 Greetings, mobile Accomplishers. Welcome to the Verge Mobile Show. I am one of your hosts, Dieter Bohn. Should I go second because I'm seated next to you? Yeah. I'm Chris Ziegler. And since I'm seated next to Chris, I will go third and I'm Dan Seifert. And we are joined remotely by our good friend, Vlad Savov, who I believe is on the line. I hope I am. Yeah. Hey, Vlad, how you doing? Okay, is there a mystery to me whether I'll be visible if I have a video stream going for this show? We're looking at you. We're looking at your plaid shirt. I will say kudos on the lighting. Yeah, you've done really well for yourself. Vlad, I do have some concerns about your beard. It looks as though you may have shaved it at some point. No comments. I'm taking a fifth on that one. You can't take the fifth. No, hang on, Vlad. You can't take the fifth. You're not allowed to take the fifth. You don't live in America. Yeah, you're only Americans get the fifth. You're a queen subject or whatever they call you guys. Also, you're on video. Yeah, both of those things are valid. And the third thing is valid actually as well. I have a video. I do not have the liberty to have Comcast dominating by internet program service. So yes, I can't take the fifth. The truth is we were away the past couple of weeks because I had to regrow the beard and cover up that little brief moment where I didn't have one. There we go. But now we're back and Chris very subtly skipped past that detail. So yeah, it's been. We've got so much to freaking talk about. We do. Yeah, but we're not gonna try and talk about everything because that would be madness. That'd be insanity. We've got some things that we have to talk about but it has been a good three weeks, three years. It's been an eternity since we've been here. And I don't know. We should just talk about what happened today. Today, what happened was this right here. This is the new one, the one M8, the one awkwardly named phone. 2014. 2014. However you like to. It just vibrated at me and I don't know why. Oh, I just turned it on somehow. I just like. I think you, did you double tap it? I must have. That's, I don't know. So this phone is, it's funny. We've kind of struggled a little bit with this device, I think, because the story in many ways is the same as it was last year, which was that this is HTC's last stand but that was the story with the one in 2013. So really what they've done is they've taken the 2013 one and quote unquote refined it. And what's really striking to me about this phone, tell me if you guys disagree, but when the leaked photos were circulating the web, I felt like it looked like a steaming. Everything leaked. Yes, everything leaked. Everything leaked. And it looked like a steaming pile, but then when you see the phone in person, it's a really nice looking phone. So I disagree. I think that seeing the phone in person is not all that different from seeing it on the internet. I think that it is not as like harshly beautiful as the original one. It's curvy and whatever, holding it is much nicer. That's the point I wanted to make is as soon as you pick it up and feel it in your hand, you can feel how different it is from the prior model. Like it just feels so much nicer and feels so much different and you could feel that, you know, they say like there's 20% more metal or something in the body of this and you can actually feel the difference. Well, I also prefer the brushed aluminum to the sandblasted metal. See, I'm gonna disagree with you there. I like the sandblasted metal myself. Vlad agrees with me, I think. Will someone please agree with me on something? Vlad, please. I agree with Chris. Thank you. And the thing is both of you guys can be satisfied because there's this dark gray version, which is the flagship variety, which has the brushed aluminum look on the back, which I'm a fan of. I prefer that. But then also the classic look is still available in the light silver version, which is the one that most closely resembles last year's HT1. And there's the golden version, which I'm really no fan of the color, but again, it's well built and constructed. Just to correct Dan, because it's kind of an important point, the new HT1 doesn't have 20% more metal. It's actually gone up from 70 whatever percent to 90 whatever percent. You are correct. So it's 20 percentage points more. 20 points, right, yes. What is the other 10% of the phone? No, it's 90 something. Love, unicorn of years. The rest of it is... Ivory. It's conflict metals. Conflict minerals. No, the rest of it is the plastic inserts where the boom sound speakers are. And then the display obviously isn't being counted because that's like half the phone. Right. Okay, okay, fair enough. I mean, it's beautifully built. It's beautifully built. The thing that I would say, there's two downsides actually, to two actually very good things. As Dan says, the hand feel of this phone is brilliant. It really just feels robust and good. But it's, and okay, stifle your chuckling. It's the length of it. It's just too long for me. No, exactly. Compared to a five inch phone. I wanted to actually laugh at robust hand feel. But continue. So when I first saw it, I thought... Compared to a five inch phone like the Nexus 5. I mean, when I first saw it, I thought the same thing because it's taller than last year's model. It's noticeably taller than last year's model. But when you use it, because they moved the buttons from that weirdly awkward, almost at the bottom position to on the screen, they're actually a lot easier to reach with your thumb when you're holding the phone in your hand than even last year's model, which was shorter. So like you totally, this thing is too big, just like every other phone that's too big. No, but the thing that makes it too big is the speakers in the top and the bottom. So it just makes the whole fricking thing tall. Like the Nexus 5, the screen is like virtually identical. In size, I think. I mean, it seems super close to me. And it's just, it feels way better than, than the, in my hand in terms of being able to reach the stuff. Yeah, well, I mean, like the same, I mean, the same thing could have been said about last year's too. It was taller because of the speakers. Yeah. But which phone sounds better? Well, it does have boom sound. Two things happened during the live blog today. They had, HTC had their event and it was fine. It was in a plate, a warehouse next attached to the post office by Penn Station in New York. It was unbelievably cold in there. And then the wifi didn't work. And then it did, it was great. And then they did the event and that was fine. But during the event, they said boom sound and I had to write boom sound. I had to write boom sound unironically. Did you capitalize the S properly? I did capitalize the S. The camel case got in there. And then somebody on stage at one point said, and I quote, 2013 was the year of the selfie. And I just had to write that out. That is a sentence that I heard. I mean, it was added to the OED. No, it wasn't added to the OED. Whatever it is. Man. See, whatever it is. Not the real OED, the online OED. Well, to that point, the camera has a selfie option. There literally is a selfie option in the camera software. Does it make your face more beautiful? What's the story with it? No, you've hit a thing. You swipe up to switch the camera angle. Does it have the beauty things? Because last year's definitely had the beauty things. No, that was ZTE or something. No, no, the one had that too. So it's a five megapixel camera on the front, right? And four on the back. And four on the back. Yep. This is like the ultimate mullet phone. It is all business, straightforward, nothing special about a camera on the front. And it's party wild ultra pixel time on the back, including the two color flash. True tone. True tone. Yeah. And the depth sensor. So we should talk about the depth sensor. It supposedly lets you do lightro-like refocusing. But it's not true lightro-like refocusing. It does, in fact, accurately measure depth. So it knows that Dan is far away and Chris is close. But the only thing you use it for is applying crazy after effects. And it uses that depth information to apply the effects. So if you want to apply bokeh, it just blurs stuff that's far away. If you want to apply pencil sketches, pencil sketches things that you don't focus on. It's cool. So this type of that whole refocusing thing has been this trend with manufacturers, Nokia introduced it, LG has it. They all do it differently, though. The Nokia and the LG, and I think Samsung probably does it too, where they take a series of photos and they're at all different focus points. And then they stack them together. And then you can choose afterwards. The thing that is key different with the One is that it is just taking one photo and that secondary sensor is capturing all that depth data so it doesn't need to stack the photos, which takes longer. And HTC says that this whole refocusing ability and silly green screen type of effects or whatever, that's just the beginning. At least they think it's just the beginning of what this can do. And they're going to release an SDK and have people have fun with it. Manufacturer specific SDKs are always a bad idea. Yeah. And they just introduced two today. They always get tons of support. They introduced BlinkFeed and this today. Well, so BlinkFeed does do a couple cool new things, right? Yeah. It has Fitbit integration. It has Foursquare integration. I think that they tease that there are going to be some more things in the future. It has keyword integration. And what everybody is going to do instead of like search, I think their example is searching for mountain climbing or something ridiculous. I don't know. But everybody's going to just put in their name. It's your home screen. It should have all the news stories about you. That's what's going to happen. You realize that for 99.997% of the population, it would just never return anything. Unless you're Barack Obama. Right. Or Chris Ziegler. Or Chris Ziegler, who's making news on a daily basis. That's right. Yeah. So here's the million dollar question for you gentlemen. And Vlad, you as well. Are you going to get the Sense version or the GPE version? Before you jump into that, I just want to say that you can buy the Sense version today. You can walk into a Verizon store and buy the Sense version. Just Verizon. Which is just Verizon. You can order on AT&T and Sprint online and have it delivered tomorrow. And T-Mobile, right? T-Mobile is the next month. The next month. The un-carrier. But I mean, either way, the fact that HTC announced this phone this morning, at least here on the East Coast, it was this morning. It was afternoon in London. And then less than two hours after the announcement, you can walk into a store and buy it. It's pretty unprecedented. Apple hasn't even done that with the iPhone. And Apple always brings its products to market very quickly. So that's pretty cool. Well, I mean, no, it's really important. Because now they are guaranteed to have two weeks where the thing might actually sell before Samsung destroys them. And the saddest part, and this is a point that Drew Bamford brought up in Dan's report, is that Drew Bamford being their software designer, there is so much more attention to design detail paid to this device, and really last year's one as well, compared to Samsung. I mean, David mentioned this in his review. Like with a Samsung phone, you're not buying a phone. You're buying features. And with one, you're buying a phone. So that's true. But on the other hand, I got to say, $0.06, by the way, the third thing at this live blog that I had to type out multiple times that I was not happy about, Sense 6, whatever, there's a lot of gimmicky features on here. Like there are one, two, three, four, five different ways to turn on the phone with gestures. And you just got to like, the first time you do it, it's like, hey, you just did a thing. It's like, OK, that's weird. And then every time I open up the camera app, I had to hit close on six dialogue boxes telling me how stuff worked. There's a lot of gimmicky stuff that they put in. Yeah, but that's a one-time thing, right? Yeah. I mean, I feel like you need those indications on the first time you do a gesture so you know what the hell you just did. So again, we haven't had these phones for a long time. So I figure that would be just kind of an irritating thing when you first pick up the phone. It helps you learn the gestures, and then you progress from that. But I agree with D2. I don't think that the gestures are necessarily all that useful. I haven't been using them at all. And one of the shortcomings for me is actually double tap to wake. First of all, we all know that I'm in love with it. Ever since the Nokia N9 days introduced it, LG has embraced it. It's beautiful. And HTC has done it, and somehow has managed to screw it up. What's screwed up about it? They screwed up a very particular way that I use it. Well, here's the thing. They expect a motion gesture of the phone before they accept double tap. So if you just have the phone laying down on the table like I have right now, and you double tap the screen, nothing happens. So it is actually there's a motion gesture, and then it starts being responsive to the swipes and things like that. And that's what I like to do. I just have the phone sitting down on my desk, and I want to check notifications. Now, swipe up works. Swipe up works, bro. Just swipe up. Ah, that's one. Yeah, I'm a double tapper. Sorry. It's too late. Did you see that LG has added a thing to knock on where you can actually knock a password? Yes, it's called knock code. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That is just so completely unnecessarily complicated. It's like your pattern unlock and things like that, but you just tap the blank screen, and then magic happens. But magic works. Yeah, here's the thing about that is if anybody turns that feature on, literally every phone on the planet will be unlocked with shaving and haircut two bits. Right? You lost me, dude. OK. Let it go. The listeners, the viewers, they get my jokes. They're hilarious. OK, so we need to go back to the camera before we get to Chris's $64,000 question. Meh. Right? Meh. I'll just say the camera. The camera. Like, it's great in low light, but there's nothing here that makes me go, oh my god. Like, they took a shot with the Ultra Pixel thing, and instead of being like, yeah, it was a good idea, we're going to just go increase the megapixels, but still claim it's Ultra Pixel. We'll just make a better camera. They just added a second camera to the same camera. And there were shortcomings with the original camera last year, and I think there are shortcomings with it now. Well. Yeah. Let me say the positive stuff. I want to just say the happy stuff here, which is that the operation of this camera is just it embarrasses the Galaxy S5. Because today, I had a Galaxy S5 around at the event, and I've got to tell you, Bulgarian reviewers are getting Galaxy S5s, and I'm contemplating actually flying back to Bulgaria to get one of those damn phones. Yes. So there was an S5 at the event, and we literally had the two phones side by side taking photos. And actually, the S5 was exposing the scene better, but it was just so slow, and it was just delay. And the HTC One, it is just murdering it. It's just instant. It's like, you tap, picture is taken, it's ready. You want to get into the gallery, instant. Everything just super smooth, super fast. So as far as the software side of things goes, and also the menus to switch between software modes, switch between front-facing and rear-facing camera, they're just brilliant. I cannot say anything bad about that software. I think it's really nice, really smooth, and snappy. But I'm with you guys. Adding the second sensor with that depth sensing at the moment, it's just a gimmick. There's nothing compelling or unique that makes you want this over any other phone. And I think they really should have done something better with the sensor. I think the HTC One from last year, that was not as strength. And HTC could have made it as strength this year, but didn't, so that's the disappointing side. But it leaves them room. It leaves them a very clear-cut place to improve the One M9 this time next year. The one thing that is cool is. Are they going to be here this time next year? So you know on the Moto X, you do the screwdriver twist thing. If you turn it sideways and hit the volume button, it launches right into the camera. That's actually really cool. That's a really smart way to do that. The twist is the worst. I actually like the twist. No, the twist is the best. I use the twist all the time. I pull it out of my pocket like this, and I go, and the camera's open, and I can take a picture. Yeah, that's some James Bond shit right there. It is. It is literally the worst. And I've never gotten it to work. It's like I'm jumping out of the helicopter, and I'm like, whop, selfie. Yeah, right? Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And your other hand is still free to fix your bow tie, so you can get it in one motion. It's like I pull the camera out, and I pull my 38 out, and I'm like. 38? Whatever he uses. Come on. I assume he uses a 9 millimeter, but I'm not sure. Oh, my god. James Bond. Walter PPK. Yeah, you're right. Are we done? Yeah, you're right. Also a Beretta early, but we're going to let that go. No, but what caliber is the Walter PPK? Who cares? If it's a 38, then I'm right. 765. No, wait, wait, wait. No. It's a 7 millimeter, isn't it? 765. Yeah, that's NATO, I think. Yeah. Anyway, that was a weird thing. What's the physical gesture for when a conversation is completely going over your head? How do you signal that visually? With a hand like this. Yeah. And then it launches the camera. OK, well, I'm asking you guys. So back to my million dollar question. Who is buying which version of the HTC One M8 2014? I'll tell you which version I'm buying. Turbo Championship Edition. Neither. Yeah, I don't think I'm going to. I'm not prepared to point out my own money. I may not be able to stick to that, but look, I've got a Nexus 5. And the camera on the Nexus 5 is itself not much of a champ. But comparing these two phones, I can't see spending the money. If you had a red Nexus 5, I might agree with you. That's fair. But the black one, I don't know. If I were to buy one, I would probably. So it all depends on whether or not the camera software on the Google Play Edition is as strong as it is on the regular Sense Edition. If that is the case, then I would probably go with the Google Play Edition. But Sense has got some nice stuff where it actually lets you reorganize the quick menu, the quick settings menu, where you can reorder stuff and add stuff. And you can actually add the option for mobile tethering. At least on the International Edition, I'm sure that AT&T will take it away. Because that's how they do. But that's pretty impressive. And that might make me want to switch. I can take or leave blink feed. This thing is just wicked fast, though. Nexus 5 doesn't have boom sound. I'm just saying. So my take on it is last year, I bought the Google Play Edition of the one. And the reason that I bought the Google Play was because I could have Android 4.4 or whatever immediately. And updates were coming very quickly to that. And when last year's one was launched, I think it launched with Android 4.1, which was way behind the curve for Android versions. But if I were to buy one this year, I'd almost lean towards the Sense models. Already got the latest version of Android. HTC has been really aggressive at pushing out updates, especially if you buy an unlocked version. And some of the things on the Sense that don't really bother me as much anymore, Sense 6 is a lot cleaner, a lot flatter. It's a lot faster. I can very easily put the Google Now launcher on there and do away with blink fleet entirely. And I also get the software and all that stuff. I mean, my real answer might be the Google Play Edition of the GS5. I know. In Band-Aid gold. Weirdo. Weirdo. Oh, god, no. What about you? I think Dieter's call might be the good one. Why? Why do you want the GS5? Focusing, well, hang on a sec. Focusing on the HTC One to start with, I actually completely agree with Dan and Dieter again. Sense 6 doesn't trouble me all that much. And I'm finding myself using blink feed. Like, I feel weird. I've been bemoaning blink feed for the longest time. But I'm using it. I don't mind. I've got the Verge. I've got Polygon on here. I've got a couple of UK newspapers. And those are interesting stories. And like Dieter says, the quick menu is indeed quick and customizable. And the big distinction for me between this and Samsung software, which I just find intolerable, is that Samsung has just way too many features and options. And it just takes you so long to read through everything in order to be able to make a choice and a decision that by the time you finish customizing it, you're just fatigued. And you're like, OK, I'm done with this part. I just need to go and do something else with my life. So yeah, I mean, what I would say is having spent time with this, when I first heard that there would be a Google Play edition last year, I would have been like, yes, fist bump, bump and pump, whatever, both. What? Bumping and bumping? Great. There's a Google Play edition. What's the hand feel of that gesture? Does that launch the camera? Yeah. Well, if there's anybody nearby, I would do a fist bump. Yes, there's a Google Play edition. But if there's nobody nearby, I would do a fist pump. OK. Right. Fair enough. So now we've got that cleared up. That would have been last year. But now I'm like, well, OK, Google Play edition, that's about as good as the phone that is available to buy today. So I think that's a great credit to the improvements that HT has made in its software. That being said, I do agree that the Nexus 5, I mean, it's so much cheaper and more affordable. And it's comfortable. Like, it doesn't have anything terribly excellent about it. But just like the camera, I'm just comfortable with it. I'm settled in with its limitations. And I just don't see this phone to have that unique, special thing that compels me to go away from Nexus 5 or to spend the extra money from Nexus 5. And the thing I would say about the Galaxy S5 is you get rid of that crazy, nonsense Samsung software, and you ignore the silly colors, it actually feels good in the hand. Like, the texture of its back is pretty comfortable. And over the long term, the HT1 just kind of feels like it's almost too premium. And I feel like if I own one, I would be too precious to buy that. You know what? I'm going to buy the Galaxy S5. Because I don't deserve the HTC One. I'm not good enough. It's too good for me. Vlad, Vlad, how often do you wash your hair shirt? No? My jokes? Your hair shirt monks, they wear hair shirts because they're punishing themselves? I have no idea what you're talking about. Walter PPK. No, you're right. I should have known the PPK. That was my bad, not yours. But the hair shirt was one toke over the line. Anyway, Vlad, continue. Most of the Bulgarian monks, it's different in my defense. They also get review units, really, apparently. But no, seriously, guys. I feel like with the HT1, I would be a little bit too precious about it with that fine finish and the metal and everything else. Whereas the Galaxy S5, it just feels like something you really can just have and toss around the place. And I don't know. But Vlad, if the finish is just too precious for you, you can cover it up with the dot view case. Show them the front. Show them the knocker thinger. Let's see. Where's my camera? There we go. OK. Which is literally. Most of the only guys who are excited about the case. That's pretty cool, dude. No, the case is just. It's pretty dope. That's pretty. It just adds this level of fun and whimsy. And you can see some notifications and the weather. And touch works through it. And touch works through it. So if someone's calling me, I can swipe down to answer the call. I can swipe up to ignore it without ever opening the case. Can you flip the case over and then take a picture with it? Open up the case. So it's not perfect. And now take a picture? Oh, wow. That's pretty ape. You can't take a picture when the case is flipped in the back because they didn't put a hole for the camera. And it is a $50 case that is a lot of plastic and rubber and does not feel $50. And the notifications are limited to first party apps. So third party apps don't show notifications and stuff. But all of those other major complaints aside, I think it's really, really cool. And it won't work on the GPE version, right? You know, I don't know. Because it uses. The only thing it works with are the Sense apps. I doubt it'll work on the GPE version. It'll work as a case. But you won't get the fun dot matrix view. But it's fun. And they're coming out with these cool colors. I got to see a couple of them in their design studio. The orange looks really hot. The blue looks really hot. It's kind of weird that they're only launching it with gray. Because it's a fun accessory. And they're launching it in the most blah color. Yeah, this thing screams to be yellow or orange or red. Or it screams, look at me. And the gray is very subdued. Yeah. But I know Chris is going to buy one. But it reminds you that no more than 20 minutes ago, we've been moaning the fact that this phone is rather chunky and large. And now we're celebrating the fact that it has a case that adds a plastic flap on it. It's funny that you mention that. Because when I was speaking to Scott Croyle, we were doing our behind the scenes look here. I was like, you know, you guys spend all of this time and energy designing this beautiful phone that feels great in your hand. How does it feel when somebody just slaps a case on it? And he's like, the reality of the matter is people put cases on their phones. Because they have them for two years or three years or whatever it is. And they're really expensive. And they don't want to drop them and break them and scratch them and all that stuff. I have seen they dropped a review unit that was dung up. Dung up. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,. Yeah, I mean, as much metal as you put up on the phone, you drop it onto concrete, it's going to get damaged. And he's like, at least we made something fun with the case. And I was like, yeah, I guess you're right. And it is. It's fun. I would say that this case would be much more interesting to me if it had an AMOLED display underneath it. Because most of the notifications, again, it's a dot matrix look where dots are illuminated on the screen underneath the cover. And I mean, I agree. That's a clever and kind of a throwback look. So fair enough. But with an AMOLED display, you're not using the entire backlight when you're showing those notifications. So it's really power efficient as well, as well as being cute. That's true. Whereas with the HTC One, because it's an LCD display, you are always using the full backlight. Even though it's a gorgeous display, I mean, we're not going to quibble about it too much. And by that same logic, Vlad, the One doesn't have active notifications like the Moto X because they just can't do it in a power efficient way. So Chris, you asked that big $64 million question. And you have yet to answer it. The value keeps going up. Like Dieter tried to make it a $64,000 question. I tried to make it $1 million. Now it's $64 million. It's a pretty pricey question. I think I was originally leaning GPE, but now I'm starting to lean Sense because I'm really into the case. You're right. Sense has gotten way better. How long have you been using an iPhone? Close to two years. And this is going to get you to switch? Well, yes, and here's why. Because I am not surviving a single day without a Moto 360. Oh, we've got to talk about this. The second the 360 hits the market, I am hopping on that bandwagon. It's not going to be iOS compatible. Yeah, so well, it could be. You don't know that for sure. It's called Android Wear. There's no way that this thing's going to be iOS compatible. Well, Google Glass is iOS compatible. So the Moto 360 is a smart watch, right? Yep. Oh, Vlad. Vlad, Vlad, Vlad. Vlad, Vlad, Vlady Vlad. No, you were on vacation. He was on vacation. It's not his fault. It takes a lot of effort and focus to grow this beard. OK, so I was intensely focused on my thoughts. Vlad, I thought you were about to make some big point about the Moto 360, but you were genuinely just asking what the Moto 360 is. So we should talk about all of this stuff. The Moto 360 is nothing at the moment. Like, I really want to highlight that as a reader. No, no, no, no, no. I need to tell you you're wrong about that, because I want to believe so badly in this thing. When Jim Wicks did the online Hangout, he had one on his wrist, and he was futzing around with it. And it was a real thing, and real screens went whizzing by on his wrist. And you could see it. It was like a quarter of an inch square on a giant monitor. And it looked real, and I believe in it. It looks like my watch that I have here. Just imagine this isn't an analog face, and it's a round touchscreen. Yeah, and it looks bigger than that, though. It's probably a little bigger. Is that a Moto 360? Yes, it is, Chris. By the way, that's the craziest looking watch. I have to beat you in the face until you give me your Moto 360. So it looks great. There's Android Wear overall, and then there's the Moto 360 specifically. And I love them both. I need to not be so giddy about this, but I was having this conversation with David Piers, who wrote the excellent HTC One review, and many other excellent reviews. And I was like, look, this is what the smart watch should be. They should take what they did with Google Glass and make it suck a little bit less and put it on your wrist. And they should Google Now it up a little bit and put it on your wrist. And you know what they did? That. It is very Google Now heavy. And they did notifications really intelligently. It does this thing that Pebble did right so far in the way that they've shown off. And maybe they're going to screw it up with more apps and throw garbage later. But it gets notifications right, and it gets some ambient alerts right. And that's all it tries to do. It just makes sure it nails those experiences. It works with current Android notifications. People can extend stuff, and they can start working on that now. As a first gen platform, if these things come out, if they're not slow as hell, and if a battery can last for a day and a half, which are all big ifs, but if they can do those things, then I am super excited for this. And they're not obscenely expensive. Well, OK, four things. Right. Now, other than the four most important things for a product, it's awesome. Well, but also I think that if they had just debuted it with the G Watch or whatever the hell it's called. Oh, god, the LG G Watch. Yeah, it would have fallen. The announcement would have landed with a thud because it looks exactly like how you expect a 2000s era smart watch to look. And the Moto 360 looks like the future. And that's what really. It's pretty crazy. Really, the only difference between the Moto 360 and the G Watch and a lot of other smart watch concepts is the fact that it's round. And like. No, that's not true. No, two things. You're right. That's the big thing. But the other thing is that the G Watch has a bezel. A huge bezel. Yeah, the Moto 360 has no bezel. But the fact that it's round, Motorola talks a lot about how that makes people think of a watch when they see it. And Motorola is right. It looks like a watch that you'd wear on your wrist. I prefer square watches. Like with a screen. But I prefer square watches, but I also prefer pretty watches. And the LG G Watch is just horrendous looking. Well, it's not. It's not horrendous looking. Guys, the Moto 360 looks sick because it's a freaking Brenda so far. No, it's not. This is the thing that troubles me about it. But Vlad, Motorola was on camera using it. He said that, Dieter. Right, but he wasn't using this tiny freaking bezel and the awesome display and everything else. And he wasn't getting more than a day's worth of battery life out of it. It was like a glimpse. So to me, it's like we can be excited about the potential. But I don't think that this announcement necessarily should make us any more excited or feel like it's coming any time sooner. They said summer. They said it's coming this summer. Here's why we're excited, Vlad. I'm saying the potential of the really ideal watch that satisfies all of these conditions. I don't think that's anywhere near this. Yeah, so that's fine. That's fine. But when was the last time a product, a technology product, was announced that made you go, holy shit, I want that? It's been a little while, right? You felt it. You're like, that is awesome. It's been a while. It's a category that feels like, whoa, that just grabs you from your unmentionable parts. I mean, last year when the Google Play Edition 1 was available for sale, I bought it the minute it was on for sale. So yeah, this Moto 360 could be vaporware. It could be too expensive and too slow and have terrible battery life. I don't think Motorola is that stupid. Right. But the reason that we're excited is because they're at least laying out an ambitious vision that actually seems achievable in a real product and not some pipe dream concept video that Microsoft used to make. That's what's exciting about it. It's like everything that they're showing seems achievable. And we believe that Motorola could probably achieve it. And it seems like it's the right thing to do for a watch that you could pull off in a V1 product. That's why I'm excited, because there's enough that's right here to make me excited about technology. It's so exciting to me that it actually makes me really second guess Google's decision to sell the company. Like, Google needs, as long as they're going to be in the Werewolves game, which they're still making glass, and by all appearances they're going to do a consumer version, as long as they're in that game, they need hardware chops. And the 360 and the concept behind it, the design behind it, are really exquisite. Like, it is the first and only smartwatch that, like you say, Dan, it looks like a watch, and people around you aren't going to recognize it as being anything but a watch. And that's so important for a product in this category. I don't think it looks exactly like a watch. I don't think that's, it's more watch-esque, but I don't think the goal of a wearable should be to try and mimic. It's the new skeuomorphism. It's hardware skeuomorphism. It should be honest to what it is. No, it should not. Because the difference between a smartphone and a smartwatch is that a smartwatch is a place that's visible. It's jewelry. And so the only way it works is if it's. Yeah, but it has to look good. We're going to get to, like, this is a piece of wearable technology. I've made this point so many times, right? Like, this doesn't look alien to you. It's become part of our cultural acceptance that this piece of technology is OK to wear. We will get to a time when wearable technology with screens and other geek eyes will be acceptable. We're in a weird middle point where we want it to look like what we think of as a traditional watch. The reason the Moto 360 is awesome is because it just doesn't look like a steaming pile of garbage. It looks actually really awesome on its own merits. But you know why the eyeglasses work is because they're available in literally thousands of styles. That's something that you can't say for technology of any sort. The best case scenario, you have three colors to choose from. So I think that one of the things that has made me. Well, hang on, Chris. You can do that with headphones. Ooh. Yeah, but headphones aren't wearable. They surely are, dude. Come on, man. Because, actually, because I see you guys, when Dieter was saying this is a piece of wearable technology, I was like, is he talking about a headset at the moment? And rather than glasses. And headphones, I mean, this is, give credit to, where is you? This is Miriam Joao Tango said this. The original wearables were headphones. We just kind of forget about it because they're widely available except. Actually, the original wearables were loincloths. Let's be clear. I would say that headphones are one step removed from what we're talking about, Vlad, because you wear them temporarily, not in the course of your daily life. Whereas with a watch, it's something where you get up in the morning, you put it on, and you wear it till you go to bed. Or maybe you wear it 24 hours a day. Yeah, well, this actually, I did a panel at South by Southwest. Humble brag. That was just a brag. There's nothing humble about it. No, at the end of the panel, it was no wearables. Anything you want to brag about? It was about wearables. At the end of the panel, this incredibly smart woman came up and just nailed us. She's like, why are you calling this stuff wearables? What is a wearable? And me and a dude from Pebble, a guy from Fitbit, a guy from Whistle, we're all like, uh, yeah, you're right. This is a really stupid term. Nobody knows what it is. But my thing is to say it has to look like a watch is silly because watches come in thousands of forms. It has to look good. If it just looks good, then that's enough and it can be a piece of technology. That's fair, but the reason, I mean, I think it looks good because it's borrowing familiar concepts from what we perceive as a watch. And it's like watches come in thousands of forms, but they all look like watches. And they're unmistakably watches. And I think that the Moto 360's unmistakably looks like something that you put on your wrist to check the time and other things. So there's a difference between looking good and looking alien. And the problem with most wearable technology, especially like the original Pebble, is it looks alien. It looks unfamiliar. And at some point, it will stop looking alien. Well, yeah, right? It just needs to not look completely alien. As long as it's familiar enough where you're not completely put off by it, we'll move forward. Eventually, your category of things that you're not put off by will grow. And so like, well, maybe we'll get there, but there's been concepts over the years of things that are like a full screen that wraps around your wrist. And granted, if I were wearing a full screen around my wrist, I would look pretty stupid to most of us right now. I would also mug you and take your wrist out. I was going to say. Take your futuristic wrist out. Wait a minute. You're the one that thinks that it has to look like a watch. You would want the wrap around screen? Maybe the 360 would be my second purchase. I wouldn't wear it. Maybe we'll get there using the concepts of the 360 and stuff like that. Yeah. I think that, look, any way you slice it, regardless of your philosophy on this, I think that the existence of Android Wear, the existence of a common platform that anyone can come to and build upon is great news for this business. Because you saw the list of partners, including Fossil, which is an honest to God watchmaker. Samsung. Samsung. HTC. And those guys I'm less excited about. But Fossil specifically. And of course, I wear Fossil watch for like 10 years. And so the fact that they're in on this, and undoubtedly we're going to see more watchmakers in the future say, you know what, maybe this is something we should try. I think it's just great news. Well, what's hysterical about it, to me at least, is that Sony came out today saying that they're not going to use Android Wear. Yeah. And they're going to continue pursuing the smartwatch platform that they've been using, which just screams of a mistake to me. They're going to be left behind. No developer is going to invest. They have a handful of apps for, I think they'll say that they have over 300 apps for their smartwatch platform, but none of them are really compelling. And the developers that care are going to go wear it. Well, look, beta and memory stick did so well for them. Look, guys, Sony gets a pass. It can do whatever it wants this week after it announced Morpheus, the VR headset for PlayStation. They literally can go punch a small child in the face. And I'm like, eh, it's OK. You made a VR headset. It's cool. Maybe you didn't see them because you were wearing the goggles. Well, so I haven't tried them. But the consensus is that they're no better than DK2 or Crystal Cove, right? Like, they're as good. No better. Oh my god. These suck. They're no better than the most amazing VR headsets around right now. Come on. No, but Oculus is like a PlayStation. Oculus is a Kickstarter. It is a Kickstarter versus the largest company, the largest consumer electronics company in the world until like five years ago. They've got to keep the costs down. Until like five years ago when a bunch of other companies became larger. Like, I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Yeah, you are just saying. But no, we are all in agreement that Sony has to do itself. Except for Vlad. Oh, no. Sony's, yeah, they watch thing is stupid. But Vlad is not in agreement on the Moto 360. Are you, Vlad? You're very mad about it. Well, I just want to see it. My thing is, I mean, usually I'm trying to find the happy side while we're having a big bitch session about something. But in this particular situation, I just would like people to curb their enthusiasm a bit and just take stock of the fact that we are, again, breaking into a new form factor, a new and aggressively smaller footprint in terms of how much hardware you can fit inside the device you're talking about with smart watches and with wearables in general. Let's not forget that Android Wear is supposed to be a platform for wearables beyond smart watches. It's just going to start with smart watches. Because, I mean, if you think back to the beginning of Android, and if you think back to things like the first 3G and 4G phones and all of those things, it takes time. It takes months and years for the hardware to catch up with whatever ambitions we might have. So I absolutely share the desire to see these excellent devices, as Dieter was saying, with all those stipulations. But I just feel like it's going to take us quite a long time to get there. And if Motorola accelerates that roadmap, great. But I also feel like battery life, performance, storage, all those things that can really enhance the functionality and make these devices truly smart watches, rather than just watches with a bit of tech-tactone on top of them, that's the thing that's going to take time. And this is why I'm just not ready to get that. Vlad can't see you raise your hand, man. Chris put his hand in the air in the middle of your monologue there, Vlad. And you're making really good points. Like, you couldn't see him. You're just waiting for his turn. I don't know. I just need Vlad to hold the phone for one hot second and explain to me why we need improvements in storage for a smart watch to work. Well, because, OK, this is, again, maybe I'm taking too much of a long-term view. But I really feel like smart watches are going to be the next step. So we had the desktop, we had the smartphone, and then we had smart watches. Like, this is where we're actually heading. And the reason phones became the central computing device for most people nowadays is just because they were convenient and they kind of matched the size that technology was falling and shrinking down into. And now we're able to shrink the same things down into the smart watch. And I don't feel like cloud drives and cloud services and the cost of even wireless, but still it's a tether to a smartphone, is the thing that's going to compel people like myself to own a smart watch. But if you're giving a smart watch with all those important things that you can get from a smartphone, then we can be talking. Including a big screen? Well, no. But I've never said that a big screen is an important aspect of a smartphone. That's when you get a nice, small tablet and you stick it on your bedside table and your life is complete. I'm just buying a nice Bell and Ross and getting out of this whole smart watch game. Yeah. That's what I'm doing. Putting my money behind a real Swiss maker of fine devices. I think Dan is pulling a classic move in buying a device right now. No, I'm not. The GPE? You can order the GPE edition of the HTC One M8 right now. It's $700, which seems high. It's not on their front page. And it's a two to three week shipping time. Two to three weeks. Isn't that like two Nexus 5s? Yes, it is. That's exactly what it is, Vlad. It's two Nexus 5s. Worth every penny. $700. It's actually $50 more for the Google Play edition than the unlocked sense model, which I do not understand. That doesn't make any sense. Can you buy the unlocked sense model right now? You guys want to watch us order phones? I'm going to just buy like eight Moto Gs. I mean, $179. Just string them together. Yeah. OK, so the other thing about the Moto 360. Last thing, it doesn't have a perfectly circular screen. It has a little bit on the bottom that's flat and is not screened. Instead of a perfect circle, it's got the little notch on the bottom, which is a bummer. But it's one that I can live with. But the reason I ask about it is there's two things that we don't know about it. Well, there's lots of things we don't know about it. Two of the big things we don't know about is one, why couldn't they make the screen just circular? And I think it's just physics. But two, how do they charge it? Because there's no. They made a circular screen on the Aura. Right. Yeah, but how do they charge it? Wix was kind of, he played coy when he was asked that, right? We assume it's just straight wireless. But there's no visible USB ports. There's no visible contact points on it or anything like that. So I mean, I assume they figured out some sort of wireless thing. I just hope it's not like the Qualcomm Tock, which was the worst thing ever. Right. It would be nice if they could charge a smartwatch the same way you do an automatic, a mechanical watch. But I just don't think it generates enough power. Where you have the counterbalance inside the case that rotates as you move. And that just generates power. But I don't think that'd be enough. I just want to say that Chris Welch, one of our reporters, is telling me that Verizon sells the one unlocked for $599. Well, I guess not unlocked. Off contract for $599. Can I use that on AT&T? Just tell me right now. AT&T is $699. But can I root and unlock a Verizon 1M8 and use it on AT&T? Probably won't get LTE. If my fiance is watching, I'm sorry. No, I'm not buying it. Not doing it. Closing the tab. Didn't do it. I'm OK. No, the Moto 360 is going to be inductive charging. That's the answer. It's just going to be, unless it uses the sweet bowl that Intel has made. Intel's got a bowl you can just throw your crap in it. Yeah, that'd be cool. Some people are saying on Twitter, somebody is saying that Motorola, let's see, Royd Ranger? Royd Ranger? Is that the handle? He's telling us that Motorola has this solar panel display patent, which may be something. But we have yet to see any solar panel charging that produce enough power to realistically use it. Also, if you wear a long sleeve shirt, you're just screwed. By the way, Royd Ranger, your photo of Barack Obama in a sweater wearing safety glasses and holding a cat is the most amazing thing ever. Royd underscore Ranger only has a few followers. If you are listening to the sound of my voice right now, please go follow him because he is hilarious and amazing. But I honestly don't know if we'll see solar panel charging. I think that would be a pleasant surprise. I'd assume it actually works, but it'd be a surprise to me. Maybe they'll finally use, they've been talking about long range wireless charging for years. No one has been able to do it. Our producer, John, says that because the back of the 360 is purple, then it definitely is going to be inductive charging. What does purple have to do with that? That's what I said. I don't know. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. I hope he's right. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'd rather have something future. If it's microUSI-Fi, then I'm going to buy one and throw it against the wall and break it. There's no port on it. Which, by the way, when the thing inevitably crashes, not having a port, it's going to be a problem. It's going to be a magnet, like a pebble. When it crashes, not having a port will be a problem? Yeah, because you're going to need to put the firmware on it. Because it's Android? No, because how am I going to load CyanogenMono on my Moto 360? That's what I want to know. Oh, people are going to hack that so fast. That's why I'm not worried about it not running on iOS. It's going to be fine. Yeah. All right. It's going to be just fine. We'll see. Yeah. Speaking of iOS, are you guys excited for iOS 8? Just to mention that. Go ahead, Vlad. Sorry, guys. Just to mention what we're discussing specs. One thing we overlooked with the HC1 is, I mean, the specs are pretty much standard. It has a quad-core Snapdragon processor, 2.3 gigahertz. Most places around the world, it's going to be 2.5 gigahertz in China, because apparently people over there just love their specs. And also noteworthy, it has a dual-SIM, nano-SIM version, which again, is probably going to come to China and some of those other countries where people use more than one SIM. Again, not to the land of the free, because you guys won't really have much use for two SIMs. What's interesting to me is we didn't mention it, but they put a micro SD card slot on it, which I found really kind of interesting. I mean, in the US, they're going to be selling a 32-gig version. It's going to be the only option, I think, in the US is 32 gigs. But you can slap a giant SD card in there if you want, which is something we haven't seen. And on the HTC flagship, in how long? The One X didn't have it, did it? No. I've solved the mystery of the weird little bezel underneath the screen, thanks to MRAM 32. There's another picture of the Moto 360 that is in silver, and then there's another angle on it. And there is the tiniest little sensor that you can see. It looks like it's a light-detecting sensor on it. If you look closely, you can see the little circle in the middle of the black area. Looks like a light sensor to me for brightness for automatic. No, it's for automatic brightness detection. You heard it here first, guys. On the Verge mobile show, the definitive show about all things mobile on the Verge. There are no other shows. You solved the mystery by being told the answer by somebody on Twitter. Listen, Vlad. Yeah. That's how it works, man. I can take credit for what people tell me on Twitter. That's how the internet works. I mean, a dealer cited his source. Yeah. I mean, if you write at Backlawn and say a fact, I will repeat it. I'm going to do it right now. OK. I tried to transition to the iOS 8, but I don't know if we have it in us. I will say that there was a leak of a bunch of icons, and one of them was text edit. And Chris just wanted me to say that the Galaxy Mega is the best phone ever made. It's true. It's totally true. It's a giant, low-cost Galaxy. Galaxy Mega is the most amazing phone I've ever heard. Chris, are you still getting royalties for the name on that? Are you still getting royalties for the name on that? I better be. Because you coined it like three years ago. I did. Like, don't joke about getting royalties, because people will believe you. But I'm just saying. I mean, he named it on this show two years ago. Yes. They should call it the Galaxy Mega. And then five months later, Samsung's like, here's the Galaxy Mega in five different sizes. Someone at Samsung was watching the Verge Mobile show, and they're like, oh, Mega. That's a really good name for a phone. Anyway, I'm sorry. You were trying to make a point. We were trying to talk about health. I'm sorry. I asked you to say that you can't get royalties on a trademark. That's copyright. Yeah, but I can. No, I can't. Don't kill the dream. Well, OK. I'm sorry. I forgot about the Z-Power exception. My apologies. Thank you. The Z-Power clause. Dieter, you were attempting to make a point when I interrupted you with the Galaxy Mega news. You know, I think it's time we started having real talk about the Verge Mobile show. I think you're right. I think you're right. I think that the important thing to say here is we've had some good times. We've had some bad times. We've had some bad times. We've had some very bad times. Some awkward times. What was the worst time that we've had on the Verge Mobile show? Every show. Using Hangouts. Hangouts did the job. It let us talk to each other on the internet. No, my worst time ever on the Verge Mobile show, we had some early ones with extreme delay, where we were constantly talking over each other to the point where we had a meeting after a show to discuss the fact that we were constantly talking over each other. And then what happened? And then we started talking over each other. It finally ended. We figured it out. Never did it again. In that respect, today is an actual throwback episode, because with my Skype delay, I am perfectly overlapping with you guys. I just want to point out that Joanna Stern just favorited my tweet to you about the Galaxy magazine. That's what I wrote. Yeah. So you may have heard that the Verge cast is going on hiatus. We are going to go on a lacuna, which I think is more amusing than a hiatus. We're going on a walkabout. No. We're going to Australia. We're going to get lost in the desert. A lacuna is an unfilled space, an interval, a gap. We're going to perfect. It just makes me think of the racetrack Laguna Seca. We're going to a purgatory, if you will. Limbo. Yeah, limbo. Limbo. Verge Mobile show, limbo. How low can you go, not much lower than this moment right now. We will be back in some form or another. You will be able to download our voices again someday, somehow. Even during this extended period of radio silence, we'll still be able to download old episodes. That's right. If our viewers and listeners. You could even go back to the shows we did before the Verge Mobile show, if you wanted to. You absolutely could. Going back to 2007, seven years of podcasts goodness of our voices. The sky is the limit. I don't think that's the right direction if you're doing that. Vlad, what is your favorite and least favorite moment of the Verge Mobile show? I'm just going to condense them both into one. And that was when I did the podcast from the street. That was amazing. That was awesome. I don't think anything is ever going to equal that experience. I mean, that was the good side of it. The bad side of it was freaking cold. And I was talking to my phone, holding it up in front of my face. We know my neighbor's probably peeking out the windows and thinking, yeah, I'm not going to talk to that guy ever. Well, my favorite moment about that show was that you were, I was commenting that I was concerned you were going to get mugged. And then you were like, no, I would be doing the mugging. Which I thought was a really appropriate comment. And then, Dan. Got to turn it to you. I would say that my favorite is when we've all been able to be in the same place and do a show in the same room. I always enjoyed the fact, whether it's CES or Mobile World Congress or just all of a sudden New York. The first Mobile World Congress show is my favorite. It was like 4 in the morning. We were not entirely sober. We had strung together two USB microphones across the room so they wouldn't interfere. And we were talking quietly or trying to talk quietly so it would actually work so that you could get two microphones. I remember this. And it was great. And then we fell asleep hard. Yes, we did. I remember the apartment that we were in for that. We were in the video team's apartment, if I remember. That's right. Yes. And I don't have a worse memory. Our conclusion is that the best thing about the virtual world show was when we were able to do the show with as little technology as possible. So our big conclusion is we hate technology. We're going back to the jungle and putting on those loincloths, which as Dieter says, were the original wearable. The original wearable technology. Is the loincloth. The loincloth. The fig leaf. We're going back. Well, I guess the fig leaf. So I think that the parting memory that we want to leave our viewers with is Vlad in a loincloth. Please Photoshop that for us. I'm sure that there's plenty of base material to work off of out there. So no, we're taking an extended break. And that doesn't mean that we don't love you. In fact, we appreciate you. It does. We don't. It means we love you so much we don't want to do any more half-ass shows. No, we don't love them. Well, we love them platonically, just not romantically. Got to draw a line somewhere. Are you going to let me wrap this? Yeah, go ahead. We're just going to keep going. You're going to keep interrupting me. I'm going to keep going. We're just going to keep going, you're going to keep interrupting me. Go ahead. It's all you. I lost my thread. You were talking about loving. My tread. You were talking about loving. Loving people. Oh, no, no. We'll be back in another form in another way someday. And until then, you can follow us on Twitter. Dan is DC Seifert with an EI. Chris is Zpower with a Zed. Vlad is Vlad Savov with a bunch of Vs. I'm at Backlund, and since this is the very last Verge Mobile show, I thought it would be a good idea to finally reveal what Backlund means. But I'm not going to do that. Oh. Thanks for watching, everybody.