 Welcome to the Herb Volpe show for CES 2014, an amazing rollercoaster of thoughts and emotions. Feelings, I am Dieter Bohn and I'm joined by my friends. I am Vlad Savov. I'm Dan Siefert. I'm Evan Rogers. And Chris Ziegler, he's out driving a car somewhere, because that's what he does. He drives a car everywhere he goes, all the time. He doesn't report on gadgets anymore, although I guess cars do. I heard he's trapped out in the desert. Yeah. He's having a full-on Las Vegas experience. I think he took one of those. There he is, right there, out in the middle of the desert. I think he took one of those electric BMWs. Yeah, he's going to get shot. Pushed into the limit. He's going to get stung by a scorpion. You think he brought a shovel? He really is a bit, yeah. I look forward to seeing him crawling across the desert sand. Yeah, no. So it's the end of the week. We've had a full CES experience. It's Thursday. There's a plane flying overhead, which is not weird at all. It feels like it's in the room with us. And how are you guys feeling? Evan, how are you doing? Feeling good. Yeah, really? Yes, feeling dry. What? I'm going to have a cup of coffee. Good to go. You're not feeling terrible or horrible or failed? No, no, no, no. I may not have had sleep, but what I didn't have in sleep, I made for excitement. Sweet spreadsheet excitement. I feel like Evan is lying ever so slightly. What? Sweet, sweet spreadsheet excitement? Yeah, you have no idea how many times I've heard that. Your CES experience is way different than mine. I think I've heard that tagline in a Microsoft ad somewhere. Yeah. It must have happened. Yeah. But there was something exciting. I mean, I know we're kind of exhausted and our souls have been battered and we're going to need like a month's worth of recuperation from this Vegas experience. But there was one really exciting and fun thing about the mobile side of things, and that was the Xperia Z1 Compact or Z1 Compact since we're in the States. And I think all of us have been excited. All of us have been anticipating it. Dan has an Xperia in front of him. Evan has one. He's a Sony fan. As am I. Okay. I do want to ask one question about this though. Yes. Why are you jumping right into like the business? I want to know how you feel, man. I'm afraid I have... Tell us the feels. Tell us the feels. The way I feel right now is... You just want to talk about the Z1 Altra. That's all that matters. No. Everything else is gone for you. All your flowers in your life have wilted. There is only space in your heart for the Z1 Altra. There's always space in my heart for vegetables. Flowers, vegetables, and eggs. Eggs are very important. Are you a big fan? Protein. But no. The way I feel is I've just had dinner. I'm exhausted. And if I don't talk about something truly exciting and interesting, I am going to fall asleep. And I mean, look, this is the only thing that's sustaining me. Unbranded water. That's the only thing I have space in my heart for. Let's set the scene. So typically every year at the mobile show, or at the CES show, there's not a ton... Wow. There's not a ton of mobile news. But Sony usually does something to give us something to talk about and something to do. It's not always a flagship. Sometimes it is. But they try harder at CES and mobile than basically anybody else. And they already have got this, the Z1 as their flagship, then they had the Z1 Ultra, the ridiculous tablet thing, and now we have the Z1 Mini? Compact. Exactly. It's not Mini. Not Mini. Mini denotes crap. Mini denotes we're pretending it's the same thing, but really we're nerfing the processor and putting a really crappy camera in. That's what Mini means, right? This is Z1 Mini? Yeah. Galaxy S4 Mini. S4 Mini. S3 Mini. S3 Mini. That's what it means if you're talking about Samsung products. It carries a lot of baggage. Same with the HTC, though. The HTC One Mini is nerfed. That thing is a piece. I was so excited for the One Mini, but that thing is a total piece. I was just cutting right to it. Every single one... I shouldn't say every single one, but many of them have a problem where the plastic around the outside just cracks along the buttons because they didn't make it. All right, enough about the One Mini. So the Z1 Compact, this is different because it's taking everything that we loved about the Z1, the great camera, the really fast processor, and putting it in a smaller size. Have you guys noticed my microphone's on the other side now? If you had audio issues, I apologize, but this should be all resolved now and I won't sound like the beautiful cold-ridden monster that I am. Continue. So, yeah, they're putting it in a smaller body that's easier to handle, which is what a lot of people, at least in our circle, have been asking for for a long time, for everybody to do. Who's played with one? I haven't touched one yet. I touched one briefly. Okay, so same build quality? Yep. I want to say it's not the same build quality. Okay, what's the story? Not quite. It's incredibly close, but the Z1 feels a little bit more solid. And the Z1 Compact just feels a little bit like... Maybe it's because it's lighter, like obviously it doesn't have a bigger battery in it, there's less glass, like just surface area of glass, but it does feel slightly lower, but it still feels great. So, I don't know. Still waterproof, still fast. Still glass, yeah. Yeah. They had some cool cutouts of like the aluminum extrusions that they make them out of. So here's the question, are you guys going to put your money where your mouth is? You've been talking about wanting a great 4.5 inch phone for years. If they will sell me one, if I could buy it with my money, I would throw down right now. Yeah, here's the problem. They announced it here at CES, which is, it's called the International CES, but it's mostly a US centric show. But they're not even going to sell it in the US. Not at this point in time. Vlad can buy one. At some point they will, right? Hopefully. God, I just, I mean, I don't even care if a carrier picks it up and they only offer it in pink. I just want them to bring it to the US. I mean, look, the thing is, what does the Z1 Compact, what Dan said, it's the definition of easy to say, but hard to execute, hard to perform. You take your flagship device, it's a five inch device, and you just shrink it to a 4.4 inch form factor. And we all kind of shrug it and say, well, okay, interesting, fine. But no, I mean, technically to get that, to make that happen is quite an incredible achievement. I mean, this is still the same 20 megapixel sensor, same camera as on the Z1. It doesn't, I mean, the only sacrifice that you make is that you don't have the 3000 milliamp power battery because there's just nowhere to fit it in that form factor. And the screen goes down to 720p. Yeah, and the screen resolution comes down, but again, that's irrelevant because there's no way for you to physically sense the difference between 1080 and 720p at a 4.4 inch size. But actually the screen goes up in quality because it's an IPS display. And this is the biggest upgrade as far as I'm concerned. This makes the Z1 Compact Sony's absolute flagship. Sony isn't going to openly say it, but this is its flagship because the IPS display is improved, it improves the viewing angles. Finally, after years and years of me complaining, obviously it takes a while for the message to get through from me to Sony. Well no, this is one of the stories to see. Sony is no longer a crushing disappointment. Every time they release a phone, you're like, oh man, Sony, you're going to do it right this time. And they don't. And like with the Z1 and especially the Z1 Mini, it's like, Mini, the Z1 Compact, it's like they got it. It seems like, right? I feel so. I absolutely feel so. And to Dan's point, it's disappointing that Sony isn't bringing it to the US. Or isn't immediately bringing it to the US. I know that I believe it's end of February or something like that they're starting to ship. I just asked them and they said there was some kind of intermediary time in February. They have no official. Yeah, it's a few weeks. And I mean, it's not perfect. It's still not perfect because it's not shipping with KitKat, which it really should be. That's an embarrassment. And they're saying the coming weeks after it ships, they're going to do a KitKat update. And to me, it's a case of what's going to happen in Mobile World Congress is at least Samsung is going to bring KitKat with its new devices. And others are going to push KitKat. Samsung announced devices here with KitKat. The tablet line that they announced, the Galaxy Tab Pro. We got to talk about these. We got to talk about the Tab Pro and the Note Pro. Tab Pro is like, stop. Why do you use this? Tell me why. So Samsung announced four new tablets here. They announced three Tab Pros in 8.4 inch, 10.1 inch, and massive 12.2 inch. And then they announced the Galaxy Note Pro, which only comes in 12.2 inch. And of course, the difference between the 12.2 inch Tab and the 12.2 inch Note is the support for the S Pen. But when I think about it, I always thought of it like Samsung's lines. The Note line of tablets always seemed like their Pro line already. Compared to the other tabs that were cheaper, didn't have as many features, they generally didn't have as fast processors and stuff like that. The Note tablets gave you more to do, and they worked better and things like that. Say what you feel, man. The Tab Pros are just like, they're iterative, they're whatever. There's no reason. And they're really too big. Note Pro is interesting because you get a huge tablet, and you've got multi-window thing if you're into that. You don't think you should be, well, maybe it's okay. The keyboard is ridiculous. Yeah. I mean, so they got this keyboard, it's an on-screen keyboard that has shading and bevels on the display of the keys to make it look like a real keyboard. They don't make it look like a real keyboard. They make it look like a real keyboard from 1987. Yeah. Come on. And then it has control buttons, so you can do Control C, Control V, which is kind of neat, and you're doing all those awesome spreadsheets for days. This is Samsung's move. Now you got my attention. Every year at a show, they roll up to CES, and they're like, yeah, we got some stuff, we made them, what the heck, we'll put them out there. They do it at MWC, and they do it at CES. This is they're like, yeah, we made it, we might as well, see. Yeah, I mean, it's just like, okay. The thing is, Samsung's probably going to sell a ton of them. They're going to put them in every single Best Buy. They're going to be on the big Best Buy displays. They're going to be 12.2 inch tablets, it's going to be massive. People are going to buy it, and then they're going to bring it home, and they're going to realize this thing's really awkward to use, and it kind of sucks. Now, Samsung phones have an air of inevitability about them because of their marketing, but I don't think that that magic, that whatever marketing prowess they've got, has bled over into tablets. Okay, okay. Here's the thing. Our producer, Jordan Oplinger, Oplinger or Oplinger? It's Oplinger. Oplinger, okay. Jordan Oplinger, our producer slash director, he told us- Slash friend. Oh, absolutely slash friend. At least I like to think so, but maybe he disagrees. I don't know. We'll see. He's an overall good guy. Yeah, that is undeniable. Well, he did ask us to make definitive statements about CES, and I noticed Dieter dropping one of those earlier on. He was like, cut mine in. All right. Mine is that if there is a theme to CES this year, it's that it's full of things that people don't actually want. Because these Samsung tablets, a great example of that, and we've been discussing this in the Verge Trader today, all of these wearables that we've been seeing are total example. Because everywhere I go, there are these Android-y smart watches slash fitness trackers slash pedometers slash things that don't really work. But how is that different from any other year? There's always crap I don't want at CES. I don't know. I feel like they've all done some research. They've all done some focus grouping, and they've all picked up on a trend. Because that's how Samsung does its devices. It does a focus group, and a bunch of people in Korea tell it, I want a 12-inch tablet, and it just kicks one out. So are you saying there's just nothing about a 12-inch tablet that could be redeeming or useful? For example, someone who's a student, could you not feasibly use it to read textbooks? Here's the thing. I think Samsung really kind of half-assed this whole thing. A 12.2-inch tablet could really be useful for somebody who wants to compare two spreadsheets side by side. They've got lots of screen to do it and stuff like that. But Samsung's not even offering a keyboard dock with it. They're relying on Logitech and third-party manufacturers to fill that in. But it would make so much sense for this thing to just dock into a keyboard, like the countless keyboard docks that are made for the iPad, and then you close it up and you've got a laptop replacement that runs Android. But I know Logitech announced that they're making one. We'll see how good it is or whatever. The other thing we need to talk about with these. The reason these don't work is because you need this tablet to be a real, like your computer replacement. But this UI, this like Metro, I mean, this tile thing. Yeah, they're calling it Magazine UX. It's a total ripoff of Windows 8.1's Metro tiles and stuff. Your widgets become squares and then you can have news squares and weather squares. It's hard to navigate. I think it's easier for new users who aren't used to like an Android home screen or whatever. But in this market, I don't know how many of those exist. Are there new users that have never used Magazine UI? The thing is, they call this a pro. It's going to be aimed at the early adopter, the person who wants the pro product. And it's running a very basic UI. It's aimed at dudes in suits. I can just buy it and say, give me a tablet that I can do work on. Be right back, take your call on my Bluetooth. And it's the thing that Evan asked of me, are you saying that there's no redeeming feature to a 12-inch tablet? And the thing is, of course there can be. But in order for that redeeming feature to exist, these guys need to be doing software well. And everything that Dan has said so far about Samsung's efforts with the software on these tablets says they're not doing the software well. And this is consistent. It's always the case that you see nice hardware and then the software comes around and it's supposed to work. Actually, Samsung is talking about walking that back now. Walking what back? Walking back their UI and being less crazy with their UI. Like on the next version of the Galaxy S. Yeah, but when a drunk person changes direction, they're still going straight. You bring a great point. I mean, what was the software like? I mean, so it's got that flip-forward Windows tile thing and then underneath it, it's touch where you can resize these windows, a little cross thing, and everything is very performant. But then as soon as you find a way to get out of there and God help you figure out how to do that, like hitting the back button, you hit the home button, getting back to it is weird, saving it is weird. It works super well until you actually try and have a sense of place and where it works in the OS. In which case, it totally falls apart. If you're using this in kind of like a business professional aspect, can it actually fulfill that? Like would a 12-inch laptop fulfill the same duty better? Yes. I mean, would a Windows 8 tablet be better for a student or a business person? I really just don't see the point of any tablet beyond 9 or 10 inches. Any tablet beyond 9 or 10 inches. Can you multitask well? Look, we're approaching the point where every screen is going to be a touch screen, even your TV. You don't have a choice. Touch screen is fine. I am down for that. Touch screen is fine, but once you go above 11 or 12 inches, you might as well just attach a keyboard to it. Right. Nah. When it's primarily used as a laptop and then you can maybe pop it out and do some quick tablet things and it has a touch screen, that's fine. I don't know. Touch screen is fine. But when this thing is primarily used as a tablet and it weighs a pound and a half and it's like a mile long because it's 16 by 9 and you're trying to hold it in one hand and interact with it and your hand just kind of like falls and cramps. I mean, I'm just going to bring this up very briefly. Transformer Book Duet. The one that ASUS introduced. And they call it a four in one. And you know what? It's just a one in one. It's just one compromise. Because it's supposed to be an Android tablet, a Windows tablet, a Windows laptop, an Android laptop. And you know what? The OS switching takes just three or four seconds. It works. That part of the software works. But it's a 13 inch tablet when it's a tablet. And other than Shaq, who's here at CES, and I go to within arm's reach, but no, well, his arm's reach, not my arm's reach. Other than Shaq, nobody really can use a 13 inch tablet as a tablet. Dude, I would. I could. Yeah. If every laptop had a detachable screen, a detachable touch screen, would you not use the shit out of that? To like, I'm going to work. Oh, no. You know what? I'm going to go watch a movie in bed. Oh, you know what? I'm going to lean back. Like, yeah, the fact that you can't carry it around, granted. That's fine. But if every laptop had a detachable touch screen that you could do stuff on and like watch a movie on and hang out on your couch with, how is that a great idea? If you could get a keyboard for upstairs, downstairs, and like at your desk, and you could just dock it into it and just leave the keyboards everywhere, that would be sick. The problem is all those tablets, laptops, were in Windows 8. Yeah. So, I mean, we didn't actually see very many of those. Yeah. Very little Windows stuff. That's what I was going to say. I mean, my perception of it remains, and it's exactly the opposite to what Intel was pushing with the two-in-one concept. My perception of it remains that if you want a laptop, you go and get yourself a laptop because you avoid the compromises. You avoid the mechanical things because with that Transformer book duet, it's chunky. It's chunkier than most 13-inch Ultrabooks. Whereas what I would say is my idea of the device would be like a 12-inch laptop, like one of those ThinkPad X240, things like that, where you can just fold it all the way back so the keyboard goes all the way around. I mean, I'm really talking about Lenovo Yoga. It exists. But just a little bit thinner, a little bit more refined, all of those extra little engineering bits that go into the improvement side of things. And then if you want a tablet, you go and get a tablet. Anytime you try and get too many things into one and the same device, you end up getting nothing that is really to your satisfaction. I mean, really, I think that's pretty much true, too. A 12-inch or 13-inch laptop and a 7-inch tablet, that's really a good sweet spot to do it. And then an Xperia Z1 Compact, which I am telling you is an amazing, amazing phone. I really like it. A Google Play edition of that phone, and I would buy like five. I mean, you've got to get every color. Yeah, exactly. There's four colors. I'm actually not. I may actually get the yellow one and the black one. The yellow one is awesome. I love the way the black and gray one looks, but the yellow one looks amazing. All right, let's talk smartwatches, because we've seen a lot of smartwatches this year at CES. Okay, that didn't work. We saw some last year, but this year, they're everywhere. Pebbles out. Yeah, they're everywhere and they're all terrible. I wouldn't say they're all terrible. I would say most of them are terrible. I would say that there are significant improvements to earlier versions. We saw Pebble announced its Pebble Steel, which is a dramatic improvement on the hardware. I know that not everyone loves it, and some people have been critical of it, sure, whatever, but nobody can really deny that it's better than the first iteration of the- I bought it. Dieter bought one already. I'm excited. Does anyone here really not like the design? I like it. I would say that- It's not stunningly, oh my God, I'm so happy with the design, but after seeing the steel, seeing the orange Pebble that I'm wearing on my wrist right now, this is embarrassing. You know what? My girlfriend told me she loves me less when I wear it. I don't blame her for it, because look at this thing. My take on it is, if it was not a Pebble, if it was a regular analog watch, I would not really be into the design, because it's kind of a generic watch design. It is a Pebble, and it does this fun stuff that I like what my Pebble does, but it looks nicer. It looks nicer with a suit. It looks nicer when you're going out to dinner. You can wear it with a suit. You can wear it with a suit. I think it's a marked improvement. Not only is the design much better, but the build quality leaps and bounds above the plastic Pebble. That's me handling it in the video, by the way. My big claim to fame for the Verge is that anytime there's a new smartwatch coming out, I put about five of them on my wrist. You've got great wrists, man. We've got the Pebble here. It's great. It's the same thing as last year. It's way faster with this new OS, though. Which the old one will get. So if you have the first edition of the Pebble, you're going to get the upgrade to the new software. You should get all the benefits there. There's a slew of just garbage. Just take an Android phone and cram it on your wrist. And that exists. Someone did that. Before we finish with the Pebble, I just wanted to bring up a couple of points about the hardware. Firstly, and Dan was asking me about this because I was first to see the Pebble, the buttons on the side are much, much improved from the original Pebble. In terms of hardware, though, the guys from Pebble said that they're trying to keep the hardware platform consistent. So everything inside the new Pebble is the same as the old Pebble. Except for RAM. No, the RAM is actually the same. It's storage. Storage, except for storage. It had four megs of storage. It's now eight megs of storage. Oh, yes. Eight megs. Who's going to use more than that, right? And there is a final point, and this is actually kind of a downside. It also has a different magnetic charging connector, which isn't compatible between the two generations, which kind of sucks. But the first one was done to match the contours of the Pebble so they couldn't really keep it the same. The downside for me is actually that I'm not in love with either the leather or the steel strap for the new Pebble. And the connector is custom now, right? Well, actually- No, not so much custom. It's still standard, but it's a much rarer standard. The connector has teeth. So it's like if you look at the standard Pebble as a straight bar across, the new one has teeth, which Pebble says is actually still a standard size, but it's a little bit harder to find straps for. So if you want to swap the strap, you'll probably have to go to a specialty watch shop to find it, but it can be done. And they sold how many of these Pebbles? 300,000. Of the ugly horrible ones? Of the ugly ones, 300,000. The new one is the high box Mars 250. I'm sorry, we can't call them the ugly ones. My mother wants one of these. They're not ugly. The white one's pretty fetching. It's not bad. It's a white watch band, and it's all right. I saw someone with a gray one today. I'm into that. I haven't seen that in person. It wasn't ugly until I saw the new one, and then I was like, oh, yeah. The new one does look really good. That's the point. That's the point. And that is the really big distinction here, that they went for style, and they actually delivered. Except for the fact that they have the giant word Pebble on the face of the watch. Yeah, that's pretty rough. Yeah, no one's a fan of that. No one's a fan of the branding, but what can you do? I didn't think it was too noticeable on the dark gray metal one. Which one did you buy, Dieter? The dark gray metal one. Yeah, I think the dark gray is the way to go. That way, in dim lighting, the whole thing will just be a flat sheet of unreadable plastic instead of silver surrounding unreadable plastic. It's actually Gorilla Glass. Yeah, I was just- Is it really? Yeah. I've got an old way to find out these. It was Gorilla Glass 2, and they're going to be moving to Gorilla Glass 3 as production grows on. Okay. And the old Pebble is still going to stick around. Now it's the entry-level sporting model. Don't get me wrong. There's not another smart watch that I would recommend to anybody right now. Absolutely. It's a lot of the raft of low rent stuff that we've seen here. I'm also still not a huge fan of the metal watch. I know that a lot of people do like the new look, but I think it's just trying a little bit too hard. I'm also, they've got that four tile interface, which is good in theory, but in practice, at the end of the day, at one point, I just want a nice, big, cool looking. So a couple things there. For the, regardless of the four tile interface, that's their current interface, which they are loading on, they're showing their new design with the current interface. They say by the time the new design actually hits stores, they will have a revamped interface. So that's going to change. But I think what you're saying about the metal watch, and it's like, hey, it's not my style, that's speaking to the core issue of smart watches in general, is that if you look at the traditional watch market, there are hundreds of companies and thousands of different designs, because the watch that I like might not be the watch that Evan likes, not the watch that Dieter likes, or the watch that Vlad likes. But when you have these smart watches that are essentially a homogenous design, that doesn't necessarily work for everybody. So I'm with you. There should be lots of different kinds of smart watches. They should look all kinds of crazy different ways, and you should be allowed to wear them wherever you want, and whatever outfit you've got. I don't think we're in a smart watch prohibition. Well, it's possible. I would like to institute one, but we'll see. But the problem with that is if you're going to have that wide a variety of smart watches, all of those different companies are not capable of making the software not suck, and are not capable of pulling off the technology. And so we need, I mean, it's me, so of course I want everybody to sing Kumbaya and form a standard together. So when you think about analog watches, the standard is the hands. That's a standard way to tell time that every single analog watch sold everywhere uses. And there's some unique Tokyo concepts or whatever that brand is that makes those really weird watches that are really hard to tell the time on. But for the most part, you look at a watch from one company, you can read the watch from the other company. It would be great if smart watches had the same concept, they just vary their design. What I'm saying is like, Google, Google, Google, where am I looking? Right there. Google. Google. Google. Just buy Pebble open source software. No. Yes. And then everybody can use Pebble software. No, because then there's the Google Plus on there and it would be disgusting. No, Google. Okay, not Google. Apple. Which camera am I looking at? Don't do it Google, please. Please. Somebody just. No, thank you Google. It's okay. We need the software to be handled by somebody who knows what they're doing. Right. But yes, yes, absolutely. And you know, this is the thing. I now have the confidence that Pebble are that kind of company. Yeah, but there's no way that Pebble can make the wide variety of watches that I want to buy. Of course. Right now. Oh yeah, they're going to be a mass empire. A Pebble empire. So I think, what if Pebble licensed its software to other makers? Sure. So I think in the conversation of smart watches, the first instinct is to compare them to the litany of regular analog and digital watches that are out there. Like you're saying, there's a huge variety out there. But for me, for example, I don't wear a watch. I haven't worn a watch since I was in high school. Kids these days. Even that one was stupid. When you were a child, you did childish things, now that you're a man, you've given up watches. Put a watch on. Put a watch on, boy. You know, a lot of people I know don't wear watches at all. They never have. They're not interested in watches. Uh-huh. And I think really the smart watch... You do wear a wristband party rave ticket. You do have wrist accessories. I went to a concert or a club. This is a CES exhibitor patch. But I mean, I think... He's been exhibiting his pecs. Yeah. I mean, that's... I mean, there's always going to be that segment that doesn't wear watches. And the same thing that's always happening with... That's their game, though. It's going to be very hard for them to convince somebody who's been wearing a watch forever to move from a very high-quality analog or digital watch to a smart watch. But for people that have never worn watches, I think that sell is a lot easier. Yeah. Maybe. I'd take the point. It's an interesting... And you know what else? That is very much the case... When I first started writing about technology, I was still using a feature phone. I had a Sony Ericsson W810i, I think, which I really loved. Oh, man. It pays me to hear you denigrate that as a feature phone. It's an amazing phone. It's a brilliant phone. And it also lasted a good five or six days. Particularly if you're not terribly popular and you don't have to handle a bunch of calls, it just lasts. It was the Nokia age, right? So she had a T for Nokia, now dead, buried by Microsoft. Anyway... I really hope they squeeze that in. The situation then was, for me... You had a struggle to convince me to switch to a smartphone because smartphones just died. It was like one, two days, gone. I didn't have any struggle switching to a smartphone. I accepted the most painful experiences just to have the internet. Because he's saying... what he's saying is absolutely true. It was a trio. Which one? The 615. Oh, God. So young. I know. Right. I'm a much more of a late adopter than you guys. And to Evan's point, the usual watch wearer today is used to a battery life that is measured in years. If measured at all, right? Because you have automatic watches as well. They just don't worry about battery life. And that was me with my feature phone. I was like, I'm not going to worry about battery life for half a week. So that's why the most exciting concept thing I saw at CES was Intel's charging bowl. It's a bowl. I did not see this. Yeah, they had it in their keynote. It was... You know, you had the wireless charging pads or whatever. This was just a bowl. So you could just throw junk in it and it would charge everything in the bowl. And so, you know, for a phone, you don't want it in a bowl or whatever. But like, if we're going to live in a wearable age to have them all wirelessly charged and like get home and like throw your watch in there, throw your earrings in there, throw your whatever you got in there. That's a pretty dope idea. I'm with that idea. Because I throw my keys in a bowl every day when I get home. But D-D is really working hard to be in that super car today. Come on. I was not. Also like... Is that bowl a real thing? Yes. Well, I mean, they showed it off. Okay. Who knows? You never know with CES. You never know. Intel especially. There is a valid point. No, that's not fair. We had Frank Niuovo in the studio and we spoke with him today. And he was talking about that whole making technology relatable to people and not making it hard, you know, softening it a little bit with design. And I think that's exactly it. Like if you just gave people a flat wireless charger, that's technology to them, right? But if you give them a bowl, it's natural. It's like I'm throwing my keys in there. I arrive. I'm just putting my things into that thing. And it just so happens to be revitalizing and refreshing my technology. It just feels so much more natural. You know, it's like your mind just understands. It's like a spa for my gadgets. No, but seriously, the way that people think is through stories. Yeah, yeah. I hope that's what they call it. It's narrative. The gadget spa. The gadget spa. I like that. I'm just trolling you back for trolling me. We got to talk about these, the insane things that would happen to service plans. Yeah. These carriers just pretty much went nuts. Because everyone except for Verizon. So AT&T kicked it off and they announced that they are doing the sponsored data thing where they will partner with companies. They destroyed internet neutrality. They took net neutrality. They took it out back, shot it in the back of the head. Yeah, and then they lit some puppies on fire. It's just bad. Net neutrality puppies. Net neutrality puppies. If you don't understand how the internet works, it's not a series of tubes. It's puppies. They run the information. There's free range happy puppies and there's cage sad puppies that have been lit on fire. Yeah, there's AT&T puppy mill puppies. AT&T took the happy puppies and put them in a cage and lit them on fire. That is what sponsored data is. Also it makes your wireless plan cheaper because other companies can pay for your data instead of paying for it yourself. Right, so the concept is if a company wants to say promote a particular trailer for their movie, they can deliver it to your phone and the data that's used by that trailer does not come out of your data cap. Or if AT&T wants to pay for your data on maps, then that one is free to use and Google Maps sucks. It sucks because you have to pay for the data for that. So we've railed about this on the website, so I don't really see that we need to get too far into this other than to say that it's one of these things that sounds great but is a creeping thing that hurts the internet. I don't know to who it sounds great. I think it sounds great to consumers. If I could get Spotify and I know that Spotify is paying for my data and it's never going to count against my data cap, that's awesome. That means that I could maybe eventually pay for a smaller data amount from AT&T. And HD movies are pretty much impossible. I never stream movies over LTE, but if Netflix were paying the charges, I would do that all the time. That's awesome. Until the internet is ruined because of bird puppies. It puts the ball in AT&T's court to really pick winners and losers. That's a huge problem. It stifles... I know it's been talked about in the Verge cast to death, but it's just gross. After AT&T lost its mind or just continued to do what it normally does... This is like an escalating level of crazy... Sprint. This crazy level falls while the crazy level rises. We started at evil and kind of crazy with AT&T. Now we're in the middle of Sprint. Let's hear what's going on. This announcement happened and it kind of just got blown over by CES. I don't think many people realized what happened. Sprint announced these new plans called Framily Plans. I actually thought that was a typo. Everyone thought it was a typo. We actually got a scoop on this and the tipster tells us in the email, please read this. It's not a typo. The name of the plan is Family and Friends Together. There's your Framily. Framily and Friends. That sounds incestuous. The concept of it is you have a Sprint account and you have your data and your voice and your text. As you add more lines to it, your bill goes down. Every person that you add, up to seven people, your bill goes down by $5 per month. It's a pyramid scheme. Anyway, it's wireless service. The only thing that I'll say that's different than it's a period scheme is that everybody in it gets the same benefit. Because with a pyramid scheme, the person that starts it gets the most benefit and it falls down the ladder. It's like a suicide cult. Everybody gets together and everybody benefits. It's a suicide cult because everyone has to use Sprint. Also, it's called Framily. Could you imagine having to call the rep and say, could I please have the Framily plan? I'd like to be part of your family. I would be too embarrassed to ask. Can I be part of your family? Oh my god. I really want to be part of your family. But what this really is... You want to say five bucks? You want to be part of my family? Yeah, get in on my family. Hey girl, you want to join my family? So these are new contracts? So that's the important point. I'm good. And that's not... Want to join my family? I'm roaming internationally. I don't need to Framily. So Evan brings up an important point. This is actually Sprint's play following AT&T and T-Mobile to decouple the contract from the subsidy. Because these plans are not contracts. You have to buy your own phone and bring it. You can do Sprint's zero down payment plan. I can't remember what they call it. But once that's paid off, you're not paying any more for your family plan. But it is just insanity that they're calling it the Framily plan. It's really interesting that they're doing that. Because Sprint, their advertising is promoting a message of the low cost alternative. They're always offering the value. That's all they've got. It is all they've got. But shifting to this model where you do have to buy your own phone. I know that there are financing options available, but it is a divergence. If you want a high end smartphone on Sprint, if you're not on a contract, I'm not sure why. Well, anyone with a brain would buy the Nexus 5. Because it is available on Sprint. It's $350. An iPhone is going to be what Evan's saying, $650, $750. If it takes you more than a half an hour, and a half an hour is super generous, but it takes you more than a half an hour to decide if a plan is a good value for you or to figure out what plan you want on a certain carrier. Things are broken. And things are broken so far everywhere. Left and right. This is exactly what I had. Every single gimmick that every single one of these carriers have been introducing over the past six months in their reaction to T-Mobile, and we're going to get to that crazy instant of T-Mobile, is driving me nuts. And I give T-Mobile credit for forcing some simplification on their stuff and forcing everybody else to start reacting. But they're reacting like crazy people. And T-Mobile stuff isn't exactly the simplest thing out there, but it's moving in the right direction. And man, the fact that I had to sit here live on the internet and say the word Framily and it actually meant something, I hate the world. Right. But you know, my thought exactly was, I came across an AT&T ad on television, which I have to say American television is completely insufferable. I don't know how you guys live. You just don't get it. You've got great TV here. What are you talking about? I'm sorry? You've got great TV here. In your opinion. We can just agree to disagree. I'm sure that there are lots and lots of series as good as Breaking Bad coming out of- Bulgaria. Yeah. I wasn't going to go straight for Bulgaria. I was going to go for London, but then you've got Sherlock, and so that would have been stupid. It's true. Yeah. And I'm missing that. I haven't watched anything new. Anyhow, I'm sure there'll be spoilers in the comments. Yeah, thanks a lot guys. People love us that much. The ad that I saw was from AT&T, and they were pimping out their version, AT&T Next, their version of the whole decoupling thing. Oh God. And they're like, it's not complicated. You pay zero down. You get the phone for free. It's not complicated. And I was like, that's exactly what it is. When you get down to it, when you get down to figuring out when I'm not paying the upfront thing, how am I going to pay for it afterwards subsequently? And that's when it just becomes a complete quagmire. And you know what? Yes, these guys are crazy, but they're kind of that Homer Simpson, crazy like a fox. They're shrewd business. That's what it is. It's shrewd business. Well, they intentionally obfuscate. Intentional osmosis. So T-Mobile- By the way, this is the best sub-headline on an article we've ever published on The Verge. When we published the thing about AT&T's next upgrade plan, it was no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. I actually wanted one more no as a new sentence, but I got rejected, which is a bummer. So T-Mobile says it's going to fix all this garbage. Oh yeah, to review, AT&T, relatively high degree of evil, relatively low degree of crazy sprint, kind of meet in the middle. And now we're moving on to T-Mobile. If you're wondering where Verizon is in this equation, it's over there. Just AT&T, but double it. I'm off the screen. It's busy scheming for Spectrum. T-Mobile has this big press event here at CES. CEO John Legere has pretty much been off the rails all week. First he tries to crash AT&T's party. He does successfully crash it, and he gets kicked out by security. Such a stunt. Which is such a stunt. He claims he wanted to see the good old Macklemore. That's how you know that it was a lie. That's how you know it was fake. I just wanted to see Macklemore. I didn't think it would be inappropriate. Two days later, he gets on stage. Words that never should come out of anybody's mouth. Two days later, they have this press event, which has a lot of Macklemore playing. He gets on stage here now. It's on Carrier 4. And T-Mobile reveals that it's going to buy out your ETF if you switch over. So if you are on contract with AT&T or whatever other carrier, and it's going to cost you money to cancel your plan to come to T-Mobile, T-Mobile is offering to pay you. They'll pay that fee for you as long as you trade in your phone when you come over. Up to $350 a line, up to five lines? So yeah, up to five lines, $350 per line. And then if your phone is actually worth something, like say you've got an iPhone 5S on AT&T, they'll give you up to $300 for that. If you sell it to them. You have to trade it in to get them to pay your ETF. You have to trade in your phone. Why? That's part of the deal, man. That's stupid. Like there's plenty of phones on AT&T that work just fine on T-Mobile. Why would I have to trade in my phone? Well, the reason you'd have to trade in your phone is because of the SIM lock. But I thought we were past that. So what if I have an unlocked phone? So they can, there's an opportunity to pay you up to $650 per line for transferring over to AT&T Mobile, which is a pretty big deal. Yeah, his schtick was like, you can like, since AT&T is also paying people to switch over to them, like you could switch over to T-Mobile, have T-Mobile pay for it, if you don't like it, switch back and you'll end up making money in it or something. Yeah, so like if you, you could, you could, you can switch over to T-Mobile, get your ETF canceled and have that credit paid for, try it out because you're not under contract with T-Mobile now. Try it out for a couple months. If it doesn't work, go take AT&T's offer to switch back to AT&T where they'll give you $200 per person. Well, the party line is though, is that, you know, you're going to enjoy it so much while you're there that, you know, that you're going to stay. I mean, unless you live outside of a major, major area. If you leave the city- Then you're in a world of hurt. Do you understand exactly how all these, these details work, Dan? I think I do. You know why? Why? Because you don't have a life. Yes, it's true. I spent my life trying to decipher T-Mobile's plans and now I do not have a life. Ah, the CEO of T-Mobile. So I will have to say, hang on, the people might not know, the CEO of T-Mobile told Dan to his face, he doesn't have a life in response to a question, a legitimate question about the quality of their service outside of urban areas. So let me set this up because, you know, T-Mobile, if you've been following their press events, manager always gets on stage and says a bunch of stuff that gets a lot of headlines. By a bunch of stuff he means- He calls the other guys peckers, he drops F-bombs, he says shit a lot. They like horse shit, they like to say that a lot. He likes to say horse shit a lot, he makes fun of other CEOs' physical appearance, which, you know, personally I don't agree with that. Glass houses? That was a really, yeah, glass houses, man. I mean, that's a really low blow. I mean, make fun of, poke fun all you want at the business practice and things like that. Our image is quite fizzy right now. But, you know. Wow. We're just keeping that up. They've got him up on the monitor. So he's doing his usual shtick at this. He's dropping F-bombs. Oh no. He is insulting the industry. This is a nightmare. He is doing, this is, the thing is, this is a character that he's built up and now he's in this character. So, it comes time to Q&A at the end of the session and I ask the obvious question. You guys are talking, oh, not only do they announce these new plans, but they also are making, staking a claim that they are the fastest network in the US based on data from the speed test app that- That's an AT&T assist letter. On your smartphone. Yeah. So, they're making all these claims that they are the fastest network in all these various cities. And, you know, I asked, what about outside of a big city? Because if you're in a suburban area, if you're in a rural area, you guys do not have the footprint that the other guys have. And how are you going to fix that and what's your response? And his response to me was, you don't have a life, man. But then he said neither do I. He said neither do I because he seemed, like, that is kind of a bit of a dick move to do. To say to somebody's face. And then he proceeded to walk around my question. And then their CTO said some stuff, like, they've got some new spectrum that they're going to start using. So, they have some spectrum. There's a chance. They just bought $3 billion worth of spectrum from Verizon. They will not be getting that spectrum until the middle of this year. By the time they roll it out and deploy it, it's going to be well into 2015. The other problem is that they made a big point of taking down Verizon's recent network expansion because they said that if you don't have a recent Verizon phone, it's not compatible with that network. Well, guess what? When they launched this low band spectrum that they just bought from Verizon, if you don't have a recent T-Mobile phone that's compatible with that, it's not going to work. So they're going to be in the same boat. But I think this whole thing that T-Mobile does is a big kind of a bit of a clouding the details, but shouting out these loud points that they want everybody to know. They're picking up customers. And that's their marketing campaign. And they're these big loud press events. John Ledger is a marketing tool for the company. Level of evil, low, but level of like crazy, a little bit too high in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, I think they obfuscate a lot of the details. And I think that it's great that there's no contract and that you can try it out because you might buy a phone and take it home and it might not work for you. And that's a frequent thing that I hear a lot from readers. I experienced it myself in my home. T-Mobile has terrible service and I've got great service from AT&T and Verizon. And obviously that varies where you live. You have a life. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean to make you so mad. I just, I mean, it's easy to fall into the like, yeah, they're for the people, man. This is the uncarrier. This is like, they are changing things. They're fixing this and they are, and I'll give them credit. They're doing a lot of good things. They should swing by and get on the mobile show. Well, we got a chair right here. Obfuscate a lot of the details. And yes, John Ledger, come on. We'd love to have you come down. Talk on the mobile show. Talk with us. We'd love to have a chat. Tell us how this is not obfuscation. Honestly, this almost sounds like Boxer saying, I'd love to hang out with you. I'd love to hang out with you. Bring it on, man. Yeah, bring it on. Come over here. We're going to have a conversation. You and I, you and I. All right, John Ledger, you and I are here on the stage, which is getting torn down in about 30 minutes. We've got 29 minutes to get over here. So we're going to have a conversation right now. But wait, you said you had no signal at home. That's Kentucky, right? Yeah. There we go. John Ledger, Kentucky, take care of it. And Brooklyn, actually. I tried to switch. Upstate New York. And you know, anywhere outside of the major metro. But okay, but setting aside the crazy from carriers, let's talk about the crazy from hardware manufacturers. Because we had one guy who sounded crazy. He's not crazy, but he sounded crazy. He's a little crazy. And that was John Le Chie from Asus. Oh, man. Oh, man. He's bringing the pad phone to the United States at long last, after many, many dozens of demands on Facebook saying bring us a pad phone to the United States. I kind of think it... Here's what cracks me up about the pad phone. This is the Pad Phone X is coming to AT&T. It's the first pad phone sold in the US. The first Asus phone I could think of being carried by a major manufacturer, in recent years at least. And it's a five inch phone that slots into a nine inch tablet. And if you are familiar with the pad phone concept, that's what it is. What cracks me up though... No, no, that's the Pad Phone X. What cracks me up is that as these pad phones have gone along the line in development, this is now the third or fourth generation of them. Six. The phone... They make a new one when you're not looking. They don't change the name. And so you're like, oh, there's a pad phone. Every time the phone gets bigger and the tablet part gets smaller. So we're going to come to this point where the tablet will be smaller, the phone will be the exact same size as the phone, and they'll slot into each other. It's going to dock a seven inch phone into a seven inch tablet. And there will be a screen on it. I got to say, this show is all about inflection points. We're all about conversion and inflection points. So that's coming to the AT&T. I can tell you exactly how that's going to go down. AT&T announced it on stage at its developer event. I think AT&T has fulfilled its commitment to promote the Pad Phone X and will never forget to get the check. But actually the big news is that HTC is coming to the US in fours. Now they're really bringing a whole bunch of devices and most of the devices they're going to hope to sell are the Zen phones. But where are those going to be carried though? What kind of storage are they going to walk into? I think the Zen phones look not that exciting. So they don't look that exciting, but they are really affordable. And so is the Moto G. Can we take turns to just announce their pricing? I don't know how to top that. Should we do that? I mean, do we have the energy? Because I don't think we're allowed to announce the pricing in any way other than the way Johnny Sheese has it. Which is that the Zen Phone 4 will be available at 99 US dollars. And then the Zen Phone 5 will be available at 149. And the Zen Phone 6 is at 199 I believe. Anyhow, from 99 to 249, Asus has a phone for you. And Johnny Sheese has a yelling price point to tell you. And there's also the Padfone Mini, which is somewhere around four inches and sorts into a seven inch tablet. And amusingly, when Asus was doing this round up teaser video for all of these new phones, a lady took the Padfone Mini, slid it into a seven inch tablet, and just carried on her conversation. And it's a big fat seven inch tablet. It's amazing. It's like- Maybe she was running out of batteries. Yeah, that could be- That must be the case, right? So there you go. That just basically tells you that it's clearly better and superior to the iPhone. I really just, I don't know where this market is at. I think the Padfone concept was really radical when they first announced it. And it was like, wow, I can use one data SIM and I can use it in my phone, I can use it in a tablet, and I can use it in a laptop-like device. Because that one had a laptop dock. That was like back in the days of the Atrix though. The execution was so bad because the phone's processor at the time wasn't powerful enough to push a tablet. Tablet Android software back then was kind of abysmal. And the dock, I hate to say it, but Android doesn't work that well with a mouse and keyboard. So there's that idea, and I think they're trying to hold onto that idea and move with the times as Android tablet software has gotten better, phones have gotten bigger, and things like that. So is this better than carrying a good smartphone and a Nexus 7 or an iPad mini? Probably not, but that's the whole point. All I'm going to say is that with Asus, you get a lot of technology for your money. That's the one thing you can't deny. Actually what else happened that we need to handle? So Nvidia announced a new processor, it's got a whole bunch of cores in it. It's probably not going to be as good as the next processor that Qualcomm announced. I don't have time to talk about it. I can talk about Nvidia, just briefly. Okay, do it, fast. It'd be awesome. First of all, it has 192 cores of confusion. Cores of confusion is like... So if they give up to the claim that it is as good as last generation consoles, that's like legitimately exciting. And if it lasts more than 10 minutes on a battery, that's also legitimately exciting. I would agree with that. They're conflating the graphics processor cores with just general purpose cores, which is just not true. But if they're delivering a mobile product like an SoC, they can deliver last gen graphics, that's great. It's not last gen, but that's the whole point. The point is that they're bringing modern graphics in. So it's based on Kepler, right? Here's the thing that always happens to Nvidia. They beat everyone else to the market with these high powered processors, and then two or three months later, Qualcomm drops its next generation processor that is so much better and everyone forgets Nvidia exists in mobile. It's not always that much more powerful, but it's actually viable in a mobile device in terms of power and works with LTE. But generally in my experience when I'm comparing an Nvidia device to a Qualcomm device, the Qualcomm device is faster, snappier, more pleasant to use. But you see what Nvidia is doing is trying to play in a different playing field. It's essentially... Because I spoke with those guys after their presentation, and it really rather clarified the whole situation for me. Nvidia isn't trying to compete with all the other mobile chip makers. It's essentially trying to trickle down a PC part into the mobile space. What are they trying to do? Trickle down. But what are they trickling it to? Don't they need to sell stuff to people? That's the point. But hang on a second. They're trying to do something really quite ambitious, and I think it has viability with this K1 chip, because this is based on the K-Pro graphics, the K-Pro graphics core, which is already in the desktop graphics cards. And the point that they make, and this is something for developers and Nvidia to know, not for me to judge yet, but the point that they make is it's very easy to port a game from PC or console to the Tegra K1. Oh, so that's the thing. The Tegra chips actually support true OpenGL. And that is not OpenGL ES, but actual OpenGL that's used in desktop games. And that's a huge deal. Qualcomm does not have that. Are any games written for that? No. But the question is, does that... But you can make something with that. I'm with you. The chip is legitimately awesome. I will grant that and assume that, and I'll even grant that it's okay. But is that what sells chips anymore? Is that what sells devices anymore? Is it really? This is the point. When you had the Tegra 4, you had a more powerful chip than the other guys, but you had a big hurdle for developers to make games, and they had to code specifically for it in order to harness its power. And nobody was coding for it because nobody was buying the device. I'm granting all of this to you. I'm granting all this to you, but my question is, I don't care what chip is in the phone. But that's the point. You will start caring if there's games specifically for that chip. But is the thing that is most likely... When I'm a phone manufacturer or tablet manufacturer, am I most likely to pick the graphics chip or the chip that is power efficient and gets me LTE and is cheap? Because the cheap stuff is really close to good enough. Yeah, yeah. But that's the point. I think Nvidia wants to deliver experiences that the other guys just aren't interested in delivering. Right. Yeah, yeah. And all 15 of their customers are gonna be super pumped. Yeah. Yeah. For all those cars. Give me a moment. I need 10 seconds. Okay. You get 10 seconds and we gotta wrap up. But the point is Nvidia is trying to be high-end, is trying to be niche. But with this K1, with the lower threshold for porting games from PCs and consoles, it actually has a chance to succeed at that. A chance that it didn't really have with Tegra 4. Okay. So it's a more positive outlook. Yeah. That's all. I am... I'm wrapped. I am tentatively coming closer to your side of the thing. I want to believe that you're right. But I just... Still a lot to get it. I've seen Nvidia get beat up so much and go the wrong path for the past few years that I worry that it's happening again. I need to see them prove that they can sell stuff with the stuff in it. I agree. Yeah. Well, on that note, thank you for watching The Verge Mobile Show. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, you can and you should. We're all at Verge, but individually, I am Backlund. Dan is DC Seifert. Vlad is Vlad Sabov. Evan is Evan R. Rogers. Just Evan Rogers. Just Evan Rogers. Why do I think there's an R there? Pretty sure we could start over here. Oh, it's okay. It's okay. There's a D in it. That's the thing. There's a D in it. Oh, after the G. Yeah. Right. Number 40G. Yes. Well, thank you for watching, and we'll catch you next week, week after. I don't know. It's CES. Who knows what day it is anymore? It's like, what? Saturn? I don't know. All right. Goodnight, everybody. When you need me. Thanks for teaching me how to speak at school. See you later.