 I'm glad to have you here. We're going to get started in a minute. So, welcome to the Verge Mobile Show. Hey, welcome to the Verge Mobile Show for the week of December 10th, 2012. This is episode 29. And if you're joining us and you're watching us live, we apologize for our slight delay this week, but we want to say that everything is working now and we're all here. So I'm Dan Seifert. I'm Vlad Savo. And I'm Chris Ziegler. And I am responsible for the delays, by the way. No, no you're not. Comcast is. Yeah, I actually would kind of like to relay the harrowing experience that I had the past half an hour. So first my main connection died, my Comcast cable modem, at precisely the wrong moment. So I switched over to a Verizon LTE hotspot connection, but the machine that I normally broadcast from is an iMac with fried Wi-Fi hardware, so I couldn't use hotspot mode. So I switched over to a MacBook Air, and then that connection died. So then Brendan, our producer, tried to loop me in on a hangout on my Nexus 4. That didn't work very well. Which worked? It kind of worked, not really. You can't use Bluetooth with it, and I could barely hear the loudspeaker, so it kind of wouldn't have done any good. And then my Comcast connection came back, but I couldn't get to Google Hangouts because Google.com wasn't resolving on DNS, and it goes on and on. Bottom line is I'm here, I'm ready to talk about phones. But if I do suddenly die, if the connection drops, you probably can blame Comcast. Just a warning, fair warning. This entire scenario that has developed probably all across Chicago and the American north, well, north what is it? Northeast, north, middle north? North Chicago, so Midwest. It's still the north, man. But anyway, this entire scenario, the reason for it is because Comcast changed its logo and stuck the MBC peacock in it. Which is, it's a travesty. Let's not mince words, guys. Well, I got to say with that logo, the MBC peacock is not the worst part of it. The worst part of it is the fact that the letters start off rounded and end off sharp. Like it's insane. No, they don't. Yeah, look at it closely. I didn't even notice that. Look at the C, and the top part of the C has a rounded end, and then you go all the way down to the bottom of the C, and it's sharp at the end. And you'll notice that every letter. Oh, you mean vertically. I was thinking laterally going to the right. Yeah, I mean I don't know how to put this in words well. I don't speak well. That's excellent. That makes you fully qualified for this podcast. I'm trying to find our post on it. But actually, I spotted that apparently there are channels like Comcast Portsnet. This is how savvy I am on US cable channels. Which do actually have the MBC logo next to the Comcast logo, but again, that's an entertainment channel. So now you have this entire massive network of Comcast engineers and people carrying an entertainment channel's logo on them. Which some people think might be something that that'll lose the brand, because look, Chris just had this entire massive outage, and he's just going to associate the entire freaking network with it. Chris is going to boycott watching MBC now because of his Comcast outage. I mean just to put things in perspective, this would be, Vlad, if like BT put the BBC logo right above it and called it their new logo. This is insane. Yeah, that would be pretty intense. This is nonsense. The thing is the BBC logo is actually mostly a word mark rather than an image. That would be a little weird. Yeah, no, this, Dan, I'm really upset that you brought this font situation to my attention. I think our chat room cleared up. It's like half sans, half serif. Partially serifed, I don't know. I don't know if that's, no, because there are no flourishes. I don't think that's accurate. It's entirely sans serif, but it's, as Dan says, it's rounded at the top and then kind of... Like look at the A. And then it kind of loses its puffy fat as it goes down. Which is, you know... This is a nightmare. It's a really fascinating topic of discussion, but let's like bring it back to mobile. Fine. What do you want to talk about? Let's start with Windows Phone. Let's get this stuff out of the way first. Poor Windows Phone. I mean, I'm sounding underwhelmed about it and I think it's fitting. We got to put up our HD Windows Phone 8S review today. That was done by Tom Warren, who at long last managed to have enough time in his life to actually review Windows Phone. And he wasn't that psyched about it. Disappointing me. Well, I mean, the 8S is a mid-range phone and there's like a couple of things that are definitely disappointing with it. We encourage you to, of course, read the review, but you know, the display is WVGA, which we know is in quite a bit lower resolution than what you get on the 8X or on the 920 from Nokia. And the camera is a bit of a disappointment apparently. But you know, I think the phone looks really great. I think the design is cool and I'm kind of bummed that we're not getting it here in the States. The lack of a front-facing camera is really... It's just a really bizarre omission. And I know that it's not a big deal for most people, I get that, but like, of all the things to just randomly leave out, the amount of bottom line cost that that feature must add to a phone, I'm sure is like absolutely minimal. I'm curious what decisions went into that call. It's a little strange to me. But it is a very nice looking phone. I haven't held it in a couple months, but from what I remember of it, it's a pretty cool little phone. And I was expecting, I was kind of hoping that it would end up being the replacement for the radar in the US. So what? It's not to be. Yeah, I mean personally, aside from the front-facing camera problem, or missing front-facing camera, I kind of like this, the 8S better than Nokia's equivalent in the 820. Yeah, and Tom did too. Tom gave it a better score than he gave the 820. So I think that regardless of which mid-range Windows phone you choose, you're making some pretty severe compromises. And I think Tom does a pretty good job of spelling that out in the review. And I think that if you're in the market for a Windows Phone 8 device, you're probably still better. On balance, you're better off going with one of the higher resolution devices. I'm actually, I have an 8X for Verizon right now. And it's growing on me. I'm not going to lie. It's growing on me a little bit. The power button is still one of the worst in any modern smartphone, I think. But it's a decent device. One thing Tom notes though is that the 8S is extremely affordable as a pay-as-you-go device in the UK. Is that right, Vlad? It's like, I think it's the equivalent of $289 or something like that. Which is pretty decent. I would be able to tell you that, but then I'm too much of a snob to care about WVGA phones. So, it's completely, like, my mind sees the price and just blanks it out. I mean, that price would have been awesome six months ago. But now, assuming you can actually place an order for one, and you can get a Nexus 4 for $300 with a 720p display. So it's like, the Nexus 4 totally screwed up that pay-as-you-go value quotient for me. I mean, just to expand on my snobbishness, there is actually a rational reason for this. And also to spread out the hatred that emanates from me tonight. It also applies for Android. Because today we've got the UK announcement for the HTC One SV. And first thing is, I'm reading through the press release and I'm like, okay, is this more of an HTC One V with a bit of HTC One S sprinkled in, or is it the other way around? Which is it? What's the difference? Yada, yada. I looked at the images, it's kind of a nice phone. And it has a Super OCD2 display. And then I'm like, well, hang on a second. This is like the One S, has LTE, it still has a 4.3 inch display. The sign is okay, it's not quite as sharp as the One S. It's a little bit softer. This thing is interesting. And then I see it's also WVGA. And I just completely submarine the whole thing. And now, it's like, apparently this was also, I mean, it's not apparently, it's a fact that it was also announced for Australia and the Southeast Asian region something like a month ago. So it's not a brand new phone either. But it's like, I look at this, I look at the 8S, and I just don't see any inspiration for why I would want to buy either one of them for however much. And Dan is absolutely right. With Nexus 4 being so affordable, it's not entirely obtainable. As notes, the Nexus 4? I did hedge that if you are able to buy one. Right. Unless you're Chris Ziegler who has like six in his house. Unless you're him, unless you have that stash, okay, I take the point. But still, the pricing on the Nexus 4 right now makes a lot of these mid-range phones feel lower than mid-range even. And the other thing is, we need to like carefully consider what's going to happen at CES, which is just a month away. What's going to happen with mobile resolutions? And particularly on the Android side. Because all of these 1080p displays which are being built and stashed and stacked up right now are going to show up in new phones. We're going to see more 1080p phones. Everybody's mid-range is going to become a 720p display. We can see that if you can price a Nexus 4 at that price with a 720p display, nobody else should really have an excuse. I would love for more people to make smaller phones, but higher res is definitely the future. So WVGA just isn't going to cut. It's just like a horrible, horrible time to buy anything with WVGA. Yeah, it is the biggest disappointment with the A8S, that's for sure. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's apples to apples. Because the Nexus 4, you have to take a few things into account. One, Google is obviously juicing the bottom line somehow. It's Google. So meeting those price points was obviously very important to them. And they did something. They pulled some magic to make that happen, because the numbers just don't really make sense considering the hardware that you're getting with that device. But then also, of course, LG, like Samsung, is very, very horizontal. And so they can insource many, many, many of their components in that device, which is something that Nokia can't really do. And most manufacturers can't do, other than Samsung. Chris, I think you mean vertical. No, I mean horizontal. They're very broad. Samsung is in many, many, many different silos. But I think vertical integration is when you go from components, manufacturing, for assembly, for distribution, et cetera, et cetera. I understand what Chris is saying, because Chris can be like, LG can just call over to LG Display and source a display. Yeah, pretty much. Even though they're supposed to be different. OK, look, they're both horizontal and vertical. They're 2D. LG is a plane. LG is a plane in space. And Samsung is another plane in space. And the line intersecting LG and Samsung is Google. Never mind. Look, all I'm saying is that Nokia, and we mentioned this before with regards to HTC, they don't have the component buying power and the component design power that somebody like Samsung or LG does. LG, for instance, has been making absolutely wonderful displays for Apple for the iPhone, going back to the iPhone 4, the original retina display. So this is something that they've been preparing years for, the display on the Nexus 4, which, by the way, is a really, really beautiful display. Agreed. Yeah, it's very good. Actually, I'm sorry, guys. I'm sorry. I don't mean to harp on about it. But a few people like Josh have been disappointed with the display. I think it's a little washed out. It is a little washed out, but it's very gapless. And I think I'm looking at it right now. Very, very gapless. I really think that unless you put side by side with the one app or the DNA. Oh, dude, I want to buy a display like that, super gapless. Yeah, super gapless too. Oh, that's perfect. They would do one. Just be like, super gapless too. We've improved it. Yeah. Now I need to stare at displays. I totally believe that Sony would create a super gapless display, except they'd have like a brand name for it. They'd call it like, hybrid. Like they'd make up some vaguely Greek sounding word for it. And then they'd brand it hybrid, and then they'd have a super hybrid too. And that would just refer to the fact that it's like, gapless. Anyway, it's a nice display. If we ever do like a quiz, particularly on branding names, we need to make sure we ask people what reality display and the Bravia engine actually mean. And then we can take their answers and learn ourselves. Yeah, yeah, please. Answers on a digital postcard. I'm amazed. I mean, I've read it so many times and I still don't know what the hell the Bravia engine is. I know what white magic is. When they say that, I know what they're referring to there. But I don't know what the Bravia engine means or the other thing that's... White magic is a white pixel, right? Yeah, white magic is the white pixel that makes it brighter and easier to see in daylight. Yeah. Would it be pretty cool if they did a black magic and it was a black pixel? I don't know how that would work, but it would be cool. You just want it to work in the black magic brand name. Yeah. Okay. And just before we wrap up all this display discussion, I just thought we should mention Nokia introduced the Lumia 620, which in terms of pricing is the most affordable Windows phone yet at $249, I believe is where they announced it. It's very colorful, but it also has a WVGA display. And again, branding is clear black, so it might be a good high-quality WVGA display, but... This is a WVGA display at 3.8 inches, though. I can almost live with that, because you're not going to get a 720p display that's 3.8 inches. That's just not gonna happen. At least not today. Yeah, that's true. And it is cheap. So maybe when you grab it, embrace it, hold it... And note that this has a front-facing camera. Yeah. Highlight. I don't know why you wouldn't... I'm just looking at this, I don't know why you wouldn't want this over an 820. Can somebody answer that question for me? I don't need that. I would actually go for this. The 820 has a larger display, right? If you're into that. Yeah, I guess. I mean, this is a nicer looking... Oh, this has microSD... Oh, no, that supports your argument. Yeah, I don't know, unless this just really feels lousy. I don't know. Yeah. But again, I mean, I hate to keep going back to the Nexus 4, but this is only $50 less than the Nexus 4. I hate to keep going back to the Nexus 4, but I really don't hate it. Yeah, well, I mean, look, it's 8GB. The 620 is 8GB. The Nexus 4 8GB is $299. I mean, this is just... I don't really know where to go with that. I mean, Chris, going back to my December theme, if you're going to introduce a phone at this time of the year, it's not going to be the one that's going to be your biggest seller and your biggest attraction. Right. Yeah, but this would make a great... In the US, this would make a great prepaid device for T-Mobile or for any of the CDMA carriers or even TrackPhone. TrackPhone is going to have to stop ignoring smartphones at some point, and when they do, I mean, something like this would make a great device for them, or Straight Talk or any of those guys. I mean, the point is, there is a market for a phone exactly like this in the US, but I'm sure that that is not where Nokia intends to roll this thing out. Well, not in the immediate term, but maybe eventually. Yeah, maybe eventually. Another thing I'd like to point out is that this is still much, much, much more expensive than the cheapest Symbian devices that Nokia has made. So in terms of licensing, in terms of the amount of horsepower that is required to run Windows Phone versus the horsepower that is required to run Symbian, there's still a gap there, even though technology has advanced since Nokia was making a lot of Symbian devices. Yeah, I mean, it should be noted that this has a much better screen than virtually any Symbian device, a much better processor than virtually any Symbian device, and the camera is probably the only thing that's really on par with most average Symbian devices. Well, they've overbought with much better screen Symbian devices, because the E7 had a really nice AMOLED display. Well, it's a higher resolution at least. The E7 was that funky NHD, right? Yeah, NHD, which has nothing to do with HD whatsoever. It's like, I wish. That's why the N is there, because it's not HD. Yeah, perfect. There you go. But actually, Chris brought up T-Mobile in the US, and I think we should jump through our topic list and get on that, because I think they made some pretty big waves this week, or was it this week? In any case, I don't think we've sat down and properly discussed T-Mobile's announcements. Shall we? Yeah, no, we definitely should. So T-Mobile kind of blew up the world last week when it finally announced that it would be offering Apple devices of some sort next year. They didn't really go into specifics of which Apple devices they'd be carrying, or how much it will cost, or how they'll sell them, but it's pretty safe to say that we'll probably see an iPhone on T-Mobile next year, and more than likely an iPad to go along with it. Then after that, T-Mobile announced and made official some rumors that we had heard before, but they made official that in 2013, the carrier is going for all value plans, which means that it's essentially dropping subsidies on cell phones, and selling them at full price, separate from the planned options that it offers. You can finance the smartphones, but it's not connected to your plan like it is with the standard subsidized model, which is a pretty big deal, and it's kind of a huge thing that will really separate T-Mobile from the other big carriers in the US that are still using the subsidized model. Yeah, I personally really like that. Sorry to talk over you then, but I'm a huge fan of that. I don't know how it's going to work out for the company, because particularly going off the UK experience, and something we mentioned, or I mentioned a podcast or two ago with the Times newspaper bundling an XS7 tablet, associating some sort of hardware, some sort of material possession with a service seems to be a way to attract people to spend money, because then they kind of feel like they're getting something for their money. It's a sweetener for the deal. That's one reason why they like to do these subsidies. The second reason is you subsidize your phone for the minimum duration of your contract. If you're paying here in the UK 20 pounds per month, let's say five pounds of that is for your phone, 15 pounds of that is for your data, but then people get lazy, the contract expires, they carry on paying the same 20 pounds a month even after the subsidy has already been paid off for their phone. That works in the carrier's favor. All of these little tricks work in the company's favor and not the consumer's favor. From our point of view, I love it. If I'm going to the US, I would just go to T-Mobile and say, sell me a phone. I want to support you guys. I like what you're doing. It's good. But sticking with the UK experience, there was a retailer over here, one of the bigger departments that was, we decided it's going to just do away with sales, do away with discounts and just be like, this is how much our stuff costs. If you guys want our best price, this is it. We're not doing any sales. What happened with them is their sales just crashed. People just love sales and discounts and even when they're BS. JC Penny actually learned that the hard way this year when What's His Name from Apple came over and took over JC Penny's retail operations, they said no more sales. They were just going to be like, these are our everyday prices. They're good prices. We're not going to have any more sales. Then they retracted that. I'm sorry. You're right. I think I might be recording that experience rather than the UK. Now you can get some things on sale at JC Penny. It will be interesting to see how this works out for T-Mobile. Like you were saying, Vlad, it's great for a consumer because right now, I paid full price for my Nexus 4 here and I take it to AT&T. I have to pay the same amount per month that I would pay if I had signed a contract and gotten a subsidy on a phone, which is kind of insane because the contract is supposed to absorb that subsidy. If I were going towards T-Mobile, I'd be paying less per month because I bought the phone at full price. That is something that's really great for the consumer, but like you were saying, it's going to be interesting to see if it will turn out to be profitable for T-Mobile. Chris, what are your thoughts? I think that the entire industry in the US, the entire wireless industry here is based on hand waving and providing maximum spin to the consumer by the time they actually open the door and walk into the brick and mortar store. That is why there is so much difficulty in breaking out of the subsidy model. From the consumer's perspective, they're comparing apples to apples when they look at T-Mobile and they see that they're paying $299 for a Galaxy S3 and they go to AT&T and they're paying $189 or perhaps $99 on sale or whatever it is. Yes, if you do the math, you break it out and see that you're winning in the long run with T-Mobile ValuePlan. I've been on a T-Mobile ValuePlan before and it's night and day if you just run a few numbers. At the end of the day, for many people, the question is, what is my outlay when I walk into the store? That is going to continue to be a question for many people. That's weird because T-Mobile has a reputation as a value carrier in the US. They're asking these value customers, these customers who put a premium on value, to take a leap of faith and pay more upfront in exchange for really getting the better value in the long run. This is a society that's addicted to, I want it now and I want it cheaply. That is going to be a philosophy that they're going to have to fight. I think what T-Mobile will have to do is make its planned options that allow you to subsidize the phone or allow you to finance the phone over the course of two years very apparent so that when you walk in the door, you see that $199 price or that $99 price and then you're paying $20 per month for the next 20 months or whatever until you've paid off the subsidy. What's cool about that is once your subsidy is paid off, that $20 per month fee is gone and you are now paying the lower cost. You paid less upfront, you paid it over the course of your 20 or 24 months and now you're paying less per month which doesn't happen now. When my contract ends with AT&T and I've technically paid off my subsidy, my bill does not go down one penny which is totally in AT&T's favor and it's against my favor unless I take another subsidy immediately. Exactly. So I think T-Mobile will definitely have to make that a very loud, obvious thing to consumers when they walk in the door. Yeah, agreed. Just to throw in some additional thoughts from me, I am so sorry to be letting the team down on the beard front guys. You're both looking so lush today and I just look like a 17-year-old just coming into maturity. You call it lush, I call it my beard trimmer broke a week and a half ago and I haven't replaced it yet. I like your angle better, Vlad. I call it I'm waking up in time to properly trim my beard in the mornings. Whatever, Dan just grew this since this morning and we know that. I've decided I'm going to grow a nice beard so expect me to be up to speed come CES time and hopefully Dieter keeps up the team tradition as well. I don't know Dieter when he wears his wayfares or whatever they are. He has these new frames that he's been wearing and it really freaks me out when he has those on. Oh, speaking of Dieter, we're not supposed to talk about it at length because he wants to be here when we do it but he is using a Nexus 4 right now and he has extensive thoughts on his experience. So upon his return next week expect a long, I don't know if I called it tirade, but a long speech from him. Yeah I think we'll have a good discussion assuming Chris is still actually in possession of a Nexus 4 by then. And assuming my internet does not degrade further. I'm hanging on by a thread here. So teaser there for next week. As if you have had enough Nexus 4 jabbering and blabbering today. Next week more Nexus 4. Or the week before that. I want to say I don't think we talked about how significant it might be for that T-Mobile is actually going to be able to carry the iPhone. For years now T-Mobile has attributed subscriber losses to the fact that it doesn't have the iPhone and now that's going to be changing next year. And that's kind of like a big deal. They haven't had spectrum synergy with anybody. They are the only ones in the US using AWS for 3G at least among the nationals. And so that at least early on I think that was a major barrier for them. And finally they got to the point where they can do it. I think this is another case where it would be fascinating to be on the inside, to be a fly on the wall during these negotiations because I think that Sprint in order to get that jump that T-Mobile did not get paid dearly. And they will be paying dearly for many years to come and Dan has had to defend that decision in public on a number of occasions. I don't think that T-Mobile needed to stoop to quite the level that Sprint did to get this device. Right, and I agree. I think that one of the executives actually said that it would be making money off of the iPhone within a year. So it definitely did not have to put out the huge deposit or payment that Sprint had to do. Yeah, and making money off the iPhone within a year is exactly what Sprint hasn't done. Yeah. Which is rough. It is rough. It's a rough time to be a carrier in the US. Speaking of Sprint, we're just going to segue right into our next story which is that this news kind of came out earlier this morning that Sprint might be talking to Clearwire to buy out the rest of Clearwire. Sprint currently owns, at this moment I think it's 51%. So there are talks now from CNBC that's saying that it might be interested in buying the remaining 49% of Clearwire that it doesn't own. And I'm not really sure why they would do that. So this is like that male and female friend you have that kind of pretend they're not dating but they are. It's been going on for years and sometimes they're dating other people but really you know that somehow they're going to end up together. This is exactly that situation. These companies have been flirting with each other since before I was even writing about phones I think. And they need to just hook up. They need to seal the deal. They need to hook up. They need to have beautiful babies together. Sprint briefly sold off, for a long time they had held I think it was 51% of Clearwire, sold off just enough to no longer be a majority shareholder which was a decision that I didn't understand at all. And then SoftBank swoops in and I think they were like why did you guys do that? So then they probably bought back a majority holding and now they just want to bring it entirely in house. It makes sense to me. Clearwire has a ton of spectrum even though it's largely considered to not be super valuable but it does, it's a huge block and Sprint is like all carriers could use as much spectrum as it can possibly get its hands on. So this deal would not surprise me at all and frankly I've thought of these two companies as kind of being one and the same for five plus years. Yeah, I mean it has been exactly like you described it, a kind of a romantic relationship between them and Clearwire must have done something wrong that offended Sprint and Sprint backed off and now Sprint's parent came in and smacked him upside the head and said you know you really should be getting along with Clearwire. I think what Clearwire did that offended Sprint was it didn't deliver, I mean there was that period last year when they were first discussing network vision and they were in talks with LightSquared and Sprint had set a number of goals for Clearwire to meet in order to win a TDLTE contract and so there was that whole, and there was some concern on Sprint's end about the amount of debt that Clearwire was carrying and Sprint kind of didn't want to be involved with that and I don't blame them because they had their own financial troubles. So they really didn't want to mix finances yet, they were just not at that point in the relationship. That's right, that's right, they didn't want to combine bank accounts and I don't blame them. That's kind of prenup, that's the real question. So yeah, I think like you said Chris it's probably very likely that this will happen but it hasn't happened yet, still a rumor. What is the impact going to be on the guys to buy the phones and use the phones? I don't think it will have much impact because there's already an agreement in place for Clearwire's upcoming TDLTE network to augment capacity in the markets that Sprint is rolling out LTE in. Like for instance, it's not good for covering a wide area because it's such a high frequency but they can deploy spot coverage in places like Times Square where they need to really blanket it and beef up the capacity. So that was the intention and I think that's still the intention but presumably there's some financial advantage or investor advantage to having all those licenses in house owned by Sprint instead of having an arrangement with Clearwire to farm it out. I think this is more a legal and financial maneuver than it is a technical or product one. I think this will really change the short to mid term strategy at all actually. And I have one more question about US carriers. This was kind of a big news story and I'm struggling to understand why some of you guys can lie to me. The 911 SMS texting service in 2014, why does that matter? Why is that significant to you guys? Well I can't speak for Dan but I know that I prefer to text people instead of calling them and 911 is no different. I don't want to go through the pleasantries of hello, how are you doing, what's up. I just want to text them and be like yo, I broke my leg. It's just more efficient. I think it's just a convenience factor for people that want to use it, it'll be there and your grandma will still dial 911. I don't know how teletype services work for 911 but there might be an impact for deaf and hard of hearing too. I don't know. There might be that aspect. I can just envision you using something like Siri or Google Now to input by voice a text message and then say send to 911. I would test it but I've already butt dialed 911 like 20 times this year on my 1X. Didn't you do that a ton at CTIA this year? Yes, to this day I don't know what was happening to this 1X. I kept pulling it out of my pocket and I was connected to 911. I just kept hanging up instead of talking to the operator which is probably not the right thing to do. I assumed that at any minute a cop car was just going to roll up on me and haul me off to jail for abuse at 911. It got pretty ridiculous toward the end of the week. I'm going to assume the phone is calling for a rescue because you didn't love it enough. That's entirely possible. I was probably making fun of it and it felt uncomfortable. I don't know. To this day I don't know. What I ended up doing was I kept the phone in my pocket with the screen facing me and I turned it around so the screen was facing out and that seemed to stop it. I don't know. Whatever. That's a good consumer usage tip and also a great segue. We have a great segue here because I think it's Dieter who wrote up the 1X Plus review. He did. For AT&T. But before we get to that I'm going to segue in the midst of the segue and just say that today the 11th of the week in December is when my 1X here in the UK got Android 4.1. 11th of December. They claim that these rollouts of the software updates are staggered but they're like staggered drunk. Honestly, it's awful. Has the AT&T or the US version of the 1X gotten Android 4.1 yet? I don't think it has. I don't think it has. But you know this is the thing that frustrates me because guys like HTC would just say we're starting to roll out the next version of Android and they say that we'll do that in October and then two dozen people somewhere across the globe get it in October, October 30th. And then a few more people get it in November and then the laggers like myself get it in December. And then the first of every month comes around and people write articles with headlines like two years after its release Android 2.3 is still more than half of all Android phones. Of course it is. Because if you're going to do a rollout, do it properly. If you say I'm rolling out in October, it better finish in October. And that's the thing that frustrated me with the 1X Plus launch actually is it launched in October and the way that HTC phrased it sounded exactly like a whole bunch of people are going to get the Android 4.1 update in November for the older devices and a whole bunch of people are going to get it in December. But HTC really, really wanted to push the narrative of this rollout will begin in October and I think it might have done but as I say probably to like just a few people. And it frustrates me because you make these announcements, they're technically true and accurate that you're rolling out the update but it isn't getting to everybody and it leads people frustrated. And I haven't actually played with the phone so I don't even know what the benefit of Android 4.1 is on it yet. But Google now is in there somewhere. Yeah. You'll probably have to dig for it but you know. Yeah it's actually kind of weird because after the update happened it said there's a Play Store update for Google search which I think is the thing that turns it into Google now. Yes, yes it is. But I can wrap up the segue and say that the 1X Plus on AT&T comes with 4.1 preloaded. Actually that five minute segue. And Sense 4 Plus. 4.1 with Sense 4 Plus out of the box. Which is cool aside from being a generation behind now. And so I mean I wish Dieter was here to speak more about this just because he's the one who spent a good amount of time with the 1X Plus. But based on his conclusions despite the fact that it's got a slightly faster processor and a slightly bigger battery, it's not a huge, huge difference from the original 1X that AT&T has been selling for most of this year. The battery didn't last a super long time as far as much longer than the 1X and it didn't feel that much faster with the faster processor. So I have a theory about the 1X Plus and I apologize if I've already offered this theory. In fact now that I think about it I'm pretty sure that I have offered it. I'm going to offer it again for new viewers. I think that in the US the 1X Plus is only available in black. I think that's probably true in Europe too, right Vlad? No it's the other way around. In Europe the 1X Plus is only available in matte black. Whereas on AT&T I think it's available in white. No. No? No the 1X is white. The 1X Plus is black. Oh yeah I was just talking about the 1X Plus. I'm sorry. Okay yeah so my theory is that I complain about this in the 1X review and I saw a lot of complaints about it on XDA devs and some other places that on the 1X the case had a tendency to get really dirty really fast. And I think that's because it's matte white and that's why other manufacturers, specifically Nokia when they do a white device they do it glossy because it doesn't capture the dirt like a matte finish does. And I think that HTC learned that lesson on the 1X so I think that they specifically opted not to do a white version of the 1X Plus because of that problem and they didn't want to bother to go through the retooling of doing a glossy shell for it. They just decided that it wasn't worth their time. And that's kind of a shame just because I thought that the 1X looked really nice in white when it was clean. It just got dirty really fast. Yeah it's definitely more striking when you're looking at it than the black version which is just kind of everyday all black. The circle around the camera on the back is also black. It's just another black slab phone. Right. Well Chris you say retooling but actually I don't know if I'm using the word correctly. I'm just going to use something Johnny I said and pretend I know what I'm talking about. The chamfers on the edges of the 1X, I'm sure I'm using it incorrectly but yeah the edges and the sides of the 1X are actually glossy, the white one. Oh yeah you're right they are. Just have the extra little bit of gloss. So the tools are there to make a glossy surface. Maybe they're just there for the sides. But I just want to raise one more point and I don't know why I'm harsh on HTC so much today but the branding with the One Series has just gone down the toilet. I'm sorry it's a nightmare. Things like the One SV as a product maybe it has a reason, maybe it has a place to exist but the name is garbage because it tells me nothing. What is the One S and what is the One SV? How do I distinguish, how do I differentiate between them? What is the One XL versus the One X Plus? How do you, is there someone who doesn't know about it? The One VX which just launched on AT&T the other day. I literally don't know what that is. Well I mean you really don't need to bother yourself with it but for a consumer that's looking at the One X and the One DX, the One DX is a significantly lower end model but you can't tell that from the name. Exactly. I mean this is, first of all this is a problem with DSLRs and cameras but the guys who sell those things get away with it for the most part because they cost so freaky much that people do the research anyway. And they're not concurrently available usually. Yeah but it's also like the D90 and the D7000, how could you ever make the connection between those two even though they're so close connected? And I mean a great example for this is electric toothbrushes. That's a spectacular example because you go in, you take a look, it's like, one is a 500, another one is a 600 and then you've got a 1000 and 3000 and nothing ever matches up, nothing ever makes sense and you just have to like read random weird gross specs. And that's the point, HTC isn't selling electric toothbrushes. It isn't selling niche products. It's trying to sell like devices which are, you know, just the accessibility. So I think that HTC wanted what Samsung has with the Galaxy brand because Samsung literally puts Galaxy on every single smartphone it makes these days which I don't think is a great thing because then you have things like the Galaxy S Blaze 4G which is not as high end as the Galaxy S2 or the Galaxy S3. Dan, you're forgetting the Ativ. Oh, the Ativ, okay. So I should say Galaxy is on the Android smartphones. So all of Samsung's Android smartphone line has Galaxy in its name and I think HTC wanted that with the One Series but when they pitched the One Series when it was first announced it made it feel like it was a premium line and it wasn't just going to be on every single phone that the manufacturer released. I think the big distinction is Samsung in terms of advertising and promotion makes the Galaxy S3 so clearly the flagship and differentiates it so clearly from all the other garbage Galaxy S whatevers. Well the fact that it promotes it kind of separates it. I mean aside from Note and Note 2 ads I don't know if I've ever seen an ad for another Galaxy phone that wasn't a Galaxy S2 or Galaxy S3. Exactly. And look the other thing is HTC's biggest mistake was to make the One S so desirable and then put a phone above it in its range. And then you're like which one is the flagship again? Because the One X, yes, is the flagship in terms of specs and all that stuff but the One S is actually the more attractive phone for a lot of people. And like you say Dan, it felt like the One Series was just going to be premium and premier. So maybe if that was the case, just keep the One X and the One S and don't add anything to it. You have to differentiate and you have to stick with like two, maybe three phones at most that people are going to want to know about. We don't have attention spans that can cover that many devices. You got to give it a couple generations to establish whether they do something similar to what Samsung is doing though because they might very well have a One X2, a One X3, a One X4 that will just carry them forward on the flagship line and then whatever they do below that is just kind of meaningless nonsense, which is what we have with Samsung. But look, there's a trouble. Even if you go into a store with One X2, right? And then you see next to a One XL and a One X+, how do you know that the One X2 is like the really brand new awesome thing? The other one sounds superlative as well. It's true. It's a good point. Well the other thing that HTC kind of failed with as well was Samsung's got in its Galaxy line on every carrier with the name Galaxy in it. Whereas at least here in the US, HTC has not been able to do that with the One series. They've got a variant on Sprint that has its own name and a variant on Verizon that has their own names. And then AT&T's got the One X and T-Mobile's got the One S and AT&T's got the One X+, and this other one, DX. So it doesn't feel like a cohesive thing at all when you look at the grand spectrum of offerings that HTC has. And as far as phones go, I remember when the EVO 4G LTE came out, I liked that one better than I liked the One X, which then One X was supposed to be the flagship. Irregardless of Sprint's limited LTE network, the hardware was nicer on the EVO and it just was a better phone in my opinion. And there's the other thing that HTC is also sabotaging itself with the Droid DNA. Okay, fine. You sold the Droid DNA branding to Verizon. You had to do that. I get it. HTC's income and profits have been kind of on a downstream, on a downward trend for a while now. So you sold yourself to Verizon. A lot of people do it. It's forgivable. It's not that much of a sin. But then it's called the Jade Butterfly in Japan and it's going to be called just the butterfly in Europe, which meshes with the One series, not at all. And that's also the Droid DNA for Verizon essentially. Yeah, that's what Gladys said. I think that HTC, this goes back to something we've been saying for a solid year now, which is that HTC does not have the same level of power in the market that Samsung does. And that's a huge problem. You just wish, you want so badly for HTC to just stand up to the carriers and say, no, screw it. You can't have the Droid DNA. And then just slap it off the table and then storm out. I wish that's how that meeting went between HTC and Verizon. But realistically HTC needs as much business as it can possibly get. So they end up bending over and doing all sorts of ridiculous things. But I mean, yeah, their intentions were very pure when they originally introduced the One X and One S. And it's kind of gone downhill from there. I still think that the fault lies on them for the XL and the X+. Because that's global branding. But some of these other products, specifically the Droid DNA and the Evo 4G LTE, those are entirely HTC's fault. I am going for another Segway smash out of the ballpark by asking, who else do you think really needs to get some carrier buy-in with new devices? What do you mean? I'm Segwaying, Chris. Check the topic, please. You're not taking the bait. Yeah, I fail to see... Well, we know that RIM, once it finally does release its BlackBerry... Do we have to talk about BlackBerry? Oh, man. All right. Why am I... No, you guys are terrible. I'm sorry. I'm the cynic. I've been hating this whole podcast. And now I'm the most optimistic guy. I'm the most excited to see this teaser of RIM's first BlackBerry X. Okay. Let me clarify this. Teaser is very generous of what this is. Because I can't even call it a teaser. It's a quarter of a render of the back of a device that may be the first BlackBerry X smartphone on the market. Dan, I'm sorry. I know you're American, but that is exactly how you tease. I know you've watched the Motor Hollywood trailers where the entire freaking... I feel like a teaser is just giving it too much credit. It's like half of a tease. If that. Yeah. Okay. Vlad Sevov, teasing expert. If you look at his business card, that's actually what it says. Yeah, I mean, look, I don't care about BlackBerry until they give me a reason to care about them. And they have not yet done that. And I will reevaluate when I see these freaking phones. That's all I have to say about them. Okay. Chris, BBM 7 is out now. Out of beta. Beta. And you can do voice Wi-Fi calling. BBM voice. Come on. To all your BBM buddies. I can't tell if you're trolling me or if you're seriously trying to get me excited about this product. Oh, man. There was such a time when BBM was the messaging platform. And I'm just sad for that. I was never on it. I was never one of the addicts. But nowadays, the only people who are still on it are kind of embarrassed about the fact that they're still on it. So it's just sad. Well, I remember when I carried a BlackBerry full time, I ended up using text messages more than BBM. Because I think at that time, it was still before everybody had BlackBerries and I had nobody to BBM with anyways. And I will never forgive RIM for using hex codes as the primary means of communicating. Like, if you wanted to add a buddy to BBM, you had to give them this insane eight-digit hex number. Like, what? What? I mean, seriously. Well, until they did the thing with the barcodes, which was kind of smart. It was like, you know, pre-NFC pairing types of things. Yeah, but how about a word? How about a username? Like, it's not... Oh, man. Sorry. Like, I had... My last BlackBerry was a Curve 8900, which I wanted to love. It was a T-Mobile branded... That was the last one of mine, too. Yeah, it was a T-Mobile branded Curve 8900. And I believe... It's right up to date, guys. Yeah, I know. It's getting up... It was one of the last Trackball BlackBerries, I think. But it... No, but I'm serious. Like, you're not missing out much functionality from the very latest BlackBerries. Sad but true. Sad but true. Yeah, because the Curve 8900 was... It had a high-res display. It was HVGA or something, wasn't it? Yeah, it was 480 by 320, I think. Boom. Yeah, I mean, that's a pretty serious display. But DPI muscle there. I will say, I think I've said this many times before, and I know Neelai will agree with me on this as well, that it was definitely the best-looking BlackBerry that RIM has ever produced. Even better looking than the 9900. And I'll continue to say that, I'm sure, after the BlackBerry 10 devices come out. Because it was just... It was, at the time, it was cool-looking. The keyboard was great. It had a nice screen that was very competitive at the time. And it actually had Wi-Fi, which was rare for BlackBerry devices at the time. Even though it was only Edge, and you had no 3G. I liked the 8900. I don't know, man. The bold with the denim back cover. I mean, putting up some serious competition for the 8900 there. But no, I agree with you. What ultimately led me to return it to T-Mobile was the email experience, which I don't think has been... It's just highly ironic. Yes, it is. Well, you know, I think that they were so hell-bent for so many years, going back to the 90s, on delivering a good exchange mail experience. They did that at the cost of really paying any attention to any other mail services that came along. And, you know, of course, in my case it was Gmail. And they didn't do ToAsync. To this day, I'm not sure they do it well. Yeah, they introduced ToAsync eventually, but it works awful. The last time I used it, I was reviewing the BlackBerry 7 phones when they hit the market. And it was like, why am I constantly having to check mark this email red twice? I'm marking it red online, it's not marked red on the phone, or vice versa. It was driving me insane. Now, Dan, I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit. And you have to be honest. Do you still have a playbook? Yes, I do. And why is that? Oh, come on. Is that just going to dig it up from the top of the shelf? I don't know where it is at the moment, but I do have a playbook. And you know why? Because I want to know what it will be like with BlackBerry 10. I was going to be really impressed if it was like right at the top of your gadget shelf. You know, I was using it as an alarm clock for a long time. Nice. Oh, speaking of that, I have to give a little shout out to our producer Brendan. Because I was looking at, because part of our hangout is we get to look at him and his handsome, handsome face. But I was just switching between tabs and at one point he wasn't there. And I saw the background and it looked like a code hanger on the wall, but it wasn't actually a code hanger. It was just headphones. It was just surreal, man. Like the dude has a wall hanger where he just stacked up headphones. Like I actually want to go and visit his place and try all those out. I'm jealous. I only have my beats. Sorry. I'm not going to try to hide it anymore. I wish I could put a troll face on you instead of just on me. Yeah, no, I'm not going to get into a beats discussion, but I'll just say they sound great when they're plugged into my Bose Airwave or whatever that $600 FM radio is called. You know what I'm talking about, right? It's the one that's like an alarm clock with like two crappy speakers. The one that bends air, right? Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that on QVC, like the 20 minute explanation of... I remember the infomercials they had for that thing were like so long and these people were like this is the most remarkable thing ever. Yeah. And look, here's a candle, right? And if you use a normal speaker, the candle stays on because it's not strong enough. But we bend the air, right? And this is perfect because it matches the Airbender movie, which stinks, right? So it's perfect. So you bend the air around the cone and then the thing and boom. And the thing still has... Not only does it still have a CD slot, but it's available with a 3 CD changer in the year 2012. My first car, a Chrysler LeBaron, a rusted out Chrysler LeBaron, I was very excited about installing a 6 CD changer in it. This was 1990 something. And here we are in the year 2012 and Bose is offering 3 CD changers for an FM radio for $600. So I just want to point out that I found my Blackberry playbook. If you guys want to hang out for 20 minutes, it'll boot up. That's a nice Kindle Fire, Dan. Yeah, dude. That's a nice last generation Kindle Fire. Kudos. Boom, proof. Nice. There is a question here though, which I'm sure many observing listeners will be asking. Why the heck are you guys wearing over the head headphones for just a podcast? Okay, I want to clear that up because actually I really like these headphones and they sound great. But I was tearing my office apart today trying to find the in-ear monitors that I own and I cannot find them to save my life. So I'm using my over-ear headphones again. Did you just have one pair of in-ear monitors or is there a particular set that you like to podcast with? There's a particular set that I like because the wire goes behind my head and they sound really great. I guess I could use ear pods if I really wanted to punish myself. Yeah, don't do that to yourself. Yeah, they hurt. Well, I'm just a huge fan of Beats products. No, look, these are actually growing on me. When I first put these on, these are Beats mixers and when I first put them on, I thought they were the worst things on the planet because the cups are just small enough so they rest, they're on-ear instead of over-ear. That's supra-oral. Is that the technical term for that? Yes, for you audiophile nerds. Which mine are as well. They're called supra-oral. They just sit on top of your ear. Yeah, but they probably don't want to... They probably don't make your ears want to fall off is my guess, but these do. I've grown on them over the years, over the months, however long it's been since I got these and I no longer despise them. I merely dislike them, which is an improvement. That is like a 45 degree downward angle thumbs down. It's not complete thumbs down, it's just creeping up. No. Right. That's exactly right. On that topic, I'm just going to wrap up this topic by name dropping my favorite set of headphones, which a lot of our producer guys also use, which is the Sony MDR-V6 and MDR-7506. The V6 is actually as old as me because apparently it was first introduced in the mid-80s. It just hasn't been changed. The MDR-7506 was introduced in the 90s and again hasn't been changed. It's just that tank like... I have a pair of MDR-V700s here. Which are completely unrelated. The number is close. MDR... That's my point, Chris. This is exactly what I was getting at. It's like with the HTC naming schemes. The V6, 7506 is one series, V700, all of this modern Sony stuff is garbage to be honest with you. As far as headphones go. No, please. Please, Vlad. Please. But relative to the 80s and 90s stuff, it is garbage because Sony showed itself in the foot by just making stuff that didn't break and lasted for decades. Yeah, no. Yeah, 80s Sony gear is like primo. In fact I wish I still had my mini disc player circa 93, 94? That would have been, yeah, 94, 95 I think. Yeah, it was the bomb. And I miss it. But those days are gone. Never to return. Poor mini disc. I will never own spinning media again if I can avoid it. Of any kind. I agree. That's a very laudable go and I think it's a very achievable one nowadays as well. Yeah. Next year I'm going to buy a Pano. I just want to point that out. I would like you to follow. I'm not doubting you because I'm sure you will. I would like to see it when you do. So let's wrap things up by talking about a few apps and a few app related situations and skirmishes. Yeah, it seemed like, I don't mean to cut you off, Vlad, but I just want to get this in there that it seemed like the past week has been like all about pictures and filters. No, by all means, let's finish each other's sentences. Carry on. So yeah, it was like we had last week, Snapseed finally, Google finally released Snapseed for Android. It bought Snapseed earlier this year. Snapseed was a pretty popular app for iOS that let you do a lot of tweaks and adjustments to your photos as well as add filters and things like that. It's finally available on Android. It's really great. It runs really great on Android and it feels just like the iOS version, which is a good thing. So that was released. Then... And let's make mention, the iOS version used to be $5. It got chopped down to free. Yeah, so Google is being very generous with that. As far as the user's perspective is, this is an absolute net positive. It's awesome. Right. So Snapseed is kind of like a little bit more advanced than your typical Instagram. It requires a little bit more work on your end, but you can get great results. But then yesterday, Instagram released a new version of its app that added a new filter, totally redesigned the iOS camera and added some integration with Foursquare, which is really cool. And then, you know, out of nowhere, well, not really out of nowhere because it had been rumored, but then Twitter's like, oh, we're going to have apps. Our apps are going to have photo filters. So here's our apps with photo filters to compete directly, pretty much directly with Instagram. There are so many ways to make your photos look like crap now. It's amazing. Absolutely. And I will say this, that I've been using the Nexus 4 a lot and I really hate the camera and none of these apps make the camera good. So I'm just wondering about Twitter. Is it just the official Twitter app that now should have photo filters in it? Right. It's the official app for Android and iOS. When you upload a photo, you now have the ability to add a filter to it. I'm guessing the update has a road app to my phone. The update actually just hit this afternoon, so check now. For iOS, it was delayed about a day for whatever reason. And by the way, I should mention, I'm just going to plug a report that just went live on our site, a little site called theverge.com recently, written by the amazing Ellis Hamburger. He penned an editorial on why Twitter should not be focusing on these filters and I wholeheartedly agree. So if you haven't read that report yet, please do. Is this making your head explode? Because I know you're such a huge fan of filters in Instagram. My head exploded regarding filters like 18 months ago. There's nothing left to explode. My head is just an open, an exploded pile of meat at this point. I think that that battle is lost. I mean, Instagram certainly isn't going anywhere. Twitter has a few users and I think they're going to do a very respectable job of continuing to push the retro photo agenda for years to come, which makes me very, very sad. But what can you do? I'm going to continue to fight the good fight. I'm going to upload unretouched photos. I may crop under certain circumstances as needed, but I will not. To protect the innocent, you might have to crop. Right. But I will not, you have my word, I will not upload a retro styled photo to Twitter if you follow me on Twitter, which you should. Please do. Because Chris is back on Twitter, your hate is finished. I never left Twitter. There was a long time between two tweets. That's all there is. There's an extended break between two tweets, that's all. I think what we need to discuss here is the thing that everybody's discussing, which is Twitter's protectionism basically. Because Twitter first of all removed Instagram previews. But wait, no, no, that was Instagram that removed that functionality. Oh. Yeah, Instagram was supporting Twitter's cards functionality, which allowed you on the native Twitter website and apps to see the preview of the image. Instagram went ahead and turned that off. Ah, interesting. So maybe Instagram did that because it got wind of the fact that Twitter was going to do its own filters. Maybe it was like a preemptive move. Maybe. I think Instagram was doing the, you were saying that Twitter is being protectionist. I think Instagram was the one being protectionist. Right, right. I mean my perception was Twitter was making the viewing of Instagram images tougher by making it not preview in the timeline. You have to click on the link in order to look at an Instagram image. And then coming in with its own more convenient photo filtering effort. But if Instagram pulled its own support, then yeah, I guess nobody is particularly clean in this one. Yeah, it just kind of stinks for the users because it was a nice thing that you could easily see without having to jump out of your timeline or stream to see previous photos. Yeah, but I don't really get the angle from Instagram's perspective. Why do that? Because you have to click the link and now that Instagram has a web viewer that it didn't always have, you can like and comment right from there. And it drives the likes and comments back to Instagram. That was my guess. That's fair enough. I think that's a fair guess. And also there's obviously the fact that under the Facebook umbrella I think they have a very different set of agendas than they did as an independent company. So there's that consideration as well. Do you guys think I'll ever get Instagram on my playbook? I think you have a better chance of running iOS on that playbook. But that's just my take. Actually I think somebody managed to hack iOS apps to run on the playbook a few months ago. Yeah, wasn't that a thing? What? You're making that up. No, I don't think he is. When I say a few months ago, I mean like a year or two ago. When people were actually fascinated by the playbook sufficiently. I did not mean to turn on that smiley face. Sorry if anyone caught that. Yeah I mean I don't know why anyone would do that. I don't know why anyone would spend a minute of their time porting iOS apps to playbook. Yeah this happened in June so Vlad was definitely right. Okay well kudos to the three playbook owners and their new found catalog of iOS apps I suppose. Stay strong guys. Stay strong. Blackbird 10 is coming. Look at the devices but it's coming. And then you'll be old school and you have street cred and stuff. Just an update, we're to the splash screen now. Oh nice, progress. You're not serious then. You haven't been booting that thing for like seven minutes have you? I think the battery might have been at its minimum and I had to plug it in and then it finally started bloating. That's pretty much amazing. So let's just draw a quick conclusion on this. Google takes over a photo app in company and it makes it universally better by introducing it to Android and cutting the price to free on iOS. Facebook does the same thing and makes our lives more difficult in a line. Is that the balance of what's happening here? That's a very poignant observation Vlad. I like it. Write that down. So Google good, Facebook evil. I don't know about that. I might be drawing broad strokes but what do I know? I'm happy with making that statement. You can quote me on that. If you want to put it on like a product box somewhere that Vlad Savov said Google's good and Facebook is evil, I'm fine with that. You can use it. But in the battle of good versus evil, Apple and Microsoft have been jabbing and fighting at each other again apparently, reportedly. People can choose which one they think is good and which one they think is evil. This relates to the iOS SkyDrive app which is being held back and the issue also seems to relate to the Office for iOS application which has been removed for so freaking long. I don't even know who cares about it that much anymore. I don't know. I think when it does get released it will be huge. I think it's a very big deal. Office on their iPad and that's a very big deal. It's kind of like the trump card that Microsoft is holding with the Surface now is that it offers a quote real Office experience. I think about it and I'm like there are ways for me to make charts and there are ways for me to make documents outside of Office. I haven't used Office under the sub for years, maybe for years. I'm with you Vlad but with all due respect, you're not the target demographic for this product. I think that there are millions and millions of business people who rely on Office to get their job done on a daily basis and rely on very specific features of it and want to use iOS and want to use iPads and want to better integrate those devices into their lives and the lack of a true Office experience is holding that back. To be fair, at this point there are a number of third party Office replacements for iOS that I think do a pretty respectable job but there's no replacement for the real thing. I think that they are going to sell licenses of Office for iPad in spades when it comes out, if it comes out, when it comes out ever. We'll see. Right and that's the wrangling I think. It's always about money with these things anyway but it's like they can't sort out their agreement for Office for iOS and that's the thing that's also holding back SkyDrive for iOS which just got rolled out for the Xbox Live and Xbox 360. So it kind of puts a little bit of a kink in Microsoft's plans to make SkyDrive a universal cloud service, a universally accessible one. Right. Are there any third party SkyDrive clients for iOS or no? Third party? Well there's the SkyDrive app itself for iOS. No it doesn't exist dude. No SkyDrive for iOS? Am I crazy? Am I high? An actual app? I don't think it exists. Yeah no it definitely does. The problem is that it hasn't been updated and Microsoft wants to update it and Apple is holding the update back because of the subscription argument that they're having. Oh right yeah the subscription aspect. I was just insulting my iPad mini. Cool product plug there. Cha-ching! I can respect that check in five to seven business days. I like SkyDrive but I like it best on Windows phone and when I'm not using a Windows phone I don't care as much about it. Yeah which I should mention is also my excuse for just completely not knowing the fact that it exists on iOS. Right. What service do you use Vlad? Do you use Dropbox? Do you use Google Drive? What do you use? Yeah 99% Dropbox. I made the switch to Google Drive once and that thing was trying to sync up every single file in it every time I turned it on. I mean I had issues with it. I was gung ho. It was around the time that Google Drive was introduced and I was like screw it. Drop Dropbox. Let's go with Google Drive. Let's be all Google all the time. The thing with Dropbox is if you're like a fan of phones and you're buying or switching phones a lot, HTC offers a deal on money of its phones that give you 25 or 50 gigabytes free. Samsung does the same thing on a lot of its phones. So it's like I've had in my possession enough HTC and Samsung phones where it's like I don't think I'll ever leave Dropbox just because I have so much storage there available to me. Yeah. I'm going to use that as a segue and say that December 13th Samsung Galaxy camera, not a phone, not a particularly good camera but it's coming to Verizon and that has the extra 48 gigabytes of Dropbox storage. And LTE. LTE. Hey that's neat. You know what's really, really weird about it? This might be the first device ever released on an LTE carrier that doesn't have any form of cellular fallback to another network. It's LTE only. It doesn't have CDMA. And I can't think, I'm sure I'm going to get corrected by somebody, but I cannot think of another device that is LTE only. No, I agree. I think you're right, Chris. And what makes that interesting is that if you do buy this from Verizon, your wireless connectivity is useless anywhere outside of Verizon's network. And it's also useless outside of Verizon's LTE footprint. So if you happen to live in an area with shaky LTE coverage or you're still in a CDMA only area, it's useless to you. And it made me wonder, now that this LTE model is out, why didn't AT&T just release an LTE version of its own? And my theory is that Samsung designed it with only one wireless radio in mind and it could use one wireless radio, didn't have room or the power management for two. So since AT&T's LTE network is much smaller than Verizon's at this point, certainly not nationwide at all, AT&T went with HSPA, which is a much larger footprint. And also it's the advantage of being able to be used in most parts of the world. Right. And it should be noted that AT&T definitely made a special exception for this device because they have long since required LTE support on any smartphone. You can't, as an OEM, you cannot even present a phone to AT&T that doesn't support LTE at this point. So they made a loophole for this Galaxy to be camera. Well, that's the point, Chris, it's not a phone. Well I mean, it's, look, it's basically a smartphone with a giant camera on it minus the earpiece. Yeah, but you, yeah. Could you, I mean, could you run Skype on it? You preempted the question. You preempted the next question, which is, where is the freaking earpiece in the microphone? Could you, I mean, could you run Skype on it? Does it have Bluetooth? Could you connect a headset to it and run Skype? Well, yes, no, you could do video calls on it, except that there's no front-facing camera. So like your part, your co-caller or whatever will only see whatever the front of the camera sees. Yeah. You could do a voice call on Skype too, presumably. Presumably. Yeah, yeah, no, I think you can. I feel like we covered it in the review. Let me check. I'm sure we covered it in the review. That's going to be my only phone. I'm just going to carry a Galaxy camera everywhere. No, dude, you're making me sad. Like honestly, I would be happier to see people go with the Nokia 808 just as their own phone. Look, a Galaxy camera would be easier to haul around than a Note 2, okay? So? It's like it's easier to haul it around than a big ass phone. I think that's a stretch there, Chris, because it's like as thick as four Note 2s stacked together. Wait, how much does AT&T charge for the Galaxy camera? They charge $4.99 for the camera, and then it's ten bucks a month to add to your mobile share plan. Okay. So you can get an international unlocked Galaxy camera from Expanses for $5.09. I imagine there are a number of retailers that sell it for around the same price. Not to say there's any reason to get an unlocked Galaxy camera. Because Chris quietly clicks the buy button. Yeah, I know. Chris is looking at it and he sees they have limited availability and he's like, okay, I need to backstrap right now. All right, I need to buy two of these, one to keep new and box. I wish that was a joke, but that's sadly close to reality and what just happened. Hey, Chris, I'm right here. I'm pretty sure Expanses is a UK operation. So if you want me to buy you some gear and bring it over for CES, you just tell me, dude. Vlad, you know something? Expanses is a UK operation, but their US division is headquartered very near to me. So I can actually run it. Actually that's not true. It's like a two hour drive. They're in the middle of nowhere in Illinois. But I could run down there and get some Galaxy cameras. I'm going to show up to CES with a dozen Galaxy cameras for no reason. But the best thing I was wondering actually is what gadget, device, any piece of electronics is there that's actually cheaper here in the UK than in the States? I'm struggling to come up with it. Well, if it's offered here in the States, or you mean... Because if we have to import it, Chris will know that the Galaxy Nexus, when it came out, the GSM model, it cost $850 to import. But generally, I mean, most things are like... I don't know. I'm sure Kindle Fire HDs are being given away with newspapers over there in the US by now. Whereas the UK price is pretty much the US price, but translated into the other currency. That was the thing that always bums me out. Yeah, but you guys have free healthcare, so... Yeah, so, you know. Better education as well. You guys have free healthcare, great 3G service that gets awesome speeds pretty much wherever you go. Right. So I don't wanna hear it. A tiny little LTE network. Yeah. I love a 3G LTE. It's still bigger than T-Mobile's LTE network in the US. And might be bigger than Sprint's. Might be bigger than Sprint's, yeah. Although I will actually announce this exclusively on the Verge Mobile show. Actually it's not exclusive at all. No, Sprint's LTE network in Chicago is intermittently showing up now. Even though they haven't announced it live, they said it was coming soon. And somebody tweeted at me the other day that... In fact, I think it was our own moderator, Dr. Techno PhD, who first clued me into this, that the network is starting to show up in places. So if you have a Sprint LTE device in Chicago, check it out. And be sure to thank Dr. Techno PhD in comments that he noticed this. I don't have any Sprint LTE devices, so I can't check it out. And on that note, we can wrap it up. Yeah, I think so. We have nothing else to talk about? I feel like it was such a short podcast. I don't know, man. We're going on an hour and a half. I just want to talk to you guys forever. Your major delays. I just want to talk to you guys forever. Keep it going, Chris. I'm just waiting for the troll face to show up. I'm done. I'm done with troll faces. I promise. I think it felt like it did because before the podcast, we kind of anticipated not even being able to see your beautiful face, Chris. With all of that drama and connectivity issues. That's the face I'm talking about. I kind of want to get Chris riled up right here. The chat room wants us to talk about the Galaxy S4 rumors. So I want to get Chris really mad really quickly. Oh yeah, no. I would be... Garbage. I'm happy to discuss the Galaxy S4 rumors. Sorry, I didn't mean to leave that on. So yeah, the bottom line is that they will definitely... You will definitely 120% not see a Galaxy S4 at CES. If Samsung announces a Galaxy S4 at CES, I will eat my own face off with a spoon. That is my promise to you, Verge Mobile show listeners. It's not going to happen. As soon as that... First of all, it was not a rumor in the first place. It was merely idle speculation on the part of some publications. Samsung put out a teaser for their CES events and they were like, something big is coming. And everyone was like, Galaxy S4, as if Samsung doesn't make a thousand other products. And it doesn't make any sense anyway because the Galaxy S4 only came out like six months ago. It isn't right for the product cycle. And anyway, I reached out to my Samsung source who I have a long history with and who has never, literally never been wrong on anything Samsung related and just asked him to confirm or deny it and he said it will definitely not be at CES. But he did give me... He did give me... I should mention very briefly, he did give me a couple enticing tidbits about the Galaxy S4. One is that... well, he didn't, but he hinted that we can expect a 1080p display, which makes a lot of sense. And he said that we should not expect this so-called unbreakable display because the flexible technology is not near term enough for that generation. S5 maybe, but S4 no. I'd just like to point out that when he dismissed and debunked the Galaxy S4 rumors, that followed about five minutes of him laughing on the phone to you at the very premise of the Galaxy S4 coming to CES. Yeah, that's about right. I just really hope that Samsung announces a new washing machine just because... Something big is coming. I want to upgrade my washing machine again. I'll tell you this much. No guarantee from Samsung's CES. There will be an OLED TV and it will probably look stunning. A 4K OLED. Wow, don't push it, Chris. The point is, everyone would like it, everyone would want it, and none of us will have it by CES 2014. They will show... Here's my prediction. They will show a glasses-free 4K OLED of at least 62 inches. It will have 12-person head tracking for the 3D. Will it support Miracast? Yes, and it will be Google TV. That's my prediction. By the way, I know nothing about TVs, so don't listen to me. This is why this is the mobile show. All right, wrapping up time. So I guess I'll wrap that up. So thanks for listening to the Verge Mobile Show this week. Please follow us on Twitter. I'm Dan Seifert. My handle is dccifert, S-E-I. Vlad is at Vlad Savov, and Chris is at ZPower. And if you want to follow Dieter, of course, he's at Backlon. So that's it, and we'll see you guys next week. Thanks. Thanks, guys.