? Right, so I am going to say I trust Microsoft not to do that. That if your phone ran Windows Phone 8, that you're going to be able to run 8.1. Wasn't that the whole purpose of moving from 7 to 8? Yeah, they put themselves in modern infrastructure and the whole shooting match. I guess, but it's like… I'm sure Tom's yelling into his screen right now. That's my goal on every podcast, because I know that Tom watches us. So I just want to make sure that Tom gets upset at what we're talking about at least once per show. Hi Tom. I mean, does Windows Phone even have Instagram yet? Right, we're still waiting for that, right? And Vine? Well, no, they got Vine. Vine is really important. I'm just trolling Tom. Okay, so Cam Aaron wants to know, does it matter how good Windows Phone gets, can they dig out of the hole that they're in? So we kind of talked about this last week where I was like, we need to stop thinking of them as being in a hole. They're definitely in a hole in some markets, but in other markets they could actually do okay and they just need to focus on those. I would give Windows Phone another try if they could make nice with Google. Like I would give it more than like a… I'd give it the old college try. Tom just tweeted that he's upset. That's a very… You don't know that that's about us though. He's just generally upset. I would favor you. Wait, is there a footy match going on? Because he's always upset about footy matches. I love it when people call it footy match. What? Yeah, he does tweet about footy a lot, it's true. It's always around like four in the afternoon my time and then Tom starts complaining about some soccer game. So here's what you need to know about Tom. He's a huge Manchester United fan. If you're not sure who Tom is, it's Tom Warren, our resident Microsoft expert who is… He's an enormous Manchester United fan. You should tweet at him things about Man U. You should send him Man U like in products and souvenirs. Huge fan. Anyway. Yeah. I'm sorry guys. I'm sorry. It's late in the day. I overslept which is the reason I have a red nose and I'm late for the podcast. So I'm not really in a position to defend Europe at the moment. This entire assault on the good name of Tom Warren and our entire continent, I just don't know what to do about it. I'm just going to shrug and say on top of it. Just let it completely slide by. Just a detest point about Microsoft as a chance who makes good with Google. I mean that if is just way too big for me. As far as I'm concerned, from what I've seen since the beginning, the real problem that Google has with Microsoft is Google doesn't want a competition. Whether you say Google is afraid of Microsoft getting in or Google has some other disagreement that it's kind of taken out on Microsoft in this way. The fact is the reason there isn't a good YouTube app on Windows phone, there isn't a good Gmail app, etc. is because Google doesn't want to play ball. And I think it's wanted to do so ever since the beginning. Because to me I just see it as Google being defensive on the mobile front. What do you think? I mean it's defensive but at the same point it's like Google is so far ahead that it doesn't need to be defensive in this way. I think maybe this has to do with how much Microsoft has gone after Google in certain areas for search dominance and claim that Google has a monopoly and all these things and actually gotten somewhere with especially European authorities and things like that. So I don't know, maybe this is Google's way of taking out, I don't know. But yeah, without the Google support it does make it very difficult. At least for myself, I know a lot of us, a lot of people that rely on Google services which seems to be growing every day. Gmail subscriptions are growing not shrinking so that's a big thing that makes it difficult to move over to Windows phone. Absolutely, but I would also say it's a little bit different from the search situation where Bing's existence actually helps Google because it keeps Google out of antitrust situations, at least even more severe ones that already exist because at least there's some sort of viable, you know, somebody you can say, hey, Bing exists, those guys can take a bit of the antitrust heat off Google. That's not really the case with their mobile strategy but I agree with you. I think that Google is way far ahead and can afford to be a bit more relaxed about it. But then we can also say that about Apple and the iPhone and Steve Jobs used to spend earnings calls talking trash about Android and now Tim Cook has just taken up the baton and he's doing the same thing. Like every chance he gets, he talks trash about Android, you know, crappy tablet experience, whatever, you know, as far as really disease companies are. Somebody asked about Google selling off Motorola and he had an acerbic thing. He said… That Google wasn't committed enough. Yeah, I think it's really hard to do hardware and software services and link all those things together. That's what makes Apple so special. It's really hard so I'm not surprised that they're not going to do that. I mean, in all honesty that's just kind of like a slightly meaner way of what we've been saying. Google just didn't have the patience to ride that out. Yeah, well it's not… I mean that's not the only factor but I think that's one of the factors is that Google didn't want to wait for Motorola to sell off. It was a pretty well honed burn, I got to say. He gets credit for that from me. Same interview he also was pretty evasive about what the new categories were and he's like, you know, there's going to be new categories and no reasonable person would say that this isn't a new category which is a weird way to couch it but whatever. Categories being new products that Apple is expected to release. Not another iPhone, not another iPad, not another Mac. Maybe, I don't know. I would say not another Apple TV but maybe it is something in that zone. Tough to say. Anyway, we should actually get back on the Windows Phone horse because Nokia has got news coming up. We're expecting that it's going to unveil the Normandy. Ironically, not Windows Phone news. They've also got this mystery Windows Phone that we saw the YouTube video for which there's been speculation that it's the Verizon icon, I think. This has been talked about for a long time or rumored or something at least. Go ahead Dieter, I'm sorry. So I don't know. Normandy and Nokia Phone running Android. So I think Tom, not to bring the talk back on to Tom, but he summed this up really well the other day in a tweet. He's like, if you don't care about Nokia's Asha phones, you're not going to care about Nokia's Normandy phone even if it runs Android. So that's pretty much what it is. We've talked about this before about how it's a great way for Microsoft to bring its services to the lower markets where Asha is and where they currently don't run. Asha phones don't run Bing, they don't run Outlook, they don't run OneDrive now, a whole host of services that Android phones can run. So it's a good way for that and the other side is that Nokia's had these subversive factions that have managed to push products to market before. So I'm not hugely surprised that this thing is going to market. A lot of people have said it's egg on the face of Microsoft. Maybe it is, I don't know. It totally is. If they can push their services though, that's all that matters, right? If it's an Android phone, I mean it's not a win for Google because it's an Android phone that won't run Google Play. Google doesn't care. And if it's able for Microsoft to be able to push Bing and Outlook and all these other services to a whole new audience and a whole new market, then that's a win for Microsoft too. And bear in mind that from the consumer's perspective, they will never hear the word Android. You don't hear it from Amazon and you're not going to hear it from Amazon. And it looks like a Windows phone. Like the interface that we've seen, the leaks interface that we've seen, look like Windows phone interfaces. Which will clash jarringly with the Android apps, but whatever. Well I mean that's the thing though, right? Because they are not going to have Google Play, Nokia presumably will be curating app availability very closely. So that might end up being a non-issue to some extent. I mean they might install something like the Amazon App Store on there. Just make it completely a paradise of great apps. Yeah Amazon App Store and Yandex. Those are your options on the Yola phone. Does the Yola phone have Amazon actually? I know it has Yandex. I don't think it has it preloaded, but it's one of the recommendations that they make. Well regarding Yandex and not just Russian but also Chinese app stores, it's probably safe to say considering the market segment that Normandy is going after that there will be an opportunity for them to load a lot of Asian and Russian app stores on these phones, right? Yeah. So that one fly in the US, but you're not going to see the Normandy on any US carrier, I'm assuming. Well we don't see any Asha phones here. Right, exactly. So okay, we saw a couple of Samsung leaks. We saw there's some icons, well they were teasing these new icons that look very decent, but I think you made the point that they look flat whiz. Flat whiz? Wow. That's pretty good actually. I like that. But here's the thing, when is the last time, I mean we still make fun of Samsung for touch whiz, but seriously, when is the last time anyone at Samsung has said the word touch whiz? It's been a long time and they always jump on me whenever I mention touch whiz or tweet touch whiz. We don't call it touch whiz anymore. Yeah, it's like okay fine, whatever, I'll call it life companion software, whatever you want Samsung. Listen, they stopped talking about touch whiz and they started putting S in front of everything. Yeah and now instead of putting S in front of everything, they're putting 5 after everything. Yeah, everything to the power of 5. So life, speed, curiosity, everything to the power of 5. So there's been a couple, well I'm sorry Vlad, go ahead. Go ahead then, go ahead. Well I was just going to say there's been a couple of reports that Samsung's new software is going to be toned down, that they've had these agreements with Google and that was part of the reason that Google sold Motorola was that it made these agreements with Samsung that Samsung's going to back off of all of its S software or a lot of it at least and promote the native Google apps. And we've seen, we've heard those reports, Samsung itself released these icon sets today. But other than that, we have no idea what the S5 looks like. There haven't been any hardware leaks. We saw, there's been some very kind of sketchy leaks saying the specs of it, that it might have this processor and a 1080p screen or whatever but we still have no idea what the design looks like which is pretty remarkable. I think we mentioned this last week or whatever that it's pretty remarkable that we haven't seen any leaks of it with it supposedly being released. But it's not, it's not remarkable. Samsung has done a tremendous job of keeping its phones secret for the past like 12 to 18 months. It's remarkable, it's still remarkable in the whole scheme or the whole world of consumer electronics where literally everything leaks. I mean yes, Samsung's done this before where it's kept everything quiet up until the release. It's still remarkable that it's doing. Dan can I live vicariously through you right now and would you do me the favor of eating a cookie dough Oreo which I still can't find in Chicago? I will actually need to leave my seat to go get them. I want ones so bad but I can't find them. They're not good man, they taste like day old coffee. They're not good. I don't recommend. While we're on the topic I'll give my quick review of the new special edition Oreos. The marshmallow crispy ones which have a golden cookie are edible, they're not bad, I would not buy them again. The cookie dough ones which have a chocolate cookie are not very good and I definitely would not buy them again. That really sucks, I had high hopes for the cookie dough one. Yeah, me too, it sounds like a great idea. What would happen if you put a cookie dough Oreo in the oven and baked it first? Then you'd get a solid cookie in between two overdone cookies? All the way through now. I mean maybe cookie dough Oreos would be awesome broken up and crumbled into vanilla ice cream but on their own, not very good. What they should have done is just taken raw Oreo batter and put it in between two cooked Oreo wafers. I don't know if anyone wants to really know what raw Oreo batter looks like. That's true. I'm trying to decide if I woke up or if I'm still going for a nightmare. You're definitely not awake right now. I'm just going to drag this right back to icons, I don't give a damn. The Oreo is the iconic cookie so I think that's an appropriate segue. Yeah, no, sorry, quick mention on the icons. Somebody funnily enough in our Facebook comments mentioned this and he was spot on. They very much remind me as well of Symbian, the latest versions of Symbian by Nokia, things like Symbian Bell. They're very clean. All the gradients have been taken out. It's all dual color and it's all circular. Symbian Bell had this kind of squared circle, rounded square shape. These are all circular but they keep that same sort of flat design and just two colors. What I would say to them... It's very generous of you to say that they're pulling this stuff from Symbian when the obvious thing is that they're pulling this flat idea out of the iPhone. Yeah, but iOS 7 does a lot of gradients. There's no gradients here. Samsung's icons, specifically the thing that stood out to me is that they've eliminated the gradients, at least in the ones we've seen. Now there have been some leaks which show gradients which are much closer to iOS 7 but in general... I have the strong feeling that... Well, they've got gradients in the icons on iPhone. Anyway, I have a strong feeling that the design of the software on the next Galaxy phone from Samsung is just now getting pinned down from radically different visions. I think that they had that weird stuff on the tablet. There's rumors that Google is making them tamp stuff down. We've seen various conflicting leaks. We've seen these icons that don't seem to match up super well. I am betting that what we're going to get is going to be kind of a hot mess of a bunch of stuff that got finished last minute. It doesn't matter. You're going to get that with Samsung anyway. Imagine Samsung just releases the S5, it's got killer cutting edge hardware and then it's just running stock Android 4.4 and then it just drops and walks away. That would be pretty awesome. Instead of waiting six months for a Google edition. Just saying. That would be pretty awesome. So did you see this rumor over at the information that they're creating an API where it will track stuff that you type and then create a service called Context so that other apps can see that you're completely obsessed with Oreos and so when you open up Amazon it will know that you search for Oreos all the time and it will suggest Oreo stuff to you. Me as someone who loves to be targeted by ads, that even terrifies me. Yeah, okay so hang on. So you live your life in a browser on your desktop and Google knows what you're searching for. It's got a text box that you're typing stuff into all the time in your browser or on Google's homepage and that gets used to target stuff to you all the time. So is the difference that you don't trust Samsung to be a good steward of that information? I don't trust the apps that could potentially be requesting that information. Yeah but hang on, Google shares that targeted information with the sketchiest of sketchy websites I'm sure when you're doing stuff on your browser. The only difference between what Google does and what Samsung is doing is that this is on your phone and it's Samsung and they're like targeting more than just what you type into a browser. Well, I think we don't know, I think there's a lot of unknowns here. Like you said, they're targeting more than what you type into your browser. So is it reading all the text messages that I send? Is it reading all the private email communications that I send? Because is it capturing literally everything I type into the keyboard? And you know, a lot of people have taken issue with like third party keyboard apps that you can install on Android because the biggest permission that they have on them is that this can read everything you type and you know, what are they doing with that data. So that's kind of a big concern. It's not just third party keyboards, I was just going to say that is no different to what Google's keyboard available in the Play Store wants permission for. Yeah but we don't believe that Google is using that information for ad targeting, do we? Well it doesn't matter what the information is being used for. The point is, you install the Google keyboard. That's exactly what matters. Well yeah, but what I'm saying is it doesn't matter for you to be upset or worried about it for you to know whether it's for ads or for some other purpose. The risk is there. That's my point. So you install the Google keyboard and the first permission you give is this can record all the information that you type into it. Doesn't matter what application, what you're doing, you start typing, we can record all this data. So that's sufficient for you to have a security worry. To answer your question, I think speaking candidly, yes. We don't trust Samsung as much as we trust Google. I mean Google operates in the United States. Even people in Europe, we're more familiar with the US privacy regime and the ethics that Google is subjected to whether it adheres to them or not. And Samsung frankly is, okay, I'm not going to say it because I like to be alive and everything, but it's this big octopus like company with all of these subsections and Samsung display company which is a separate company but it's also subsidiary and there's all this stuff going on and it's just unfamiliar. So it's kind of a scary proposition. I think that the challenge for Samsung will be if it does indeed plan to do this is to show the value that it's going to provide to me the user with all this data that it's capturing. Google has whether it's actually providing value to me or it's convinced me that this is valuable. I find things in my Google now cards all the time for stuff that I search for that is kind of interesting. So if Samsung is able to prove that to me that letting it capture all of this information is going to be valuable to me and it can do all these cool things then great, that's going to be the hard sell. Google has already proven that, it's been doing it for years, it's improving the searches, it's improving things with flight recommendations and airline status and all this other stuff that it already does. So we'll see. I think the way to summarize this is first of all, these touch with icons or whatever Samsung was calling itself to it. Let's right now, here and now decide are we going to just keep calling it touch with and the same way we decided we're calling it Metro and I don't care what Microsoft capitulated. Are we just going to pin touch with on Samsung forever because it was terrible once or do we want to come up with like. The other option and I think the one that Samsung prefers is Samsung user experience. No, you don't need to be bland like denuded words that have no reference and passion and meaning. That's what Samsung calls it. I think we should call it life experience or life companion. Move on. Overwhelming support for that one. Samsung software. Samsung software. Center face. Center face is pretty good. So Vlad, finish your thought about the center face. I would focus on the same part of the center face. I think yeah, it's versatile. You can read it a whole bunch of ways. I think first of all, I get from comments. Okay, I'm going to try and finish the sentence here. Again coming from comments, somebody said whatever alternative you give me to the current and the old touch with icons is an improvement. So we don't need to be too picky about these and after all, we're still just talking about an icon set. It's just a teaser. There's two weeks until February 24th when Samsung very much seems likely to announce this Galaxy S5 like Dan is saying, we don't know much of anything about the hardware. We started to build an idea about the software. What I would say is even if Samsung like Dieter is saying is working to scale things back, its customizations, trying to be cleaner and more basic as the look suggests, it is really going to build into a hot mess because right now, one of the icons that is being shown is a style icon which again is simplified but its graphical representation is the same thing as the stock gallery icon in Android. So the very least that's going to happen there is that people are going to be confused because it's going to look like a gallery icon but it's called style which we don't know what the hell that's going to be. But if that's your photo gallery, then we've got a problem. John Ledger asks in the Hangouts Q&A, I don't think it's the real John Ledger again, but hi, do we realize that if it is called the Samsung User Experience, the best abbreviation for that is SUEX. That's beautiful. It would actually be SUEX. I am willing to reserve judgment on this thing until we see it. Comic has a very checkered past when it comes to this stuff, both in throwing way too many features in lots of weird little corners and just having ugly design. I would love to see them turn that around. These icons are actually a step in the right direction and give me a little bit of hope. I think we can consider that it will have been made progress if they just took out the option where you can choose Comic Sans as your font. That is progress, yes. Please, please, so long as we do that. Hey, and you know what else? The Sony, the Experience L1 compact from Sony has a white balance adjustment. That is the first phone I've seen with a white balance adjustment. I would like more companies to kick that out and just have those extra tweaks available. Because particularly with Samsung and those AMOLED displays, sometimes they over saturate. We discussed the whole blue tinting with displays, etc. That would actually be a nice bit of new functionality for me. Okay, we've got to talk about HTC. They just signed a huge patent agreement with Nokia. They stopped suing each other, which is great, but they also had a quarter where they broke even. Hooray! But they're going to lose money again soon. Boo. And then cheaper phones. That's going to solve everything for them, which no, no it's not. Just no. They're going to have to provide phones across. They can't be like a virtue. They've got the design line, whatever. I mean, I'm telling you. It depends on the market that they're going for. If they're going for the market in China, Sher Wang in her comments made a very good point that the phones in our stores cost $500 or more and most of the phones sold in China are $150 to $225. So if they're not selling phones in that space and they want to be in that market, then yeah, they're going to have to release cheaper phones. Maybe they don't have to spam the US with those cheaper phones. The idea that those cheaper phones are going to become a profit center for them and save the company, I mean, no. I think there's a lot of other things that need to happen as well. But hang on a second. I do feel like HTC is just kind of out of ideas at this point. It's really making me sad because it's a glorious company with a glorious recent history. Well no, that's not true. They've got one idea. They're feeling optimistic about wearables and it's not going to be just another wearable. Yes. They're talking it up. But that's my point. What I've seen over the past four or five years is every time a mobile company has gotten desperate, it's decided to retrench to emerging markets. So Nokia when they were still going with Symbian was like, we've still got all of this market share. We've got to work in the emerging markets. Stephen Hill just kept talking and talking about that until he got the company bought out and the whole device division shut down and owned by Microsoft now. BlackBerry has been doing the same thing. Oh, we're really big in Indonesia. It's like no, emerging markets and high volume of low profit margin devices, like Dita says, I'm not going to say. So that is really a common idea that HTC is trying to retrench. Wearables are a common idea that HTC is trying to jump on. And good luck to them. I would love to see HTC capture that market, but again it's nothing new. And finally the really disappointing thing for me is Peter Chow with quarterly results that we just announced yesterday in fact. We're saying we're going to communicate better with the consumer. It's like better marketing was your solution this time last year, and now you're just rehashing the exact same solution that you haven't done anything about over the past five months. I mean they're in a really tough spot. They can't fight Samsung on marketing dollars. They're not integrated stack developing a ton of their own software. They got blink video. So there is a steep, steep hill that HTC has to climb in order to be successful and I don't know how they climb it. I don't know what possible innovation, unless this wearable is the bee's knees. If they actually had a wearable that fit on the knees of bees, that could be interesting. Scott Croyle is a pretty talented industrial designer and I have a pretty strong feeling that whatever we see out of them in the wearables department is going to be unique. I don't think that they're out to replicate the Galaxy Gear and if they are then God help them. But you know one thing, really the only thing that in terms of their high-end smartphone game, about the only thing that I can identify at least in the US that hurt them last year was the extremely delayed availability of the one on Verizon. Otherwise there really wasn't anything that I felt like they totally stumbled on. Well I mean I don't know if it was just the funding issue or what, they didn't really have great marketing or a whole lot of marketing. Yeah but I don't think they could have done any, I mean just considering their marketing budget I'm not sure that they could have upped their game there much. Oh they could have gotten B-list instead of paying for Robert Downey Jr. That's true. You know they could have had Keratop. The thing that I noticed different in 2013 versus 2012 is even though HTC didn't really sell any One X's, there were quite a few AT&T commercials for the One X and I don't recall seeing the same for the One. Yeah, alright so when HTC inevitably fails, Shuman wants to know who is going to buy them. Actually I'm not going to say they inevitably fail, but if they were to fail and decide oh it's time to sell the company. Google? Lenovo. No man, Lenovo's already got their company right? They shopped around, they got rejected by Canada for buying Blackberry and like screw it we'll just go with Motorola instead. Yeah but Lenovo already had a smartphone business, so why not continue collecting smartphone companies. It's not like Voltron, you don't like buy four of them and it turns into a giant awesome smartphone company. Then you'll have the Moto One X. Yeah, I'm just saying, throwing out ideas. I mean think about it, can you imagine a One X with HTC's industrial design sensibilities? That would be a truly epic product. Here's my guess. A One X price? That already exists. No, like a Motorola One X. Are you ready? Yeah. Are you ready? Sorry, Moto X, not One. I always do that, I always call the Moto One X, I mean the Moto X. Who's going to buy HTC, are you ready? You guys standing by? Yeah. Think about it. Amazon. Yeah, that's right. Think about it. They're both in Seattle. I mean it would make sense. Yeah, it would make perfect sense. Yeah, I mean there are. But then Amazon puts its cards on the table and essentially announces to the world, we are building a smartphone. No, no, we just bought HTC because they already built the smartphone. Well I mean they could wait until, so the rumor in late 2013 was that HTC was partnering with Amazon for its smartphones, of which I think there are two or three that are in the pipeline, or at least Amazon is playing around with. So Amazon could wait until the first generation Kindle phones come out and then buy HTC. It's a thought. I mean it is super convenient. It is serendipitous that HTC has a large facility in the Seattle area and of course Amazon is headquartered there. So there would be some synergy there that would work out very well. Yeah. I mean if Amazon wanted to, it could buy T-Mobile and HTC and then it could have a smartphone company and a mobile network to run those smartphones on and never leave Seattle. Ever. Ever. Is T-Mobile being run out of Seattle as well? Yeah, T-Mobile's… At least until Sprint buys them. Oh, but that's not going to happen is it? Just briefly, I just want to say, and this builds on Dieter's point about, what was it you were saying, the Heplink video. I mean that to me is the point with HTC. You have a company and you have a budget of energy and time that you can spend on developing your proposition to people. So if you spend your time on BlinkFeed, if you spend your time on things like HTC Watch and things like HTC Sense and 5.0 and 5.5 and I don't know what it's going to be next version 6.0 and those things are not compelling to people. They are bringing new consumers in and getting people to buy, to make repeat purchases of HTC devices. This is where you end up. I mean Tim Cook is right, you can do the hardware but you can't just do that well. You have to do the software as well. And this is where HTC has consistently been failing. I mean we keep saying this, industrial design is HTC's strength and it keeps naming it. It keeps doing it well. Okay, so here is a great example, Zoe's. The one has got this little thing where you can take a picture and it's like a moving image and then you can upload it to their service but it won't stay there forever because why would you want that to happen? And then you share them and they are like flash and whatever the little movies are. Look if you don't have the chops to run a cloud service and distribute your brand new media format, then don't run a cloud service that takes a Zoe and converts it into a GIF or a GIF if that's how you prefer it to be pronounced. How cool would it be to have a phone that has the GIF camera that like it takes a picture and five minutes later you've got an animated GIF of the things that you can embed anywhere, right? That's Samsung. You could have done that and they didn't. No, but this is the point, with the latest version of Zoe I do think that you have a built in GIF creator, if not Zoe I think it's in the photo gallery app. That's fine. But you're absolutely right Dieter, it's the most convoluted GIF maker in the world. Your pitch to people isn't you have a GIF maker now in your gallery and you can get it on your HC phone and you can stick it on Instagram and everybody will love you for it because you look pretty cool. No they're like we do Zoe photos and people need to understand what Zoe is, they need to decode it and it's just so convoluted and messy that ultimately it puts people off and they don't even bother using it. And the other thing, their sharing service, you're absolutely right, it's so over branded as well as not being more functional than all the other ones. It's so branded, it's so HTC Zoe, I'm sharing a Zoe with the world. They assume it's kind of like set from an iPhone. In order for anybody to want to have all this signature that identifies your device, they need to feel proud of the device in the first place. And HTC just isn't in that position anymore, it's sad but that's the case. You need to give people a reason to want to push your brand and they're not doing that right now. I mean if I told somebody that I was sending them a Zoe they'd be like no thanks, I'm not ready to have kids yet. Or oh no thanks, I've already watched the West Wing. Or I'm not a big fan of New Girl. There you go. I actually haven't watched New Girl at all. Oh it's a good show. I'm actually a fan of it. I was mad at her because like Ben Gibbard really? I mean come on. But that's not right. She left him. Yeah she left him. Yeah she was like I kind of want to be a movie star so see you. I don't know what you people are talking about. So the star of New Girl, Zoe Deschanel was dating… They were married actually. Oh isn't her name Zoe? It's pronounced that way. Death Cab for Cutie. And Death Cab for Cutie had like three great songs and we were like oh man these guys are going to rock and then they got super emo and then it's like oh they're just dashboard conventional all over again and then I gave up on them. But like that, he managed to be cool enough long enough to land her and so I was always just bitter about that. She did better and she is now so there you go. I have literally nothing to contribute to this conversation. I mean the challenge HEC faces to get back into business when you have even just the name is… Yeah exactly. Like they, HEC married Ben Gibbard right and that's what I'm saying. Who should they have married? I don't know, Robert Downey Jr. but that came too late. But like in his coke phase or in his clean phase? Definitely in the coke phase. Either way. You know I have to say… It's like buying buy low, sell high, they get in the coke phase even early and then… Just to extend this whole thing, this whole stupid terrible metaphor about Robert Downey Jr. as a promoter of HEC, strikes me as kind of like Jennifer Aniston in her desperation phase where she is trying to prove that she can have a hot boyfriend and she is like just find me somebody to associate my name with. I don't think that's fair. Robert Downey Jr. is one of the most well-known movie stars in Hollywood right now. The Iron Man franchise remade his career and you know the fact that he is so well associated with Iron Man and like high technology and things like that kind of makes sense that he is a spokesman for HEC which pushes high tech funds. I'm just saying that HEC is desperate and it's just showing… Look the highest paid movie star of 2013 was Dwayne The Rock Johnson. The Rock? What? Are you kidding me? No, it's true. It's true and so he should have hooked up with The Rock. Really? Yeah. Man. I mean he is definitely the guy who works at it the most. You can tell. Yeah. I believe he made like $66 million last year. Yeah, his packs are larger than Vin Diesel. Every Fast and Furious movie that The Rock is in like his arms get bigger and his chest gets bigger and he just like becomes more towering and menacing and then he like smiles and he is like, oh I'm a nice guy but I could crush your face. It's really terrifying. All right, we need to keep this going. Scarlett Johansson's publicist is… Johansson? Johansson. Are you Swedish now, Johan? Yeah. Maybe she is, okay so deal with it. That's fair. That does sound like a Swedish name. I mean it's certainly Nordic. I've never heard anyone say Johansson before. Oh I have. For her name. Well, her publicist is to me, you know, the biggest failure of this year so far. Why? You have the most marketable actress in Hollywood and you associate her with freaking Soda Stream. Well. Okay, you associate her with the Israel-Palestine conflict which is the most intractable conflict that nobody should be commenting on if they don't want to have the head yode off by one side or the other and you stick your actress into that. I mean she could have market in anything. The commercial also sucks. Like she's like, I don't know what they are trying to prove but she's like, I'm going to make this go viral and then she like just stands there for a minute and then that's the end of the commercial. It's terrible. Hey man, we're talking about it so it must have gone viral. That was the plan all along. Do we want to talk about how Sprint thought that they could roll into the FCC and be like, hey guys, how's it going? The FCC is like, nope, not merging. Nope, you're not buying T-Mobile. It's like I could have told this, look, I mean all Sprint had to do was bring me in as a consultant like a month and a half ago, pay me $100,000 and I could have been like, nope, this isn't going to work. Nope. Walked out of the border, like walked out of the… Yeah. What do you guys want to do? Nope. Nope. Okay. But they could have saved so much time and effort and money if they had just brought me in in December to tell them this. Did anyone think this was remotely plausible? Sprint Chairman Masayoshi-san and CEO Dan Hesse, according to the Wall Street Journal, they were shocked by the opposition within the FCC. Well then they should both lose their jobs because anyone with half a brain could have told them that this wasn't going to happen. Yeah. And why is that, Chris? Because the market dynamic is completely different now than it was in 2011 when the FCC shut down AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile and it has become much more competitive now. So if they shut down that acquisition in 2011, what would possibly lead them to believe that in a more competitive market in 2014 would see regulators approve a sprint purchase of T-Mobile? It just doesn't make any sense. Well their idea is that they would be a better competitor to the other big two. Right now it's the big two duking it out on top and then sprint and T-Mobile kind of on a lower tier and that if they were to combine then they would get up to that upper tier and then there would be a true three-way competition instead of a two-way competition with sprint and T-Mobile. Well I will… That's your argument. I'll be the first to admit that Dan Hessey is a sad panda, I get it. But John Ledger has created this arsenal of quotes that would work against him in any merger scenario, right? Yeah. Like he has done nothing but try to convince people that they are the most hyper competitive like, you know, FU18-Teen Verizon carrier on the market. There is nothing depressing about their message. There is nothing depressing about their prospects. They are growing, they are adding subs. Like it just… he is working against the whole deal. Not to mention the fact that even if sprint and T-Mobile did merge they would still be something like 25-30 million customers smaller than AT&T and Verizon. So they wouldn't like be top tier competitive. They would occupy this like weird third place that can't quite reach. Yeah, it's a terrible idea. It's already so to Chris's point, there is no point in merging. So that's that. That is that. And that also is the entire Verge Mobile show. We want to thank you so much for listening and watching. And we want you to comment on the post on the website, theverge.com where the show appears. You could also tweet at us. I am backlon, Vlad is Vlad Sabov, Dan is DCC, Chris is Zpower. We are all at Verge. You could also head into the forums and talk to us there. We will be back next week, probably, maybe, definitely yes. Good night everybody. See you.