 If you've been watching The Verge Mobile Show for the past couple of weeks, you may have noticed that the show now comes in three different sizes. We've got the Classic version with three editors, The Verge Mobile Show 2 with four editors, and The Verge Mobile Show Mini with just two. Today, we're bringing you The Verge Mobile Show 2 with four editors, so stay tuned for The Verge Mobile Show. Hey, so I'm Dan Siefert. I'm Vlad Savo. I'm Chris Dickler. And I am Peter Bohn. Yes. So we actually have all four of us here this time with Dieter coming in via phone as you notice there. And this is our 20th episode for the week of October 8th for The Verge Mobile Show. It's a milestone. It's a good milestone. It's a strong number. Indeed. Next week, we're going to binge drink and... Yes, next week we'll be all drunk during the show. And be drunk completely. It's a good plan. I think that I brought this up before, but I just want to confirm. Yes, the 20th anniversary is you give the gift of China, but a modern... That's the traditional gift, but the modern gift apparently is platinum. So listeners, if you'd like to send us platinum, you're welcome to do so. We'll give our home addresses at the end of the show. Isn't the gift of China, you know, inexpensive smartphones made by slave labor? I see what you did there. Wait, that's what I was going to ask. Do you mean like actual China, like bone China? Like porcelain? It means the entire country. Yeah, you just give the gift of 1.3 billion people. Yes. Okay, because while you were saying that, I brought up my cup of tea up to my mouth and it's made out of China. I was going to note that, Vlad. That was amazing timing. I didn't want to interrupt Chris there. It's also really educational, Vlad. You shouldn't have done that because now people think that you don't need China and they're not going to send it to you. Okay, I don't. I have this and it's a really educational cup because it has all sorts of ducks on it, including their names, including a Mandarin duck and a pochard. I guess people who drink tea get bored easily. So it's good to have some fascinating information. Oh, I also want to note that we would like to really thank Vlad for joining us today because he is on vacation and he took time out of his vacation to join us for the Verge Mobile Show today. Yeah, my really distant vacation. We pulled him off the sunny beaches of Britain to October to join us. The sunny and shingly beaches of Britain. Yes. Well, you guys did pull me off of the sunny beaches of San Diego, which I would be at right now rather than actually going to the Mobilecon convention today because there's not a whole lot else to do at Mobilecon. It's an enterprise only show and it is ridiculously quiet. And so are we even talking about stuff that happened at Mobilecon later in the show? Yeah, I guess we are. Yes. Yes, absolutely. But I'm skipping the keynote so that I can be here with you guys and I couldn't be happier. Well, we couldn't be happier that you're with us, Dieter. It's a really emotional thing for me because this is the first CTIA that I've missed since 2006. So I'm sorry that I couldn't be there. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And I do believe, Chris, that they are aware of the fact that you're not going to be there, which is why they have absolutely nothing new to show. Right. Yeah, that's it. They were like, well, Chris isn't coming. We got to postpone all these launches that we were planning for the event. That's exactly what happened. I do believe that all of us... Sorry, Vlad. I was going to say there's one thing that is new that I saw, which was the T-Mobile variant of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Cool. But really it's not new because we've seen it before because, Vlad, you wrote an excellent and comprehensive review. Let's talk about that. Vlad, tell us about this review. Tell us about the Note 2, actually. Yes. About the Note 2. What can I say about it? I mean, at the moment, my conclusion at the end was basically that at the moment it might be the best Android device you can buy. And I'm going to stand by that, even though it's kind of outrageous to say because to me, when I look at the premier Android devices, we're talking about the HT 1X or the 1X Plus or the 1XL, whatever variant you want to look at, and we're talking about the Galaxy S3 from Samsung. And both of those are 4.7 inches and above. And to me, that makes them devices that are most comfortably used with two hands. You know, one hand to hold the phone, one hand to operate it. And then I look at the Galaxy Note 2 at 5.5 inches, and I think, well, that's kind of a small jump. It isn't the same way that it was with the original Galaxy Note. With the original Galaxy Note, I thought it would be such a niche device because it wasn't a tablet, it wasn't giving you as much of screen real estate as an actual tablet, but it was forcing you into a new way of using your phone. And at the time, the premier phones were actually around 4.3 inch size. So now that your best choice is a 4.7 inches and above, I just feel like, well, step up a little bit and get the bigger battery, the bigger screen, and the stylus with the Galaxy Note 2. That's just my reasoning. I just figure it's so close to the Galaxy S3 in terms of specs and in terms of capabilities, it has the exact same camera, same processor, etc. Why not just get the better, more powerful device? So you're saying, Vlad, if you're willing to go big enough for the Galaxy S3, you might as well just go as big as you possibly can. Exactly. And that's exactly it. And the thing I also said at the beginning of my review is that this feels like the Galaxy S3 Note edition. The crazy thing to me, though, I mean, I hear what you're saying about, you know, like they're not being that big of a difference between the S3 and the Note 2 in terms of size. But there's this really striking picture somewhere in your review where you have it next to a one X and like the I I'm not positive about this, but it looks from the picture like if you place the one X on top of the Note 2, it would be completely contained within the outline of the display itself on the Note 2, which gives you an idea of how big this device is. So the Note 2 does make the one X, which I'm holding up right now next to my face. So so, yeah, if you know how big my face is, you know how big the one X is, you can get an idea. I think we need a comparison next to a bicep to really know. There's a scientific principle that says that the size of Vlad's bicep cannot be accurately computed anyway. So that would help. Yes, I also think that anything that is not bigger than my biceps counts as a phone. So the Note 2 is a phone. No, it's not. It's a tablet. I'm counting as a tablet. I've never called the Note 2 a phone. I never called the original Note a phone. I'm still not calling it a phone. But the distinction is that I would use it in place of a smartphone because it can replace a smartphone. I just don't think it is one. And yet the thing I was going to say quickly about its size is that, yes, it makes the one X, which is a big phone, look kind of small and cute, which is amusing. So maybe you can answer this for me, Vlad. The problem that I had with the original Note was that it was a giant. To me, it always felt like a giant smartphone because the software on it was all smartphone software. You had the smartphone version of Android smartphone apps except for like two customized Samsung apps. Has that changed at all with the Note 2? Does it feel like are there more tablet specific type of software on it or are we still just dealing with blown up versions of the same phone apps that we would get on any other smartphone? Well, you said two Samsung specific apps that you must have had some sort of stripped down bloatware free version. Well, perhaps I was exaggerating a little bit, but it was only a handful of if I were to download an app from the Play Store, for instance, I would get the smartphone version of it. I would not see a tablet version. No, of course. I mean, there's no tablet optimization here to speak of. Samsung has loaded, I don't know, dozens and dozens of its own apps, its own customizations, its own presets. When you first start using the Note 2, you're going to have to dismiss so many little tutorial notes and little do you want to do this? Do you not want to do this? It starts to feel like you're setting up a Windows machine. So there you go. I don't buy check boxes for hating on Samsung, hating on such as hating on Microsoft. I'm just doing it efficiently. But there's no tablet optimization. It is very much a phone experience extended upwards. But I mean, I still don't feel like Android's tablet interface such that it is particularly good. Right. So just expanding the smartphone one seems reasonable enough as far as I'm concerned. OK. All right. So Brad, can you fit this thing in your pocket? Yes. OK. Fair enough. I can't bend down with it in my pocket, but it fits. There's a 100 percent chance that Dieter is going to buy the AT&T version of this stupid device. Yeah. I mean, I'm the guy that said he was going to buy a black. I do need to also say the stylus is useful. I think we need to make a point out of this. I mean, the first thing I already mentioned, the 3100 mAh battery in Note 2 is very strong and very good. It's probably the most attractive feature as far as I'm concerned. But a stylus is legitimately useful. And the handwriting recognition is really improved than the original Note. I can't make it miss now. And my handwriting with that stylus is so much worse than my handwriting with a regular pen. So it deals with the challenge very well, recognizes handwriting. And on multiple occasions now, I use it to take legitimate notes. I'm on a call with somebody, not with the Note itself, but I would sit down and just scribble notes on it. And stylus works. It does its job. Now, Vlad, when you say that, are you talking about in the S Note or the S memo? Man, I forget. It's still insane to me that there's S Note and S memo. Is that still the case? I don't know if the S memo still exists. OK. Are you talking about taking handwritten notes on the main screen as you have in this picture here? Or are you talking about using it in the keyboard input area where you get rid of the software keyboard and you use it as a handwriting entry area? Right. Well, I've done both. I've taken full page notes, just handwritten notes, which I haven't converted to text. I don't know if Samsung has the option to take your handwritten notes and then retroactively convert them. And I've also written messages just by using the handwriting area in the messaging application. And both are useful. See that's really bad news for me because I'm really interested in. I've been taking a lot of notes lately handwritten. I like carrying around a little field notes notepad in my back pocket. So I'm really used to taking notes on a piece of paper that's actually smaller than the Galaxy Note 2. And so I could maybe legitimately use this thing for note taking. And so you can expect that. So yeah, I might end up needing to get one of these. Now the thing that I'm worried about is, as you mentioned, actually sitting down. I love that there's nothing else to say about this other than talking about its size from my perspective. But I guess it's because I haven't played one. But like if this thing takes off and becomes popular, I'm calling it right now the holsters back baby. Oh, oh, no, no. That'll be the greatest travesty of the note and the Note 2 and whatever comes after the Note 2 beyond the fact that they exist would be that if they brought back the holster. Here's why. Here's why the holster is not coming back. I can tell you exactly why. It's because unlike, you know, the late 90s, early 2000s when holsters were were chic. I'm going to stop you right there, Chris. They were never chic. They were just in use. Yes. What correction when they were in use? Star Tech holster was pretty was pretty sweet. What was so sweet about it? No comment. It was it was a plastic holster designed specifically for the Star Tech. It was a very svelte and thin and, you know, because it had an antenna, you know, and like you click it in. And so the back of the phone would point out. And so it was just, you know, it was it was very low profile. So it behaved like any other plastic holster that's ever been produced. But it was the first one that that like was so widespread use. Everything else copied that one. Well, look, the difference now is that every man is now acceptable for men to have purses and it wasn't when when holsters were first in use. I carry a purse everywhere I go, basically. So I mean, it's not called a purse. It's called a messenger bag. But for all practical purposes, it's a large purse. So if it doesn't fit in your pocket, you're just going to throw it in your messenger bag. I could see putting this in a jacket pocket. That's actually where I put my Nexus 7 is in like the inside pocket of my jacket. And I suppose you could do that with a note, too, as well. I was going to just suggest that just wear a jacket everywhere you go. Which you should be doing anyway. So it looks like TouchWiz is still sort of I think the phrase you use is that they're still emphasizing quantity over quality. And I was really hoping that they would try and tone it down a little bit now that they've revved it up to Android 4.1. But oh, well. How's Google Now on it? Is it the same as on the Galaxy Nexus? I didn't use it too much. I've never really gotten to use Google Now much. I mean, two things to be said here. Now, the first is the TouchWiz is the most tolerable skin as far as I'm concerned, Android skin. And when I first turned on the Note 2 and started just wiping around the home screens, which Samsung again preloads with just the crap ton of things you don't want and you have to clear away. I'm serious. It really feels like you just bought a Windows 7 machine where there's just all of this stuff which you need to disable and get rid of and clean up and tidy up. It's like part of the packaging is having way too much stuff in the software. Besides that, besides that complaint, when I started swiping between the home screens, I was like, wow, it was just so quick. And my first reaction was I must have forgotten how responsive the Galaxy S3 is. But then I realized that this is Jelly Bean and Jelly Bean has Project Butter. And Project Butter is Google's optimizations to make the screen animations smoother, make them better, et cetera. Look, Project Butter is a lie. It has done nothing on the Galaxy Nexus. In fact, I almost go so far as to say. That's my point. You need a fast processor to benefit from it because I had Jelly Bean on the Nexus S and I was like, well, that's impressive. But it is on this phone. Oh, sorry. On the Note 2, which is not a phone. But to be fair, you haven't used the Note 2 with ICS. So I mean, the Note 2 could in theory be just as fast with ICS. Yeah, that's also true. And also it's a quad-core processor. It's clocked at 1.6 gigahertz, whereas I believe in the Galaxy S3, it's 1.4. So another thing that the Note 2 has is it has a title for benchmarking the highest out of any Android phone fan. It's kind of a hollow title nowadays because there aren't that many games or things that use that much power. But, you know. Well, I mean, essentially what it is, is the same solution as we've always seen with Android to make it faster, smoother. They're just throwing more hardware at it. Upgraded hardware and faster hardware and faster chips and stuff like that. Yeah, but that's true. And people complain about that. But at the same time, things are actually constantly improving. Every time somebody like Samsung throws more hardware power at a problem, it improves things. So it might not be as fast or as, you know, just clean cuts as somebody saying, OK, improve it in software and then it's fixed for everybody. But every single time it's improving, it's getting better, it's getting smoother. Which is a good thing. If you're willing to upgrade your phone every six months. Yeah. What's really amazing to me is that, you know, for, geez, at least five years, if not more, there was this principle, this widely accepted principle in mobile that the region between five inches and about seven inches was a no man's land. Like nobody could create a successful product in that in that area. And like most recently, like the Dell streak is a great example of that. Right. I don't think a single person in the world bought the Dell streak. And Samsung has pulled it off. They've pushed this product through and actually created this niche that simply didn't exist before. And it's obviously here to stay. And you know, you've got to give them credit for that. The question is whether other OEMs can and will follow. You know, we've heard these rumors of the five inch HTC that's coming, but I don't think that one has a stylus. And of course, LG has tried to follow with the Optimus View. So we'll see if this category is here to stay or if it's a flash in the pan. Vlad, tell me about the display real quick, because it's actually different than before. The dreaded word pentile appears to not apply. But you say that it's still not as good as the One X. Right. Well, nothing is as good as the One X. Nothing I've seen. A lot of people have said good things about the iPhone five display, but I haven't seen it in person. I'm actually really terrible in terms of getting a hold of an iPhone five and actually experiencing using it. But in any case, I've compared them. I've compared them. I can answer that. I've compared them side to side. And the One X is slightly better because it has better viewing angles. The One X is like basically 180 degrees and the iPhone five kind of washes out when you start to angle it. Yeah, that's my experience exactly. Good job by HTC. Now, if they actually had an Android skin worth using, they'd be in business. About the Galaxy Note 2 display. So here's the thing. It's not pentile anymore. But where you had a red and a blue and two green sub pixels, you now have a red and a green sub pixel and an enlarged blue sub pixel. So the enlarged blue sub pixel is the same size as the two green ones previously, which kind of generates the same look. I think in terms of like how many sub pixels you actually have in the display, now you have three sub pixels per pixel instead of previously having two red and a blue and then two green ones. So ultimately, the new display actually has more sub pixels. I think that's the case. So I'm pretty sure most people aren't following me anymore after I started trying to break down. Sorry, Diego. I was going to say, are we going to start calling this the hex tile display? I don't know. Hex why hex? Well, yeah, six, because pen is five, isn't it? No. Yeah. I pentiles. Now, the pentiles a brand name, right? Like that's a that's a branding. Okay. Yeah. Right. I'm just I'm just in any case, like it's I don't know how to explain it exactly. There are still issues with it is still not a straight RGB where the red, green and the blue subpixels are exactly the same size and regular like the good displays have like LG's IPS displays like the one X that were mentioned. But generally speaking, in your general use, that doesn't really matter. Like the only issue I had a couple of issues if I want to pick it as a couple of issues with note two. One is that the screen kind of has a blue tinge, which you'll notice almost with any animal display, particularly with Samsung's displays. And also its automatic brightness tends to be a little bit too dark. So most of the time, you might want to set your own brightness level instead of trusting it. I think Samsung's kind of over aggressive on saving power. Correct me if I'm wrong. I think the Galaxy S3 had that same problem with the brightness. And they still haven't figured out how to do both automatic brightness and still allow you to adjust the brightness like they do on iOS. I don't know if that's a patent issue or if it drives me nuts. Although Samsung's credit, its notifications drop down, it has a brightness slider. So you can adjust the brightness from the notifications menu, which I think everybody should have that as a little shortcut. And also Samsung has the most useful notifications drop down in terms of also little toggles, things like turning off GPS, Wi-Fi, et cetera. I like it. I like Samsung's little tweaks on the side, not Samsung's software. Samsung's apps, you can just throw them off this device and you actually enjoy yourself more. But Samsung's little tweaks on the side are mostly good. The weird thing about that subpixel arrangement to me is that, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the scientific concept behind Pentile was that the human eye is less sensitive to green than it is to red and blue. You got it backwards. It's more sensitive to green. But you're headed the right direction. But yeah, the eye is more sensitive to green light. But doesn't it have twice as many green subpixels as red and blue? That was the original Pentile. The new one has more blue. I thought it had more blue subpixels. That was my understanding. At least that was the explanation that I had gotten from Samsung when I asked them about it was because according to them, blue subpixels on AMOLED displays degrade slower than the red and the green. So they make the blue ones larger or they use more blue ones to make the display last longer. Yeah, let's just move on from subpixels. So can I actually just make mention of something here? I do believe we're underestimating how many people listen to our podcast and how many companies listen to a podcast. Like I say, the CTIA people, they found out Chris is an attending, so they decided to completely nuke their show. And I've been saying that somebody should do a high end phone, four inches, and then Samsung confirmed that they're doing a Galaxy S3 mini. And then this morning, even though it wasn't working, I was like, yes, I'm excited. It's going to be a Galaxy S3 mini, it's going to have a four inch display, and it's probably going to be like the Galaxy Note 2 insofar as it's just the S3, but in a different shell. So let's go. Now we have real competition for the iPhone 5. But alas, it seems like it's not going to be what I was hoping it would be. So I had the same exact excitement as you Vlad, but I tried to keep it tempered with a huge dose of reality because I don't think Samsung would ever jeopardize its baby being the Galaxy S3. And it seems to be from leaks that just this morning of this alleged Galaxy S, or I guess this Galaxy S3 mini, these alleged leaks are, we're looking at a pretty mid-range to low end device with a WVGA display, a dual core one gigahertz processor that is supposedly made by SD Ericsson. That's not a processor that we've seen before, but I wouldn't count it to be up there with like a Qualcomm S4 or an Exynos. No, there's a Sony phone that uses that processor, I believe. Oh yeah. There's a couple. You know, every time I talk about processors, I get 50 emails saying I'm wrong. I thought it was a variation of that Novator, a new variation that we hadn't seen. Oh, it's a new variant. Yeah, yeah, that we hadn't seen yet, but it's still a dual core one gigahertz processor that might be fine pushing around a WVGA screen, but that's all it's doing is pushing around a WVGA resolution. So I'm livid about this because Samsung, when it confirmed the Galaxy S3 mini name today or that a mini Galaxy S3 was coming, the head of the company said that it would be a competitive device that would not be a low end or entry level device. And that seems to be exactly the opposite of what these leaks, the leaked specs are telling us. So it's just as much as I would love to have a really high end, really awesome four inch Android device that has the best specs as far as processor goes and a really great high res display, it doesn't look like the Galaxy S3 mini is going to be it. Now hear me out. Hear me out, people. Would the Note 2 not be better served if it were called the Galaxy S3 mega? I mean, am I am I right? You have the mini, the classic and the mega. No, the note brand is really good and strong, man. Sorry. Yeah, because the note connotates the stylus. I think calling anything mega is awesome, but I just don't think that it works here. I'm sorry. Fine. So and also just a quick mention, Samsung differentiates between its note platform and its smartphone platform. Right. With the stylus or not the stylus, but the S Pen. Yeah, whatever. Stop crapping on my dream. Hey, listen, I've had my Vlad and I have had our dreams crapped on all morning with this Galaxy S3 mini. So I'm just going to say one more thing about it. And it's that manufacturers have said, I know Samsung has said this, that consumers want bigger phones. And every time they do these market research things, they say they want a bigger sized device and people are buying these bigger sized devices in droves. But when you think about it, if you wanted a high end Android device, you couldn't buy a four inch high end Android device. Now, like you don't have that choice. If you want a high end Android device, you have to buy a monster phone that's four point seven or four point eight or God forbid, five point five inches in size. So essentially, I don't know if consumers, if they had the choice, would choose the four inch one when it's sitting next to a shelf on a shelf next to a giant screen. But I know that I certainly would. And I know a lot of other people that like the four inch size form factor for its usability as an actual phone. So I don't blame consumers. I like the thing that you mentioned earlier. I actually blame carriers. I think that, you know, and I think that basically comes down to manufacturers like we could make a sweet four inch phone and carriers like, yeah, but that's really hard to sell because we've got a sweet four inch phone. It's the iPhone. But if you make us a big, huge phone, it's really easy for us to sell that. And so don't give us the sweet four inch phone because it's too it's just it's too complicated. It's too much work for us to actually move those units. And that makes me die inside. But but that's that's point was a good one when he said that Samsung wouldn't jeopardize its flagship by selling a four inch device with the same specs. And I like that because I do feel like if you actually offered the exact same spec, the exact same user experience, which, as I say, Jelly Bean would actually know that what I know is just gorgeous. Right. If you offer that at a four inch device and eject in a 720p display, I don't know that is a four inch 720p display, particularly not a good one. But if that was possible and somebody did it, I think that phone would sell like crazy at four inches. You only need to HD realistically. I don't think that there's a compelling reason to put some 20p in a four inch QHD or whatever the resolution of the retina display is, you know, if it can just match that, I'd be happy. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, the retina display is a little higher resolution than QHD or is what nine sixty by five forty five five forty. Yeah. But even if, you know, Samsung did what Motorola did with the Razer M and made a four point three inch screen in a phone that's the size of a four inch device, like I'm OK with that. The Razer M was not the answer to my dreams because it has a terrible display on it. But otherwise it would have been a good device if it had a better camera. It has an S4 processor, so it's got a very solid processor. And if it came with Jelly Bean and a good display, I would have been very happy with that. But again, disappointed. Yeah. And what also drives me nuts is that they made a point of saying that this, you know, they're responding to a specific market need in Europe, you know, which is like it's like such a stereotypical thing to say that like Europeans want smaller things like you go over there, they have they have they have like, you know, tiny cars, tiny, tiny, tiny coffees, tiny coffees and it's and you know, I mean, I you've seen limited success. I think I've used this analogy at least 20 times on the on the show and the podcast over the years. But you've had limited success, but some success with luxury, say, small cars in the US, you know, products like the Audi A3 and the Mini Cooper. And there's no reason for these guys to to keep believing that Americans always want everything as big as possible. So I think that if if some carrier would go out on a limb and range a high, a quote unquote high end four inch or three point seven inch device, it would and if it was marketed properly, it would stand a very good chance of doing well. I mean, look no further than the iPhone. I don't understand why the iPhone should have the exclusive on that form factor. It's very maddening. And also from the European perspective, I'm also offended because we're not just into small things, somebody from these companies should go to Oktoberfest and see the size of the beer jugs that people are drinking. And and if the specs are exactly as we've heard, as the leaks indicate, this is essentially a Galaxy S advanced. And I would also point out that people in Europe don't like being taken for a ride. They don't like companies being dishonest with them. So if you're calling this a Galaxy S3 mini and you're speaking it like an old ass phone, people aren't going to be impressed. They aren't going to be happy. And the ones who buy it on the premise that it's a Galaxy S3 shrunken down are going to be disappointed. Yeah. So it hurts the Galaxy S3 brand. Yeah. Yeah. You know, all this doom and gloom. Can we talk about the next Nexus phone? Yes. Called the Nexus 4. I just want to make one. I just want to make one final point. I was I was looking something up there and and I think it's very telling that Vlad calls the Galaxy S advanced an old ass phone and it was introduced in January of this year. So just to be fair, respect, to be fair, the advance did not have cutting edge January 2012 specs. Sure. Actually, yeah. It's fair. I mean, it has it has the same display that we saw on what the Galaxy S2 or maybe even the original Galaxy S. So I don't know something pre 2012. Which means I'm not expected to remember it. OK, Nexus. So we've seen lots of pictures. We had some pictures that we posted that had actually shown up in a random album on XDA developers. And since then, I believe we've had some more photos come out with with that basically make it look like take an LG Optimus G and make it look like a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. And that's what it looks like. And you know, we're expecting, you know, whatever is going to happen with the OS. I don't think it's going to be a huge leap because we just had Jelly Bean. But yeah, it really looks pretty obvious that LG is making the next Nexus phone and having played a bit with a couple of versions of the Optimus now. I'm actually pretty excited for this. Yeah, I'll say that I'm pretty excited to actually have a Nexus device with a cutting edge modern processor in it. Well, and a decent camera. And yeah, that too. And LTE. Well, yeah. That's that's that's the problem, though, is the Optimus G is heading to AT&T and Sprint with LTE. And that's awesome. Super pumped for that. It's weird that they're different like Sprint's gets the 13 megapixel camera and AT&T get dozens, which is a little bit odd. But the you mentioned this in your post on the original pictures, Chris, that the stuff that we saw at the FCC for what we believe is going to be LG's Nexus phone didn't have LTE. It was just being tested on HSPA. Right. So, like, yeah, there could be multiple variants, right? Very easily. In fact, there are there would absolutely have to be if they're going to range it on AT&T and Verizon and whatever else. I can't get a Nexus phone on AT&T with LTE out of the box that I don't have to hack a ROM on to by the end of the year. I'm going to go to Google's campus and I am going to take a pickaxe to all their cute little statues. That's not a real joke. Just to be clear, I won't take a pickaxe to them. I'll simply use them with spray paint. Because I mean, because honestly, Dieter, at this point, I am strongly considering going there and and destroying them with the pickaxe myself and then pinning it on you because you're the one that set it on the on the show. I mean, yeah, it's just not having something either a Cyanogen mod or a stock experience with LTE and AT&T. I know you can you can get you can it's doing really well in the GS3. The Cyanogen mod on the One X is not it's you know, it's great given, you know, the resources of the guys that are working on it, but it's not quite ready for prime time. And I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm waiting and I'm angry that it's not available. And I'm deeply hoping that it will be. But we should talk about this LG hardware because I think who here has actually held an Optimus G and like and put it through at least a few hands on paces? I think you might be the only one, Dieter. Oh, really? Oh, well, golly. Yeah, Dieter just wanted to gloat about that fact. Dieter just wanted to let us know that he's held multiple versions multiple times while the rest of us have been sitting here. Not handling them. It's the LG is really an interesting presence, at least here at Mobilecon, because they've announced for AT&T and Sprint. They've got this, you know, low end mock slider phone for Sprint, whatever. And then they've got this mid range L9 for T-Mobile. So they basically, you know, they basically we've been talking about LG not having anything in America for like a year now. Their last hit was whatever that low end Optimus was that they had on a bunch of carriers and MVNOs. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we're expecting to have a Nexus device. And they're launching like legitimate contenders that are like decently good. You know, I don't know, until we review it, I'm not going to say it's in the same class as the One X and the Galaxy S3. But it legitimately could be and could maybe even better them in terms of build quality if you're into this weird like glass, not glass, but some kind of shiny back with the texture underneath. It doesn't look terrible. It's not I'm not totally into it, but it looks pretty good. Yeah, I'm holding judgment because, you know, we I think we said the same thing about the Optimus HD and its variants like the Nitro HD, et cetera, et cetera. And those phones ended up being just complete garbage. So LG has has a lot to prove with these next few devices that they're releasing and a lot to prove on multiple fronts. I know a lot of people were burned by the whole what was the G2X thing with its software updates that were coming, weren't coming and then weren't coming again. So I think LG really has to if it if it wants to make a dent in the American market, it really has to hit a homerun with this next device, you know, assuming everything comes out as we expect. Have we ever seen this many U.S. carriers launch this many LG phones? Yes. Really? I mean, how well. Well, so the the Optimus one, like you mentioned, was on almost every carrier as an entry level Android phone. And then the the one that Chris just mentioned, which was the Optimus LTE was the Nitro HD on AT&T. It was the revolution on Verizon. The two LTE carriers here in the U.S. So this is the first high end one that I think we've seen for Sprint, if I'm not mistaken. But we have seen LG attack multiple carriers in the U.S. And they're actually recently their own branding. You know, it's getting the the Optimus branding instead of getting renamed like right for the four different carriers. That's a very good point. So I mean, it will be really interesting to see if if LG decides or it manages to pick up some mind share, if not market share in the U.S. I was talking to Phil Nickinson from Android Central and he made a really good point that LG, if this launch of these devices goes well for them and they turn out to be really good, like they have the potential to like kind of eat HTC's lunch because we all know HTC is not doing well lately. And they refresh the One X and we love their devices. Not a huge fan of their software skin, but it always feels like they're kind of underperforming relative to the kind of hardware that they're making. But like, you know, they're on the ropes and, you know, and drink their milkshake. So that was a nice mix of metaphors going on there. But I well, my question about the Optimus G is, when it has that core core Snapdragon S4 inside it, and maybe that just I'm about to reveal how little I've been paying attention lately, but first, it does it ship with Jelly Bean on board? And secondly, what is its responsiveness like? How smooth is it? So every time I played with one here at MobileCon, you know, I get the the standard song and dance about it still being, you know, pre production. I don't know whether that's true or not. The responsiveness, it's not it's not like, whoa. It's just like, oh, this is OK. This is pretty good. And so I don't want to I don't want to judge it one way or the other until I have a device that is, you know, shipping and sold. But like, basically, my overall opinion on both the build quality and like, you know, even the skin and everything about these is like, they're legitimately good and they could be legitimately good when they ship. But there's there's nothing that's immediately like, oh, my God, this is going to suck or oh, my God, this is amazing. It's like, oh, hey, LG is making really good stuff all of a sudden. OK, and I also just want to bring us back to the LG Nexus phone for a moment, because we saw today something called the LG Nexus 4 in the Carphone Warehouse stock listing. And Nexus 4 would make sense because it would be the fourth generation of Nexus device. But it kind of sounds like then I mean, do you only have one Nexus fourth generation device? I mean, the big rumor and the one everybody among us was excited and thrilled about was that we would have a Nexus from multiple manufacturers. So I actually think if that isn't referring to a four inch device, I think that's a very misleading name because the previous Nexuses weren't named one, two, three. So no one's going to grok the fact that they're trying to say it's a fourth generation device. You're just going to think, oh, it's a four inch phone. And of course, it's not. The first one was Chris. The first what person was a Nexus one. Oh, yeah, good point. I'm an idiot. Yeah, but now we have the Nexus seven, which clearly indicates size. Yeah. So so having the Nexus four is exactly like what Chris said. It would most people would assume that has a four inch screen. I mean, the fact is, we don't know that we just have the name LG Nexus four. So all that really tells us is, yes, LG has a Nexus device. So yes, we can be excited on that front. I just again, I'm kind of like I'm sure myself and Dan will be thrilled to have a four inch Nexus device, brand new one. That would be great. But I just kind of feel like to Dita's argument and point, everybody's pushing to four point whatever. Indeed. So so maybe maybe and this will be the really awesome thing. Maybe LG gets to make the four inch Nexus device and then somebody else gets to make the four point five inch Nexus device and Sony get to make the five inch Vita Nexus device, etc, etc. So just to about the to go back to about there possibly being more than one Nexus device. And is there any evidence of it? The pictures of this alleged LG Nexus G or whatever show on the back of it, it says it has the with Google branding, which we haven't seen in a long time. I don't think we've seen that since. Gosh, I mean, I recall it on the the original G1. But generally the Nexus phones have said Google on the back and not with Google. So we can kind of be reading into that and be pretty skeptical as to what exactly that means at this point. But perhaps, you know, there will be a line of them that, you know, each one is stamped with Google and they have like a. Pretty standardized hardware specifications and then each manufacturer can can have a Nexus device in their lineup. Nobody else. No, no, I was thinking and I think it makes sense. I think ultimately what might happen is that the Nexus branding and name could just mean stock Android, which I'd be totally cool with. And I would just make that my one like my first prerequisite for buying an Android devices. Make sure it says Nexus somewhere on it. And a quick question, LG with the Optimus 2X, the first dual core smartphone they had with Google stamped on this thing. This is kind of backbone that the phone had in the back in its shell. So with Google, maybe one or two years ago now, it was being used. But yes, since then, most most haven't been using that sort of branding. But at least LG has kind of a track record with it. Yeah, I'm going to say if this if this like, you know, just call it an exorcist, if it's stock Android and multiple manufacturers offer it pans out like that'll be great. But I'm telling you right now that Google better get its update situation hashed out right fast, like because it's not been great on the Galaxy Nexus. It's been pretty terrible, actually. And so like if they're going to have, you know, this whole big new push, then they need to also not have people wondering when they're going to get the latest version of Android on a device that says Nexus on it because well, it was it was just fine for the unlocked GSM version of the Galaxy Nexus. It's always, you know, as usual, it's the carriers that gum it up, right? The Verizon version just started getting jelly a couple of weeks ago, right? Yes, yes, that's correct. So that's I mean, it's as always, it's the carriers. OK, so can I just use that as a segue and move on to a company that does software updates in a more organized fashion? Which is Microsoft? Surprisingly, but yes. And we could do we could do a bit of Windows phone talking because we've been on Android all day today. So what's happened is the Lumia 920 is an AT&T exclusive, which would have made a lot of people cringe and it's launching sometime in November alongside the Lumia 820. In science, they have a cyan version. That's the only thing that matters about this device. Screw Windows Phone 8. Screw the camera on the 920. Nobody cares. The only thing that matters is the fact that it's coming in cyan. Thank goodness. All right. So the world is a better place because. Yes. Yes. I'm going to agree with Chris here. The world is now right. It was it was not right before. Here's the thing, Chris. The science online only, right? Right. So you're not going to be able to walk and people aren't going to walk in a store and see cyan. It's not going to it's not going to change the world, man. It's not going to change fashion industry. It's not going to change anything. But Peter, I don't I don't care if not if not a single other soul on the planet buys this phone. The only thing that matters to me is that I can go to a website in order to sign on 920. That's all that matters. That was the only reason I was I was bellyaching about it. I mean, Chris would actually be happy if nobody else bought it. Right. Everyone else can go use their yellow and red versions. It's fine by me. But I think the gray ones, I think yellow yellow is also online only right. Yellow and cyan. The only ones you can get in store are going to be red and black. Well, it's like a matte gray, I think. All right. So I want to talk about the exclusivity a bit. I could see it. It's going to go one of two ways. One, it's genuinely exclusive and Nokia is not going to launch its top of the line phone on any other carriers, which is a bummer. Or two, they're going to do what they've done with the 820, where they're going to launch variants on other carriers. We've seen the 810 on T-Mobile and then there's the rumor of the the Atlas variant of the 820 on Verizon. And so everybody gets an exclusive, but it's basically the same phone, which also seems like kind of a huge bummer. Yeah, I think that Nokia is trying to have its cake and eat it too. They're signing exclusivity deals with carriers, which I'm guessing in some cases is the only way they're able to actually get carriers to range these phones, considering what a lukewarm reception the 900 ultimately got at retail. So I think that AT&T said, look, you can either give us an exclusive on the 920 or you can go exploitive yourself. And Stephen Elab said, OK, well, then there you go. There's your exclusive. And meanwhile, we just happen to be working on a very mildly changed version of the device known as a 922, which Verizon will get as an exclusive. That's my guess. That's my hope, because, you know, I've been basically saying all year that this fall Verizon's going to go big on Windows Phone and it's going to be a big game changer for Microsoft. And now I have egg on my face because I'm starting to think it's not going to happen. Well, if it does turn out to be that the 920 is the only version of the 920 that we see in the US and it's only on AT&T, that will be directly against what Nokia has been saying itself all year and that it would be working with as many carriers as possible in the US and working with all of the big four to get its phones out there. So I really think that it's going to be the second scenario, which is still unfortunate because Nokia loses the whole advantage of the iPhone branding and the Galaxy S3 branding that its competitors have. But at least it'll be available to more people. And also, you say that might happen, you know, Verizon making a big push with Windows Phone. We don't know yet. And there's still ample time for that big push from Verizon to come because the Windows Phone 8 launch event or multiple launch events have now been scheduled for October 29. So there's one in San Francisco. There's one in London that we just recently announced. But amusingly, the Windows Phone 8 pre-orders are going to begin on October 21. So Microsoft will let you pre-order a phone and operating system, which is going to get its big unveil on October 29. Yeah, I don't even know. It's like they've got two email threads going for planning this stuff and everybody just keeps responding to the wrong email thread, and so they just got their dates mixed up because of that. That must be it. Like, they just need to switch to Gmail that has better thread and messaging, and they'd be fine. Problem solved. Yeah. Can I talk a little bit about the A10? Yes. It is terrible. It does have interchangeable backplates, though. There will be a cyan backplate, from what I've... Yeah, no, there's a cyan backplate. But you remember, was it last week or two weeks ago, I took that picture of my old visor prism, the big blue chunky PDA? That's what the A10 reminds me of. It's like just this big square thick hunk of phone. They wouldn't let us turn it on. And I took the backplate off and actually, because everybody's locking all the screens on these phones, they wouldn't even let me turn the screen on. They put a piece of paper on the battery contacts so that it wouldn't turn on. But it's super thick. And the other crazy thing is we know it's a variant of the A20, but it's not like... I mean, Nokia did more than just take the A20 and put a square frame around it. They've moved stuff around a bit. And moving stuff around on a phone is not a trivial thing. The stuff gets packed in very carefully. And so they've spent some time making this. And to be honest, if you're going to sell a mid-range or low-end Windows phone, there's got to be something that's really appealing and cute about it. And I just don't feel like this is it, despite the fact that it has user replaceable backplates. I actually think that the 710 was a much better play for what a low-end Windows phone and T-Mobile should look like than this. I just think this is moving in the wrong direction. I haven't handled the 810 yet, so I'm not really in a great position of authority here. But I'm going to disagree with you, Dieter. I thought the 710 was a hideous mess. And I hated that physical home button, physical start menu, search back button that was at the bottom of it. I thought it really cheapened the device and really made it feel like garbage. Honestly, I thought the 810 was kind of good looking. Well, wait till you hold it. Maybe you'll disagree with me and you'll think it's got some sort of retro blocky charm. But there's just- You know what it looks like to me? It looks like the 810 was a last minute. They were like, oh, crap. For whatever reason, we can't sell the 820 on T-Mobile. T-Mobile wants to range a mid-range phone from us, so we need to throw together something. Maybe they needed to skirt some exclusivity clause that they had with other carriers. So they're like, OK, these are the minimum things that we need to do to make a version of this phone that we can sell on T-Mobile. So they threw this together in a rush in a few weeks. And this is what they came up with. Because you're right. I'm looking at your gallery here, and it's such a nondescript- It's amazingly nondescript. For a company that has kind of become known for its hardware design, this is kind of outrageous that they're selling this. It looks like a, not a prototype, like a reference. If a company is coming out with a phone that they- like a RIM's dev alpha, right? That's exactly what I was thinking. This is Nokia's dev alpha B device. I like the Lumia 820. I like its look and feel. I honestly, I'm sighing with exhaustion, exasperation. Exasperation is what I was looking for. The fact that Nokia's going to have to do all these variants, there's going to be a little tweak for Verizon, a little tweak for T-Mobile. I understand from what we've heard about the Verizon version of the 820 that it will have different specs as well. It's just, you know, I mean, it's Dita's point. You're diluting your branding. Okay, people will get that Lumia means Nokia, Lumia means Windows Phone, but the numbers constantly changing after the Lumia is just annoying and it's not consistent. And consistency is actually what Nokia needs. If they can hit $49.99 on contract price point for this thing out of the gate, I will rescind all of my complaints and say, hey, that's actually pretty cool. But I'm, you know, who knows? That's the other thing- Guess what you can get for free on contract with an iPhone 4. Like $49.99 is not impressive anymore. So free on contract. You can't get an iPhone 4 from T-Mobile. True, but I mean, yeah, that's details. Have you guys noticed like in the past, I guess basically the past month, like everybody forgot that it's a good idea to announce price and release dates. Like nothing that I've seen at MobileCon has got a price or a release date attached to it. It's really important. But that's just kind of par for the course for the companies that you're seeing stuff at MobileCon from. I mean, that's par for the course for Nokia. It's been doing it since forever. LG's been notorious for that. Samsung's notorious for it. I mean, the closest thing that we've gotten out of all these new phones to a release date is from HTC when it announced the 8X and the 8S and it said, you know, it would be on these specific carriers in November. But even that is not very useful. Yeah. Well, I mean, a big part of this is Microsoft's and the Windows phone development cycle. I mean, the Samsung Tiv S or Ativ. Bless you. Ativ. Bless you. Yeah. Thank you, Tito. You're welcome. So that is one of the most fascinating phones just because it hasn't existed outside of some renders and some Samsung produced video and pictures, you know, and the reason it hasn't existed is because what Samsung going to do? They're going to bring it out. And exactly as Tito just had with the Lumia 810, they're going to, you know, screw around and just show people the shell. It's like, what was the point in that? And, you know, everybody has all this hardware, which is just perfectly ready. I hate I also hate the fact that they say things like pre-production. It's not pre-production is the freaking production device. It's just the software isn't ready. And so call it what it is. It is the production device. You know, you can take pictures with it and you're going to get the exact same camera quality that you're going to get with the final device. It's just that the software isn't baked. It isn't ready. And this is why we're looking at this ridiculous situation where you can pre-order a phone on October 21st and then eight days later, Microsoft is going to do the big unveil. Like Microsoft's deadline for finishing Windows phone is probably October 28th midnight. I know the other thing, I'm getting ready. We need to go to the event. The other thing is, I don't think that Microsoft's actions are stopping any of these manufacturers from announcing a price with it. I mean, the software being finished or not is not going to affect the price of the phone when it launches. So I mean, I why they're withholding all this information is it just it only makes us skeptical. That's really I have a theory. I have a theory, which is that they know that there's a lot of news happening in the month of October, including presumably or possibly some nexus announcements. And it might be just a game of brinksmanship where they want to wait as long as they can until they find out how their competitors are going to price things to decide how to price these devices. I also feel like maybe Microsoft is asking them to hold back the pricing and the full details so that October 29th, Microsoft be the one who says, here it is, Windows Phone 8 coming out. Here's the pricing is the dates is the carriers, the phones. Of course, if you're also preorder on the 21st, you'll be preordering blind, if that's the case. Yeah, yeah. But I wouldn't put it past them. So this is just going to be like, do you want to give us money? Do you want to invest in Windows Phone? It's going to be the Kickstarter campaign. It's going to be like an enter your email for more information type of thing. So, you know what I want to kickstart is an achieve mega, a five point five inch. I would I mean, think about it, a Windows phone version of the Galaxy Note two. I mean, that would play. Right. Am I crazy? Well, the whole point of the note is it's is it's S Pen, right? Yeah. So, yeah. So. So do you like a I don't know, maybe have an achieve mega running Windows RT instead of I don't know. I'm spitballing here live on the show. But I think that there's I think that there's a product here that Samsung should probably consider. I mean, look, Samsung makes so many products at so many sizes, half of which probably don't sell a single unit that they might as well make an achieve mega, even if nobody notices that it ever came out like they might as well. It cost them nothing. They own the display manufacturing like just do it. Would you buy it? If Chris, can I get you on record that if Samsung is would be willing to release an achieve mega, you would actually go out and buy it and be the one person that buys it? No, of course I would. I just want to make it. Chris is just so reckless with other people's production lines. I'm telling you, whatever whatever OEM steps forward and starts using mega in their product names gold mine. Like it's it's an untapped font of like it just it's going to print money for these forms of embarrassment. Well, that motor was already using Max. So if somebody wants to go up against Motorola and it's Max branding. Yeah, it makes way better than Max. It's just a stronger sounding term. And then they can get going on. Let's talk about this a bit of there's been a bit of development with T-Mobile and it's talking about more takeovers and more mergers. But I'm going to let you guys handle this because it's American. So we were we were talking about this last week, actually, because it was on the verge of possibly happening. I think by the time we were on the air for the mobile show, it was rumored that it was going to happen, but it wasn't confirmed. And then like the next day, it got confirmed that Deutsche Telekom, which is the owner of T-Mobile USA, is essentially buying Metro PCS and plans to integrate Metro PCS into the T-Mobile brand and company. And it will use Metro PCS's spectrum and network for T-Mobile's LTE network years down the line by 2015. So it's kind of an interesting thing. I think both Chris and I said that it wouldn't be a huge surprise if this were to happen. So it makes sense based on both Metro PCS's and T-Mobile's needs in the future. Maybe not right now because they have not incompatible networks for their non LTE services, but for the future, it makes sense. So and it seems like- Didn't they hear a rumor that Sprint was maybe going to try and swoop in and make like a competitive bid or was that bunk? So that was rumored. We haven't really heard about it since the rumor, which came out just after the deal was officially announced. The rumor came out the next day that Sprint might do a counterbid against Deutsche Telekom for Metro PCS. But we haven't heard anything about that since then. So my theory is that Deutsche Telekom really doesn't want to own T-Mobile USA even after the AT&T thing, and they tried to show some lukewarm recommitment to the organization. But in reality, I think that they really would like to get rid of them. So my theory is that they're using this Metro PCS acquisition in an effort to create value in the company where they're currently- I mean, it's no secret that T-Mobile is deficient in a number of ways, both technologically and in terms of spectrum ownership and- And emotionally. Yeah, and they're commercially just gone to hell. They're no good. Carly and the Motorcycle is just annoying. Right. Thank you. Yes. Because you can't rhyme six with Phoenix. It drives me nuts every time I see that commercial. What? She tries to rhyme six. She's like one, two, Kalamazoo, three, four, Jersey Shore, five, six, West Phoenix. And you can't rhyme six with Phoenix. It sounds really weird. I'm so glad that you have that memorized, Chris. I've seen the commercial like a million times. I've not seen that commercial. I was just referring to the one where she drives through the city on a motorcycle and all the buildings turn pink. Or I'm sorry, magenta. Right. Yeah, no, I've seen that one too. But this one is like, it's every other commercial on TV right now. But anyway, so I suspect that Deutsche Telekom will ultimately try to spin off the combined organization as a public company sometime after 2015. And then it will just be, you know, and their theory, their hope is that it will be self sustaining by then. And what do we think? Do we think that actually has a chance of working out? I mean, I'm still not convinced that the U.S. market can sustain four profitable national carriers as much as it pains me to say that. But this probably gives I do think that this probably gives T-Mobile the best shot possible in light of, you know, the spectrum that's available and the circumstances and the competition that they're facing. What's funny is that even with this merger, it still doesn't put T-Mobile within range of even Sprint, which is its next biggest competitor. So Sprint's got 50 million plus customers now, I believe, with MetroPCS and T-Mobile combined, it's somewhere in the mid 30s. So it's still a ways away from even reaching number three. Yeah. OK. Well, so us. You guys, you need to make these U.S. carrier discussions a bit more exciting for us Europeans. It's like, well, we had 18T by T-Mobile. This goes on to 2015 and it's a long road and they need LTE and it's all belly aching. OK, I'll give you some drama. I think that Verizon has a huge chip on its shoulder about LTE. Like they held this event yesterday where they announced that I think it was October 18th, they're going to launch their 400th LTE market. They're actually going to get like 417 or something and they're going to hold some party in Marquette to celebrate their 400th LTE market. And here is our by the end of 2013, every single 3G area that's got 3G is going to have LTE and we're working with rural carriers and on and on and on. And I think basically they had such a lead in LTE and they pretty much still do, especially if you compare them to Sprint and even compared to 18T, they're just in way more markets. And I think that 18T calling HSPA 4G and also just saying we have LTE now, even if it's not in anywhere near as many markets, I think Verizon is finally tired of it. And so they're trying to swing the LTE hammer while they still can and while they still have a huge lead in LTE. I think you're totally right, Dieter, because now Verizon used to say that it has the largest 4G network and then the definition of 4G got really murky and changed. And now 18T claims that it has the largest 4G network because it's counting its HSPA and LTE networks combined. And I'm fully, wholly agree with you, Dieter, that that gets under Verizon skin to no end because if you're really going to be a stickler about the definition of 4G, LTE is much closer to the original definition and Verizon's LTE network is much larger than any of the competitors here in the US. So now Verizon claims that it has the fastest 4G network in the nation instead of the largest. So I mean, I expect that they're going to be doing nothing but pushing 4G for a while. And once 18T catches up in terms of, or at least gets close enough in terms of covering markets in 4G, we'll see another turn. But the question is, what's next for these guys in terms of pushing themselves? Is Verizon just going to go back to reliability? Or are they finally going to start doing voice quality again? That would actually be kind of nice to see carriers competing on voice quality. I hate talking on the phone. That's actually a good point. I don't think anybody, I mean, voice is dead. I was just going to raise that question. I know HD voice is something that was picked up by Sprint. And I know Apple introduced that with the iPhone 5, and I think there's, I don't think it was a feature in the Lumia 920. I don't know if it was. But I seem to record it on the iPhone 5 and some other recent phone. What is happening with HD voice? What is happening with picking that up from other carriers? At least here in the US, it is available from Sprint, but it's available on one phone, and it works between only that phone. So if you have an Evo 4G LTE, you can make HD voice calls to other Evo 4G LTE owners. And we haven't really seen anything since then about that. I don't think any of the American carriers are really going to be pushing HD voice. I think that the next step for them is VoLTE, and that's what they're going to be putting their focus on. And that's what we're going to see. I know that Verizon's been very cagey about its VoLTE plans, and it might be a while before we actually see them. I asked them about... They brought it up in their little press conference, and then I asked them specifically about it later. And their line is, it's still a ways off, and the reason it's still a ways off is our implementation of it is amazing and the best thing ever, and it takes a while to lay the groundwork for doing it right instead of doing it quickly. I wonder where they got that line from. By the way, I just looked, and apparently the Lumia 800 supports AMR WB, which is also known as HD voice. Aren't there carriers in the UK that have it for some time? Maybe Vlad, you can confirm that. I believe Orange has it. Yeah, they've had it for a while. Yeah. Well, I mean, I like it. I've seen tests of it, and it makes a real, real difference. And there's basically no phone that can't handle it, because it's just kind of increasing the bit rate on your phone call. It's a tiny extra bit of data transmission. I can't really see why nobody has picked it up. I mean, VoLTE is nice and all, but then you need to be connected to the LTE network, which consumes the most power out of any networking option. Whereas HD voice, you can do... Can you do it over 2G connection? I think so. Yes, I think so too. But I mean, you can do it over 3G connection, which still, that's one of the things that companies often scold us about. We get excited about the latest phones, the latest technology, et cetera, and then they tell us, ah, but the rest of the world, there's China, there's India, there's Africa. All of these countries don't have the capabilities or the budget to buy really, really powerful devices with large screens and fast connections. To me, it's just kind of silly that you have this HD voice option, which seems really straightforward on the technical front, and nobody seems to be pushing it hard enough. I don't see what the marketing issue is with pushing HD voice. It's like, here's your phone call, and here's your phone call on HD voice. Can you tell which one is so much better than the other? Then you sell it to people. I think people would buy into it. I think that it's pretty straightforward. I think that it's a combination of the fact that you need to roll out handsets that are compatible with it. And at least in the US, there aren't many yet. So you end up having very little practical benefit to the feature. But more importantly, I think that voice is widely regarded as a dying feature of phones. And so selling people, putting any significant marketing effort into a feature that is attached at the hip to a dying mode of operation is a tough sell, I think. Okay. And then what's the point in VoLTE? So VoLTE has a couple of different reasons, especially for Verizon, because right now on Verizon, and I guess you could say even Sprint, you can't do phone calls while you're on LTE, especially like this just came out with the iPhone 5, the iPhone 5 on Verizon and Sprint. If it's on a phone call, it will drop its data connection. VoLTE will allow it to keep the data connection because you're doing everything over LTE. And also VoLTE, moving to VoLTE harmonizes the operation of the phone so that it doesn't need to be connected to multiple kinds of networks. So it becomes a power saving issue. It becomes a reduced complexity issue because everything is packet data instead of maintaining both the circuit switched and a packet data connection. And then also long term, that means that they can repurpose all of their bands to LTE and higher technologies, whether that be LTE advanced or 5G or whatever, instead of having to maintain both those kinds of technologies simultaneously. And I think the most important point is that VoLTE is just really fun to say. Yes, it is. It is. And I was just going to say Chris's argument is spot on. I just wanted to raise the earlier point because our podcast should include developing nations and developing world where less fortunate people than yourselves, such as myself here in the UK, can only think and dream about LTE as something coming in the future, maybe. Don't get me wrong, Vlad. I would actually love to have HD voice. That's something that I would love to have because I hate talking on the phone. I noticed with the iPhone 5, the calls quality are much better than with the iPhone 4S and a lot of other phones, but it's still not HD voice levels because we don't have the support for it here. But I would love to have it. It's just a matter of whether the carriers will give it to me, which I just we just can't see happening. Not here. Right. At least now I get that. Get that. And what's insane to me is even with HD voice, the bandwidth is outrageously low. I mean, I think that the lowest defined AMR WB mode is like six kilobits per second. It's insane. I have noticed that with you guys in America in the fact that you you like to have a choice of no more than two. So AT&T and Verizon, two presidential candidates is like as soon as you get a third or a four competitor, you kind of lose interest and I just make a league out of it. I want to dispel that right there because a lot of people would love to have more than two choices and more than two carriers and more than two presidential candidates. It's just it's it's a matter of that's kind of just the way it is. But it's it's not something like I don't like it. See, I personally think two is one too many. I just want everything dictated to me. Just give me a phone. Like, don't give me a choice. You know. OK, so I don't really have any good transition on Segway, but I think we should move on and talk about Huawei and ZTE, who, according to a new congressional report, pose a national security threat to the United States with their networking equipment. And they've responded saying, well, ZTE said is disappointed by the allegations. Huawei said that the evidence is lacking predictably enough. But again, I'm handing this over to you guys in the US. How do you feel about it? What are your thoughts? I'm leaving this one up to Dan. So I'm actually very disappointed with this report. You know, it's essentially if you read the report, there's no smoking gun evidence that the investigation turned up against Huawei and ZTE. And they spent 11 months doing this. And really where they're still at where they started, where they had suspicions that this could possibly be happening as far as Huawei and ZTE using the equipment they make sold to American companies to spy on either trade secrets or national security concerns and then relaying that back to China. And the investigation didn't have any smoking gun. Like I said, that says that they're definitely doing this. The one complaint that the committee had was that Huawei and ZTE did not open their doors as much as they wanted them to. They didn't show them as much evidence that they're not doing this. And they essentially didn't prove their innocence in the eyes of the committee. So the committee said they were just issuing this recommendation that American companies don't buy their products, which is like kind of crazy when the whole basis of the American judicial system is innocent until proven guilty. But it makes me disappointed. I think that actually Huawei and ZTE feel the same exact way if the releases that they put out saying that the decision was kind of predetermined before the investigation was completed or even started. And it's going to make it difficult for them to break into the U.S. wireless market, to bring in their infrastructure and their equipment here if companies are explicitly told by the government that they shouldn't buy it. There was actually a report on 60 Minutes this week where they interviewed- 60 seconds would be better. Yeah, 60 seconds would be better, right? But they interviewed a couple of people involved with this. They interviewed some of the members of the committee and an executive from a regional carrier that bought equipment from Huawei to deploy on his network and was visited by federal agents afterwards, which is like insane to think about. So I mean, I don't really have a conclusion to say about this other than, you know, I don't like where it's going. I mean, I can totally understand out of an abundance of caution. I can definitely understand why the federal government would not want to install any foreign sourced networking hardware in sensitive areas. You're not going to put a Huawei switch in Los Alamos National Laboratory, right? But to recommend that private companies don't use their equipment is I think is a bit over the top. And the other thing is that there really aren't any American competitors that you can source this stuff from. Cisco still exists, but it's not competitive on the same level that Huawei and ZTE are with their equipment at this point. So if a company wants to buy the best that's available to give them the best advantage in the marketplace, they're not looking at American companies. They're not looking at Cisco. They're looking at Ericsson and they're looking at Huawei and they're looking at ZTE. Yeah. Well, I don't want to necessarily support the congressional report, which as Dan says, is light on substantial allegations and saying things like, there's this piece of information which somehow found itself into Chinese hands and it passed through their networks that like that's never happened. So there isn't like hard evidence against them. But I do recall that over here in London, Huawei had an agreement, I believe to provide some networking infrastructure for some either Wi-Fi or 3G rollout on London Underground. Like my memory of this is hazy and unlike Chris, I'm not looking everything up on Wikipedia during the podcast. But they had one of those deals in place and then there were some concerns about Huawei from the UK and from the government, which scuppered the deal essentially. So there is some sort of track record. There is some sort of distrust there and I'm more willing to credit the UK government would be rational about it than the US one. So I would. Well, I mean, the UK is not alone. Australia actually banned Huawei's equipment as well. So they have the same concern. So it's not like the US government is the only one that has these concerns. I just would have liked them to actually have proven their concerns. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel exactly the same way as that. I don't think there's like a hard conclusion that that we can put under this. There's not a hardware hardware. Yeah, we are talking about hardware. There's not like a single line which we can summarize it, but neither party in this seems to be particularly clean or right, which is kind of annoying. We like to conclude on some sort of definitive point, perspective, I guess. But you know, I mean, I also, without getting too political, I do find it kind of shocking when I see how openly American politicians just attack China and just say China steals from us. China is a patent thief and an IP thief. Those allegations are not without merit. I mean, they're not. But you know, usually when these conversations happen, they're so much more subtle and diplomatic, whereas American politicians have taken to just being like, you know, China is a thief, China cheats, China, et cetera. And I mean, I don't think that's perfectly fair. I mean, the other thing is. So what's that? Sorry, go ahead. But well, I mean, just a quick point I was going to make is China is a huge country and we underestimate how huge it is in terms of population and size and scale and all of these things. So that's the other thing. Even if Huawei is in cahoots with the government and the state, that doesn't I mean, yeah, it implicates the Chinese state, but it doesn't implicate all of China. It doesn't implicate all of China's businesses and is dangerous for countries to also generalize in that fashion as well. I feel right. Yeah, well, what's what's very interesting to me is that apparently, Dieter, I don't know if if if Phil mentioned this to you when you were talking to him, but apparently Android Central has been blacklisted by the Great Firewall. So you can't reach Android Central in China anymore, apparently over their reporting on on this on this issue. I had not heard that. That's that's amazing. And then so China is taking this very seriously. OK, I don't know what to say. It's just kind of crazy. I also feel we should we should like stop ourselves. Before we start talking too much about things we don't know about or understand. Yeah, I don't want to get too political here. But yeah, before we wrap up, I do want to tease a couple of things which we've got coming up. So apparently, I just want to give this quick mention. Jola, which are the guys who are working on developing a me go device for my split Nokia guys who I like to call splinter cell, but not really. So they're going to show off their me go based in Finland next month. So that's coming up. Is it that I really want to pronounce that? Oh, yeah. It's instead of instead of Jolla or Jolla because it must be Joe La Jolla. But moving on. OK, if you must. Do you want to call it that? It doesn't matter. Yeah. So so there's that and also next week, a Suze is going to debut the platform to which me and I'm going to be there live in person on the catwalk with better lighting than I have had on today's podcast. So that's happening on Tuesday, I believe. So Tuesday next week, the platform launch event is happening. We may we may have to move the podcast timing a little bit to accommodate that event happening. But I should be reporting having touched it and played with it and probably touched all the 17 different accessories that it ducks into. I'm pretty sure it's going to be a phone that can enter a tablet that can into a keyboard that makes it Windows laptop ducking into an only one that's ducking into a tank. They just showed the final version of the original pad phone at MWC. Like it's to the point now where they are going to announce the launch event for the pad phone three at the same time that they're showing the pad phone to for the first time. I just combine them into it. We're still not going to see it in the US ever. Yeah. At the end of the pad phone to event, they're gonna be like and come back. Join us again in two months for our pad phone. I'm actually excited to see the pad phone to I think there's been some specs leaked that really make it kind of like a pretty bunch of a beast of a phone. Very similar specs to the Optimus G, if I remember correctly. So I'm excited to see. I'm very eager to hear what you think about it when you do actually get to see it in person. All right. I should I should do my utmost to give you the first person experience. And I need to just apologize to anybody watching the show by because I've been messing around with my mood lighting here in my room because this podcast started while I had daylight and I was so delighted because for once, I'm not doing a podcast in the middle of the night and then daylight just kind of died half an hour into the podcast. And I'm like, I don't think I'm visible anymore. And then I started screwing around with this. Yes. Right. But I think your background has gotten progressively darker, but you're still you're still illuminated properly. So, yeah. But that's it. That's all I got. So do we have anything else to wrap up here? We think we're we're just we're just waiting for you to wrap it, Dan. All right. So let's wrap it. So that was the Verge Mobile Show for the week of October 8th. We want to thank you guys for tuning in. Of course, you can follow us on Twitter. I'm at DC Seifert. Chris is at Z Power. Vlad is at Vlad Savov and Dieter is at Backlon. And they can email us, right? Yes. Mobile at the Verge. They want to. Why not? Yeah, why not? I believe we'll show it at the Verge. Or you can tweet at us or whatever you want. And there's the forums. And the forums, yes. So jump in there. Go crazy in our mobile forums because we always like to see what you guys are thinking and doing in there. As always. And steal ideas. I mean, yes. Today's podcast is about 70 percent reader ideas. Uncredited. Yes. Yes. We always do like to cultivate our free ideas from there. So. Right. Next week, we should be back on Tuesday. But like as Vlad mentioned, we may have to shift our normal time a little bit. But we will definitely give you guys a heads up as to what's going on there. But for that's it for now. So I guess we're signing off. So see you guys later. Thanks for listening. Thanks, guys. Bye, guys. Thanks for hanging out.