 Greetings, mobile accomplishers. Welcome to the Verge Mobile Show. This is episode 41, which means that we're over the hill. It's the week of April 1st, but there are no stupid jokes here. Hi, I'm Dita Bohm. I'm Vlasav. And I'm Dan Seifert. And we are, sadly, without Chris Ziegler, he is on assignment. It's a very important assignment. It might be the most important reporting he's ever done in his entire life. But luckily for us, we have somebody else filling in for him, we have Walter White. Seriously, Vlad, you look awesome. You can just call me Heisenberg, that's fine. Heisenberg. You need the hat? Oh my god, you need to get the hat. That would be amazing. Somebody needs to buy it for me. I don't think they sell them in the UK. In the UK, we have bowler hats. Anyway, this was actually very intentional. I did have Walter White in mind. I did have Gianluca Viali, he's a famous former Italian footballer, in mind. And I was like, if my hair is this short and I haven't shaved in this long, I need to do this at least once. Yeah. Totally worth it. I'm incredibly jealous. I, meanwhile, haven't had hair cut in six years, and it's pretty bad. Oh, shush. So OK, we missed last week, and for that, we are deeply sorry, and the level of angst in the comments on our Sorry We Can't podcast post was pretty high. But it doesn't mean we don't like you guys. It just means we were busy. I'm short staffed out here. Vlad was away. And we could have done just a mobile show of just Dan standing there. Just standing there and smiling, not actually saying anything. Guys, I'll tell you, I'll give you a breakdown of what I did last week so you know how committed I was. I had to play Tomb Raider. I had to play Bioshock Infinite. I had to play XCOM, Enemy Unknown, which has been out for a while. But honestly, I still haven't cracked that game. It's amazingly hard, actually. What else was there? I mean, there was loads. There was loads of stuff happening last week. Absolutely no chance to podcast. But we'll make that up for it today, right? First of all, yesterday basically killed the news cycle. Nobody bothered to announce or do anything important yesterday, because everybody was way too busy making the worst jokes in the world. Google had something like two months worth of work invested in spoofing things yesterday. Yeah, there was more jokes from Google than you could count on one hand, which is just. I mean, that's the way, right? Yes. But it wasn't always their way, because they launched Gmail on April 1, 2004, and it was no joke. Yeah. So there was one piece of news yesterday that started out looking like maybe it was an April Fool's, but it turned out not to be. And that's Charlie Kindle, who used to be product manager at Microsoft for Windows Phone? I think he was a Windows Phone evangelist or something. No, he had a bigger title than that. He's a great guy. We've met him. Anyway, he is going to work for Amazon on a secret project. It probably starts with PH and ends with NE. So he's working on phonemes for them. Oh, no, it's ME. Shoot. So close. So that happened. But other than that, I mean, actually, the funny thing is April 1 is my mother's birthday. So I didn't learn about April Fools until later. And I didn't understand why all these people were being mean to my mom. It was very strange to me. I wish I had a punch line for that joke. But that's the truth. It's just what it is. Dieter, at the same time, you do have German heritage. So there would have been a lot of strange things in your youth and childhood. Particularly as a German-bred kid growing up in Minnesota. My father's birthday is on Halloween. So I just thought that everybody had birthdays on holidays. That's how it worked. I wondered why I didn't. It was very strange. But to bring it back to Charlie Kindle, first of all, I love this. And I'm sure everybody else does. His name is Kindle, K-I-N-D-E-L. And he's about to work for the company that produces the Kindle, which I don't need to spell. But it's very close. So it's Mr. Kindle working for the Kindle maker, which is not at all confusing. That's the first thing. But the second thing is his phrasing and his wording is very nice, because it says that he's working on something totally new for Amazon. So I mean, yes, everybody, every evangelist, like we're saying, is going to tell you what we're working on is totally new. It's revolutionary. It's going to be kick-ass, et cetera. But totally new for Amazon is a very subtle phrasing. I mean, think about all the things that Amazon already does. There aren't that many things which are totally new for that company. Video game production might be a random thing that is new and might be done by Amazon. OK, he's not going to do that. But yeah, it really does look like the Amazon phone is shaping up. And Charlie Kindle is going to be part of pushing that. Well, I mean, that's the obvious speculation. We could be way off base here. But we've been expecting Amazon to properly fork Android for a phone. They've already done it for the Kindle, obviously. And actually, I looked up our archives and what we've written about Charlie Kindle. And he already had comments saying Google has lost control of Android. So he's already of the mindset, let's say, that Android can be split up, can be forked successfully. And Google isn't the one who's going to control its future. And other companies can have that position, which again kind of meshes with what Amazon would be intending to do. Well, OK, let's just jump ahead of the issues you want to talk about Facebook. Because they also are a company everybody's been assuming is going to have a phone. And this Thursday, two days from the day we're recording this, we'll finally find out what exactly they have planned. And it looks like what's going to happen is they're going to do something called Facebook Home, which is going to be basically a home screen replacement, like a launcher, in addition to presumably deep ties into other bits and bobs. And then alongside that, we're expecting that HTC will probably have a mid-range phone that it'll launch on, but that it'll still be available to other phones. When the thing got announced, a whole bunch of New York Times and Wall Street Journal came out and wrote over rumors they had. And then Android police got a hold of the actual APK, the file that runs this app, and did a tear down of it. And I think we learned a few things. It has hooks in there for both talking to HTC Sense and TouchWiz, in addition to standard Android, so it should work on a whole bunch of different phones. It's called Facebook Home, or at least there's a Facebook Home logo in there. They've got a little button to launch the app chooser. What else did we see? Just a bunch of stuff. So basically, we've been hearing for years Mark Zuckerberg say Facebook isn't going to build a phone. And it looks like he hasn't been lying. What do you think is going to happen? Are people going to see this HTC phone that's kind of mid-range, it's not that exciting? You're like, oh, the Facebook phone sucks, just like the cha-cha-cha sucked, and whatever the cha-cha-cha's sister phone was. Not the cha-cha, not the status, the touchscreen one. It was terrible. Yeah, whatever that was called. But I think there's been a lot that's been said since. Salsa. Salsa. Thank you. Actually, I'm sorry to break away, but my cousin. You're not sorry. You're not sorry at all. My cousin had one of those two phones, and he had an incredibly low amount of RAM. The cha-cha. Yeah, you could fill up the apps on the HTC. I had reviewed the status way back when it was on AT&T, and it was like six apps, and you'd filled up every other thing, and you're done. But you know what's funny? Even though those were essentially themed as Facebook phones, like we're saying, they were still perceived as Android phones. Like my cousin thought Android sucked. Right. And I think that might be the reason. Well, on the status, it did suck. Yeah. Well, I'm sure they all suck. The good thing about me is that I managed to avoid using both of them for longer than seconds. But that might very well be the reason why Mark Zuckerberg is so reluctant to have anything called a Facebook phone. Well, I don't know. Because he anticipates Facebook's chance to get into the market, also, it's going to be in these mid-range and low-end devices, not as a leading platform. Because Facebook doesn't have anything to contribute on that front, I don't think. Well, I just know that there's been a lot that's been said this past week since Facebook's announcement of who really wants a Facebook phone or who really needs a Facebook phone. And I think the audience of people who are into technology and are into having the latest and greatest phones are not the market that's going to be like, oh my god, a Facebook phone. But when the average customer comes into the phone store and they're like, well, what do you want to do with your phone? It's like, well, everybody's on Facebook with their phone, so I want to be on Facebook with my phone. And then there's this phone that is all Facebook through and through. You can access your Facebook Messenger. You can access your Facebook camera and photos really quickly and easily. And everything looks like it's Facebook. I can see that totally being an appealing thing for someone who doesn't care too much about the specs. They're not going to spend $300 plus sign a two-year contract for their new phone. They're going to get like a $50 or $75 phone or whatever. I think it totally makes sense for that type of market. And the fact that it's a mid-range phone, it looks like it's running an older version of Sense. HTC probably hasn't put a whole lot of resources into making this a cutting edge device. I don't know if that matters so much for the type of market that might be interested in this thing. YOSSI ELKRIEFENGELD-ROSS. I totally agree. I think what we've come to conclude with the South Southern cha-cha-cha experience, triple cha in Spain to avoid cursing, was that HTC and Facebook, because Facebook was part of it, they cut too many corners with the specs. Yes, we don't care about the specs, but we do care to the point where people like our cousins want to be able to install some apps. She literally had to disable things, Skype or whatever, in order to keep using her phone. It's that crazy. This was also two years ago, too. So an entry to mid-level Android phone today has got a dual-core processor. It's got a gig of RAM or more. It's got 16 gigabytes of internal storage. I mean, today's mid-range and entry-level phones are way more capable than they were two years ago. And I don't think that's as much of an issue as it was with this status and the cha-cha-cha. Right. So at least you could take something like the One SV, for example, because that has a WGA screen. It's kind of a mid-ranger. And essentially, just adapt it and just slap the Facebook stuff on top of it. So I led this discussion by asking you guys, are people going to focus on the phone instead of on Facebook's software and offering it across all of Android and what it means for Facebook? And will people actually want it on whatever phone they've already got? And you pretty much answered my question by completely ignoring it and just talking about phones. I don't want to get too far into my thoughts and feelings on this, because I want to actually write it and publish it on the site. But I will say that imagine you've got an Android phone and you're kind of like, this kind of sucks. Touchwood's kind of lame. I kind of don't like it. But you're a regular consumer who never would have in a million years considered rooting or even installing Nova Launcher or Apex or whatever. But you hear that, hey, I've got this Facebook app. And I know it does a bunch of random stuff. And it's a little bit too nerdy for me. And I can't figure out how to use it for free voice calling and free messaging. But I know that if I click the button that's going to be shown to me all the time on the Facebook app itself, hey, you like the Facebook app. Make your whole phone a Facebook phone. I'm going to eventually do it. And they're going to convince me that I get free calling. And I get all those other benefits. And they could become a big part of the market on top of Android. Now, what's interesting is part of this leak was that all the Google stuff appears to still be there. So they're not pulling an Amazon and just completely forking away from Android. It's still going to have Google stuff built into there. Because that's the way stuff is built in on phones already. But I mean, I look at this from Facebook's position. They could try and make a phone based off a fork version of Android and have every story for the next three years be, why can't Facebook get more than 2% or 5% or 10% at the max market share? Why are they getting pantsed by Windows Phone and Blackberry? You could either have stories about getting beat by Blackberry and Windows Phone. Or you could have stories about how you're secretly taking over the entire Android ecosystem and nobody sees it. I mean, that's an easy answer. They're already trying to do it with the app ecosystem. I wrote this report a few months ago. And they're just like, Facebook would rather be the connective tissue that underlies the internet than it would try to take on Apple for hardware profits. YOSSI ELKRIEFENI. Yeah, that's a given. But let me point out to you. If it's a given, then why are we talking about the mid-range specs on some random HTC phone? This is a much bigger game. YOSSI ELKRIEFENI. Well, because you can't view this just because it has branding now, Facebook Home. You can't view this as this brand new thing that's breaking with your tradition. Facebook has been trying this for a long time, right? It had those HTC phones. It had a couple of Inc phones, like Inc Cloud Mini, things like that, which were actually really nice, really handy phones that if you want a thoroughly integrated Facebook experience, they had those. But once again, exactly like the HTC phones, they had insufficient specs to really compel people. It was just below the threshold where people felt comfortable using the phone and didn't feel any deficiencies. It had deficiencies. And that has been Facebook's mistake so far. It's getting itself invested, getting its brand invested, its phones which just weren't good enough. So but as Dan says, now the hardware is so good that you pretty much have to screw something up on top of it to make it deficient. So Facebook is not. Let's not rule that out. I'm not ruling it out at all. I've seen sense. OK? I know. But with that being the case, Facebook is a much better opportunity today than it was previously to have the basic hardware stuff and then to layer out some compelling stuff on top. What I was going to point out was, however, first of all, when you get excited, Dieter, your whole webcam shakes, and you being in San Francisco, it's a little bit disturbing. Because it's like, is this what happens over there every two minutes? Yeah, exactly. Jellyvision Dieter. And finally, to actually try and address your question, which clearly is your big passion about software, I personally really like this idea of a branded Facebook home. Because Facebook already has a home on its web interface. It's a paradigm that people are familiar with. So the idea of a Facebook home screen, which is very likely, I guess, to include a bunch of widgets for news streams and junk like that, I don't expect this to be really revolutionary in terms of UI innovations. I hope it's not. I mean, I hope they keep it relatively simple. As long as it looks better than the Facebook widgets that they've offered before. Right. Right. So I mean, functionality is always the most important thing, right? I mean, I'm imagining something like Link Feed, I guess. Like you've got your news stream, you've got your apps, and then you've got your messaging. I don't know. I have no idea. I mean, I can't really envision it being useful to me. But then I don't find Facebook itself useful to myself. So I'm not exactly its target audience. But like you say, I can find the idea of Facebook home. OK, Facebook home, that makes sense to me. It's a starting position. It's a home thing. It's where I go back to. And it's key to my mobile experience. Since I'm a big Facebook user, yeah, I can get with that. That whole idea is very accessible to people, it might be. So I mean, one of the ways that I think about this is people like, oh, Facebook trying to take over phones. I mean, one, they get to go on top shelf hardware if they want to, because they're just going to offer the app presumably. Two, people are thinking of it as, oh, it's Facebook versus Samsung, Facebook versus Apple, Facebook versus whatever phone manufacturer you want. I actually think that that's a good thing. I actually think that this is just as much about Facebook versus Twitter as it is about Facebook versus these phone companies, because right now on your phone, Facebook and Twitter are basically equal citizens. I can't hear what you guys are saying back to me, so I'm just going to keep talking. You've got an icon for Facebook, you've got an icon for Twitter, you might have some widgets for it, but you basically get to choose. But if Facebook can take over the home screen, then it becomes the first class citizen on your phone, and you're much less likely, if you've got 30 seconds, to jump into Twitter, because you've got Facebook right there. And so this is, I think, just as much about making sure that they take on Twitter in the mobile space as it is about them trying to beat Apple. I mean, it's not about that. YOSSI ELKRIEFENGER. And Google+. Let's not forget Google+. Yes, it hasn't taken off, but it has this amazing deep integration into the latest versions of Android. And it's got one of the best looking apps on iOS, ironically. YOSSI ELKRIEFENGER. Google is forcing plus on you at every opportunity that it gets. Everywhere it goes, it's like Google+. You're not talking, you're Google+, talking. You're having a Google+, hangout, et cetera. Every chance that it can hook into Google+, and get Android users to be aware of Google+, and then to become users of it, it's doing it. So absolutely, as Ida says, Facebook versus Twitter. Facebook Home is a step ahead of Twitter, but it's actually a step behind Google+. So Facebook is simultaneously catching up and trying to get ahead. Only one of its competitors matters, and the other one doesn't yet. Any thoughts there? Yeah, sorry, I'm looking at something else, but Dan can jump in. I agree. I'm sorry. I'm like totally under the weather today, so I apologize. But no, I'm with you, Vlad. I don't have anything creative to say. He's not a Facebook user, that's it. No, I do use Facebook, actually. And I find that for my own personal needs, I connect with my family a lot on Facebook, they happen to be all over the country, and they all happen to be on Facebook, so that's where we go to catch up with cousins and whatnot. I don't use it all that often on my phone, though, so it would be interesting to see if this new software or new device encourages me to use it more on my phone. Facebook, like the day before yesterday, just put out a study that they had commissioned from IDC about how people use Facebook on their phone. And I think that that is not a quinky-dink. They put it on the 27th, and it was like, such and such percent of people use Facebook every day, and such and such percent post photos, and yada, yada, yada. So I really think that we underestimate how much people would be interested in replacing their crappy TouchWiz skin on their Galaxy S2 that they're still using with a Facebook skin. Be like, oh, well, I can just act like this is a new phone. I think that it could potentially be really huge. Anecdotally, my wife almost exclusively uses Facebook on her phone. She never uses it on the desktop. She's always using her phone to check on Facebook and things like that. So there's definitely a lot of people that it's already a purely mobile experience for them. And then the IDC claims that Facebook is the number third most used app on a smartphone at 70% behind email and web browsing, according to this study. Yeah, that's actually been consistent for a while. The Facebook app has been one of the top uses of phones in general, with phone calls progressively going further and further down the list until they just disappear. Which is awesome. Which is the way it ought to be. Although I kind of say I like phone calls lately. Man, I know it's not cool to like getting on the phone. But you know what's faster than having a five minute chat conversation? Having a one minute voice conversation. Such as you can do with a Hangout or Skype. Well, yeah. You know, it's funny. The thing with Skype, and to a great extent, is that people are now using them almost as terms, almost at the same level as Google. Yeah. The BBC, I mean, I've mentioned this before. The BBC, which tends to not promote any, I mean, it does no advertising on its channels, its TV channels. It tends not to promote any brands. It automatically identifies news readers, Twitter accounts, and people say you can get in touch with us on Twitter, Facebook, email, et cetera. The thing with Skype was I watched a news broadcast on Channel 4 here in the UK. And it was saying, we spoke earlier over the internet or over Skype. Like Skype is a different thing from the internet. And it struck me that over Skype, not over the internet. I get it now. Yeah, I see. And it's just kind of become this kind of common language terminology now, the way people say Google it instead of search for it on the internet. Which is neither here nor there, but I thought I'd mention it. I mean, Facebook wants to get in that game, right? Because you can make calls with Facebook now. You can make VoIP calls with Facebook. Have either of you actually used that? Like for a minute. I can't say I have. Yeah? OK, goodbye. That's what I've done. I don't even know if that's available for the server IP, I guess. Yeah, it's not worldwide. It's US, Canada, and some place. I know they did launch it. Yeah. I don't think Facebook has, at least to this point, made that a very visible feature. Like I think the vast majority of the people that even know about the Facebook Messenger app that's apart from the main Facebook app know that the Messenger app can make and receive phone calls through it. But I mean, tell me they're not going to push that super hard. Yeah, I mean, that's their angle, I guess. Well, anyway, we'll find out on Thursday. Yeah, I was going to say we should move on, because we're going to be discussing this Facebook Home scenario. For the rest of our lives. Every day, all we do is talk about Facebook Home. We finally got release dates and prices for the HTC One on Sprint and AT&T. And close enough for T-Mobile. And $199 on contract, or on T-Mobile on contract. For a 32 gigabyte version of that. So I mean, that's pretty aggressive pricing to come in at that $200 level on contract for a 32 gigabyte model. And then AT&T's got the lock on the 64 gigabyte one for $100 more. So it looks like, from what we've been able to tell, that they're undercutting the Galaxy S4, which we learned also this past week that that's coming out on AT&T for $249 to start. But we don't know what capacity that model is yet. But either way, when you walk in the store, you'll see the one listed at a lower price. Hang on. Do you care about capacity? I mean, 16, yeah, that's a little bit short. But like, maybe it's because. A power user definitely does. I think someone who's going to be interested. Oh, a power user cares even less, because they're streaming all their music. Are they storing video? I don't know, man. Capped data plans. I'm constantly filling up the storage on my Nexus 4. And I have the 16 gigabyte one. And as soon as you get on a plane and you want to load up some TV shows, and then boom, you hit your limit. Or you load up a couple hours of music, and boom, you're at your limit. Because you don't have data access, or you don't want to use up your four gigabyte data cap. Dan, I'm sorry. This is worse than a first world problem. I have 16 gigabytes, and I can't fit enough music to use, it's a zero world problem. The power users that are really gaga about the HTC One like to have more storage. How do you append ordinals or whatever to imaginary numbers? Like I say first, second, third, fourth. I guess you'd say zeroeth. But what about i? Do you add a th at the end of it? An rd, an st? Iced? I mean, we can say the nth degree. So I guess i'th. i'th sounds pretty good. Yeah, just imagine you're saying i's and you have a lisp. Boom, it's done. So the other half of the story is that the One is indeed actually looking to be hitting shelves before the Galaxy S4 arrives. Yeah, by like what, two weeks, three weeks? A week or two, maybe. It's kind of a bummer for HTC that they couldn't get together and get it out a month early. So when is that going to be in the US? It's going to be in stores on Sprint and AT&T shows on April 19. And coming soon to T-Mobile. T-Mobile has not announced a date yet. Yeah, and we're still in this weird nether zone where we think it's the rumors from Unifried at allthingsd. She's like, no, it's coming to Verizon. And HTC denied it on Twitter and then deleted their denial, and so we don't know. There's also been rumors about the DNA plus more recently. So I mean, who knows? It's going to be called the drone. I already called it that. HTC drone coming to Verizon. Yeah, I like it. Let me also make a quick mention that AT&T announced that it's going to be rolling out HD Voice. Yeah, they actually had mentioned that at CES, and then they just confirmed it at Mobilebee. So fine. Dan told me this morning that it's old news, but I'm still excited insofar as AT&T's. I thought you hated phone calls. Didn't we just have this conversation? No, you said you hated phone calls. But AT&T is a big carrier and one that can push things like this. And I like HD Voice. Every time I've seen and used it, every time I've seen it on the phone and used it, I've enjoyed it. And I like the idea of getting the benefit of having a good solid connection when actually making calls. Yeah, I mean, so this has been around in the UK for quite some time. And Sprint has had it in a very limited fashion here in the US. But I highly doubt there's any real large number of Americans who've ever actually used it. But it's just as limited in the UK, I have to mention. Oh, is that really? Yeah. I do know that since we're on the front of HD Voice, maybe we can transition here. T-Mobile had quite a few announcements. One of them was that it would be carrying the iPhone. And the iPhone that it carries will indeed actually support HD Voice, just as it does in other parts of the world outside of the US. So that's how you want to lean into AT&T's new mobile. But that means T-Mobile will be supporting HD Voice. That's the implication, right, Dan? Yeah, well, T-Mobile's supporting HD Voice on the iPhone. It's like the worst transition. I know. It doesn't matter. Leading into talking about Pearl Harbor by talking about specs on a Zeros engine. It's like, did you know that the Zeros got it? The important point is that they're going to have HD Voice when the iPhone launches. And they get some other things, too. I don't really care. It's not important at all. They get some other little things. Whatever, man. Look, the point is this. It doesn't matter how we transition to the T-Mobile discussion. I just got a bit more comfortable in my seat. I wish I had popcorn, which I wouldn't eat, but at least just to set the scene. Because I really want to hear about this. This has been such a crazy, crazy thing. I need somebody to tell me about it. So full disclosure, we are going to swear. It's going to happen. So if your children's ears are delicate, can't handle it, T-Mobile's John Legere's for. So we are, too. He is a dynamic CEO. He's crazy. Bounces around. He got on stage and cursed like three times before he got to the main thing he wanted to say, which is also swearing. I think his blood pressure is dynamic, definitely. So yeah, he's like, stop the bullshit. He wants to be the uncarrier. And he ripped into the other big four. He ripped into Sprint and T-Mobile and Verizon, AT&T and Verizon most of all. And unveiled these crazy new plans that we had seen before. And so they were basically what we expected. And I was immediately like, yes, I'm with you. Let's storm the castle. Yay. And then I'm down off of that high. And I'm not as sure that I'm, I mean, I'm not switching to T-Mobile because I can't, because the signal isn't good enough where I live yet. But I might. So basically, the idea is no more contracts. But you do sign a contract for the phone that you buy. And so you can still get a subsidized price. But once you're done paying that subsidy, you don't have paid anymore. And then it's not built into the cost of your plan, in theory, which is great. And then if you want to upgrade more often, they're toying with the idea of being able to turn your phone in. And they'll pay you a fair market price for it for the rest of the money that you owe for it. Which is guaranteed to be less than what you expect it to be. Well, I mean, it will be, yeah. And then you would be able to upgrade to a different phone right away. So if you already have a phone, it's cheaper. If you're not paying a phone hardware subsidy for the vast majority of people, even people that need to do a lot of heavy tethering, which sounds really dirty. Even people that need to do heavy tethering, it's cheaper. And that's awesome. But if you want to be buying a phone every year, that means you're going to be paying the phone non-subsidy, subsidy thinger. And it kind of ends up being complicated about whether it's true. The other carriers have essentially gotten rid of that every year upgrade from your phones. I know Verizon got rid of it, AT&T got rid of it, and Sprint got rid of it. So now with the other carriers, you're in a minimum of 20 months before you get a discounted price on your new phone. So if you wanted to upgrade every 12 months with, say, AT&T, you're going to be spending full price for that phone in 12 months if you decide to upgrade early. So I don't know how much different the T-Mobile thing is from there. The only thing that I can think of that's different is that when you cancel your plan with, say, AT&T and you have your $300 ETF or whatever, if you bought a $100 iPhone and you put it with a $300 ETF, you're out like $400, and the phone is yours. Whereas with T-Mobile, you're going to be spending $500 or $600, regardless, whatever it turns out to be, because there is no ETF. You're just paying the full price of the phone. So if you are looking at it from that route, it might be a little more expensive for you. I think that's kind of an edge case scenario that not a lot of people are going to encounter. But maybe an early upgrader or someone who upgrades frequently or jumps carriers frequently might be in that situation. Well, for me, the best thing is just the issue of fairness that if I have paid a phone off, I shouldn't be paying for a subsidy on that phone built into my data plan. They should be separate things. And that's awesome. That's how it ought to be. And so I really hope that they get enough popularity where every carrier feels compelled to switch to that kind of model. But wait, let me just check Dan's numbers, because that doesn't seem to make sense to me. Is the ETF with a, let's assume, I'm looking at an AT&T contract now, and we're just looking at that iPhone that you mentioned with an upfront cost of $100. I mean, would the ETF really be $300? I mean, here in the UK. If it's prorated, it usually starts at $300. It starts at like $325, I think. It goes down by $10 or $15 every month that you stay in your contract. So like five months or six months down the line, it's going to be under $300, but when you're paying it out. Well, because here in the UK, a lot of the time, I think carriers just make you pay off your contract. Like you say, I want to leave my contract early. And they say, that's fine with us. Just pay us everything you owe us in terms of monthly fees. And then when you actually stack up the monthly fees, you get a pretty large number. Yeah, it's not broken down like that in the US. It's like they have a flat fee system. And then as you stay within your contract for a period of time, it goes down every month that you stay in your contract. I mean, then yeah, I guess it's actually advisable to you. I mean, the mathematics of this doesn't make sense to me, because then people would just buy up the phone for like $400, including paying off the ETF early, and then going off and using the phone elsewhere. Right. I mean, that's a thing that people. That's because you can go elsewhere in the UK. In the US, 99% of the time, your networks aren't compatible. So where are you going to go? That's actually one of the things that's awesome that's changing is starting next month, the iPhones that are sold in AT&T will be banned compatible with T-Mobile. Right now, they're kind of not. They are a little, but it's complicated, just like this price and crap. But they'll actually be, for the first time since Edge was the hottest, fastest network around, actual genuine ability to bounce between two carriers in the US without having to switch phones. We haven't had that since, when was it? Like 2005, 2006? Yeah. It's ridiculous. That's with the iPhone 5, though. And that's really only with the iPhone 5. That is the only LTE phone that I could think of that actually. Yeah, no, but long term, both T-Mobile is working hard, I think, to build out a network that it feels is largely compatible with AT&T. And I think that we're going to see in a couple of years the ability to switch between these two networks pretty seamlessly if you're not on a contract. And it's been like, I don't know how long, a decade, eight years, a long time. And that's another reason why this is potentially exciting is we're finally moving to a place where maybe we'll have a little bit less insane lock-in based on your bands and maybe look a little bit more like Europe. I'm not interested in, do I save $50 or $100 over the course of two years if I pick this subsidy model or that subsidy model or if I buy my phone early, how much is my ETF and what's the prorated law? I don't care about any of that. It's a few hundred dollars over the course of a couple years. Most people are too stupid or don't pay enough attention. And I count myself in this group to think through my savings over two years. I just get the phone I want right now and I get the plan I need right now and I'm done. But what I am excited about is making those decisions with T-Mobile, it just seems like there's fewer trying to screw you over clauses. It's moving us forward to something closer to what our wireless industry should look like. But the problem is it's easy to be open when you're losing. It's easy to be open source when you're in last place. It's easy to be awesome when you are about to die. And I'm not saying T-Mobile is about to die. I'm not sure I buy this argument. I'm saying it's easy to be the white knight when you're not the big guy on top. How is it harder to be the white knight? Something Batman lived to be the villain. How is it harder to be the hero and to have these things if you have big reserves of cash and a massive network? Ask Verizon. They'll tell you the answer because you make a lot more money by being a jerk and not being open. Yeah, I don't consider that a difficulty. I consider that an economic imperative, I guess. No, but what I'm saying is it's, we can't give T-Mobile too much credit for storing the steel here. Because it's easy to store the steel when you're poor. Not easy, but you know what I mean? What other options do they have here? I think T-Mobile deserves a credit for this. And I think we should understate it, particularly because, to go back to your point, Dieter, about the less interested consumer. Thinking about myself, I've been away from the site the last week or so. And then coming back, I felt like things like The Guardian here in the UK, they do roundups of news stories, tech news stories. And to me, when I'm at work and when I'm following the news on a daily basis, I find those really redundant. Because I've seen every single one of these stories seven times yesterday. But as somebody who just coming into it has been away for a week, those are the most useful things. Because I don't actually want to go and read seven different articles. I want to read the roundup of the most important ones. So a lot of the time, people operate with very limited information. Like imagine yourself, you go off to buy a new sofa, you go off to buy a new desk. You don't want to be a specialist in those parts in order to learn about them. You kind of have to be, because there's so many pitfalls. But the same point applies to mobile contracts. Most people operate with the superficial material information that is given to them. And most carrier contracts, like you're saying, build in subsidies for phones which carry on even after you've actually paid on the phone, which isn't fair to the consumer, isn't good. And T-Mobile is pushing you in the right direction. And there's just one other example I want to cite, which really frustrated me, which I came across recently. And that's decaffeinated tea. Well, I guess, I don't know about coffee, but decaffeinated tea. Why are we talking? OK, I'm with you. Well, you're with me. Oh, you will be with me. You're hoping you and I will circle back together and be together. No, it's because decaffeinated doesn't actually mean caffeine-free. Right. Whereas I assume decaf meant it's tea without the caffeine. There's less caffeine. Exactly. It's reduced caffeine. This is what the mobile industry does to you. It uses terminology like that that lets you make that assumption, that lets you make that extra step where you think you're buying something that you're not. 4G? Yeah, exactly. So now everybody has to say LTE 4G. So we know it's actually the relevant kind of 4G as opposed to the old kind of 4G. But that's it. All of these guys are kind of setting you up so you fool yourself, whereas T-Mobile is pushing in that direction. So I don't really care if the big guy is the small guy or if it's their only option. I just care that it's happening. I care that the CEO swore and he didn't have the same fashion. I will say I was sitting in the audience for that. And I'm doing my thing, and I'm taking notes and prepping for the announcements that we expected to happen. And then all of a sudden, this torrent of foul language comes flying at me. And I'm just like, this has suddenly rapidly changed into the most interesting press event that I had ever attended. So it was quite a trip to hear somebody be so candid on stage and just not care. This is the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard in my entire life. Do you have any idea how much you're paying? Like, come on. Great. I mean, that's nothing sacred. That's hold no bars. Yeah. And I mean, the only reason I'm excited at all for CTIA in May is I hope to see this guy on the stage with AT&T and Verizon. Like, if that happens and they get to talk to each other directly, oh my god. I'm sure it won't. The past couple of years at CTIA have been roundtables like that. No, last year they did this ridiculous thing where we were expecting a roundtable. We were all geared up for the battle of the CEOs. And then they just trotted them out one by one in sequence, and that was it. And it was heavily scripted. It was terrible. CTIA's in May, guys. Gear up. Is C-Mobile part of the CTIA? I mean, I know all the other big guys are, but they're talking a lot of trash. Are they still part of the wireless alliance? Does anybody care about what I'm talking about? No, nobody cares. Dan cares because he's looking it up. CTIA is the lobbying group that they throw a convention about phones. They used to throw two a year. Now this year they're only throwing one. But they're the lobbying group that carries water for the carriers and says don't give us more taxes. G-Mobile USA is listed as a member of the CTIA still. Well, we'll see how much longer that lasts. What does it stand for? Cellular Telecommunications Industry of America. And then the logo looks like it has an old school flip phone between the T and the I. If you look at the negative space there. Nice. Yeah. That's not anachronistic at all. Nope. That's some FedEx logo action right there. Negative space. I have nothing else to say about T and T. I want to switch, but I can't because I need to stick my contract in the T and T. I don't have any compatible hardware, and I don't have good signal. So the fundamentals of their business is screwed. I actually do have compatible hardware, though, because my Nexus 4 is compatible with T-Mobile's ATISPA Plus network. Well, I'm talking LTE here. Yeah. Well, my iPhone 5 technically will work on T-Mobile's LTE network in the seven or eight cities that it's available in. But T-Mobile's regular, everyday 3G signal where I live is nearly useless. Unfortunately, I'm stuck with Big Blue. Man, who put these shuttles together? We're blasting through stuff. We've got two weeks worth of news. I don't know. Some jerk. You suck. You guys want to talk about RIM? Or the company formerly known as RIM. Sorry, right. The company formerly known as RIM. So they had their earnings. They surprisingly turned a profit, I believe, which hooray for them. And they sold three million Z10s, which may or may not include that shift. Big difference. Right. And that also doesn't include the US launch, which was just the other week. Right. So hey, they're not dead. They're hanging on. And they got lots of cash in the bank. Yeah. And Mike Lazaridis has left, and hopefully the door didn't hit him on the way. That's not fair. He was a giant among men when it came to smartphones in the 80s. I think you just mean physically. He's also a big guy. Big hair. Beautiful locks, just imposing hair. I don't know. You're the one that put these notes together. What can I say? Should we just talk about John Lazaridis some more? Because more quotes from him. Sure. We've already got a super cut of the best quotes. Oh, yes. You haven't. You definitely need to go take a look at the super cut. What phone are you guys using these days? My SIM jumped back into my Nexus 4 earlier this week. Really? I was using the HTC One, but just kind of got bored of it and went back to the iPhone. I also wanted to check out Mailbox. I wanted to check out Mailbox, which I was a How long did that last? Dude, it lasted about six minutes. Yeah, it's the worst. It is. It is. I was being very obnoxious on a previous podcast. Might have been the last one two weeks ago, where I was holding up my phone and I was just pointing out to people that I'm number 379,000 on the Mailbox waiting list. I'm going to say the most useful or exciting part of the whole experience was actually getting from half a million to the front of the line and getting to use the app, but the app itself is like, I mean, you have to buy into this entire new paradigm about later and archiving in a different fashion. And then later, in two hours, later tomorrow. It's like this stuff doesn't need to be changed. The whole paradigm of email doesn't need to be changed. Labels and archiving and all that stuff that goes with Gmail, I'm happy with. I want you to just give me a rock solid UI and one that actually maximizes the information for me. Google's own iOS app for Gmail is pretty much trash insofar as showing you the most, using the real estate on your screen properly and maximizing it. You can see about six emails at a time, and then you can see a line and a half of each email. It's very limited. You have to get into each email. Well, I mean, what do you want? I mean, you need to have touch targets, man. No, I mean, you can use that space a lot better. You can use it a lot better. It won't be as pretty. It won't be as sparse, but it would be more useful to somebody who wants to scan multiple emails at a time. Mailbox actually gives you less information than Google's iOS app. And it's, I mean, I'm just joking. I will give mailboxes the act of reading messages and sending messages and things like that. It's very fast. And I wish that Google would just release a proper native app for iOS instead of this web app wrapper garbage that the Gmail app is so that we can have that kind of performance. Because that I do like about mailboxes. I don't like the whole paradigm of kicking the can down the road. And I don't like the whole idea of putting my mail through another server not named Google that's required with mailbox. But as far as the UI of the app itself, I think it performs very well. So I just wish that was in the regular Gmail app. Do you keep, I mean, does mailbox keep any messages offline on your phone? No. Well, like, kind of, but not reliably. Well, that's my biggest complaint with the iOS app, but with the Google iOS app. Oh, does mailbox keep it up? I think mailbox does. I thought you were talking about Gmail. Yeah, I'm pretty sure mailbox does. Yeah, mailbox does. OK, so I might give it another chance just for that. I guess as long as we're talking about iPhone, we should mention the rumors from the Wall Street Journal today. What? More iPhone rumors? Yeah, look, man, there's going to be a new iPhone in the world this summer. There's going to be a new iPhone this year. Did you hear? It's going to look largely the same. It wasn't until today, it wasn't until this very moment that I didn't know. Yeah, it turns out this year, new iPhone. I'm sorry, I'm not blinking at you. I just have something in my eye. And then the low-cost thing is also not going away. The rumor is it'll be the four-inch version with a different casing. I mean, I'm expecting they'll make it look like a iPod Touch. Which I'm all about. That would be delicious. Yeah, that would be great, especially with the multiple colors that was mentioned as well. That would be pretty fantastic. I would be very happy with a cyan iPhone. Yeah. I would be really happy with an iPhone that actually does something with its notification center. Yeah, actually I went on a huge, gigantic rant on the iMore podcast last week about the notification center and how terrible it is and how insane that is. But it's not even the worst on the market. It's terrible compared to Android, but it exists, which is more than other platforms can say. And if you compare it to BlackBerry Hub, it's way better than BlackBerry Hub, in my opinion. Yeah, well, BlackBerry Hub is a 1.0 product. My longstanding theory is that Apple was aware of how ugly that stupid pattern on the notification center is. And has decided to make it completely useless so you never have to look at it. Because I never do that. I never drag it down. The only times I ever drag down the notification center on my iPhone is by accident. Then I'm like, oh, look at this thing. It still has those Gmail emails which I addressed like two hours ago, and it hasn't cleared them away automatically. Which Android has been able to do since Fast and the Furious 3, since Tokyo Drift. I'm keeping the Zegus spirit alive, guys. On that wonderful Fast and the Furious note, I think that I'm going to wrap up the show because we have other things to do. We miss Chris, and it's just making us sad and lonely. So if you want to follow us on Twitter, you can and you should. Chris, who's not here, is zpower. I'm going to start calling him zpower. Actually, is there a Twitter user called zpower? There will be in like 30 seconds if you don't hurry up. Loading? Oh, yeah, no, there is zpower, Francois. Vlad is Vlad Sabah. Dan is DC Cipher with an EI. I am Backlon. We are all at Verge. If you want to email us, you can, mobileshow at theverge.com. And we'll be back, maybe next week, probably. Who knows? We're not making promises anymore because it just makes you guys mad. Thanks for watching. Bye, guys. See you.