 Hey, welcome to the Verge Mobile Show. I'm Dan Seifert. As always, this is episode 35 for the week of February 11th, and here we are. I'm Vlad Savov, Dan's London-based compatriot. I thought I'd give a little introduction on myself. You're just supposed to do your name. Now you threw out my whole cadence. I'm Chris Stigler. To be fair, I threw out the whole cadence by saying my name before anything else. I'm never going to get the openers right. You're not a seasoned opener veteran like Dieter is, who is not with us this week. This is true, yeah. Unfortunately... The only guy who's done it perfectly so far is Dieter, just by being absent. Yeah, Dieter is covering an event today, so unfortunately he's not with us. We have us three, and we're going to talk about lots of fun things, like how cold it is and the fact that it's the middle of winter and I'm really over it. Yes, I would like to point out that I am wearing two hoodies today. I have one right here, got another one right there, and I've got these massive Sony headphones on top. Isn't London weather a lot like Pacific Northwest weather? You never get super cold in the winter, right? And you don't get a ton of snow? Right, but if you live here long enough, temperatures like zero degrees do tend to feel super cold to you anyway. Right. Zero Celsius, not freedom units. Zero degree commie units. Yeah. Yeah, it's like 41 freedom units here today, so it's actually pretty warm, but I'm still freezing for whatever reason. That's 29 here, and somebody is moving out of my building, so the door in the lobby has been open all day, and there's just this continual blast of 30 degree air coming into my unit through the cracks in the door. So if I either die or start shivering uncontrollably during the episode, that's why. I'll do it. I'm way ahead of you. Every single door that leads out of my apartment I've covered up with towels. Wait, I thought they were called flats there. What's the difference between a flat and an apartment? The difference is me choosing words. There's no technical difference. It's Vlad's mood. No, no difference whatsoever. The other thing is that there's also split level flats, so it's no longer technically just a flat piece of property. So do you know what a Maisonette is? I'm not familiar with a Maisonette. I know what a Raisonette is. A Raisonette? Yeah, I've had Raisonettes before. No, a Maisonette. Maisonette. No, I've not had a Maisonette. I'm sure I'm mispronouncing it. It's when you have your own entrance to the street into your apartment or your flat. Well Maison is French for house, right? Yeah, Maisonette being like a small house. A little house. A little house. And there's your French lesson for the day. There is your French lesson for the day. Here's a question, how do you say mobile in French? It's not handy, that's German. Le mobile? I don't know. I'd say let's ask our chat room, but sigh. Unfortunately. No more chats. So I guess let's talk about the news. What little news there is in the middle of the world. We're in this no man's land right now. I think I've said this the past couple of episodes 35s that we're in between major events. There aren't really any major announcements that are happening because everyone's saving it for their own event or for MWC or whatever. So it's like this kind of rumor land that we live in. And let's get right off with it with rumors. This week we saw another M7 image come out. Which I don't know if we wrote about it, but it is very similar to the first alleged M7 device that we saw hit the internet a few weeks ago. Which looks very similar to an iPhone 5 and it's got two grills on the front of it that appear to be speakers of some sort. And it completely contradicts the second set of pictures that looked more like an HTC 8X. So there's kind of like some drama going on here with these rumors. You know I have to say, you mentioned the first rumor slash leak looking like an iPhone 5. I think I said it first as well, but then Josh said, hey that looks kind of like a Z10 and I totally see it. Now that I, because I've seen pictures of the white Z10 and I totally see it. Yeah, well I mean, a lot of people say the Z10 look like the iPhone 5. Yes, that's a quick minute. At this point I think we're kind of way over analyzing this. Like the big slabs of glass with plastic or metal or some other materials around the side. I mean I find this, the one with big vents or the big openings out front, speaker holes or whatever they are, fascinating because usually you can have those big ones for the earpiece. Most of the time you only need like a small space for the earpiece. But HTC in particular loves to do like a whole horizontal bar of perforations. But having that at the top and at the bottom of the phone, first of all makes it kind of more symmetrical, which might not be a good thing for recognizing which way it's up. But then also it's like quite weird and random. I mean what are we looking at here? Is this going to be like a stereo speaker setup, like a big multimedia device? I don't know. Or is somebody just going to mirror the top in Photoshop? I still think there's at least a chance that it's going to end up looking like the second. I mean who knows? Many of our listeners are probably familiar with this Twitter account, EvLeaks, which has established itself as one of the predominant leakers of phones on the internet. And that account is saying that the original image is accurate. It's so weird to me. It's such a dramatic departure from what I'm used to HTC devices looking like, whereas the other one is less of a departure. But hey, I mean after Samsung's intentional, very intentional deception leading up to the launch of the GS3, I would believe anything at this point. Yes, that's true. Which actually reminds me, Samsung's launch of the Galaxy S3, this was perhaps the best kept secret, so the Android flagship devices for a long time, Galaxy S3. And then in the actual launch event, they quite naturally had people walking around with the phone in their hands, trying to be discreet, but still carrying the Galaxy S3 around at the launch event before they announced it, which to me was just such a dumb move. Because like you say Chris, I can't remember the misinformation being spread so nicely and so well as Samsung did with the Galaxy S3. We had at least three borderline credible looks. I mean it was still, again, a big slab of glass with plastic or metal around the sides of it. And maybe I'm just being jaded, maybe it's the code or maybe whatever it is, but I'm with Dan. Like this is such an underwhelming period in our lives, in the calendar. Nothing is thrilling or exciting. What do you want a phone to look like, Vlad? Do you want it to be like the Beats logo? Do you want HTC to make like a giant bee? Would that satisfy you? No, but here's a good example for me, which is the Lenovo hybrid device, whose name escapes you at the moment. The Yoga? Not the Yoga. It's a tablet that plugs in and becomes a laptop. And you can essentially slot in the tablet one way and it's a laptop, slot it in the other way and it's a really thick tablet. Again, it works with keyboard. It was something they showed off at CES. Again, hybrid devices, we've had them before and we've seen things like the Yoga and the Asus Tai Chi, which is one of those things that was announced like eight or nine months ago, way back in Computex last year and still isn't really on sale anywhere. So we've had all of these hybrid devices with laptops and yet this, the Helix, that's one. Think that Helix. And yet the Helix still feels very much fresh. It is doing something original. It is doing something wholly new and I really enjoyed it. I'm not sure that it would necessarily improve my life all that much, but I just enjoyed the novelty of it. So, and that's the other thing. You asked me how do you expect a phone to look. Well there's nothing inherent in a phone, whether it be a smartphone or any other mobile device that says it needs to have a screen or it needs to have a massive screen or it needs to be dominated by a screen. Like you could use a 3 inch screen and then do something else with the rest of it. And you would have like a Blackberry from 2006. Well I didn't say stick a freaking keyboard on it. But like what else would you do? If you, I mean like even, I'm not. Just to be clear Dan, a Blackberry from 2006 and a Blackberry from 2012, no difference. There's no point in like citing an older date. You said you could shrink the screen down to like three inches or something absurd. Like I would love to see somebody smarter than I come up with a smartphone form factor that isn't just a giant screen wrapped in plastic or metal. I don't know what that would look like. It would be kind of weird. Obviously the form of these things or the necessity to have a display like that kind of dictates how much you can do with the design and the fact that people want them thin and light and you know, such and such. I think that the last design that really blew me away was when Nokia released the N9 and then they've been using that design language for the Lumia series since then. That was the last hardware design where I was like whoa, that's some really awesome hardware design that actually looks different, it feels different, it's just a different experience. The one that really blew me away was the Sony Tablet P which I just Googled and Amazon is selling it right now for $275. Man, that's a deal. I know, right? Like that's not much more than a Nexus 7. Is that still running like Honeycomb? It's running 3.2. Yeah. Okay, that was such a hardcore throw. I think we should just let Crystal run fast six right now and get that out of time. There has been an upswell of desire for people to hear us talk about fast six. Well I mean, what is there to say? I mean, just sit back, relax. I watched that trailer. And you want to see the movie, right? Well, I pretty much know the entire script of the movie, weak and flaky and not as inconsequential as it is. Vlad, you're looking at it completely wrong. I mean if you're looking for great dialogue and a great script and a non-predictable storyline, I mean you're not looking at fast six. But if you're looking just like for a great movie that's going to be awesome on every other level and have explosions and the Rock or Vin Diesel driving out of an aircraft carrier of some sort, then fast six is where it's at. Dan, I would challenge you on the not interesting or complicated plot thing. I think that this is actually going to be one of the most intellectual movies of 2013. And I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. Because when you watch them hook a cable, like they're driving along, right? They hook a cable or something from the car to the giant cargo aircraft and somehow pull the wing down and cause it to crash. And then Vin Diesel, of course, comes out of the front of the plane. Breaking down the physics of exactly how this car was able to cause this aircraft to crash is going to take physicists generations to compute and flesh out. There's going to be major thesis papers written on the physics used in fast six. I love that justification. Fast six is going to stimulate scientific progress. But it will grind to proof by policy for how the hell they managed to make those stunts happen. Yes, finally you guys see it my way. That really does make me sad. I had the same complaint about the fifth one, Fast and the Furious Five or Fast Five or whatever you want to call it. Which is that Vin Diesel is aging now and he hasn't actually had his shirt off in a movie for a very long time. And he's not the same imposing presence that he was back in the days of Pitch Black and his Pete. He bulked up for the sixth one. If you look at the three works. He's not cleanly bulked up. He's still like half the size of the Rock. He's pretty big. To me, it's kind of cheap because the Rock is kept in shape. If he goes and fights somebody I can credit that and expect some fireworks. But Vin Diesel is kind of like, I'm just still keeping big. I'm still filling out a shirt here. I'm hoping you guys still remember when I was fit. But all I'm saying is that if you encountered Vin Diesel in a bar and he took a beer bottle and cracked it on the bar and came at you. You would probably... Oh yes, a dude with a weapon. Yes, I would be afraid. No, even with his bare hands you would probably wet yourself. Is my guess. I would. I would start joking very intensively in the opposite direction. Well there you go. Yeah, look, I'm just saying that I think that all of our viewers should see this movie. I think it's a very important movie. And frankly, it's a movie that we're going to discuss a lot over the coming weeks. It's a really important movie in the canon of our culture and our time. I think it's going to really grab that and speak to us and speak to this generation. Yes. Exactly. I'm full group with you guys. As soon as we do episode 36 is when we stop talking about episode 36. But it's not much different than episode 35. Also for our viewers who are trying to catch up with the series, my standard recommendation is that you watch 1, 2, 4, and 5 and then save Tokyo Drift for a separate viewing. I can't tell you why that's important without spoiling anything. But just know that you want to watch Tokyo Drift last. Yeah, 1, 2, 4, 5, and then watch 6 and then go back and watch Tokyo Drift. You'll have a very positive Fast and Furious experience. I keep thinking this is a joke and then Chris carries on talking about the damn movie. It's a fantastic series. Well, I can tell you this. If you do the, as Chris recommended, 1, 2, 4, 5, and you watch 3 afterwards, that jump from 2 to 4, you're not going to be lost when you get to movie 4 because you haven't seen Tokyo Drift yet. Now, it's not exactly going to the ranks here. The narrative depth and the character depth aren't all that challenging. It's a stunt stuff with a challenge. But let's actually bring it back. We were just talking about form factors and innovation. LG today released the specs for its new Optimus L Series 2. It's such an exciting innovation. But I managed to drag down some photos and they have a rainbow color around the home screen. It can be rainbow-y. Well, basically they have LED lights around the home button. That's what I'm trying to say. So you can have a rainbow pattern. You can have a red, a yellow, whatever else. So that's the Optimus L Series 2 coming to MWC. It's exciting stuff. Yay! Guys, I just want to say it right now. I don't want to be the guy who just takes photos and pretends to be excited about these things at MWC. Well you know, I think we've kind of had a few discussions about this among members of the team in the past few days. The fact that I think that this MWC, it's kind of going in the same direction as CES. The premier manufacturers want to have their own events to launch their flagship devices. We're seeing HTC do it later this month. Samsung obviously is going to do it next week, I think. So that kind of opens the door at MWC for interesting new trends to emerge. At CES, one of those trends was the emergence of Chinese players like Hisense who are really trying to break in to the US market. And my suspicion is that we're going to see a lot more of that at MWC. I'm sure that Huawei and ZTE are going to factor prominently into the narrative there. We'll see. I just don't see it as being a show for traditional flagship launches anymore. Totally agree, yeah, I feel like Huawei and ZTE in trying to establish themselves, sticking to the same pattern, the one that has a history and a track record, which is again, hit the big shows and hit them with your biggest stuff. So you know, CES, MWC, etc. But absolutely, the big brands, the ones that feel confident in their own name and their own ability to attract press attention are breaking up. I mean, HTC, the past few years has made MWC its absolute main event of the year. In fact, it just come to MWC in the strongest possible fashion, brought its finest devices. It was the Droid Incredible 2, I believe, well, the Incredible 2 two years ago and the HTC Flyer, those are the two lead devices. I was just going to say, I couldn't remember what was two years ago. I still don't understand why people didn't, you know, felt bad about the Flyer. I think it was a big old chunky thing, but it was still very robust. I know because I dropped it a few times, it's actually a medium-sized. I think we know that robustness does not make for a great tablet experience. That's like one of the smallest factors. When that launched, didn't it launch with like 2.3? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it did. It did, it did. It didn't have Honeycomb. And at the time, this is how innocent we were back then, at the time of MWC two years ago, we thought Honeycomb was the tablet OS to have. Well, aside from that, obviously. But it was like, if you want Android on a tablet, you have to get Honeycomb. You have to get pretty close. Yeah, you're not even in the conversation without Honeycomb, which is just laughable to think about. Whereas, we just discussed the tablet P, right? Having Honeycomb. So we don't have that on turnout. But aside from how the fortunes of those devices have gone, yes, HTC is breaking off. And now, out of the big brands, we only really have Sony and LG hanging out. And LG is doing the standard thing of pre-announcing and pre-empting itself. So by the time MWC rolls around, everything in LG's lock is going to be out in the open. So all we really have is, I guess, French players. You know, guys like Mozilla who are doing Keynote. Maybe we'll see something on Firefox OS, maybe on that front. Yeah, that's the thing. Over the next 12 to 18 months, we're going to see this new tidal wave of players who want to break into the smartphone market in weird or interesting ways. We have Firefox OS, we have Sailfish, we have Ubuntu. Do we have Sailfish? What happened with those guys? They're in the mix, right? They're in the mix, but it just kind of hilarious to me because we still didn't have their launch event. You go to BuildBuzz and then Zip, Silent System. I know they haven't like, a few months of space, but yeah, we just kind of... Well they haven't shipped a product yet, right? Well none of these guys have. So that's what I'm saying. I think that we're going to see... I don't even know, I have no concept of how this is going to play out because it's kind of unprecedented in the mobile business. We have Blackberry and Windows Phone fighting for third place, but then right beneath them we have this entire groundswell of companies who are established and are doing interesting things in other spaces who want to break into the smartphone market and they're doing it with a business model that is fairly different from the bigger guys, right? Because all three of those platforms are very open and very free. And so I think that those are... My guess is that those are probably the biggest threat to Android, which is as popular as it is globally only because it's free. So it'll be very interesting to see what percentage of that end of the market those new players can steal in the next couple years and which of them will survive. Because I doubt that all three will. You know, a few carriers will throw their weight behind one or two of them and then the rest will fall by the wayside. We've seen Firefox West get some traction with I think Telefonica and Ubuntu I'm sure is going to get some pick up. Sailfish is probably the one that's on the bubble right now. And there's also Tizen. Tizen, yeah. Which I think, you know, Tizen of all of them probably has the most support from carriers and I know Samsung's been spoken of Tizen as well. Yeah, but the reason why Tizen has so much carrier support is because it isn't an operating system designed for consumers, it's an operating system that's designed for carriers. In many ways it's the successor to the Limo Foundation or Limo or however you pronounce it. Where it's, you know, it's more about the infrastructure underpinning the phone and then carriers can do whatever the heck they want on top of it and really the only commonality between devices on different carriers is the fact that they can all run the same apps. But the presentation of the phone, the capabilities of the phone, it varies completely from carrier to carrier. You know, you'll just go to Vodafone and you'll get a phone that's running Vodafone OS but really it's running Tizen. Tizen isn't even, I mean, they're not even looking at Tizen as being like a brand that consumers are going to be expected to recognize. Yeah. Right, because with these big shows, CSNWC, the only invitations we're getting from Tizen is like, come meet our executives. We'll buy you guys dinner and stuff. But there's no event, there's no major announcement. And exactly as Chris says, I don't think they care to make a consumer facing pitch and to have a consumer facing brand, which to me essentially seals the fate of this entire piece of software because in the grand history of mobile phones, which includes epics such as Snake and Snake, has the best software on a mobile phone ever, there has never been a good piece of carrier customization software. Well, it's funny because this Tizen thing makes me think of what Verizon used to do with its feature phones. And they all, like you would buy a phone from Verizon and every single phone on the shelf ran the same exact operating system that was like… And it was garbage. Well, it was terrible, yeah. And those were all flashlight, right? Those were flashlight. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you probably know better than I do what was actually running on them. But it was like you could just drop one phone and pick up another and it's the exact same menu and it was a nightmare. It was terrible. So it just makes me think that a carrier is going to do that but with a line of smartphones and it just makes me kind of cry. There is at least one exception to what you said. I largely agree with you. Most carrier customization is complete garbage. But the one thing that I've always enjoyed and T-Mobile has never been keen on pushing it is T-Mobile's UMA where you can just… Pretty much any phone in their lineup, I don't know if this is still the case, but at one time you could buy pretty much any phone in their lineup and Blackberry, Android, whatever and connect to Wi-Fi and then you'd be making and receiving calls with your number over the Wi-Fi network and not using minutes and you don't have to worry about reception and it's great. I'm assuming that's still the case. I honestly haven't tried it. I think it was on a per device basis. It wasn't every device that supported it but it was like the larger or more popular models and I know they pushed it on the Blackberry models a lot for whatever reason. That is a very good and very valid rebuttal, Chris. Absolutely. That's about the only example I can think of. But aside from that, I just want to return to the previous decade. About exactly 10 years ago and all I can say is just as color screens were starting to come out, we here in the UK were treated to some of the most appalling software from these carriers. It was things like you put up the phone and then you have to go through this 15 second animation where you get one frame a second of the O2 bubbles bubbling up. It was like, do, do, do, do. And Vodafone. Well, they're still like that. It's a big theater and it's packed and you hear people start to turn off their phones and I hate to generalize it this way but it's generally older people who might be in the movie theater turning off their non-smart phones and you hear this like noise that's like obnoxiously loud and you know their screen is lit up with some bar animation from AT&T as it shuts down their prepaid phone. I don't know if we have any Tim and Eric fans listening but there is an episode of Awesome Show that is about the shutdown animation and sound on cell phones where Tim dies and Eric is speaking at his funeral and he goes to shut off his Cinco cell phone and it takes like a minute and a half to shut down and it's this ridiculous song and it's great. But I'm guessing most of you have no idea what I'm talking about so never mind. I'm on your beat. I'm on your wavelength there. Well, as I say, this is the season for us. We've got nothing to do until MWC comes around. Well I can tell you what I'm doing. I'm waiting for my Nexus 4 charging orb to arrive because I actually had the ability to buy one this week which is like amazing. Out of the blue, it came out of nowhere. Google throws this thing up for sale for $59.99. Yeah it costs like a billion dollars. After shipping and tax it cost me $71 for this thing which is insane because it's literally like a magnetic puck that transfers power to my phone. But it's wireless, right? Yeah I mean it has to be plugged into something but the connection to my phone is wireless. I guess compared to the Touchstone from Palm was like $70 at retail but quickly went on the clearance shelf so that's when I bought mine. But I guess it's a comparable price. I don't know. It's comparable to other Qi wireless chargers I guess. It still just really bothers me that Nokia's main Qi charging pad that they started selling in concert with the Lumia 820 and 920 isn't really compatible with the Nexus 4. And Tom recently discovered this who I believe may be watching the show right now. Tom has a Nexus 4 and he probably has many of these charging pads actually. They aren't really compatible with one another. It's no longer standard. The whole point is it's supposed to be a standard. And the great thing about those Nokia pads is that they're pretty cheap. I want to say they're $39 and for a long time, I don't know if this is still the case, but for a long time you can get one for free if you bought a Lumia 920 on AT&T. Now correct me if I'm wrong, the Nokia pads don't have any magnets in them, right? You kind of just put your device on and it just stays there. It doesn't get held in place or anything. They offered them with a, what's that pillow company? There's like a thing, like a pillow that you can put it inside and then the phone rests on the pillow. Is it called Fat Boy? Is that it? Yes, yes, that's right. I recall this. I don't think you put the standard wireless charging pad. I think they actually sell pillows which have wireless charging built into them. No because I got sent the Fat Boy and the pad and one end of the Fat Boy is Velcro and you open it up and slide the charger in. I mean maybe they sell it as a bundle, but it's just the regular pad. So without the magnets, it kills the best application I could think of for a wireless charging thing which is in my car. When I had a Palm Pre, I actually mounted a touchstone charger in my car's dash. So I would just get in my car and I'd pop my phone on it and it would be held in place by the magnets and charge while I was driving. It was the best thing ever. Yeah, I think Dieter would agree with you on that. He has talked about that use case on many occasions. I kind of agree with any of that because I don't drive. How do you take the tube man? Every time I'm in London, I go to get on the tube and it pulls up to the station and people are pressed up against the glass. And half of the trains, I mean every line has a different kind of train and some of the trains on some of the lines are only four feet tall. I guess maybe because British people are tiny, I don't know. So people are kind of bent over and pressed up against the glass. If you're claustrophobic, you would quite literally die on these trains. And even if you aren't, you might suffocate. So I don't know what you do. Just to point out, while you have your face pressed up against the window, that person has a newspaper in front of their face. That's the other thing. So it doesn't matter how busy it is. Somebody will whip out a newspaper. And it won't even be like a high class brochure like the Guardian or like a nice big, something like the Financial Times. It's not even worth your time. No, it will be the Metro. It will be just the freebie newspaper that you put up on the train onto the tube. And that will just be like this. And then the top of the newspaper will poke into the back of the person in front of it. And the person in front of them will get animated by it and poke into the back of them. Because they're British, they won't complain about it. They'll just let it happen. And then that anxiety and angst is going to build up in them. And they're not going to move down when space opens up in the middle. So then what you find is you get these clusters of people just completely jam-packed like sardines right next to the doors. And you've got some jackass in the middle with his arms spread wide open like this, just standing. I'm enjoying this London Tube experience. But ultimately, the reason why you don't drive in London is because there's just too many bodies and too many people here. It's too much for everyone. Well also there's the congestion fee, right? Yeah, but you know, we're rich people. We don't really care about that. Oh, we don't worry about that here. We're all wealthy. Yeah, we were a world empire at one point. Yeah, we're still exposing that in some fashion or another. I don't know. Why am I speaking in we? I'm Bulgarian. I just said that. Well last time I was in London, I almost missed my flight out of town because I was in Canary Wharf and I kept waiting for trains to Paddington. I had to connect, I can't remember. But trains kept going by and every single one was like that. It was like a Saturday morning at like 8 a.m. or something. I'm like, where are you people going? You should be sleeping right now. Wait, there might have been a football match because that's the other reason when things get really clustered up. Just before we bring it back to some more same topics, I would just like to point out a major, major flaw with the iPhone 5 and any other devices using metal. They feel like absolute hell when you're trying to use them in the cold because they pick up the same temperature and you pick up the phone and you're like, I just want to get something done really quickly and put it back down. Because otherwise you have to, I don't know, tuck them in under your shirt and warm them up with some body warmth or something. I'm really put off using the iPhone 5 right now because of its freaking metal surround. And you think if you had a Lumia 920 you could wear gloves? Exactly. That's, yeah, that is true. I have tried to swipe the iPhone with gloves on a couple of times over the past week or so and just needed one of those little jingles like uh-uh. You need to get those capacitive gloves, man. Those are the ones that have capacitive fibers. I do have a pair of those but the problem is that you don't have the resolution on your gloved fingers to really do anything anyway. Well I mean I wouldn't go banging out emails with it but you can answer the phone. Right. I didn't tell you guys, I dropped some serious knowledge on GM last week. I was at an event, a press event for the Cadillac ELR which is their new extended range electric. It's like basically an upscale volt coupe. And the event was in Chicago and one of the journalists there asked the question, can you use the touch screen with gloves? And the chief engineer said, well no, it's a capacitive touch screen. You can't. It needs to detect iron in the hands. I can't remember what he said. And I actually piped in. Like I couldn't resist. I piped in. I'm like, actually, Synaptics has a touch screen technology employed in the Lumia 920 that allows you to use it with gloves. And they're like, oh, you do it. But the long and the short of it is that I think I dropped some serious knowledge on GM. I just wanted to point that out. And you'll never be invited to a GM thing ever again. Whatever. If I'm going to drop knowledge, I mean, don't they want me there? Like maybe they would have never found out about these glove compatible capacitive touch screens had I not been at this event. And now they know. And so now when the next generation Cadillac ELR has a glove compatible touch screen, you have me to thank. Also, I would like to point out a resistive touch screen sighting. I think we should keep track of those. I agree. Since then, it's just completely gone to the dumps ever since Nokia abandoned them and finally got onto the capacitive bandwagon. But I did discover one resistive touch screen. And it took me about five minutes to realize it was resistive. It was like, it's going to be such an ancient technology that you keep trying to treat it as like a capacitive or an optical touch screen and you keep trying to give it your full finger and flesh and whatever. But no, it was resistive. And the place where it was is in IKEA in London. So IKEA. Yeah. I reviewed a Sony camera a couple months ago, I guess now, that actually had a resistive touch screen on the back. And what was weird was the prior model of the same camera, the prior version of it had a capacitive screen and then the newer version had a resistive screen. And I was writing about how it was much less responsive without realizing that it was actually a resistive screen until later on. Nice. I don't know why Sony did that, but they did. Nokia 5800 Express Music. Long live the 5800. I tried to use it as my personal phone for an hour or two. I was going to say that because it lasted long. I barely survived. Did you have the white and purple one from T-Mobile? No, no. I think it was all black. I think it was an international unit. Oh, I was going to say, but I'm eulogizing. So we can actually use that as a really good segue into Nokia moving past its old ways because this week, yesterday in fact, November to February, was the two year anniversary of Nokia Microsoft hooking up officially. And Nokia is switching to Windows Phone. So do you have any thoughts on how that's gone? What you're telling me is that it was two years ago that Stephen Elop jumped off the platform and he's still treading water hoping that the helicopter would come and pull him out. That's what's happening right now. He's probably getting a little cold. He's running out of protein bars. He's worried about the sharks that are circling. And also, there is still the burning platform that could collapse at any second and fall on top of him. So things are not looking very good for Mr. Elop. Yeah, I mean, obviously they still have a long way to go if they want to survive. You know, we're starting to hear about this catwalk, codename catwalk, which is supposedly the replacement for the 920. Although we're starting to hear some conflicting information. Catwalk is definitely a codename for a next generation Nokia device. The only question is what it's going to be. We're also hearing about this tablet, which seems an inevitability at this point. That might be something we see at MWC actually. So yeah, they have a few things going on, but there's still no sign of what's going to be that blockbuster device that pulls them out of the decline and really gives them something to rally around. Well, as far as Nokia is concerned, the blockbuster device is always the next one. Right. That's exactly right. That always seems to be the case. Yeah. That's exactly right. So, yeah, I'm still the next one. Yeah, and you know, Microsoft, Tom has talked about this many times, Microsoft used a really kind of bizarre marketing and retail strategy for the Surface that may have given Nokia an opening if they can do something. If they can come out with like a really compelling looking device and sell it in all the right channels, which I'm not convinced they can do, but you know, maybe that's an opening for them. But yeah, they need to, I mean, hey, excuse me. Like I said last week, they sell the stake in Virtu and they're doing interesting things. Interesting is one way to put it. Yeah. Another way to put it is $10,000. That's the thing, you're not buying like, you're not buying them like in a 10,000 unit bulk shipment. That's for one device. With a WVGA display. Look man, I'm just saying, Nokia's, or I guess Virtu I should say, is definitely turning a profit on each one of these that it sells. And Nokia does still own a small percentage of Virtu, so maybe they'll get some benefit from this. But hey, you know, we talked about Virtu either last week or the week before and the story remains the same. I mean, to Virtu's point, the typical Virtu customer is not looking for a bleeding edge device. They don't care about specs. They just want something that has some bling to it and costs a lot of money and Virtu is happy to oblige. Oh, and there's the concierge button that we talked about. The very important concierge button. Yeah, that takes up like $9,000 of the $10,000. Right. You press the button, you can ask for quite literally anything and they will help you. Including the weather app. You know, but if you're in midtown Manhattan and you want to ride an elephant to your flight at LaGuardia, I'm sure that the concierge would be happy to do that. You don't need Uber. No, you don't need Uber. If you're a baller, you will ride an elephant. By the way, I literally just got an email from Microsoft that says, fall for your Windows phone all over again. Which I'm assuming is a reference to Valentine's Day. I'm not sure. They say that parents and kids love it. Discover new apps, including Chimpact and dictionary.com. Those are the apps that they're highlighting? Chimpact? Chimpact and Discovery. Not Spotify, which recently hit. No, there's WizTiles, Photofunnia, Chimpact, AE Coin Mania, the Path of Kara, Sleepbug, and Soundhound are the highlighted apps. So this is actually some really handy consumer advice right now. It is, because I would have never heard of Chimpact had it not been for the C-mail. And then there are a couple videos highlighting features where you can tap the phones together to exchange information, and you can get a Bing lock screen. So lots of exciting news in the world of Windows phone right now. Yay. That was very exciting. But actually, I want to sling back to Virtu so I can get a really nice segue in. Okay. So Chris was just saying about the idea of Virtu owners being people who just want something exclusive, something that other people don't have, something that you can go to your local Starbucks and put it down on the table and feel comfortable that you won't see on anybody else's table, because nobody else's is ridiculously dumb as you. But oh, Welfie. You're really dumb when you're Welfie. That's really the Virtu logo. Not logo, but motto for the dumb and the old Welfie. I don't think they'll be picking that up for me, but it's fine. And my segue is actually we can bring this in to mailbox for iPhone, because there is this caricature of iPhone owners being somewhat elitist, which was brought to life quite vividly with the Instagram situation. When Instagram went to Android, a lot of people freaked out and were like, oh no, now the unwatched Android users are joining our exclusive little community, et cetera, et cetera. So if this elitist group doesn't actually exist, this caricature doesn't actually exist, mailbox is the perfect app for them, because it has a massive waiting list at the moment, which has reached something like three quarters of a million. Yeah, sucks for you guys still in it. Whatever, man. I am in the cool club now. And so I believe I got it yesterday morning. My ticket finally came up. So is it awesome? So as far as an app goes, it's very well designed and it's very fast. As far as an email processing thing, I don't know if I agree with everything that it's trying to do. It does a lot of weird things that are like, if you're a Gmail user, you generally are using Gmail for a couple of reasons. One of them originally was threaded conversations, great spam reporting, and then later on, everybody or anybody with a brain adopted labels and muting. And labels and muting are not supported in mailbox, which drives me nuts, because I label the crap out of things. Every time that I get an email in that's related to MWC, I give it an MWC label and I put it in that label, and then I can go look at those later and see all my MWC stuff together. Well, I think the problem, my guess is that it's not that they don't want to support labels, but I don't think that labels are exposed in any way. No, because like Sparrow, the old Gmail app that everybody used to use before it got put out to sea, supported labels with no issue. Oh, really? Yeah, I mean, that supports full labels, so I can... Well, Sparrow didn't have an issue in supporting label colors, and if you're as anal as I am, that was a complete deal breaker. The point was that I could look at an email in my inbox, I could label it properly, and then archive it and get it out of my inbox. But Mailbox doesn't give me that option. I can just get it out of my inbox. They have, like, Mailbox has its own separate set of labels that it creates, and I can give it one of those, but I can't give it one that I'm using for my account for other things, which is kind of crazy. Otherwise it does, like, a lot of really smart things with your conversation view, and it smartly removes all of, like, signatures and all of the other crap that comes in an email these days, so when you're looking at it on your phone, you're only seeing the message itself, which makes it easy. But I don't know if it'll be something that I can use in the long term, unless these features get added in the future. Just to clarify what I said, Sparrow does support colors for labels, but it doesn't immediately pick up the colors you already have on your Gmail Web view, which is one of the things that's annoying me about it. But hey, Sparrow is now part of Gmail itself, so we're gonna experience the benefits of those things. Yeah, I mean, if Google doesn't, like, take the basis of Sparrow and turn it into Gmail for iOS, I don't know what they're high on. As great as the Gmail app is now, has been updated with lots of new features and things like that and supports a lot of functions, like multiple accounts and whatever, it's still a pretty crappy web app that reloads all of your data every single time, and it just kind of feels janky. It doesn't feel like a native app, whereas Sparrow felt great and was fast and all that other stuff, so... Which, and Mailbox is. And Mailbox has push notifications, which is awesome. Well, that's fair enough, but I've actually grown used to the Gmail app on iOS. I know it has a ton of improvements that it can add and a ton of areas where it can improve, which is the same thing, said a different way, but, you know, I've grown used to it. I'm using it on a daily basis. And like Dan says, I feel like a lot of the things that Mailbox does are just a bit too much. I have to trust the app too much. I admit I'm not part of the cool club, but I saw Ellis' excessive hands-on with the application, and it does things like when you send it off, when you want to set aside an email, you can set aside, let's say, until tonight or until next week or until such and such date, and then it essentially redelivers that email when you're ready to deal with it and to handle it. It's fine, I guess, but it also imposes a whole new paradigm for handling email on you. So you either have to fall in love with it and really support it, or you have to go and look for alternatives, I think. It's also just kicking the can down the road. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, yeah, you need to deal with email. The thing that I don't like about these mobile email apps that are trying to do, like, you know, innovative things with email handling is that that experience is not consistent across – you're not just accessing your email on your phone. You're accessing it on your desktop, your laptop, your tablet, wherever, and then, you know, if you get used to, say, Sparrow or Mailbox or whatever, then you go back to Gmail on the web and it's, you know, half of those features aren't there. So that's something to consider. I don't know. I will say this. I think that these Mailbox guys missed a key opportunity to charge, say, $10 to jump the line. I think – Or just charge $10 for the app. I mean, people would have bought it up, hand over fist for it. That's true. That's very true. Yeah, charge $10 for the app and then another $10 to jump the line and they would have had a winner. But then we would all be complaining about the cost of Mailbox. They can't really win. I actually totally agree with Chris that that would be – and hey, I don't think that opportunity is gone. Like, they could do it right now and just keep padding out the number. Like, make it 20. Make it 50. Like, you want to jump half a million spots? 50 bucks. 50 bucks. Yeah. And the fact of the matter is there will be people who will be like, yeah, I'm quite happy to do that and join Dan in the cool club. Hey, the famous iOS app I Am Rich sold like 10 copies and that was $1,000. So certainly an app that actually does something for 50 bucks would sell a few copies. Exactly. So – Did you buy one of those, Chris? Did I buy I Am Rich? No. No. No, I would not do that. I remember watching the video of Crack Great Kevin buying – like, there's a Blackberry app world equivalent to I Am Rich. I can't remember what it's called. It was a clock app that was like $500. Oh, that's right. Yeah. I remember watching the video of him buying it and I was like, oh, Kevin, don't do it. There's so many other ways. Just give me the 500 bucks. Just donate it to charity. Do something other than buying this app, please. But no, you bought it. See, the thing with the Blackberry app is you could buy it with your Porsche P whatever Blackberry, and then you have the ultimate in wasted money. Very Porsche. Porsche. Porsche, yes. Porsche design. Yeah, Porsche. A Porsche owner would literally clock you in the face for saying Porsche. I haven't had this happen. I don't – you know what? I'm not really too worried about Porsche owners just because I'm not one of those people. Just in general, you're not worried about them. They're not the Vin Diesel's of the world that instill fear into me. Also, if you're a Porsche owner, people shouldn't be worried about you anyway. You do pretty well. It's true. But what if the Rock drives a Porsche? I don't know if the Rock would really fit in most Porsches except for the big goofy SUVs. Yeah, the Cayenne. And people who drive the Cayenne don't know the difference between pronouncing it Porsche or Porsche. This is true. You're making some very valid points right now. I think Dan has really thought this through. Yeah, you see. This is not the first time you said it's conversation. When I think of – it's pathetic because there's some really great Porsche vehicles that are made and they're really awesome cars. But what I think of is I think of the guy going through a midlife crisis. He just got divorced and his kids are in college and he's driving a freaking Boxster, which is like for $60,000 or whatever it costs to buy that thing, there's so many other vehicles that you could buy that perform better and maybe look better and are just like – you're paying for that, just that label that's on there, not for the performance of the vehicle. Even the Cayman is a better car. Really? Than a Boxster? Yeah. I don't know. I was a little bit of that. I mean, I've got a friend of mine who says that – The Tesla Model S smokes a Boxster in its sleep. I'm shutting up. That segment was so good, I'm just going to shut up and let Chris talk about the Model S because we want to hear about it. You guys should have watched my Spellbinding Q&A earlier today, which was also hosted in a Google Hangout. Yeah, it was cool. The only thing I can think of to really tie this into mobile is the fact that they're using an AT&T 3G connection in the car, which is okay. Predictably failed on you when you were in the mountains. Yeah, well, yeah. First of all, it's not LTE, but then second of all, once we got into Big Sur, which is no man's land, all of our phones died, nobody had any service, and the car's connection died. Once that happened, the navigation started kind of failing out. We still had a route that we could follow, but then we pulled over to the side of the road and turned the car off. We went back in, our route was gone, and we couldn't get anything back. The base map was gone because it wasn't cached, so we had no navigation, which is insane to me. Right. It's a fine line for the possibility that maybe your connection isn't going to work once in a while. That was a bummer, but otherwise it worked pretty well. Obviously, the notion of having a live, continuously updating Google Maps instead of the old school DVD that you buy once a year for $200 from your car company and then install it in your car, it's a no-brainer. Is it the model that's also one of those cars with the massive 19-inch dash with a Tegra 3 inside and things like that? Yep, it's a Tegra 3 in the center console and then a Tegra 2 powering the instrument cluster, is my understanding. And the Tegra... You need a Tegra 2 processor to power the instrument cluster. Well, the instrument cluster is just a big screen, right? Yeah, yeah. I think it's an 8-inch display for the instrument cluster and then a central display. I just find that really, really wasteful in an electric car. I know it's sufficient chips that they're using, but still, you've got an 8-inch or 19-inch or whatever display sucking down power, which is also shortening your range, right? It's a totally valid point. Yeah, that's a totally valid point. I need to bring that point up because in the United States, if you don't talk about short range, you pretty much... With electric cars, you pretty much get imprisoned, right? Because we need to talk about that in order to keep up the old petrol-guzzling industry going. Hey, man. Too big to fail. I feel as though Vlad has been personally wronged by the petroleum... By the Detroit industry. How have I not been personally wronged? Of course I have. But you live in the country of BP, which is one of the largest corporations in the world. And ruined our beaches, mind you, five years ago or whatever it is. Oh, dude. If you're going to indirectly accuse me for every single crime of the British Empire and British company, this is going to be a really long podcast. So interestingly, the Tegra 3 was not sufficient to power the center console. There is, for whatever reason, a full web browser built into the car. It really choked on The Verge and other sites. The browser just wasn't that great. I think that they probably could have fixed it through software tweaks alone. And the software is still very early, and they can do software updates over the air with the car. I'm sure it's going to improve over time. But the other solution is just throw more hardware at it. That begs the question, and I believe you brought this up in your report on it. Why is the browser there to begin with? And especially if the car's in... I guess there's no gearing in this based on what you were saying in your report. You just get in and go. You don't put the car in park or drive or whatever. But the browser is always functional. So while the car is moving, why have the browser available? There is a park and drive, but it's almost like... What's the word I'm looking for? It's like a psychological thing almost. It's there just because you're used to having park and drive and a car, but you don't really need it. But so because of that, they could do it so that you have to physically put the car into park. There's a little stock on the steering wheel column that's like a transmission shifter. And you can put it in a park, and then I guess you could have the browser work, which would be great for Jordan, one of our video guys who spent most of the journey from LA to San Francisco looking at Vice Mallards on Reddit in the center console of the car, which was a little distracting. Not going to lie. But I do agree in general that that should be locked out. It's already illegal. Not mistaken in the US, it's legal for any display built into the car to show a movie while the car is in motion. I don't think it's legal in Europe, but it's legal in the US. So I think this is just a case, and I mentioned this in the Q&A this morning, I think it's just a case of regulations not keeping up with where the car companies are at, specifically Tesla. It's just a matter of time before someone at the DOT wakes up and they're like, oh, that's not cool. And then they'll ban it, and it'll be gone. But until then. Yeah, like even on a much more basic function, my personal vehicle, if the car is moving or out of its park mode, I can't even pair my Bluetooth phone with the dash. I have to be in park and staying still before I set up the Bluetooth phone. I can't do that driving and stuff like that. Yeah. I also mentioned that in the Q&A. I think that the legacy car companies are really gun shy about regulators, and I think they feel very burned by regulations. That is one of the reasons that they roll out innovations very slowly and very deliberately is because they're worried that they're going to get their wrists slapped. And Tesla, because they're new at this, they don't have that natural fear. So they're just doing lots of crazy things with the interior of the car that a company like GM or BMW or Ford or whoever would not consider doing. And one of them is have a full web browser on a 17-inch display in the car while it's in motion. That just wouldn't happen on GM. You showed us in the video, I believe, there's a smartphone app for it, obviously. Is there any kind of cool crazy stuff that Tesla's doing there that we haven't seen before? Yeah, well, one thing that was nice, when we parked it in Morro Bay, which is our stop on the first night, there's a sign-in sheet next to the charger just where you write your name and what kind of car you have and any thoughts or notes. And there were some notes that suggested that there might be some vandalism in the neighborhood. So we were keen to use the app to verify that the car was still in the same place where we left it. And that is one of the features in the app. You can see, it shows just a Google map with a pin where the car is. So you can see how that would be super helpful if you parked in a giant mall and you couldn't remember where you parked. Because it's very precise. Now, that would be like the ultimate troll, wouldn't it, if you park your Tesla there and you plug it in and then 10 minutes later, you're almost dead, your battery's almost gone. And then there's a guy there, some would-be thief comes up and tries to rob it, and the thing just dies on it in the middle of the road because it hadn't been charging. It's funny you say that. One of the things that Tesla told us when we picked up the car is that it's car jack proof. Because you just say, OK, you can have the car, and then you let it drive a quarter mile and then you shut it down. It's very difficult for somebody to effectively steal a Model S. So it does kind of sound like having a very odd sort of mobile PC, which is also my excuse for us actually talking about this. It has a tech free inside it. It has a battery inside it. It's got cellular connection. It's extremely mobile. It is very mobile. For 250 miles at a time. Right. Thank you, Dan, for making sure to talk about range. It's funny to me. The vibe I'm getting is that it is very much like if you took a PC, if you took a computer, let's say, whatever definition you want to give to the broad category of personal computing devices and then you put wheels around it and then you put like Chris says a few crazy design decisions from an alternative company like Tesla, that's what you would get. And I guess the road to a certain extent, but then that was also based on low solution, which is kind of an adaptation. So it's fascinating to me. Something I was also reminded about with the app discussion is also the Nissan Leaf. I believe its application for the Leaf had this nice little function where you could turn on the engine early. So if it's a season like it is right now, it's freezing cold outside, you could get the car warmed up at like 5 or 6 a.m. before you even get out of bed. And then by the time you get into the car, it's already free. Yeah, the Model S can do that too. Although, interesting fact about that, which I didn't know, is that the ventilated heat is one of the least efficient things you can do in an EV and it drains the battery very fast. So the Model S has a mode you can put it in where it replaces some or all of the ventilated heat with C heat. And it does it automatically. It automatically adjusts the heaters inside the seat up and down to match the temperature that you set in the dash. And then that apparently saves a lot of energy that way, as opposed to just blasting the cabin with hot air. That is really intimidating. I didn't know that. Yeah. And the sensation isn't quite the same. Your face is probably still freezing. Your hands are freezing on the wheel. Yeah, but if you can get another 10 miles of range out of it, then... Well, what I can say is my top tip is do the double zucker book. That's what I'm calling it, which is put a hoodie on top of a hoodie, as I'm doing right now. You're double zucking? Yeah, you're double zucking it. I like it. I do have to wonder though, in terms of cultural impact, particularly here in the UK, I know you guys in the US have the same association of hoodies and antisocial behavior and kids acting out and all of these things. What happens when you're wearing two hoodies? Then people will be, hang on, he's wearing a hoodie, but then there's another one. Is this like a double bloke? Is he like a double agent? I mean, how do you react to that? Does the one hoodie cancel out the other hoodie? Yeah. So how insane is this guy not wearing something a bit more reasonable? What you need to do, I think to complete the look, you need to have one hood in front and one in back. That way you can pull them up like this completely in case you're had. That's like the Sherlock hat, right? It's what? It's like the Sherlock Holmes hat, where you have a boo on the front and a boo on the back. Yes, except you can completely encase your head. It's exactly like that, Chris. There's no except. It's exactly like that. You're right. It is exactly like a Sherlock Holmes hat. Yes. Just like the Sherlock Holmes hat, it speaks to your intelligence. Do you own one? Do you own one? A Sherlock Holmes hat? No. Yeah. But I own about a dozen hoodies. I believe it. Yeah. Vlad Zuckerberg. That's my middle name. It's a revelation for you. Do we have anything else mobile that we wanted to talk about the show today? We have like, according to our topic list, we have like 25 Blackberry things to talk about. I think we've successfully dushed them very well. I think the big news is obviously, is that Alicia Keys, Blackberry's global creative team, has been caught tweeting from her iPhone. No, that's huge, man. That's big news. Everybody knew this was going to happen. The best part of the story is not that it happened, but that she blamed it on people hacking her Twitter account to post some Drake lyrics, which is the most innocuous hack you could possibly have. It's like the hackers were like, we're going to piss off Alicia's husband, Swizz Beatz, by posting some Drake lyrics to her account. It's innocuous unless you're Drake. If Drake himself hacked Alicia Keys' Twitter account, then that's kind of a low blow. Respect. Nothing but respect for Drake. YOLO. But I'm just saying. It could have been Drake. I am drowning in this conversation. I have no idea what's going on. Drake may actually be the leader of Anonymous. Could be. Anonymous, Jizzy. You never know. He probably has a name. Doesn't that just disqualify you? It's kind of like being married and being a candidate for the papacy. But instead of getting a name, that's it. It's too late. That was a very relevant analogy. I know. We're encompassing everything here. There was a piece of news that happened in the past week. Mobile related, tangentially mobile related, not mobile related at all. I am determined to dodge all those freaking BlackBerry topics. I am determined and I will get them. It was actually quite hilarious. We can give people a bit of a behind the scenes look. In the European newsroom, when the whole news about the Pope retiring came up, we were like, that's massive, massive news. How do we write about it? Then we were sitting around for a good five minutes thinking, is there a technology angle to this? Because everybody is freaking out. Twitter is freaking out. The BBC is trying to cover it but doesn't have any information. It was just kind of nuts because it's like massive breaking news. You're like, well, actually this doesn't really relate to us. It's a shame he didn't tweet that he was retiring. Yeah, if he had, it would have been like bang, bang, bang. Yes, we would have had a news story. But he didn't. He even announced it and that's it. You know what's hilarious actually is apparently the journalist who broke the news broke it first because she knew that's it. Talk about applying a niche skill in a high-priced job like that. You break the news of the first Pope retirement in centuries and centuries by using an outdated language. I'm sure there's some metaphors to do with Symbian here that we can bring in. If we ever talk about Symbian on a Verge Mobile show, we know that it's time to wrap it up. That should be our benchmark. Once we hit Symbian, it's time to. So on that note, that was a crazy episode 35 this week. I just want to say, unlike episode 35, next week's episode 35 is going to be with Soksof because it actually coincides with HTC's event. Yes, we'll actually have something new to talk about that will be officially on the record and we won't be playing the rumor game next week. I have the scoop on it. It's the flyer 2. The flyer 2 with two pens. Dual pens, oh man, that would blow my mind straight out of the front of my skull. How epic of a troll would that be if HTC did that? Dual pens, that would be amazing. And they could have some play on S Pen. I don't know what it would be exactly, but they could do something clever. Or S Pens they could call it. Their branding is 1X and 1S and 1V, so maybe HTC 1 Pen. No 2 Pen, HTC 2 Pen. But that doesn't fit their branding. They need 1 Pen to rule them all. I love that, but yeah. So thank you guys for tuning in. Of course this has been the Verge Mobile Show. If you want to follow us on Twitter, I'm DC Seifert. Vlad is Vlad Savov. He will not follow you back. And Chris is ZPower. And Dieter is Backlon. And hopefully he'll be with us next week. And that's it. Thanks guys. See you in a week. Take care.