 So, earlier today, Chris put up his status symbol post for the Palm 5. Incredible PDA from 1998, incredible design. And it got me thinking about my handspring visor prism, this big chunky thick PDA, no internet built in unless you put in a module on the back. And then, you know, I put up a picture of it next to the iPhone 5 and just how much thinner and better it is. And, I mean, I'm going to be honest, we're going to talk about specs today. And it's easy to get grumpy and complain that, you know, these are just small iterative bumps day by day, week by week, month by month. But over the course of years, you just miss that we're living in the goddamn future. It's kind of amazing. And we're going to try and give it the appropriate awe today. Stay tuned for the Verge Mobile Show. Hi, I'm Dieter Bohn. I'm Dan Siegel. I'm Vlad Selv. And I'm Chris Stigler. We don't have our process down for the order on when we go four up. We have the whole time. I was just thinking about that. Yeah, I was thinking about it. The whole time we were sitting here in silence waiting to start. I'm always last. I'm always last. That's all you guys need to know. I'll take the fall on this one. I think it's my fault because we should probably just go in alphabetical order. And I would have supposed that we could just go in alphabetical order. My last name, of course. So it is really hot in San Francisco. And I'm just going to start off with the off topic madness. It's October. And I'm a sweaty mess. And I had to walk and buy a fan for the office and it just hasn't helped. It's uncomfortable and I'm unhappy and I'm grumpy. And so even though I'm all optimistic in our opening, the truth is I'm really angry and unhappy, except my sister just had a baby. Which is great. Yay. Congratulations. Yeah, I didn't contribute at all because that would be gross. Yeah, that would be a weird expression. But so do they not have air conditioning in San Francisco? Not in my building. There is a like a 25 year old air window air conditioner sitting in a closet. But I don't know if I have permission to take it and use it. But I might just have to do that. Our landlord, not to well, I shouldn't say anything. Our landlord's a little bit persnickety. And so I can't do anything until I actually talk to her about it. Well meanwhile, your regular San Francisco weather has made its way to New York because it's 60 degrees and raining out. I would totally take that right now. I'm not used to heat. I just can't handle it. It's been a long time since we've had a mobile show where I haven't known a word and I've had to look it up on the air. But I'm doing that right now with persnickety. Placing too much emphasis on trivial or minor details. Actually here's the thing. Have you guys ever heard the phrase somebody is going to have a bird? No, I've heard something. I put a bird on my family. It's always said. It's like it's like having a conniption fit. You're going to have a bird. So I was going to say that my landlord would have a bird if we just took the air conditioner. But persnickety no one would know what that meant. By the way, fun fact. A synonym of persnickety is pernickety with no S. Oh, come on. I'm so sure one of those versions of the word is American. But you don't know which one. I don't know. I don't know. It's like aluminum and aluminum and flammable and inflammable. I'm sure inflammable was never meant to be or maybe I don't know. I know which one was meant to be or which one was meant to be flammable. I presume it's just flammable. And so Americans decided actually inflammable sounds like it catches flame. So we'll use it for the exact same meaning even though it sounds like it's the exact opposite one. Which I don't know what the exact opposite of the Verge mobile show is but I think we've been doing it since the start. It's so nice to have everybody in the same four-up box and just have us all together. I don't even want to talk about phones. I just want to talk about the fact that everybody has a beard except for Dan and he really needs to get on that. I know. I actually didn't shave today. So give me a few more weeks. All right. Fair enough. Yeah. You know, when Dieter came here, he didn't have a beard and he claimed that he was unable to grow one and now he has one of the most luscious beards on the team. Well, I want to say this. I don't know that I would call it luscious. My first week here, I had a pretty rocking beard and if you watch the first 90 seconds, I was in like back in August, my beard was in full force and then I was like, you know what? I might be on camera more often. The beard's got to go and so I've been beard-free since then. Yeah, the beard's got to stay, my friend. The beard's got to stay. My beard is basically like hair that meant to grow on my arm and just missed and it hit my face. It's not luscious at all. We have yet to talk about any phones. I think we've been on the air for like five or ten minutes now and we've yet to mention a phone. Although the big news has got to be HTC, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, okay. We'll talk about the on-topic stuff. I'll quickly introduce the HTC One X Plus, which is so bonkers, is so unique that only somebody who's had the opportunity to see it and touch it in person, such as myself, can really speak about it. I mean, honestly, it is such a special phone. Such a special phone. And the sarcasm needs to end. HTC just upgraded the One X and gave it a faster processor, a bigger battery, more storage, and coded the One X Plus. And it's shipping it with JetBee. All of it is actually good news. I'm just kind of underwhelmed with these iterative upgrades. And I don't think I'm alone here. And the most notable thing you can really say about the One X Plus is that it has a more matte surface than the white One X. And it only comes in black. So if you really wanted a dark, matte, black One X, it's here. And I mean, I do appreciate the fact that it has a new bigger battery. That's good. And JetBee. What isn't good, and the thing that actually annoys me is that HTC is going to ship this phone across Europe before it ships out the JetBee update for the One X and the One S. Not long before, but still before. And that's just a bad habit. So my concern, I'm really glad that it has a bigger battery, but it also has the switches to it's a 1.7 gigahertz Tegra 3. Is that right? That's right. Yeah. And one of the things I love about the One X is on AT&T with LTE is it's got really good battery life and a big fan of that Qualcomm processor. So I'm a little bit concerned that switching to the Tegra is going to offset that bigger battery and it'll basically be a wash in terms of longevity and battery life on this thing. No, I mean, that's a very real concern. I've been using the Tegra 3 based One X and it's better life is decent, but it's not great. I believe it was Chris who reviewed both the One X and the AT&T One X and he freaked out when he saw the AT&T one with the extra efficiency from the latest S4 processor from Qualcomm. So yeah, I mean, to me it's a loss. And also AT&T announced its version of the One X, which is going to be released in the coming months. So it seems to be a bit later than Europe and it's actually going to come with this new Tegra 3 processor and LTE. So this is going to be the first, I believe the first Tegra 3 and LTE phone. But I think I'm with you, DT, I would much rather have the Qualcomm Snapdragon instead of Tegra 3. I mean, the other thing is, is the problem with the One X been the specs? I mean, we know that we're pretty happy with the device. It just hasn't done as well as HTC was expecting and not as well as I was expecting. I mean, this will help push things along a little bit. And I guess it's good that they're sort of sticking with their plan to keep the One series consistent. But it's just sort of like, would they really have hurt them that much to not release this phone? Honestly, is this phone going to help them that much? It's funny that you mentioned that, Dieter, because I was thinking this, supposedly 2012 is supposed to be like a new HTC with fewer devices and a different HTC than we've seen in the past. And so far, that's been the case, but this device kind of feels like last year's HTC when we saw the Sensation come to the market. And then that phone that came out like three months after the Sensation with a slightly faster processor, which is totally escaping my mind right now, but it came out for T-Mobile. Sensation XC. Yeah, the XC and whatever the T-Mobile had branded it. Amaze, the Amaze 4G. It was virtually the same phone as the Sensation, but it had a faster processor, which just feels just exactly the same as that. And like you were saying, it's hard to say that this will do anything for HTC. It's still going to be limited to AT&T, just like the One X was here in the US. And it's nicer that it has the more storage because it's got the 64 gigabytes of internal storage as opposed to 16. But in this day and age, a lot of people are dumping stuff in the cloud and 16 isn't really a problem for the average user, I don't think. So I kind of agree with you. It's hard to see how this is going to be really beneficial for HTC. Chris, do you need to find out? What are you up to, Chris? And what are your thoughts on this One X? I have to confess, I think that my internet connection is causing me to inject just enough of a delay that it's impossible for me to actually speak during the course of a normal conversation in this Grand HTC debate. But now that you specifically called me out, I do have a couple of thoughts on this thing. I think that the X Plus, I kind of think of the X Plus as being, I mean, it's exactly like you guys were saying. I think of it very similarly to the jump from, say, the iPhone 4 to the 4S. The difference is that instead of turning that product around in a year, they're trying to turn it around in, what, four or five months. And that is not, I think that that's a very, very difficult habit for Android manufacturers, HTC and Samsung included, to break. Samsung has done a better job. And I don't think that we'll see, you know, there were those rumors going around recently that we'd see a GS4 at MWC next year. I don't think that's going to be the case. I don't think we'll see that until June or July. But yeah, so I mean, you know, maybe it was a carrier request. And that's another problem for HTC is that they're still beholden to companies like AT&T and Verizon. When they want something, it's probably very difficult for them to say, no, we're going to do this our way. And they've certainly tried with one series. But you know, speaking of these announcements today, let's talk about the VX, which is an AT&T exclusive device. And so here's another example, just like the Droid Incredible 4G LTE, of a carrier bespoke product, that does not really line up anywhere in the grand scheme of HTC's product portfolio, apart from the fact that it shares the one name. And the specs are weird. I mean, the, you know, the processor's good. It's got the dual core. It's got a 1.2 gighertz dual core Snapdragon S4, which is a great processor. And we've done nothing but praise it all year long. But 4.5 inch QHD is just a weird size resolution combination. And add in the fact that they're not discontinuing the One X on AT&T. Where the heck did these three products line up? Because AT&T is already selling the One X for $99.99. And in talking to HTC earlier about these phones, I got the impression that they're not necessarily keen on lowering that price again in time for the holidays. So you're going to have the X Plus presumably at $199.99, I would imagine. And you'll have the One X at $99.99. And then the VX is where? $49.99 free? I just, like, it's another price pressure situation. We've been talking about this problem for years. But it's happening once again, where you've got too many products in too small of a price range, I think. And the thing about the VX for me is, like, why did they change the design? I mean, that was the one thing everybody said about the One V is it looks and feels amazing. They must be aiming for a lower price point with this thing. Well, this is totally different than the One V. I mean, if you compare the One V is like a 3.7 inch display versus this has got a 4.5 inch display, which is like a totally different feel. And I think target and market. But though I do feel exactly the same way as you, Dieter, like the One V's design was was great. And it was a great entry level One series. So if they're going to just do a spec upgrade on the One X, why not just do like a internal spec upgrade on the One V and then, you know, keep that in its entry level slot? But doesn't look like that's in AT&T's plans. It's true that I was going to ask, actually, is if the One V is available on AT&T. I don't believe that it is not. Right. No, no, it's not. Right. So, yeah. So this One VX is going to occupy, I guess, that sort of position in HTC's portfolio, such as it is. And I'm guessing in terms of the display, they're kind of dredging up old supply, which is going to be, you know, going really cheap of the old displays of the class and kind, not the same type resolution as we had in the HTC Titan and the Sensation. I think it's the Sensation XC was the jumbo size one, the 4.7 inch one. So, yeah, I think the VX is HTC just being a little bit cynical and just taking, you know, cheap supply that it has, particularly of the displays. And the other thing is, you know, nowadays, as much as we don't like this trend, you can sell a 4.5 inch phone more easily than you can sell a 3.7 inch phone, 4 inch phone, just because like people seem to think they get more for their money. Right. Well, I guess we should also talk about, so the Jelly Bean is coming to the One X and the One S. It's going to start rolling out this month, although as Vlad said, probably after the release of the X Plus and the VX. Man, I hate these names anyway. And I mean, I'll be interested to see how HTC handles it, because we know that their take on Ice Cream Sandwich, they, you know, very heavily skinned it down to a custom kernel, made it really hard for ROM developers at least to start, especially with the two processors that they had. So I'll be hoping that it's very buttery and very fast, because if it's not, I think that it kind of sucks for Android, you know, in a weird way that if, you know, the big effort, the big important stuff that for part of Jelly Bean doesn't translate to these other OEMs, these other skins, like, that just sucks. And like, all that'll be there is, you know, Google now, which is cool. But it doesn't feel like a point upgrade to me, a big upgrade. Yeah. This is nothing more to say. It's just a really underwhelming phone and a really underwhelming upgrade, I think. And also, there's something here to also mention. Although this isn't a substantive point, there is the matter of the perception of your phones. And HTC has been a premier Android phone manufacturer for a long time. And making the premier devices involves treating them in that fashion. So exactly as Chris was saying, the Samsung Galaxy S3, in spite of Samsung coming out with a ton of mid-range phones, the Galaxy Note phones and upgrades and whatever else, it's not going to be touched. The smartphone flagship for Samsung is the Galaxy S3, which will probably last at least until June next year. Whereas HTC has just taken its best phone and just upgrading it kind of randomly. Like here's the One X, it's my favorite phone. It has two processors, like these I just mentioned. And then here's the One XL, it's the same thing, but it has LTE now. And now here's the One X Plus. We've tweaked it a little bit more. So these things, first of all, they reduce the resale value of the One X because it's not a unique phone. And people who go into buy a One X don't really know exactly which version they're going to get now. And secondly, because you dilute it, first of all, second of all, I'm kind of repeating myself, but yeah, because you dilute the whole message of the One phone, which was HTC's own creation, you're going against your own marketing. And that same thing that HTC is trying to create, that same emotional bonding connection for people isn't going to happen if you're going to tweak the formula every few months, even if it's otherwise harmless. So it's just not great news. Could have been great, maybe. Could have been redesigned. Like, okay, I'll say something really positive or something positive, which is that it has a 2100 milliamp battery in the exact same space and shell as the 1800 milliamp battery in phone, which HTC deserves credit for. They just jacked in a battery that's a sixth bigger without altering the device size. Just five grams heavier, which is good engineering. That's a good job by HTC. And the screen is still fantastic. I'm going to challenge you a little bit on this being an underwhelming phone, Blythe. I think the problem, I mean, you said underwhelming phone, underwhelming upgrade, and I totally agree with you on the underwhelming upgrade part. The problem is that I think the problem for HTC and for the Android business in general is that the One X did not need an upgrade this year. And this makes, I think that the existence of the X plus makes HTC look a little weak and it makes them look like they're trying to get a, you know, get some sort of leg up on the GS3 that like they feel like they're in a defensive position and they need to kind of like rejigger the One X just a little bit to get a leg up and try and get back in carrier stores, which maybe they very well need to do, but still from a public perception perspective, that's not necessarily the image that they want to project. Absolutely. And also just to mention the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 just started, well, it's on sale now here in the UK and obviously other markets. I think it's already on sale in Korea. So from my thinking, I just see HTC seeing the Galaxy Note 2 grabbing a whole load of shell space in carrier stores, exactly as you're saying, Chris, and they're saying we need to get something big to sit alongside it. We can't just let Samsung have this big new product, particularly is Samsung's first shipping jelly bean device as well. So HTC decided to counter that. But again, the problem is that Samsung's Note series is separate from its flagship, whereas for HTC, this quote unquote upgrade is to its actual flagship device. And for what it's worth here in the US, it's still going to be on one carrier and it's not going to get the exposure on multiple carriers like say the Galaxy S3 has. Right. Well, speaking of rudderless, directionless, defensive actions while retreating, Open WebOS has been released in its official 1.0 form. Yay. Yeah, so it's out and you can install it on a computer. There's a group called WebOS Ports, which is associated with WebOS internals. They work together and they got it running on a Galaxy Nexus. They've been working on it for a while. They still don't have hardware acceleration going on it. And Steve Trotten-Smith actually has also got it running on a Transformer Prime, although I suspect that hardware acceleration might not be going there either. So they really need to get that figured out. And I mean, HP needs to help if they want to get any kind of traction here whatsoever. Can I just say I'm unreasonably excited about the Galaxy Nexus port. Like I am super I don't know why I can't explain it, but I am extremely excited to try a Galaxy Nexus running Open WebOS for no reason whatsoever. Well, I see it this way. It's the best hardware WebOS has ever been has ever run on, even though it's, you know, a year old hardware that wasn't exactly cutting edge at the time when it came out. It's still the best phone that WebOS has ever seen because of the various hardware issues that WebOS and Palm had. So that's kind of exciting. The other thing is like, you know, what's the end game here? Like, I mean, this is going to appeal to WebOS diehards and super nerds. But you know, where do they go from it from with it from here? I mean, the thing that's interesting to me. Go ahead, Chris. I was just gonna say, I think that they end up having the same the exact same level resounding success that that Mego and Tizen have had. I think that's part of it. Part of me wonders if we've just seen the end game. I mean, if you read their like their post about, you know, this thing, you know, reaching one point. Oh, like the thing they keep saying over and over again is we did what we said we were going to do. We met our goal. Like, they care more about the fact that they managed to stick to their roadmap than they do about the fact that they've just shipped an OS. All right. Like, it's like it's more about the first line is like we did. We've succeeded in our goal, despite our tiny resources instead of, hey, look, there's a new OS that you can install. And so, you know, the community is going to get this up and running. They'll get hardware acceleration going in the next. It'll be a fun thing to try. And I suspect that we're going to maybe see like Huawei or ZTE or somebody, you know, take a flyer on a web OS device to sell as a phone. And we might see, you know, it's all like some kind of corporate environment. But I don't see any evidence that now that this thing is out, that, you know, what's the next part of the roadmap? What's the next step? They need to make some announcements. And I mean, we also need to see how this relates to this weird Graham spin off company and what they're planning on doing. So I mean, it'll be a fun experiment, but I really don't expect, you know, don't expect web OS to return to like, you know, mattering in the consumer landscape if it ever did. Well, Dieter, I would actually like to bring you back to our opener today, which was about status symbols that post. And funnily enough, it was a palm device that we're talking about. This is the only, or this is actually the pinnacle of what open web OS can achieve is become sort of status symbol OS with status symbol devices, which geeks will recognize and appreciate and enjoy primarily because the ecosystem issue, the third party app ecosystem issue is so prevalent nowadays. If you don't have one, you're pretty much dead in the water. And this is why the guys who are struggling to reach number three behind Android and iOS are struggling so hard, you know, Windows phone and rim with, you know, the 2015, uh, blackberry 10 release, which they've got plans. So it's always the case. I mean, I'm thinking about, um, the guys who left Nokia, uh, the former Nokia engineers and set up their own project to build more, uh, phones on the basis of Miko Harman, right? I loved it. Like at nine, I think most people who use it and go spend time with it also really enjoyed it. But as much as I love that software, even if they put it on even better hardware, it's not going to go anywhere because there are no apps. Yeah. You have to have the support of the big guys like Skype and Instagram and et cetera. You have to have the big social networks, uh, particularly with Twitter now. I mean, Twitter won't even let you build an app anymore, right? Twitter needs to build its own app. The other option is to have real and genuine web app ecosystem where the apps are more than just, you know, a glorified webpage and, you know, have it be easy to install on multiple devices. I mean, that's a potential future that never came to pass, uh, really well. And it would have been great if it had, in my opinion, and I know you're going to rag on me for this, but you know, Blackberry 10 is pretty good for web apps too. Better in fact than, um, WebOS really ever was. Right. I was going to say that could solve some of these ecosystem problems. That's the direction that Ruby is pushing in, but have we ever seen that succeed? That's the trouble. No, that's the point. Like we've never seen WebOS succeed. I wish it would. Yeah. But I mean, it's frustrating because I mean, you know, uh, I'm brand pre-central. I love WebOS. Um, and you know, if you've used WebOS on a touchpad, you know, it was a slow and buggy experience, but like you can, you see hiding behind the lag that the potential for really great tablet experiences there. Um, and you know, there's this new Luna CE thing it's called Luna CE for, you know, managing windows that the community's iterating on. So if there, if there just were a decent app ecosystem and they could get this thing running with hardware acceleration on decent hardware, it could be really compelling, but it's, you know, it's one of those just frustrating things. Like nobody, they're just not killing the dream. And part of me wants HP to just admit that the dream is dead instead of just limping along. Yeah. I'm with you actually. I'm with you. I would rather just, uh, put a line under it and then we can move on. What's going to be hilarious to me is when HP makes a windows phone or an Android device. Yeah. Oh, that's happening. That's totally happening. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, it's definitely going to make a windows eight tablet. Like that's a no brainer. Uh, yeah. So, um, well I guess since I brought up Blackberry, let's just get this out of the way quick. Well, uh, sometime we talked at the death last week, so we don't need to get to Blackberry 10 again. Um, but they did release their earnings and you know, they lost less money than people expected. Yay. Um, and 7.4 million smartphone ships would shipped, which is, um, you know, I guess enough for people not to completely ignore them, but it's still pretty sad. Well, to put it in perspective, I guess a lot of people were batting this figure around on Twitter. I think Google activates more smartphones in a week than rim shipped in the quarter. Yeah. Wow. Um, we also saw leaked images from a, it looks like a promotional video of, I think it's called the end series is what we're expecting to be called the, the QWERTY keyboard device with the big square screen. And um, I mean, I dunno, it looks cool. It's going to be weird to gesture straight up from the keyboard there. If the keyboard is really that close to the screen, having to do that up gesture constantly, I think will be a little bit awkward, but, um, I mean, I'm probably going to buy one of these things. Like, you are insane. You are, you are literally, you are, you should be committed to an institution immediately later before this purchase happens. And when is the last time that there was a front facing QWERTY keyboard portrait phone with real specs? When was the last time we had that? Well, like that was like competitive, uh, in terms of specs. I'm thinking it might've been the trio pro that, but even by the time that came around, I don't think that was competitive with specs. Yeah. That, that was the GSM one was close. I mean, and they have HTC to thank for that device anyway. Um, yeah, but I mean, you know, the 700 P wasn't maybe, maybe the, you know, one of their other windows phones, seven WX, but once the last time we had a properly spec modern front facing QWERTY keyboard device, I can't, it's been forever. And just on the virtue of that alone, interested in giving this thing a shot. Venue pro if the slider is cool. What's that? But I mean, the venue pro was stuck to your standard windows phone, seven specs that were kind of aged by 2010 when windows said phone seven came around. I wouldn't call that a flagship hype high end on the level of say a one X or a galaxy S3 or even an iPhone. I can't believe any of you are seriously entertaining Dieter's ridiculous notion and giving him the time of day. He should be Brendan, our producer should actually drop him from this program right now. You're, I was going to, I was going to actually answer these this question with a question, uh, which I forgot, which is fine. But the point I was going to make is that this, uh, quality device from rim doesn't exist yet. So I think actually my question was going to be, um, do you know that this will compete on specs when it is actually on sale, which I suspect very much. That's a really good point. And the perfect example, um, is 1080p displays, right? Because, uh, just this week, sharp announced that it's starting mass production of 1080p five inch displays. LG is already doing the same. And Chris and others, myself included was so incredulous last year when we started seeing 720p displays and you know, we just threw up the idea, you know, 1080p displays as the next step, right? And we're like, no, dude, we don't need them. And now they're happening. So things are moving so quickly, like whatever we think of as cutting edge, which rim is never cutting edge, right? So whatever we think of cutting edge today, uh, by February, March, April, when rim actually releases is going to be blunt to extend the analogy. I just can't get over the fact that it doesn't look like rim has iterated on the 9900 design at all. Like it literally just looks like a 9900 that's half an inch longer, which I mean, I'm okay with that. It's an iPhone five too, but I mean, but it's like, it's, it's, it's exactly the same thing. It's with a difference. Then is that the iPhone is iconic and people have built up loyalty. Whereas rim used to be iconic and room actually needs to change. Yes. Look, man, they're going to make a Porsche version of this up to 99, 99, 99, and it's going to cost $3,000 and uh, I'm not going to buy that one. I can't even make the joke. No, dude, that, that actually is dredging up bad memories from because I spent a solid week reviewing that garbage portion design and just giving it the time of day, just giving it on an issue. And it's crazy. It's crazy. It makes you want to strangle somebody. Um, and actually that's, that's a good point. If you, if you ever buy anything branded by Porsche or Ferrari or Mitsubishi or Lamborghini or anybody, make sure it's the thing that that company and brand is famous for. Okay. I haven't seen anything good. I'm going to argue this point with you because I want to say, yeah, it's got to be like 10 years ago now. Um, there was a line of laptops that actually best buy sold that were branded with Porsche design and they were like the best looking windows laptops of the time. They pretty much just aped, you know, whatever Apple was doing. Um, but at that point there was no, uh, windows laptops that had, uh, you know, a widescreen display and aluminum chassis and, uh, you know, relatively thin design for the time and they even had like slot loading CD rom drives. So those are like the only, I guess that's the exception that proves the rule there. But nobody, nobody wants to corroborate this on me or with me. Yeah, no, sorry. You're way out on your own. I don't even know what you're talking about, but I trust you. So if there's a Batman tie in, you should totally jump all over that. Like a Batman tie in. I think you can like the Batman, the 800, which was amazing. Yeah. How about a, how about a James Bond tie in? Isn't the, the, the Sony Xperia TL got announced. Isn't that going to be James Bond's next phone? Yes, yes. And I actually can talk about that because I've had one in for review and I can't bring myself to review it because, uh, well, frankly, the fact that I'm not going to review it, Sony should thank me for it. Probably like 70 K could say thank you because it is annoying. Well, here's the thing. It's ships with ice cream sandwich, which is good and it's generally responsive. And in terms of the widgets, I actually think Sony might have some of the best skin widgets and little skin tweaks. So it has some really, really good ideas, but Sony's habit of picking the ugliest, most annoying displays. I'm talking, if you're just looking at the display straight up in front of you, like right in front of your eyes, it looks good. And all of this Bravia engine talk that they have with the displays, right, top notch. Great. You can get some great saturation, great color, et cetera. As soon as you tilt it in any sort of direction, uh, and let me assure people most of the time you're not looking at your phone straight ahead. You know, it's not a 20 inch display. You don't need to, you don't need massive viewing angles, but you need some viewing angles. A lot of the time you're looking at your phone while it's on the table or in your hand, et cetera, and you're looking at it from an angle. And when you're doing that, the Sony displays are just garbage. And I thought this Xperia T was an upgrade over the Xperia arc with the plastic back, but Sony's still using the exact same plastic materials. And it ultimately you just start feeling, it starts to feel really cheap. I think it's such a major and significant departure from things like the Xperia X10, which to me was, I know it's what it was called, right? Sony Xperia X10. The one that was stuck on 1.6 for about a decade until 1.6. That really felt like a premium device. Like you held it in your hand and you're like, wow, this is a Sony phone. Even though the software had issues. Now Sony's getting better with software. It's just cheapening out on the hardware side and it's not learning from its own mistakes and just annoys me. Yeah. The issues that you had with the T sound like the exact, or the exact same issues with the ION that came here in the US this summer. It's just display issues all over the place, hardware issues with it all over the place. And just the thing I was going to say is this phone also makes James Bond appear completely confused because he's going to wear a mega watch, which costs thousands and thousands of pounds or dollars, whatever your currency costs thousands. It's got precision engineering and it keeps time beautifully, et cetera, et cetera. And then just a little bit further down into his hand, you've got this plastic piece of... And it's terrible. I mean, it's basically ruined the film for me. As soon as I see the product placement for the Xperia T, I'm going to be like, James Bond uses a garbage phone. I can't even respect him anymore. I want the Russians to win, whoever the bad guys are. Well, of course you do. You're Bulgarian, Vlad. You probably root for the Russians in every single Bond movie. Pretty much. Even if there are Russians in the movie. Wow. By the way, I have nothing to add to this conversation. I will say this. I don't think we've ever mentioned it on the show, but we should. Jeff Blagden did an excellent piece where he actually went and talked to Sony's mobile designers at their Tokyo design office. The text of it is great, obviously, and he interviewed them, but the gallery is really, really fascinating where you get to see all these different design concepts that they've iterated through. There's this one shot in particular of this table with, I think, literally every phone Sony and Sony Ericsson have ever made. It's insane. I want to buy that table with all the phones on it just for my own personal use. But yeah, I do think after reading Jeff's piece, I do want to believe that Sony recognizes exactly what you guys are talking about, which is that there is you know, their recent devices have felt very cheap. Sometimes they look great, but they feel cheap. And I think that as the new management and the new corporate structure kind of congeal over the next few quarters, I'm hopeful that that's going to change. At least I certainly want it to. And I think we all do. We all have everyone in our age range has a very fond memory of Sony growing up and we all kind of want to see them turn around. But this product is not necessarily that. And you know, on paper, the specs are great, right? But yeah, I'm not too hopeful about this phone that I would buy. They're not even great, that's the thing. I don't know if I've said much positive during this podcast today. I'm just here ragging on companies. But Sony blew it on the spec side as well. It has a Snapdragon S3 for about two, two and a half years. Still the S3. That was like one of the biggest complaints of the ION was that it was the S3 and it was, you know, old and slow. It's a Scorpion processor. Oh my God. Yeah, that's that's totally blowing it. Yeah, so it's your core is 1.5 gigahertz, but it's old. So that's one part. Another part, going to Chris's point about us hopeful geeks and the way that Sony is letting us all down. PlayStation certification. HTC made sure to mention that the One X Plus is another PlayStation certified device. And then I made sure to mention to HTC when they were telling me about that, the fact that the PlayStation store isn't activated yet. So being PlayStation certified basically means zero for the One X Plus and for the Xperia T. But also, let's not forget that Sony is trying to have its One Sony campaign. So we got the HTC trying to give you the one smartphone device campaign. Sony is trying to be the one Sony. It's also trying to rationalize the product line. And at the same time, they're falling back on bad old habits because you got the Xperia T, which is I'm guessing is going to be all across Europe. Then you got the Xperia TX, which is going to be the Germany only LTE version. And that one actually has a Snapdragon S4, Geocore Snapdragon S4 and LTE, I think. I think they had to combine the two, basically. So that's why they went for the newer process there. I have nothing more to say about Sony. Speaking of depressing Android garbage, the Motorola Atrix 4G, depressing in and of itself? I don't know. It's depressing that it's not going to get upgraded ice cream sandwich. Come on, guys. Really, come on. You said you'd do it. I mean, this is an old phone and that's fine, whatever. But I don't know, man. When is Motorola going to get its act together and act like it's owned by Google? We had the stuff about the Razr and all that. But I would just like to see this company have the new Motorola clean break that we're expecting it to have and just do that. And the Razr M and the Razr HD were not it. And this continued fiasco of is it going to get an update, is it not? When's it going to come? How is it not going to because it's not powerful enough? It just needs to stop. My theory, and I think that we talked about this on the show in the past, but my theory is that they're still kind of cleaning out the pre-Google ownership pipe. And the Razr M is a perfect example of that. I don't think that that is a product that the Google-owned Motorola would have necessarily greenlit, but that was a commitment that they had to Verizon prior to that acquisition completing. And of course, the Atrix 4g is a legacy product and that's probably an example of, of, you know, Motorola just trying to cut its losses and refocus its smaller team. Keep in mind that they're, they're going through some layoffs right now. They're trying to refocus their smaller team, hopefully on new and interesting products. So I don't want to sound like I'm shilling for Motorola here, but I'm, I'm cautiously optimistic that we haven't actually seen what a Google-owned Motorola can do yet. I completely agree. We haven't seen it yet. This kind of delay reminds me of HP and Palm. It just took so long for HP to quote unquote integrate Palm, get the scale, get the such and such, get the middle management to remember everybody's name, et cetera. And it never gelled, it never materialized. So I'm just going to carry on with my negative theme for today and just be like, why? The question has to be, why does it take so freaking long? Like you bought the company. It took months for Google to get ratification from Europe, US, even China. So they knew that this was going to happen for a long time. They could have learned everybody's name. They could have learned what everybody does and it could have adjusted things. I guess maybe I'm being too optimistic about how quickly roadmaps can be changed in this business. Maybe I am, but it still just feels slow, slow as hell aside from the fact that it's outrageous. I mean, to be fair, the Atrix 4G was a pretty like issue prone phone. I briefly tried to own one, but I just, I couldn't do it. But you know, I mean, if you look at it, I guess the bothersome thing to me is that this is a perfect example of a device that you look at the specs on paper and there's absolutely zero excuse for it. Not for an ICS. I remember sitting in a Motorola's press conference at CES 2011 and they, they, you know, introduced this Atrix 4G and everyone was like, holy crap. One gig of memory dual core processor. People were, that was the phone that they famously announced alongside the droid bionic, which got sent back to the drawing board and then the bionic didn't launch until what? October or something. Yeah. But they, I mean, this is a phone that when it, when it was announced, you know, less than two years ago, less than one full contract ago was far and away the most high spec Android phone to be announced. And here we are in 2012 and this thing has just been left by the wayside. I guess we should talk about the other, the biggest, you know, fail in mobile of the past couple of weeks. We got to address maps again. What's super interesting is Tim Cook published letter apologizing for maps and they have been promoting third party alternatives in the store. And who among us is using iOS 6 and maps? I know that I am and I, this got mentioned on the verge cast. I literally got poked like just like David Pogue maps sent me to a random cul-de-sac instead of to my meeting. And if I hadn't shown up super early, I would have missed my meeting. Like it was completely insane. Like I went to the address, I stood at the address and I searched for the address in Palo Alto and standing right at it and it gave me the result back at the other place in a different city. And I reported the problem, but I couldn't report the problem on the spot that I was at. So I guess the big question for me is how long until, you know, people feel like this isn't a problem. Will it be a Google maps or some third party app that everybody defaults to or will Apple be able to fix up their maps product on iOS quickly enough where we won't be complaining about it and feeling frustrated by it? So, so I have a, I have a thought on that and I'm probably going to catch a lot of hell for this, but, you know, I've been talking to my friends over the past couple of weeks since iOS 6 came out and a lot of them are iPhone users, but they're not, they're not techie at all. They don't, they don't read what we do or they're not like, you know, on the, the only mention of maps they might hear on the today show or the evening news or something like that. And, and pretty much every single one of them has said, I don't know what everybody is complaining about with maps because they're just fine for me. And it's totally anecdotal, but I think that's going to be something that a lot of average users are probably not going to have that big of a problem in, you know, a few weeks time once it blows over the, the whole storm of, of complaints and controversy. Once that blows over and everybody's kind of focused on the next thing, I don't think average users are really going to have too much of a problem with it in the long run. I kind of agree with you, Dan, but, but except for one thing, which is that it only takes one catastrophic incident to really sour you on the experience. And Dieter's example is a perfect, a perfect case of that, where it's like, if he had missed his meeting, he would have been pissed for, you know, six months or more that, that maps had wronged him. And I wouldn't blame him for that. Yeah. I mean, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. So that's going to be a situation for regular users to 99% of the time, they might get to their destination, but it's that other 1% that's really going to cause a long-term problems for Apple, I think, or has the potential to. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's definitely a perception thing. And the question is once you've been burned once you've sort of in the air that there's, it's a problem. And then you just have that opinion. Um, and you know, it's just going to be hard for Apple to turn that around. I mean, I think I've said before, like as a first iteration of maps, I think it's really good. Uh, but first iteration of maps is not really acceptable anymore. Um, right. Yeah. Uh, there was this other, this wifi issue or, uh, you could have wifi at Verizon and maybe other carriers. It was still using cellular data, but Verizon's not going to charge you for it. Um, I didn't experience this, but I'm not a Verizon either. Um, but it's good that that's getting fixed and relatively quickly it looks like too. So yay. Um, I think that's really the big iPhone news of the week to be honest. Um, other than I have one piece of failing on me, I have one piece of big iPhone news, uh, which is that, uh, do not disturb is the best feature ever invented. Um, and it, it really upsets me to say that because it's like, I remember when they talked about it during the iOS six event, I was like, Oh, that, you know, that's awesome. Oh wait, that's so basic. I shouldn't be saying it's awesome. Uh, but it, in reality, like the, um, the programmability of it, uh, it's just, it's, it's awesome. It's great. They, the implementation is perfect. Um, you know, I have like three contacts that, that I allow to get through, uh, if, if it's in do not disturb mode and I, I, I have peace of mind that while I'm on the mobile, are you scheduling it or are you toggling it? Am I what? Sorry. Are you scheduling it or are you toggling it? Both. So I, um, what, uh, what I do is like, you know, when I, when the mobile show started, I turned it on. Um, and so that's an example of me manually enabling it, but I'll, I'll definitely use it for like, if I'm going to a movie or something, I, instead of putting my brain in silent, I'll put it in, do not disturb. And then, um, uh, I also have it set so that between, I think like 2 am and 5 am or something, uh, it, it's in do not disturb right now. I, and that might change. I might adjust that depending on like what events are going on, use the events. But, uh, you know, I, I figured that's a safe range for me to be able to sleep without any potential text messages from, from drunk friends. Well, it's, it's, I know you've mentioned this in the past, Chris, but it's, it's kind of interesting how much granularity, uh, iOS gives you over notifications and do not disturb as a part of that. Um, excuse me, where the rest of like the OS is you have very little control over certain things that you might expect to have more control of, but this notifications thing, you can like go customize to your heart's content where you can't even do that on some of the other platforms. So it's just kind of this interesting anomaly within iOS. Yeah. What's interesting to me about the do not disturb, uh, is it's basically profiles. Um, and we had this innovation with the original trio 180 that, uh, you know, and actually, no, I'm sorry, with the visor phone, this goes back to the visor phone that, you know what profiles that all these phones are these different like night mode and do not disturb mode and movie mode and blah, blah, blah mode is really complicated for users. Uh, so we're just going to make a physical switch and that will put it in silent. And that's, that's the most profile management that you need to bother with. Um, and that is carried through to a ton of different phones. Uh, you know, the iPhone of course, a bunch of Android phones that they, you know, if you scroll all the way down and automatically goes to silent. Um, and so profile management has sort of like fallen by the wayside as a feature that most people care about and want to manage. And rather than just bring back the idea of profiles and setting up multiple profiles, they just bring one, this do not disturb mode, which maybe gets multiplied by the ringer switch or not. Um, and I guess it makes sense to me to do that because it's still simpler than a full on support for, you know, customizable profiles. But on the other hand, I figured if you're going to be introducing this sort of complication in the first place, just do it right and do it all out. I mean, you know, you just said there's a ton of settings and granularity in iOS, like why not have more? Well, that maybe that's the thing. Maybe, uh, Apple has done it right. Maybe it's just give you a little bit, but not the whole thing. Because I fully agree. I've seen so many phones with exactly like you're saying, like a silent profile outdoors in the garden profile, cloudy day profile. And you're like, what exactly is this adjusting? Like am I switching between the crazy Korean ringtone and the same European one? Am I going to have a ringtone? Is the phone going to vibrate? It's not predictable. Whereas with Do Not Disturb, you get exactly the predictable thing. You don't get disturbed. And to Chris's point about scheduling, Zen, our London intern, he's been saying that the best feature hands down of iOS 6 for him is also Do Not Disturb. So it's kind of notable that two of our extremely erudite and intelligent members of the Verge staff, um, obviously Chris being a celebrity in the mobile business as well, uh, are loving this feature. And it's actually encouraging because some people, myself included, started questioning, well, hang on, when was the last time that Apple actually did something really innovative and new and kind of as a selling point on the software side? Um, I don't really know, like Apple did a whole bunch of catching up with notifications, et cetera, and did quite a few things well, but it never had like this one feature that it did really nicely and really neatly, which has been kind of a hallmark of previous Apple stuff. So that's encouraging to see that it's Do Not Disturb thing has been developed in-house by Apple and it's been done right. Uh, and it's, you know, getting positive feedback from people. Uh, I do feel, I mean, Do Not Get At Nine, coming back to that, uh, favorite phone of mine, it also has like that kind of thing. You could schedule things like don't give me any alerts from midnight until ATM or whatever other time, or just disconnect the phone. Um, I believe Sony also has, uh, some of these things built into its Android, uh, skin, or if it's not Sony, then it's a friend of mine who had a Sony phone and hacked it, uh, with a rom. Um, I don't remember exactly, but the point is other companies, uh, have also tried to do the same thing. Um, and maybe if Nokia was still selling and pushing the N9, we would see that being successful, but it's good to see Apple doing it. And at least in my opinion, uh, not having used it, going on the basis of what Chris and Zenef said, uh, Apple seems to have struck the right balance here between customization and simplicity. I rescind my previous comments and acknowledge that Vlad speaks the truth. Yay. Success. Uh, I think, uh, one more thing we can't not talk about is this, uh, that Deutsche Telekom has confirmed that it's, uh, in talks to buy Metro PCS. Um, and we've, we've heard rumblings that there'd be more consolidation in the mobile industry. This is obviously an example of that. And I'm trying to decide if I think it's a good fit. And um, I mean, it's a good fit just strictly from a, uh, you know, they need to increase customer base and size of the business, but, uh, I'm a little bit less sold on if it's a good fit in terms of spectrum. Well there's a couple of different schools of thought on it. And uh, there was some really healthy debate on, on Twitter, uh, today between some really smart people. Um, and you know, the one side says that, uh, Metro PCS is a great fit for, for T-Mobile because it already has an AWS LTE network and that's what T-Mobile needs to get to is an AWS LTE network. Um, and then the flip side, the other argument says, yeah, but Metro PCS also runs this CDMA network that it can't really shut off right now and it's incompatible with T-Mobile's GSM network. So, uh, you know, it will be interesting to see how it goes. I personally, I think that, um, T-Mobile's access to the LTE network is very important, um, with the, uh, the, the AWS spectrum and since it already uses AWS spectrum and that's what it's planning on rolling out LTE on, uh, in the future, I think it's a good thing if, if this were to happen. Yeah, I think that, uh, that this is a pretty obvious fit. I mean, people have been talking about this as a possible tie up since before AT&T tried to buy T-Mobile. Um, and Metro PCS has been in discussions on and off for years and years and years with Leap, just the, the parent company of, of Cricket and they've been kind of like flirting with each other for as long as I can remember. Um, so it's, I, and, you know, I think that those regionals that, that are sitting on a lot of, uh, spectrum and not particularly many, uh, customers, uh, namely Metro PCS and Cricket are, are in perpetual danger of being acquired if danger is the appropriate word. Um, I, yeah, I think this could work. You know, I, uh, Metro PCS has some, uh, some LTE markets, uh, that T-Mobile could certainly use and I think that the FCC is probably very, the FCC and the DOJ are probably both very friendly to a T-Mobile tie up with a small carrier, uh, more, certainly more so than they were with AT&T. Um, so this is something that they could probably make happen from a regulatory perspective if they wanted to. So you think it's going to happen? I think it's probably going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. I would, I would put the odds that, I mean, if I were a betting man, I would definitely put a dollar on this happening. Wow. One American dollar. Yes. Done. Which is worth loads nowadays, dude. Are you sure you don't want to save up that dollar and maybe invest it in Sharp? Oh dude, such a segue. I'm feeling pretty good about that. Um, well, I mean, this is just a very quick mention, uh, again to pimp out Jeff Blackdon's work over in Japan. Uh, he got to see Sharp's five inch 1080P display in person and he's thrilled with it. It's extremely pixel dense. It's got over 440 PPI in pixel density and according to him, it looks great. So check out his post on the site to, you know, get some more of his impressions and, um, take a look at the, uh, a gallery of pictures from that display. Uh, just one thing, one thought that crossed my mind with Sharp today was that it's one, it's one of, I think every single Japanese tech companies having some struggles nowadays. I can't think of one that's thriving, maybe Nikon and Canon because their business hasn't changed quite as dramatically even though it is in the process of changing. Uh, but Sharp is one of those companies that's struggling. Uh, Foxconn has been looking to buy a stake in Sharp and, uh, help it out. Um, the Japanese government, I think approved a bank bailout of some 6 billion for Sharp and Renaissance recently. But the thing that came to my mind is Sharp can have a silver lining to its future if it continues to lead in mobile displays. And that seems to be where Sharp is right now because it's one of the companies providing the iPhone five display, which means it's guaranteed, uh, to sell as many displays as it can actually produce. And it's now one of the companies on the cutting edge for displays for what we should be, uh, be the next generation of Android devices. So it's in a good position. Well on that hopeful note, we're going to end on a hopeful note. I'm making it happen. Thank you very much for listening and or watching the Verge mobile show. If you want to follow us, you can. I'm at Backlawn. Vlad is at Vlad Savov. Chris is at ZPower. Dan is at DC Seaford. That's with an EI. If you're wondering, we are all at Verge. You can comment on the podcast post when it goes up. We've also got a Verge mobile show at the Verge.com. Actually just mobile show at the Verge.com. If you want to email us, that'd be fine too. We appreciate that. We do. I'm just rambling. We're going to go. Goodbye. Thanks. Bye guys.