 Greetings, mobile accomplishers. Welcome to the Verge Mobile Show. It's the last show of 2013. It is December 31st. I have a drink and I'm Dieter Bohm. I'm Dan Seifert and I have hot cocoa. I'm Chris Ziegler and I have a delicious cup of Intelligentsia coffee. The other thing that you have, Chris, what I heard earlier is drugs in your system. Yeah, so long story short, I have an ad... Wait, wait, wait. How is this a long story? What part are you cutting out? Okay, good point. It's just a short story. Where he acquired the drugs? Well, there's nothing illicit here. So I'm overcoming a variety of ailments right now, which is perfect timing with CES a couple days away. So I have a bunch of jars of pills, bottles of pills, whatever you call them, on my countertop. My sleeping pills look exactly like the Advil gel caps. So I switched them and took two sleeping pills instead of two Advil pills. And you're only supposed to take one sleeping pill. Now, miraculously, I'm not dead. But I have been drinking coffee all afternoon and I feel a little spacey. But I've also been feeling spacey just because I've been taking a lot of Sudafed this week. So yeah, it's a mess. So I apologize if I'm not making any sense on this show or if I just spontaneously fall asleep. Either situation is entirely possible. But hopefully it goes without incident. So you just have random jars of pills on your kitchen counter unlabeled? I love how Chris is trying to use the I'm sick excuse to have random jars of pills just lying around. Well, it's true. I have probably 10 supplements that I'm taking right now between garlic and zinc and sea and all this nonsense. Are you trying to ward off vampires? Well, no. I'm using every supplement that has been so much as rumored to possibly shorten colds by even a single minute. I'm taking them all simultaneously. Plus I'm taking sleeping pills at night so that I can sleep through the pathogen. And I'm taking a number of different cold medications including Mucinex. So the bottom line is that yeah, my countertop looks like I should be immediately arrested. So I mean, here's the thing. You're patient zero for the CES flu, the CES SARS or whatever. What do we call it? CES SARS? Maybe. David has the same thing I think. So either one of us could get everyone sick. The other thing that this makes me think of is that instead of actually writing about consumer electronics at the Consumer Electronics Show, I'm going to write CES Vampire Fanfic where vampires stalk the night at the Las Vegas Convention Center. I'd read it. Drinking the blood of weary tech journalists. I'd read it. By the way, whose cockamamie idea was it to have a Verge Mobile show today on New Year's Eve? Believe it or not. Yours. I said no. I was very skeptical. Oops. That came back to me a little quicker than I thought it would. Good job, Chris. Dan. Evan, please escort Dan off the premise. Oh, you can't. You're not in the – neither one of you are in the office. So Evan is here producing the show. Because of technical difficulties, he's not actually on the show nor is he hiding his face. So you just can see his beautiful thumbnail down there. It's really nice looking. Sweet tar. Yeah. Okay, so like CES is coming. It starts in like mere days. Mere, mere days. And I mean the common trend of there not being massive crazy phone news is continuing. I'm not expecting anything to change the game. There hasn't been a major huge phone announcement CES what, since the pre? We're talking like five, six years? No, there was – what was it, two, three years ago when the LG revolution – I repeat my earlier claim. No, no, no, no. But those were important because they were the first phones with LTE to be introduced by an American carrier I think. No. No, didn't – ATC Thunderbolt was the first. Thunderbolt event. Was that at CES? Yes. I remember that. Yeah, it was. That was an insane event. Like the whole room had like – they had like a surround screen and like lightning just kept on shooting across the entire auditorium over and over and over again. Hang on. I'm pretty sure the Thunderbolt was at CES. Well, I do know that Motorola showed the original Droid Bionic at CES which ended up looking way different to the Droid Bionic that actually launched nine months later. Yeah, it was at CES. It was January 6, 2011? No. That's 2010. It was January. The Atrix was at CES. The original Atrix. I still think that Deater's original point stands. No, so the original Atrix was interesting. Deater's completely wrong because the original Atrix was interesting because it was the first device with web top or whatever the hack Motorola called it. I believe it was the first smartphone announced with 1 gig of RAM. It was the first dual core and it had the fingerprint reader. Right. Yeah. I mean I wanted the Atrix so bad when they announced it. I was like – it sounded like when they announced that phone it sounded like science fiction and it turned out it kind of was because it didn't launch for a long time. And it didn't live up to the promises at all. Yeah, but it was decent. It was a decent phone. Yeah, but the really exotic stuff about it, like the fingerprint scanner sucked and the web top thing was a total flop. So all the stuff that made it really interesting aside from the nerdy level of it's the first dual core phone was a bust and it was just like an okay phone on its own merit. Right. So every year Sony has a big press conference and they usually save at least one phone for that. We're expecting a bunch of wearable stuff that's going to be everywhere. So Sony last year used CES to launch the Xperia Z which is its flagship model for the time. But I don't think that we're going to see a new flagship from them this year. Yeah, the timing isn't great. Like the Z1 just recently launched, we haven't seen it in the US yet. But it hasn't been on the market long enough for them to actually replace it with another flagship model. So I'm sure Sony will do something but I don't expect it to be a new flagship device. You know what they could do, is the Z1 on T-Mobile? It isn't, right? No, it's not available on any US carrier yet. So here's my prediction, I think that they will announce it, this might happen at the T-Mobile press conference, but somewhere T-Mobile will announce that they're carrying the Z1 and I bet that AT&T announces a weird, nerfed version of the Z1 for itself. It's happened before. AT&T takes the camera out. And makes it like an inch thicker for no apparent reason. Yeah. Oh, AT&T. The highlight of AT&T's big, AT&T has like a separate, I think it's technically a developer conference attached to CES, so it's at the Palms which is way far off from where everything else happens. And the only thing I remember is the highlight of their keynote was them repeatedly dropping gadgets into a giant bowl of water. Like here's a Kyocera, whatever it's called. Pulling it out of the water, putting it back in the water. I still don't understand, is it Vlad who always talks about wanting to be able to use a phone in the shower? No, David is a big fan of using things in the shower. I don't get it, it doesn't make any sense to me, what are you doing on your phone in the shower? Apparently David reads books. In the shower. Like you see he gets so bored cleansing his body that he's like, you know what, I just need to take a little break here and read a few pages of a book. It's really confusing to me. You know, maybe it's just efficient multitasking and it's good use of his time. I guess, I guess. It's a little weird to me. Yeah, I mean, look, I read the story this week that the majority of porn is now viewed on mobile devices. And we're going to have 4K displays on phones here in what, 2015? What is that, like 1000 PPI? Awesome. Yeah, doesn't make any sense. So we're also, okay, Sony will have something, maybe they'll get, T-Mobile's got a press conference, AT&T does its thing and usually announces crappy devices. Verizon usually announces some metric about how their LTE is better than everybody else's. There's going to be a million wearables, like just a million smartwatches, a million crappy smartwatches and the flagship crappy smartwatch, I'm predicting right now is the one that Arcos just teased. It looks like a combination of a Pebble and my Phosphor E Ink watch, and so I'm going to buy it and that's a huge giant shame. I love Arcos, man. They just, they always are like, they seem super cutting edge and then they never... I don't think they seem super cutting edge. I'm not sure where you're getting that from. No, they always feel like they're up to date on the spec race and they get, they're like MP3 players before the iPod, where like, did Arcos make something? Did they make an MP3 player? Yeah, I think that's how they got started, right? Actually, Arcos made these almost like five and six inch tablet-like devices that you're supposed to put your SD card in and view your photos and things like that. Way before the iPad, way before smartphones even really took off on the mainstream. But they always had like some crippling resistive touch screen or just like horrible software interfaces that made them like really cool looking when they're turned off, but as soon as you like touch it and you try to use it, all things fall apart. Yeah. What else are we expecting from CES? So, we kind of glanced right over the T-Mobile thing. So, T-Mobile is having this press conference, it's the Wednesday CES, which is actually kind of like in the downward tail end of CES for most things. But, you know, John Ledger's been teasing it up quite a bit on Twitter as the next big uncarrier move, and apparently they're going to be announcing it at CES. So, this is uncarrier four, I think, if you've been keeping count. And I really don't know what else they're going to announce. Short of some people have been batting around that maybe T-Mobile is going to suddenly start paying ETFs. If you cancel your AT&T or Verizon and you come over to T-Mobile, T-Mobile maybe will pay your ETF fee, which is really the big barrier for a lot of people switching between carriers. I switched to T-Mobile for a week and I had to drop it because it didn't have a signal where I needed it. Yeah, I don't think that ETFs are actually that big of a – I don't think that there's an enormous contingent of people who are saying – I mean, sure, there are some people that are saying that, but it's not like there are 10 million people in the US saying, I would switch to T-Mobile and Heartbeat if it weren't for my damn ETF. There are a bunch of people, there's a large number of people that would do that. And how many phones on AT&T can work with T-Mobile's LTE? The number is much higher now than it used to be. And so if they will pay your ETF, your ETF is now paid, which means that under the new rules that have gone through, AT&T needs to unlock your phone for you probably. I mean, I know there's a little bit of confusion about interpreting those rules, but I think that might be the case, which means that if you're an AT&T customer, you can switch to T-Mobile for a net cost of zero because they will pay your ETF and get your phone unlocked and you just switch over. And the point is, it will let you try T-Mobile. Like ETFs may be – Chris may be right that they're not stopping people from switching, but they are stopping people from even trying the service. If you've been with Verizon or AT&T for seven or eight or five or six years or whatever, you're bidding contracts the entire time, you've never had a chance to try T-Mobile or other carriers and see what their service is like until you wait for your contract. So if they do this thing and they aren't very careful about how they set up paying my ETF and I could like get T-Mobile to pay my ETF, be on T-Mobile for a week and then switch back, yeah, I'd do that. And there's no way that's going to happen. Like they'll probably do something where like if you're not with them for a certain number of months, then you need to pay it back. It's got to be that. Otherwise, they'd go bankrupt. So I honestly I think – It would be so fast that the soft bank would have to buy it. Ah. I think that at least for the mobile world, if you're not looking at wearables, I think T-Mobile's press conference will probably be the most interesting thing at CES. Well, there was a rumor – I can't remember where this came from, but there was a rumor that we could see a Galaxy Gear 2 at CES. That's nuts. Yeah. That's no way that would happen. That's a nutty rumor. I agree that seems implausible, but – I would buy a Galaxy Gear Lite that didn't have a camera and was thinner and lighter. There would need to be a lot of other things fixed with the Galaxy Gear before I even consider that. Yeah, and also Samsung would be more likely to make a Galaxy Gear Note, which is twice the size of the head stylus. And you know I'm right. Yeah. Yeah, so we'll see. But Samsung is doing something at CES. Samsung, well, they've got a million toaster ovens and microwaves and crap that they need to announce. No, who does a blast chiller? That's LG, right? That's LG, yeah, which is still like an awesome product that everyone should have. Look, I went to Samsung's press conference last year at CES expecting craziness, and it was the most boring thing I've ever live blogged in my entire life. What did they focus on? Nothing. It was just like, here's a refrigerator. Here's another TV. This TV has a slight curve to it, which you saw yesterday, so whatever. Here's a thing we showed off a couple months ago. Here's a phone with a curved screen. Oh, wait, we showed that before, too. Here's another refrigerator. I literally was typing as fast as I could for an hour straight and not one interesting thing. Just like product gadget, product, product, product, product, product, product. Well, LG has a new line of appliances that will SMS you, so that's exciting. That's not a new concept, though. Like washing machines that text you are not new. LG's going to have web OS on a TV. I guess we should talk about that briefly. Oh, yeah, yeah. But no, just to wrap up the Samsung thing, I know that Samsung Mobile specifically is doing something there. It's been speculated for a long time that they are kind of nearing the point where they need to refresh some of their tablets. My guess is that we'll see some of that at MWC and some of it at CES, and maybe there will be one or two tablet announcements that are tied in with a carrier, because American carriers love them some tablets. Even though they don't sell any. I know, I don't get it. There was a Verizon commercial, I'm sure you guys saw it, it was a Verizon Christmas commercial where this woman is using a Verizon tablet, and like the entire back of it is a giant Verizon 4G logo. It was red, right? Yes. Like I saw all of these Verizon commercials, and they would be like, red tablet, red Galaxy Gear, red smartphone, and like… Yeah, it was the worst. Don't buy that tablet, whatever it was. I think it may have been a Nokia, what you would call it. The 2520, which does come in very, very bright red. Yeah. So anyway, I'm sorry, what were we supposed to talk about before I interrupted? We were going to briefly chortle about the fact that WebOS is coming back. Well, here, I just want to say this, that I was at a friend's house this weekend, and he has an LG smart TV, and it has this crazy remote that's like a little wand, it's like an air mouse, and you wave it around in front of the TV, and it's got a mouse pointer and stuff, which is kind of cool and a smart idea, and an easy way to input things like your Netflix password and stuff, but the rest of the software was absolutely abysmal, so maybe WebOS for LG will be a good thing. But it's like, that's predicated on the belief that WebOS was ever an appropriate operating system for a television. Listen, man, all I want to do is be watching Megyn Kelly on Fox News and then swipe her off my screen. Just like they're swiping their giant touch screens? Yeah, exactly, and she could be sitting at the desk, and the channel frame doesn't even disappear, I just grab her and swipe her off. So rumors there's going to be a card interface still. If you can have three or four recent channels and be able to like, swipe up to a card interface and see what the channels are and then pick the one you want, maybe that'd be cool. And you know what's going to happen? The app situation is going to be terrible. It's going to be terrible. Well, I mean, the app situation on any smart TV is pretty terrible right now. Yeah, it can't be any worse. That's a good point. But here's what's going to happen. LG is going to announce a line of webOS TVs, and then in a few months, because they like to do giant and miniature versions of things, they're going to do a TV mini that's actually a tablet, and then there's going to be a new webOS tablet. Now, Chris, do you remember at MWC last year, I remember you and I were walking around, and we stopped by LG's booth and they had this like 21-inch widescreen monitor. It was like three monitors stuck together. Did you buy that with webOS on it? No. I mean, I buy that as a monitor. In fact, I've wanted to buy that as a monitor, and I've looked at it on several occasions. The problem with it apparently is that it doesn't work very well with OS X, I guess. Yeah, that's a sure sure. Yeah, so I haven't bought it. But it is like a really bad-ass looking monitor, and I would totally use the heck out of it, just not with webOS on it. No. Anyway, if you're not familiar, CES, technically I believe the show floor opens on Tuesday, which means that the news actually starts on like Sunday. Or Saturday or something like that. Yeah, so there's a million press conferences on Monday, so whatever your plans are for Monday, cancel them, because you're going to want to just hang out on the verge and refresh and see a bunch of live blogs and a bunch of video content, both hands-ons, analysis from the studio that we have, both like right there in our trailer right in front of the convention hall. It's going to be a ton of stuff. What phones are you guys bringing to CES? So I have been waffling. I'm waffling super hard. I'm going to bring an iPhone just in case, but switching to it is a huge pain because I have to call AT&T and talk to their customer service reps for a half an hour just to make tethering work, because AT&T is horrible and doesn't believe in free and open data and their own SIM card system. You actually need to call them. They suck. So I've never had that issue. Well, it's for tethering. Data works, tethering doesn't. But like on my account, I've got my iPhone 5S, and regardless of where I put my SIM, it stays my iPhone 5S, and everything works PG. It works on Android and Windows Phone and everything like that. And then when I go to use my iPhone, everything works. That's not my experience, friendo. Yeah, I'm sorry. So I actually tweeted this, that I was waffling between the Moto X and the Nexus 5, and I was leaning towards the Moto X because the Moto X gets slightly better battery life for me. So I put my SIM card back in my Moto X, and I've been using it for a couple of days. And I know that we all love the Moto X to death, but after using the Nexus 5, things feel slow. Things feel slow and a little small to me. Really? So I'm going to probably use the Nexus 5, and I just bought an Anker 10,000 milliamp battery. It's like this big. And I'm just going to keep that in my back pocket, and I'll use that to charge my phone all day long. I'm just taking an iPhone. Nothing fancy. I put my SIM back in my iPhone this weekend after like months, and I'm kind of happy with it. So I think I'm going to bring my iPhone. What do you guys use for Gmail? Do you use Mailbox? I just use the Gmail app. I use the Gmail app. It's been really buggy. The Gmail app is terrible. No, it's normally okay. No, it gets the... Dude, use an Android phone for a day. No, no, no, no argument. No argument that the Android Gmail app slaps the iOS Gmail app up and down. But it still gets the job done on iOS. The problem is that lately it's been super buggy for me, so I might have to go back to Mailbox. If you want to talk about a steaming pile of hot garbage, try out the Gmail app on the iPad. It has gotten so bad. I cannot handle it. So are you using an iPad Air or a Mini or what? I'm using an OG iPad Mini right now. Well, there's your problem, obviously. Yeah, because I was thinking I might actually buy a Mini Retina just for this show, so I have a giant hotspot. Well, so that's what I was debating buying, a Mini Retina with Verizon. I've got an OG Mini with Verizon now. But my thinking was maybe I would flip the script and be an iPhone guy with an Android tablet, which I know is insane and stupid, but I was thinking it because the Nexus 7 is so much cheaper than the iPad Mini. But Verizon and Google can't get their shit together and release that version of the tablet, so I haven't done it. What is your obsession with tablets and Verizon? Like you're an AT&T customer. Yeah, my obsession is that I'm an AT&T customer for my phone, and I want to have Verizon for my tablet so that I have a better chance, I might guarantee, but I have a better chance of actually getting a signal when I need it when I'm in dire straits. I'm doing my job, man. I've got to have as many different ways to get online as possible. Put all your eggs in one basket. That's the rule I live by. One platform, one carrier. If I were to – I wouldn't get an AT&T tablet to go with an AT&T phone. I'd just get a Wi-Fi tablet because what's the point? Tethering your phone to your tablet is a major pain in the butt. I'm never buying a Wi-Fi tablet again. Not that bad. Yeah, I agree. I used to be very strongly in the Wi-Fi tablet camp, and then David wrote his beautiful piece on the original Nexus 7, and then I was a convert after that. No, I love having LTE on my tablet. If I'm going to pay for LTE on my tablet, I'd rather pay the extra $5 a month more, $10 a month more to have it be on an alternate network, so I've got options. How does that actually – because I can add a tablet to my AT&T account for $10 a month, and there's no way that you have a standalone – Yeah, so it's $30 a month. That's a lot of money. You're paying $10, so I'm paying an extra $20 to have – it's worth $20 a month to me. I mean, that's at least – To provide news and information to our viewers. Why don't you care about the people that go to the verge? I care about no one. Oh, Chris, you're awake. You were looking down there. I thought maybe we lost you. Well, my very unusual monitor setup here makes it look like I'm nodding off at all times basically. I apologize. So I'm currently in my brand new apartment in Brooklyn in our office, which is yet to be set up, which is why everything looks weird and strange. I only, minutes before the podcast started, got my keyboard and trackpad working. There's also Echo here, I guess. So anyway, I'm also not in a setup that I'm comfortable with, so that's why this show is going so great. Anything else you guys want to talk about with CES? I mean, you're both bringing iPhones. Well, I'm bringing an iPhone, and I'm also bringing my Moto X, and I'm also bringing my HTC One, because invariably a battery will die, and I'm just going to jump my SIM over to my phone. Well, no, I'm bringing the Moto X and the iPhone and the Nexus 5, and so when the Nexus 5 dies and I don't feel like charging it, I'll swap it over to something else. I've got one of these battery packs. I've got one of the knockoff ones that's... Oh, that looks horrible. A no-name brand that I paid like 30 bucks for for the iPhone, and then I've got like these crazy... I once took a picture of all the batteries that I have, and it's like 10 inches high stacked of external batteries, and I carry all of them. You know what I'm not bringing is my old mini HyperMac laptop charger. Haswell for the win. And it feels really nerve-wracking to not have a giant freaking battery in my bag to back up my laptop. I don't know. Yeah, but you'll have plenty of heads up when you're getting low. One thing that's been worrying me about my iPhone, and I didn't even think about this for CES, this is going to be a problem, is that it's now completely unpredictable when the phone will turn off between 0% and 10%. It's the worst. I had it happen once, and I thought it was because I was outside, and it was really cold, and batteries naturally have less capacity when they're super cold, so I didn't really think about it, but then I was sitting on my couch last night, and I had like 8% left, and it just turned off. So that's not good. You want to know what I'm doing right now? What? I am buying a charger for a Sony NEX 6 camera. You know why? Because despite the fact that this thing claims that it charges over micro USB, literally not a single adapter I have plugged into it has worked. Only the one that comes with it works, and I've lost it in the move, so I can't charge my camera. I've sung Sony's praises for its cameras so many times, but it continually irks me and drives me mad that they don't pack an external charger in their camera boxes. It's not just the lack of the external charger. Being able to charge over Bluetooth is actually really amazing. Not Bluetooth. I'm shopping while I'm talking here. Micro USB is amazing. That's a great idea. But the problem is that they've got like, they have this wattage requirement where if it's the standard, what is it, 1.1 on old style USB and then 2.1 for, is it 1.5? Whatever, it's 1.something and 2.1. And the NEX 6 is like 2.0. And so iPad charging levels, iPad charging levels won't charge it. Anything less than that, maybe will triple charge it if you're lucky. They may as well have made a proprietary plug, because at least that way I wouldn't believe that it would charge over micro USB. And the problem is if you're charging over micro USB, you can't really use the camera and charge at the same time. Right. This is me ordering batteries and an external charger and having it shipped to the hotel in Las Vegas right now. I actually left my charger in CES last year. You know what charges over any cable in any situation whatsoever? An iPhone 5S? Oh, that's like... No, the RX100 Mark II. Really? You can look at that camera and it will start charging. I've never been in a micro USB situation where it didn't charge. I love that camera. It's the only camera I'm taking to CES, by the way. This is a huge fail. Okay, well we talked CES to death. Get ready. But we should talk about Blackberry. In the two weeks since we podcasted, they have announced their quarterly results, which were of course a huge fail. They only sold 1.1 million BB10 devices. They sold way more Blackberry 7 devices, which is of course an embarrassment. They called off their Blackberry Live conferences. Mike Lazaridis sold a bunch of stocks so that he's not going to pursue a buyout of the company anymore. They decided they're going to stop manufacturing stuff. Blackberry actually manufactured a huge portion of their own phones, and now they're like, nope, sorry, they're getting rid of those factories, they're going to have Foxconn make everything for them. Which is a huge shift. We can talk about that when you're done wrapping up. Well, it's actually an important shift for them, because to be honest, one of the things that they like to brag about is they own the whole chain end to end, and that mattered for security at DOD levels. And they specifically always like to brag about how nothing was made in China, and that they manufactured things in Mexico and other places, as a security selling point. And since we all know that Foxconn is based out of China now, that doesn't look like it's going to be upheld. Whoa, bless you. See, you're catching my cold over the intertune. It's happening. I'm infecting you. By looking at you. Look deep into my eyes, Dieter. And then the last thing is the new CEO, John Chen, decided he was going to, for like the fifth time in the past month, tell everybody, hey guys, BlackBerry's cool, we've got a plan. And this time he enumerated the plan. CNBC published this letter that he wrote, this commentary that he wrote, and his plan for BlackBerry, he's like here's what we're going to do, we're going to turn around, we're going to focus on the fundamentals. Their fundamentals are, sorry, their core business drivers are Enterprise, BBM, QNX, and the hardware business. That's four. And looking at them, like Enterprise, yeah, like you still got a big install base there, but you are like one upgrade cycle away and it's fading fast. And your defense department contracts, I know that you've got like more security clearance than most people, but it's not going to last very long, bro, sorry. Next, what do we have next? BBM. You think you're going to make money on messaging? Next. QNX. Yeah, okay, we'll leave QNX, you'll make a little bit of money there, you'll embed it in some cars, you'll make RTOS's, you'll get some stuff there, but it's not going to be like a real business. But we're going to hang on to QNX, just because, yeah, that's a viable business. Hardware business, selling BlackBerry to consumers, this is your future BlackBerry. That was well planned, Dieter. For those of you not watching the video portion of the podcast, I just flipped John Chen, CEO of BlackBerry, the bird. Does anybody disagree with my analysis of John Chen's plan to stay at BlackBerry? You shouldn't have picked four core things, you should have picked one or two, and that should be it. No, but look, this is cowardice. This is him refusing to burn the things that need to be burned in order for the company to survive in a real way. Here's why I don't agree. I think that Chen was dealt the same impossible hand that Torsten was dealt, and you can look at any single one of those businesses, and if he had said, we're just going to focus on this, we would have been laughing at him. There's no right answer for this guy. BlackBerry has been at the poker table for ten years, and for the past three years, everybody that's been sitting there, and the guy's like, tap out, play my next hand for me, and the new guy sits down and plays the next hand. Torsten Hein comes in, looks at the hand, and it's a two and a four, and then he gets a two and a four again, two and a four again, and he keeps betting and whatever, he doubles down, even though it's a different betting game, the wrong metaphor, but stay with me. John Chen is getting that same two and four, and at some point, what's going on? I'm playing the gambler, Kenny Rogers. Oh, yeah. You know what all of that is? And this is when we get pulled from YouTube. It's not you should know when to hold them and know when to fold them. It's you should know when to hold them and know when to flip the table and blow everything up because you are losing, and you need to cut things off, and that is what he's refusing to do here. Like you should not be doing – like BBM, sell it. It's not a money maker. Let it go. Sell it to who? Whoever wants it. I'm sure what's up is happy to buy it for $50. Yeah. Like don't say that these four things are the core of your business. Just say we're going to do enterprise, and there's a bunch of other stuff. We'll see what happens with it, and that's it. You know, Nokia went from making tires and booths to making cars. Why can't Blackberry go from making phones to making fine china? You know, maybe they just need to look for a different business. Just throwing that out there. Maybe they need to be a maple syrup distributor. They should have kept their name RIM then if they were making glasses in China. Yeah, research and mustard. It's true. They could have made cars. Yeah, or you know, Fruit Preserves. The name is appropriate. Fruit Preserves. Wow. I guess you could say they're in a real Blackberry jam. No. I thought you were going to say pickle, and I was going to be like, that makes no sense. That actually would have been way better. Man, we've been really bad. Two weeks ago, I had a lot of great cheap puns. I'm going to keep that streak going. What are we talking about? I don't care anymore. I was just noticing like we should have, when we were talking about WebOS, we should have brought up the fact that HP is going to make phones again. They're just going to make like basically glorified tablets, call them phones, and launch a vagina. That's the rumor. This is hilarious to me on multiple levels. First of all, they have been making this like ridiculous low-end Android tablet that nobody cares about for like a year. It's so bad. It's so bad, and like I don't know who's buying it. Secondly, this is the exact same strategy that Dell took with its mobile program after it couldn't make a dent with the Venu Pro in the US. They sold low-end Android crap in China, and that went nowhere, and then they shut the business down. So I don't know why HP thinks it can succeed where Dell couldn't. HP should just take Microsoft money and make Windows phones. Yes. I'm not kidding. Like they did that back in the day. Before they bought WebOS, that was their mobile strategy. Make corporate phones that nobody cared about but some businesses would buy, make a bunch of money off of those enterprise customers and Microsoft paying them to make those Windows mobile phones, and it was a win-win. And you know, some consumers bought them because they loved QWERTY keyboards or whatever. They should just do that again. You know, there's the rumor that Sony is cozying up and might maybe launch a Windows phone in 2014, the information published today. Tom Warren is a little bit dubious because of course Sony is talking to Microsoft. They're talking to whoever they can. But I guess I believe it. But Microsoft I'm sure is desperate to have anybody be like, yeah, we support Windows phone. They would give HP a bunch of money to make Windows phones, and it would differentiate them because there's no way that HP can compete with anybody in making a quality Android device. It's not going to happen. Right. Yeah, they've been down this road too many times at this point. It's actually hilarious how many times they've tried and failed to make phones. Because it's not just WebOS, right? They made Windows mobile devices on at least two different occasions. No, more than two. I think they probably made a half dozen of them over the years. Right, but I mean they bought Compact, Compact had the iPacks and then HP bought Compact, right? No, but you guys don't remember their messaging phones? They made like three or four QWERTY keyboard messaging phones, like Moto Q knockoffs. Right. Yeah, they had a really bad name for it. Gleam? Was it Gleam or Glissen? The Glissen, HP Glissen, that's what it was called. The HP Glissen. Oh man, memories. That is really bad. Yeah, that was on AT&T, right? I mean, frankly, I don't really care what HP does with phones. Like there's never going to be a thing that HP does with phones that's going to be interesting to me as a consumer, as a paying customer. Well, you don't know that. What if they release... I bought HP phones. I have HP phones a few feet away from me. And I'm never going to forgive them for it. Yeah, I've got a VIR 4G over there. It's branded HP. Hmm. I don't have a VIR. I have like six. Do you want one? Yeah, bring it to Vegas. I'll take some off your hands. Yeah, I can actually. I can bring the VIR if you really want. VIR is a little party phone, man. I still have never... They take the big SIMs, so they're a real pain in the neck to actually use. And if you screw up your SIM adapter to put a SIM in it, it's gone forever. You have to literally destroy the phone to get it out of the little spring ejector thing. Well, there was a period when like Woot or somebody was selling VIRs for like 20 bucks, so that would be a huge loss. Actually, what I'd like even more than that though is an AT&T Pre 3. I have that too. Well, of course you do. It's helped me. Yeah. Why are we talking about WebOS again? We have to stop. Never stop. Never forget. We talked about the Xperia Z Ultra and Z Ultra Google Play edition on the last level show. I don't know. You were here the last podcast, Dan. Yes, so I've got them here. They're really big. I'm just going to block out the sun with these just because they're so big. Oh, I opened the camera. They're total roller coasters. I've played with these phones. They're completely hilarious and stupid. They're super niche products. These things are sold unlocked online. You can't go into a carrier store and buy them. They're expensive as heck. They're obscenely large. If you are into that type of thing, if that gets your fancy going and you want to spend $700 on a device like this, buy the Xperia edition. I really do not understand why the Google Play edition exists because it is literally a blown up Nexus 5 with a worse camera. Now don't you think that a Z1 Google Play edition would actually do really well? Oh my god, a Z1 Google Play edition would be amazing. I would love a Z1 Google Play edition. The problem is this device here, the Z Ultra, is so big and is so close to actually being a tablet that when you put a standard phone interface and phone software on it, it's just goofy. It's not a great or efficient use of the screen size here. That's what the key difference between the Xperia version and the Google Play edition is, is that Sony actually bothered to do some, even the smallest amount of customization for the screen size, whereas the Google Play edition is none at all. It doesn't run the Nexus 7 software, it doesn't run tablet apps, it runs phone everything just like the Nexus 5. So that's why if you want to go down this route, more power to you, buy the Xperia edition is my suggestion. They should have put the Nexus 7 software on the Google Play edition, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean just add a dialer and you're done. Yeah, weird. But they didn't, so. And no Z1. See, the fact that there's no Z1 actually I think lends credence to my theory that we will see some American, one or more American carrier announcements for the Z1 at CES and there's probably an exclusive involved. I don't think you're wrong, but I mean it just goes back to that's a follow-up announcement to a flagship product that's already been out for months. It's not like they're unveiling their new flagship device. Right, right. What if we had a SmartWatch 3 at CES, is that possible? The SmartWatch 2 hit market in October I think. Yeah, but it was announced when? At IFA or before then? It was announced at IFA, yeah. Okay, so yeah, that's not long here, right. Did we lose Dieter? Where's Dieter? I'm trying to make an app work and it's failing. So, I was going to play the, am I here? Yeah, you are here, yes. Yeah, I was going to play the, this is the worst. Oh my god, hang on, just let me get back to the video. What is happening? I have no idea how to get back to you guys right now. What happened to you? I clicked the YouTube app to try and play the ridiculous, horrible Galaxy Gear commercial from YouTube, and having done that, I literally cannot see what's going on right now. I like to refer to that as the creep commercial. So yeah, I wanted to use Google Hangouts to display a YouTube video, but it won't let me add it, so I'm pretty sure that it's not allowed to be rebroadcast. Nevertheless, this Galaxy Gear commercial is an embarrassment. It's an utter travesty. You know, it's super awkward, it's super creepy, and it super doesn't work for the market that it appears to be selling to. And Sasir Segan at PCMag wrote a piece on this when it came out, and he kind of nailed why none of it works, in my opinion. You don't think so? No, I think he wrote a... This is what he said. He said that, you know, nobody in the video is American. It's very obvious that they're foreign, and English is not their first language, and the people that are making the marketing and the head of this are not from the Western culture, and that's why it just doesn't work, and it comes off as really awkward, and it doesn't fit in with the American market. Look, I mean, I get cultural differences, and I get that argument, and I think Sasho's right to make it to a degree, but at the end of the day, sexism is sexism, and churlish assholes are churlish assholes, and... And churlish is a great word. But as bad as that is, that's not my real problem here. My real problem isn't, like, here's this creepy stalker guy, although that's a big problem. My real problem is that the jerk, the pain in the ass guy, gets the girl in the end. I mean, you've seen Better Off Dead, I hope. If you haven't, stop what you're doing. Stop watching this, and go watch Better Off Dead, because it's amazing. John Cusack is supposed to get the girl. The guy who's clumsy and in the background and isn't sure of himself and has to, like, rise to the occasion to win the day, that's who gets the girl in the feel-good commercial. Not the jerk who's already the alpha male. When has Samsung ever made a feel-good commercial? Okay, their last commercial, what was it, for the Note 3, was about a soccer dude walking through a post-apocalyptic land filled with homeless children. The only good ad I can think that came out of Samsung in recent memory was the first Galaxy Gear ad, which was, it kind of hit the nail on the head. Well, I mean, some of the iPhone line ads are pretty good, and obviously the, I believe it was a thing called Love Ad is amazing. Oh, God, I forgot about that. That was at a Super Bowl ad, right? Yeah. What product was it for? It was for a Note. It had to have been a Note. Yeah, okay, it was just a Samsung ad. Yeah, it's unfortunate that their most recent good ad, the Galaxy Gear ad, was for such a terrible product, but what can you do? Yeah, and then their Super Bowl ad this year was the Paul Rudd ad, which was terrible. Oh, yeah, I remember that, and Seth Rogen was in it, right? Yeah. Yeah, and now they're not letting me find the other commercial. It must have been for a Note. I think it was a Note 2, because it was a year before last year. So maybe it was a Note 1, because last Super Bowl, the Note 2 would have been on the market. It must have been the original. It was 2012. Let's see if the U2 app will let me play this thing. I bet it won't. How ironic is that, that Samsung's not letting you spread their marketing? Yeah, it really is, actually. Add videos to playlist, search, darkness. No, it's a fail. Well, after you watch Better Off Dead, go look for that commercial. Yeah, but mostly just go watch Better Off Dead, because it's the best. What else do we have to talk about? Oh, so Verizon. Oh, no, go ahead. I was going to say Verizon confirmed today to the LA Times that, well, Best Buy confirmed, excuse me, that it will be carrying a Verizon version of the Moto G in the apparently very near future for $100 off contract, which is awesome price, great price for a phone. No LTE. No LTE, and it's prepaid, which means that 99% of Verizon customers will not care about it, because literally nobody buys prepaid phones on Verizon. Yeah, that's true, although I want to believe that's going to change soon. It's changing on T-Mobile. It's changing on Sprint for sure. In fact, there was a rumor that they were going to boost the budget, which they really ought to. But both of them offer really a lot of prepaid options and their competitive plans and everything. What are Verizon's prepaid plans right now? They were so terrible for so long, I don't even know if they've changed or if they're updated or if they support smartphones in any decent way that you could buy a lot of data on. So, I mean, the Moto G is an important device, and it's a great device for emerging markets, and it's important for Motorola, and it's cool that you can buy one for $100 in the US without a contract, but I don't foresee it being a big deal among actual buying consumers in the US. No, but it's a big deal in concept. It's a big deal that you can get a pretty decent phone for $100. So, like, and they – Right now, CyanogenMod is the thing that you, if you're into hacking, then you put on your phone, or if you've got an old Android phone that hasn't been updated by your manufacturer, CyanogenMod gives you a newer version of Android and things like that. But if they want to be a successful company making a profit and all that other fun stuff, they need to be just like another HTC Sense or another Samsung TouchWiz, just another option under the Android umbrella for people. So, they've got a lot of work and a long road ahead of them. I just – I want to know what they're going to do with $23 million. I really do, because I could see them – okay, I know – I could see them spending $23 million to make something amazing. No question. I understand that. What I don't understand is how they are – like, the people investing in them think that they have a really good chance at a return. You know what I would do with $23 million if I were a CyanogenMod? I would rent out XS in Vegas for a night and just burn through magnum after magnum after magnum of Dom, and it just blow it – I would get in like Afrojack and like – Who would play at that show? Who would you get to play at that show? Like Tiësto? Yeah, Tiësto, Afrojack, maybe like Gareth Emery or something. Yeah, and it would just go – the party would go from like 6 p.m. to like 6 a.m. and then at the end of that, the goal would be to have not a single dollar left. So to answer Dieter's correct question, I think investors are not looking for CyanogenMod to turn a profit ever. I think they are hoping that they get bought by a bigger company and that's their payout. They hope that Google will buy them and absorb them into Android or an actual smartphone manufacturer will buy them and use them as their software. Yeah, I think that's probably what you're – Your video, Dan, is blowing my mind. Like just watching you just like sitting there listening to somebody when you're actually talking. I know, it's driving me nuts because it's like my avatar is not updated at all and I'm confused as to if I'm in frame or not in frame or if I've got a booger hanging off my nose. I'm sticking with black and white from now on, by the way. This is pretty awesome. I feel pretty boss right here. This is Aces. I don't – how do I change this? I think it was last year. I can't remember who I was writing about but I wrote a post and used a black and white picture of them and everyone thought that that was like code for the person had died. And like there were a lot of comments that were like, oh my God, this person died. I got to find the post now. I can't remember who it was. I'm black and white and now I'm real time. Wow. Yeah. I'm telling you, man, black and white is where it's at. You guys are both bad. You should get with the program. I don't know how to make it black and white. You click yourself and then you have the drop down on the upper right. Underneath the little thing that says it's live. No, I only have – no, I only have profile and mute. No, click yourself. Yeah, I did. And then when you're big, underneath the yellow live button. Oh, I see. Now you're changing colors. Compelling radio, ladies. So, wow, Chris is really bad at this. So we're getting word from our producer that the stream went down for a couple of minutes to summarize what we were talking about. When did it go down? I mean, we talked about like – I could show you guys how big the phone is again. Where'd it go? It's such a big phone, I've lost it. We talked about gerbils and Richard Gere. We'll talk to you if you get that reference. And we talked about – This is big phones. The correct pronunciation of the word DOGE. We talked about why would anybody give CyanogenMod $23 million. Not that we don't believe in CyanogenMod, but we're curious as to how they're actually going to recoup that money for their investors. That's about it. Also, we talked about Google Hangouts because we're egotistical maniacs and we only care about the things that are directly in front of our faces. Oh, I also talked about how to throw an insane private party at Club XS in Vegas. For CyanogenMod starring Tiesta. Yes. Yeah. And with that, I think it's time to wrap up The Vergecast. Not The Vergecast, The Verge Mobile Show. Someday we will be as good as The Vergecast, but that day is not today, clearly. If you want to follow us on Twitter, you absolutely should. I am at back on Dan as DCC for Chris is Zed Power. Vlad, who we miss dearly, is Vlad Savov. Evan, who is watching over us, I guess. I'm looking at his avatar in the corner. It's freaking me out. Is it Evan R. Rogers? Is that right? I think it's just Evan Rogers. It's just Evan Rogers? Okay. It's just Evan Rogers with an R, it turns out. Oh, and actually, you should check out some of our big stories. We doxxed Doge today. We've got a great video from Jordan Applinger on how to take pictures with your iPhone that you really should check out. It's super helpful. We did a big stories in 2013 too, so take a look at those. Follow us on Verge. Leave a comment on this very post on The Verge. Post something in the forums, and happy New Year, everybody. Bye-bye, 2013.