 Hey, it's August 7th. It's been a week since our last Verge Mobile show. You might notice that I'm not actually D2Bone, which might be a surprise. But we're still carrying on. Hopefully we're going to have quite a few surprises in today's show, particularly since we don't actually know what we're doing. But let's see what happens. Stay tuned for the Verge Mobile show. Hey, I'm Vlad Savo. I'm Chris Stigler. I'm Ross Miller. Hello. Hello. Where's Ross? Hi, sorry about that. Goodness. You know, you think that a guy who is sort of the consummate professional with 90 seconds on the verge. Notice that was a nice pimp for your program. By the way, I think that somebody who is such professional with 90 seconds on the verge would know when to come in on cue, but apparently not. See, we're cavemen and I second the verge. We don't have a mute switch that I was rocking. I tried to open my mouth and technology prevented it. This is actually a technology podcast that, you know, is a good transition to us talking about something more important. Hi, I'm rambling. We're not making this under an hour. Well, actually, this is 90 seconds on the Verge Mobile show. Now we're combining both programs, so we're actually shortening it from an hour and a half to 90 seconds, which is convenient for everybody. By the way, for those of you who are watching live, I just want to apologize for my video quality. We were just having this discussion right before we started broadcasting. Here's what happened. I'm going to start this show. Vlad, I know that you're supposed to take it from here and start talking about actual mobile news, but I'm going to do a little aside here. What happened is this. I am recording on a MacBook Air. It's a 2010 model Mac. No, early 2011 MacBook Air. I don't know what the... Is there Thunderbolt? There's no Thunderbolt. It's pre-Thunderbolt. I have a 720p Logitech webcam that I normally use to record myself when I'm doing this show. Up until last week or the week before, I can't remember, we were mostly getting SD streams from my location to the New York studio. For whatever reason, Skype decided to start broadcasting me in HD in the last couple of weeks. It's kind of like mysterious how that process works. You can't control it from Skype. It happens automatically. When that happened, the MacBook Air ground to a halt. I just now realized after playing with the settings here between the internal webcam and the Logitech that when I'm broadcasting in HD, the Air just completely... I mean, it can't handle it. Skype consumes 100% of the CPU. Nothing works right. I was having terrible sync issues last week. Now I'm on the internal camera, which is why I look a little fuzzier. So hopefully that's not going to be too big of a problem for you. Hopefully it won't be too distracting. I know that you like to see me in full 720p quality or 1080p if it was an option. Unfortunately, it's not. So you'll just have to deal with it. Your complexion has never looked better. Thank you. Thank you, Ross. You're welcome. Hopefully next week, I'm going to be on an iMac with a i7 and this won't be an issue anymore. Anyway, black. Yeah, tomorrow the story is get a real computer. Ouch. Hey, you have a MacBook Air. Do you not? Dude, I'm doing this on a MacBook Air. It's actually the generation before yours and I still think it's the best computer ever, but it has its limitations and you just highlighted one of the big ones. I think... Also, just wanted to mention on a topic of professionalism, I do want to say that that was basically the beta intro that I just did because it kind of sucked. Starting with the beta. I like it. Yeah, I think that will earn me a bit of audience approbation. But you know, the most professional intro producer on our team is Dieter, who's done it many a time. He's a complete veteran. Chris has done it a couple of times and I've done it once. Like I say, that was the beta. So we will have the gamma, delta, et cetera versions and eventually we'll get to a stage where it's all smooth and awesome and we actually talk about mobile devices as well. Intro omega. Dieter is a stone cold killer with these opens. By the way, you might be wondering why Dieter isn't here. He is on a very secret mission in our great nation's heartland doing some reporting and you'll be seeing that shortly. You'll also be seeing him on this program next week, I believe. Not to say we don't want Ross Miller here every week because we do. And actually, since you are in the studio for 90 seconds on the verge anyway, maybe we'll just commandeer you every week. I don't mind. And to be honest, I have backup in case I do suffer a heart attack right now. I'm actually going to pull this guy into frame right here. We have Nathan. Nathan Ingram. Hello, everybody. Hello, Nathan. What's up, guys? He exists. He's real. Nathan not only exists, but he is a quite frankly, there would be no news on the verge if it were not for for Nathan and TC and Brian, who are our dear news managers and make the site tick. So a round of applause for Nathan. Everybody out there watching right now. We can't hear you, but you know, wherever you're sitting, if you're in a public library, watching this program on a computer to start clapping, make some noise. In fact, it'd be great for clapping. You're screaming. Wow. Yeah. And then, you know, libraries quiet. Please do. Okay. I'm sorry for derailing this program. Please continue. I think we've got a five minute quota of mobile talk to make sure that anybody who's late to the show has joined in. And now everybody's here because I'll talk about phones. Finally, I think the biggest, at least from my perspective, piece of news rumor from the past week is this five inch smartphone from HTC. And what we're dealing with here is, okay, first of all, the primary source is digit times, which, you know, everybody is like, well, digit times is like 50 50, if you're lucky. But there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that goes with it. But the rumor is that HTC is preparing a five inch Android smartphone with a full 1080p display, which kind of ties in with Chris's proposition that he really needs a 1080 webcam so people can see him on their future HTC phones. Okay. So yeah, and that phone is expected in September or October, which makes sense because that's about the time that HTC likes to refresh. HTC likes to do two major refreshes of its Android flagship. One is around MWC time already been done. And the other is around the autumn time, September or October. It didn't do much with that last year. We had the sensation XL and some really quite, I mean, that was it really. Oh, here in Europe. And then you had the the resound over in the US later in the year. But this looks like a pretty major upgrade on the one X five inch 1080p phone. Also, there's a geo benchmark result, which indicates the same resolution we've seen on that resolution listing. It also shows it's not exactly 1920 X 1080. So 126 vertical lines are taken up by what's presumed to be the Android on screen buttons. It all kind of just meshes together and flows together. So it does seem like this thing is legitimate, like it's real. And the other thing is that back in May, LG announced that is built an IPS display with 1080p resolution at five inches. So all of the things that all of the pieces are there for this phone to exist. Yeah, it sounds like a great super fablet phone lit thing. Super fablet. Super fablet. I mean, it's five inches. So my question is, why are they doing refresh so fast? Like you said last year, sensation XL was not a big update. It was more iterative than it was substantial. This seems more substantial. Does something happen with the one series that just did not mesh as well as they hoped? My theory is that they want to create as large of a gap between them and Samsung as they possibly can. Because there's a lot of, you know, obviously all the attention right now is the battle between Samsung and Apple. But in the Android space, there is this less public battle going on between Samsung and HTC for premier Android OEM. And HTC just got a very, very brief jump on Samsung with the One X versus the GS three. I think that they might be looking to create a slightly larger gap with their next device versus Samsung's next device. And of course, there will be some sort of battle between the note two, which is going to be almost certainly announced at IFA and whatever HTC is bringing to the table. But I consider this if this is five inches, exactly five inches, I do think of it as more of a an upmarket one X or a, you know, a refresh the one X than I than I would think of it as a as a Galaxy no competitor personally. No, I agree. But that's also kind of a funny thing to say in upmarket one X, because the one X was supposed to be the top of the market. Right. And I think that's also the point that Ross is getting at. But to answer his question, I don't feel like HTC got too much wrong with the one series aside from the sense software, which Chris and I have been moaned at length. So but again, if you want to fix sense, that there's a very easy way to do it. That's a software thing. You don't fix sense by introducing a 1080p display and just stretching it out over a larger display. I think Chris's point is exactly accurate. Like HTC has had issues with its financials, which we'll discuss in a little bit. It's not making the profit it used to be making and it's losing sales. And like Chris says, if he could get out ahead of Samsung and actually hold on to the spec lead in Android for a prolonged period of time, you know, that might be the thing that fixes things for for the company. So that that's my reasoning, I guess, for, you know, going for this kind of aggressive thing. But then the other thing is, if OG has this five inch 1080p display, why wouldn't you want to use it? Like, why would you let somebody else grab it? Well, here's my question, though. Why? And I've I've mentioned this many times before on this show and on the podcast before it. Why in the world do you need a pixel density in excess of 400 ppi on a mobile device or any device? Can somebody answer? Oh, dude, dude, this this happened actually in the common thread on our news reports on this five inch HTC super phone. You know, like the first couple of comments were like, it's overkill, it's unnecessary, it's too much. And then the response to those were, well, yeah, but I mean, what was the response specifically? Well, the point is that you you say it's too much. But if you if you take that perspective, you never move forward. You know, I'm actually one of those guys who was really quite content with monochrome displays back in the day. Again, I've kind of mentioned this before. The first color displays really sucked. So they weren't all that attractive. But then people were actually asking, okay, you're only looking at text messages, snake and phone numbers. Why do you need the color display? And the point is, you can't answer the question, why do you need a 1080p display until you have one and then people start putting it to use? Well, I mean, I don't know the answer to my head other than 1080p movies. So here's my perspective. I think that that 1080p in a mobile display is the most clear cut example of a specs, PISN contest that I can recall in recent memory. I mean, this has been a problem for a very long time in the Android space. But there's no more clear demonstration of that than with this particular spec. What I would like to see component providers and OEMs do instead is concentrate on taking these four to five inch or, you know, four to four point eight inch 720p displays and start working on technologies for better daylight view ability, better viewing angles, better, you know, laminated display technologies, because that's the kind of stuff that you notice every single second that you're using the device. And, you know, of course, the the the Sony source component on the one X is already absolutely fantastic. It's I think I rated it a 10. If I remember correctly, I can't it's not possible to make a display much better than that, I think on a mobile device. But one area where they they could improve where they can always improve is daylight view ability. So, in fact, we were talking about this on last week's show, those old trans collective displays on the the IPEX from the early 2000s, like it actually got better when you were viewing the display and sunlight than it then it was indoors. And, you know, at some point, hopefully we'll get to that point again, where it's just as good in indirect sunlight as it is anywhere else. So I'd like to see them work on that and then then rather than resolution at this point. Is that to say that we're hitting this kind of zenith point where we don't need higher resolution if we're gonna have a 4k televisions, we don't need a 1080p phone or a 2k phone at some point? I mean, well, here's my question to you, Chris or flags, I don't have an answer to this. What is the highest pixel density of a phone you've seen or that's been out so far? Probably the resound. I guess 4.3 inch 720p. Yeah, I think so. That'll be. That would be the most popular recent one. I mean, yeah, I can't think of anything else. I mean, obviously, the I believe the Xperia S matches it with 720p at 4.3 inches. But I don't think that's a better display. But in any case, yeah, I think those are the densest ones 4.3 inches with 720p. I mean, I'm with you, Chris, actually, like in practical terms, when you think about it, even though this display we're talking about is a 1080p one, it is actually five inches, which makes it even bigger. Whereas I've already been on the record complaining that 4.7 inches in itself is a bit too bulky for me. So for a whole bunch of people, you have the H2O One X, you have, as you say, the best display technology we've seen on the phone yet. It looks superb, but it's big. And now you're just making it bigger. And you're not going to have the same display technology because LG isn't the company that built the display in the One X. And its IPS displays have generally not always, but generally been that slight bit worse than the IPS displays that have been inside the iPhone. So you might see an expansion in size, which for most people isn't going to be a benefit, and a decrease in quality. So actually, this is really deflating the whole room. I was excited about this. That's what I'm here to do, man. I mean, keep in mind, going back to the announcement of the iPhone 4 and the whole concept of the retina display is that it's that pixel density at which individual pixels can no longer be perceived. And that's what, somewhere around 275 PPI, I think. And beyond that, it's unclear what, I mean, no one has given me a logical answer when I ask, you know, what is the actual material advantage of pushing a pixel density beyond that? I mean, because, you know, even if you're watching, say, a 1080p movie, or in the future, down the road of a 4K movie, you're going to end up, you know, you're not going to be able to perceive the pixels that are that small. So you would downscale it anyway to 720p, and it would look every bit as good at the same screen size. And it's, I don't know. To your point, it's the same screen size at the same retinal difference. Like, I'm not going to hold a phone up this close. What I will hold up that close, though, is maybe like a visor. And I can see this, like, the pixel density argument continuing anew when we start getting to the Google Glass era, if they're really going to start pushing that. At that point, we'll start noticing pixel density at that level, a two-inch whatever. I don't know how big glasses are anymore. That's really hard for me to say right now, actually. And what's the VR thing? Oh, the Oculus Rift? The VR goggles? Yes. Yes, which is like, I think like 640 by 320. Really, you can tell the pixels. That wasn't, it's a good test case, but it's definitely far and away not ready for prime time. Yeah, I was going to ask about those, I think they were 3D goggles that John Carmack had that you tested, Ross. What was the resolution on those? I think it's the Oculus Rift that's now on Kickstarter. I believe it was like 640 by 320, 960 by 320, something like that. Oh, I'm so off. Thank you, Nathan, my fact checker right here. 1280 by 800, but that's split in half, so it's essentially 640 or 720 per eye. Thank you. You can tell it's not good if you have a good prescription. I did it without glasses, so I can't see very well, so it was really nice and blurry, great complexion and all that. But anyway, so yeah, so the point is, I think, Chris, I think you might have convinced me and swayed me, there is no point for a 1080p five-inch phone, or at least nothing beyond that. But going forward, I think the next pixel density battle is going to be once we get screens closer to us by necessity, virtual reality and augmented reality headsets, I think then this whole screen war begins anew. That said, I'm actually a little sad to think that we're hitting this breaking point with cell phone density that we just don't need a higher resolution. We've hit this pinnacle where it becomes a moot point. Yeah, I think if you look at. Sorry, Chris, but if we look at Apple's history with pushing resolution and pushing the retina branding, one of the noticeable things for me is that Apple didn't just raise the resolution of his displays, it really raised the quality. So when it did it with the iPhone four, it was so much better displayed than it had in the iPhone three GS. When it called a retina display the really high resolution one in the new iPad of this year, again, everybody was fawning over it. They were like, this is the best display I've seen anywhere ever. And when it did it with the retina MacBook Pro, same situation. So I do feel like in Apple's case, there's both a raise in resolution and a raise in quality, which kind of measures and gives meaning to the whole retina branding. And it also gives value and something that people can actually feel right. Whereas opposed to if you just double up the resolution or quadruple the resolution, whatever, but leave the quality the same or worse, you degrade the quality in order to get more pixels. And ultimately, people aren't going to appreciate it and like it as much. So I think that's the difference that they made. Maybe HGT is kind of falling into that pitfall of thinking, we'll sell more phones if we can say we're the only 1080p phone on the market, which they might very well do. But it is exactly as Chris says, turning into a bit of a pissing contest thing. And I'm not even sure how psyched the people about specs anymore. I can kind of see them catching on to like branding messages, like I say, with retina with Apple, it's like, does he have the retina display? They already know what it means, but it's so widespread, you can pick it up. But if it's like a 1080p versus 720p display, then it becomes a spec comparison as opposed to a big branding message that you can attach yourself to. I think there's a certain population of the market that is still receptive to what number is bigger. And they may not even necessarily know what that number means. They just say, well, this number is 1080 and this number is 720. I want the bigger number. And to be honest, I think that that sometimes is those kinds of silly things that factor into how carriers price devices, you know, and of course, to your point, Vlad, there are also certain specs that are, are very prominent and very well known, or there are certain branded specs that people understand. LTE is big one right now that all the carriers are pushing and of course retina as well. So we'll see, we'll see. It's going to be, I mean, I think that people might be able to equate 1080p to their TVs because you know, for the past decade, you know, six years to a decade, HDTV really saturated the television market. And so consumers are probably still used to being sold on, you know, 720p and 1080p there. Maybe that number will, you know, it's still in their brain somewhere. And they, when they see that on a phone, it's going to register for them. So we'll see. Sure. And just to wrap up this five inch phone, I do feel like the rest of the specs are very much in line with what HTC has been doing. And so it's just pushing every single thing. The geo benchmark result mentioned Adreno 320 graphics, which means Snapdragon S4 chip. And we haven't had any, that I recall at least, any phones that are released with the 320, the upgraded graphics chip for this year. So that's going to make it one of the, you know, hands down best performing devices. And, you know, pairing that with 1080p display and all of that stuff is just going to make a spectacular recipe in terms of specs. Right. But I mean, I also kind of fear that you've already got plenty, plenty of specs and firepower with the One S and the One X. So, you know, even if you double it up, I mean, what is there to use it? Like, what are you going to do? Are you going to actually start encoding 1080p video and, you know, start editing and doing all of that stuff? How does Creighton feel about that? You're not really going to do that, right? So, well, all of this processing power also kind of seems to be going the same way as all the resolution. Well, I have a much more important question to pose to you guys regarding this device, which is what's a better name, the HTC One 2 or the HTC Two X? One XL. Oh, you did it. No, that's already been done. Yeah, shoot. Yeah, there we go. XXL? I kind of like One 2. I don't see HTC Two X at all. Then they can do one, two, three, and it can be like a whole thing. It'll be their shtick. You know, they keep adding numbers. Creighton is timing in One 2, but comma TOO, the one also. This is why Creighton does not do branding for major cell phones manufacturers. This is why all of us have to do branding. Come on. Yeah. I mean, I actually miss those aggressive adjective names. The One series just kind of feels a bit too austere to me now. Maybe HTC just needs to get back. I would just like to make the same point that I make on every single show, which is that mega is an underutilized term in cell phone names. So HTC One Mega might be good or HTC Go One. I'm just going to throw those out there. I like those. See what sticks. Some of the commenters, they'd said One Mega. We've got the HTC XXL. We've got the Two X. We've got the HTC One Up. Actually, I kind of like that. And of course, the HTC Fastcast. Thank you, Greasy Talky Aficionado. Longtime listeners of the Verge mobile podcast and even the Engadget mobile podcast will recall the HTC Bacon, which still hasn't been used as far as I know. So maybe they was that one of your wishes, Chris? No, that was a commoner, I believe, on an Engadget mobile podcast several years ago. And I think Neelai was a special guest on that show. If I if memory serves me correctly, and somehow the topic of HTC phone names came up. But we we we're not even done talking about HTC. We have a bunch of different HTC things to talk about. Right. OK. Big news. Let's make a quick mention of the menu button updates last upgrade, which Deezer has been extremely excited and happy about. Yeah. Yeah. This isn't a quick mention thing, but this is big news in the Android world. This sent shockwaves. It doesn't fix. It fixes one of senses. Many flaws. Now, this is I think you're significantly underestimating the importance of this. The fact that the fact that HTC never mind the specific change. Right. The fact that HTC is proactively responding to a very common complaint about like UX complaint about their existing skin without upgrading to a new version of Android and going out there and patching and actually changing the functionality is pretty crazy. And I think it's it's more or less without precedent. So that's that's an encouraging sign that they're out there very, very closely listening to people. They're they've obviously been trawling through threads on XDA and probably some of our sites. And this is I think this is really, really positive sign for the way they're going. That's not to say that I think that sense for is where it needs to be. And we've talked about this at length. But this is this is very good sign. By the way, for those of you who don't know, have no clue what we're talking about. The problem that HTC has with the one X and the one S is that there's no menu bar or excuse me, no menu button on the fixed row of buttons at the bottom of the device. So for legacy applications that haven't been updated to move the menu up into the action bar like you're supposed to supposed to with Google's holo design guidelines, you get this this extra soft button bar across the bottom of the screen that takes up an additional what is it, 100 100 pixels or something with just a single button on it that center aligned that is three vertical dots, which is the menu indicator in Android 4.0. So it looks weird. It's it's bad. And we called them out for it in our review. And they went back and patched it so that you don't you can actually change the functionality of the multitasking button to be a menu button now. Yeah, I think it's pretty cool. You need to hold it down or how does that work? Yeah, there's a I haven't I haven't updated mine. So I haven't played with yet. But this is where we need Deater because Deater is like the biggest one X fanatic in the world. And he would be able to talk about this at length. But I think you need to hold it down for a second or two. But but the point is that that virtual bar is now gone, which was one of the biggest annoyances of not having not adopting the Galaxy Nexus style virtual bar or the way the Galaxy S3 does it where they have a hard menu button. All right. Well, just just to say that you said it's unprecedented for HCT to adjust the software response to feedback, which is true in terms of like adjusting the like the fundamental and the really basic interface and interaction. But let's not forget that the company has always been very attentive to feedback. If you remember back when the bootloaders were being locked down and then they did the unlock bootloaders. And when they announced they would upgrade the Galaxy, the HCT, not the Galaxy, we don't talk about the desire to gingerbread. And I mean, all of these things have I mean, they're not HCT's happiest moments in the company's history, but they have illustrated that when people have cried out and complained about something, the company's really tried to make an effort. Like the point about the desire is it announced it wouldn't get the upgrade, but everybody really complained vociferously. And I think HCT chopped out a couple of features just to get that upgrade in there, which is good. You know, I mean, it's a it's how companies should behave. Now, they should react. Yep. And why should they act that way? Because they're having trouble in in the financial side of the business. Nice transition. That was I planned that one. I had that that waiting for a while. That was I'm a little proud of myself right now. That was that was perfectly timed, perfectly executed. But I'm going to rely on you to talk about this because I'm not good with numbers. Nice call, but what's happened with HCT? They reported the second quarter revenues. I mean, HCT also the funny thing with them is that their financial reports are kind of all over the map. So they report an audited numbers at the beginning of a given month and then three or four weeks later to get around to auditing them. So we end up, you know, usually writing two posts, one to say HCS quarter for this year is such and such. The other one is yes, somebody rubber stamped it, etc. And then it was a third part to this this time around where HCC reported specific numbers for the month of March, July. Now, I'm so out of it today. And they also gave a forecast for quarter three, which actually is not a very happy forecast, like he's saying, and one of its roughest first quarters of the year this year, it improved in the second quarter, but it's actually forecasting that things are going to go back to being a stuff as in the first quarter. Which to me is kind of odd, because the first quarter you could say, well, look at what HCT had to present to people. Okay, the ReSound was a strong phone, but most of this lineup, like we're saying was things like the Sensation XL and just uninspiring kind of old designs. The One Series cave in, it really refreshed things. It really came in with good designs, you know, unique selling points like the One X's display and the One S's thinness, and the image sensor camera suite and all of these things. So then I thought, well, okay, they've corrected themselves in the second quarter. And now it's on the up and up. But then they're predicting that things won't go on the up and up, which honestly, kind of leaves me befuddled. I don't really understand this. The Galaxy S3 is a great phone, but how it's managed to sell well over 10 million units versus the HTC One X, which doesn't seem to be generating enough of a profit for HTC, just befuddles me, because I see those phones as being much closer than that. I think there are a few explanations. I mean, you can't deny the sheer force and momentum of Samsung's scale, right? This is one of the largest corporations in the world going up against HTC. And so they have the manpower and the resources to put the full court press on literally every carrier of import around the world simultaneously. And you saw that happen with the S3 and how well coordinated that launch was. And I think that Samsung, of course, we're seeing a lot of this come out in the Apple versus Samsung trial. But I think that they're finally learning how to get their ducks in a row and become a very innovative force, not just in the Android space, but in the smartphone space overall. And that makes them very dangerous considering how profitable they are every quarter. And of course, there's the undeniable advantage of making your own processors and memory and flash and displays. And that's an advantage that HTC doesn't have. And we've seen all these predictions from analysts over the past year. And I think this kind of heated up over the past couple months in particular, saying that long term, there are only two players capable of surviving this brutal business, Apple and Samsung. Everybody else is just going to kind of peter out and die, which is really sad considering what great devices HTC makes and what great devices Nokia makes. And obviously, it's to everybody's benefit to see those companies survive, even if you don't own their devices. So yeah, it's just a brutal business. Yeah, but at the same time, actually, if we're bringing back to HTC, their launch of the One X here in the UK was accompanied by a huge marketing storm. There's a few free papers floating about London, which had their outside covers were plastered with One X promotion. And stuff on the front and the back and then you had the paper inside it. Every carrier in the UK was, or at least seemed to be spending quite a bit of money promoting that handset. When HTC introduced the One X, it said that carriers have never loved a phone or a series of phones as much as they've loved the One series. So there was already a whole bunch of carrier buy-in. It wasn't like the phones were launched without the commensurate amount of hype and promotional material around them. And yet, there's still that gap between them and the Galaxy S3, which I don't know, I still can't explain to myself. And also, to your point, Chris, about what people are predicting about long term, the thing about long term predictions is that they all suck. We actually had this conversation in our chat channel today where we're like, Samsung is today's Sony, right? And then somebody's, well, Samsung is yesterday's Sony. And then somebody is Sony's yesterday's Sega. And you know, you're going to- Wait, so that is mean, by the way, that is very mean. It's kind of true, though. It's very true. So Vlad, I want to cut in just for one second. It's interesting you mentioned like HTC's campaign. Chris, correct me if you've seen differently, but I will say in the United States, Samsung has gone crazy with the ad campaigns. It's in front of every single movie, in front of every single newspaper, magazine, flyer. It was all over the Olympics, and that's of course global. If HTC had a huge ad campaign here, it was very short lived. I don't remember too much of it, especially in the video realm. But Samsung has the budget, I guess arguably, to just go all out and just advertise everywhere, a ridiculous amount. The entire city of Chicago is plastered in Galaxy S3 ads right now. I mean, it's complete saturation. If you think Android, I mean, Samsung's point is to come out there and say, we're the only choice for that. And I think they've done a great job. I mean, I don't see a lot for LG. HTC's maybe the one other company besides Samsung that I'm seeing any advertisements for, and it's been a long time. And relative to Samsung's weight of advertising and the huge campaign, it's minimal at best. Okay. I mean, that's obviously good to know. But the question I'm trying to get to the bottom of is whether it's just a matter of advertising saturation. I mean, obviously you need a strong product to start with to promote, but then can you really just ensure success by just carpet bombing everyone? Maybe you can. Maybe you can. Well, Vlad, let me ask you, when you see HTC ads, what are the advertising with the One X? How are they showing it off? Primarily over here in the UK, it was this video of skydivers, skydivers and taking photos with the One X. Oh, yeah. And showing off that it can take photos really quickly, et cetera. And they're so edgy and sporty and fun and super quick and stuff. It's interesting. Yeah. And what we see over here is the Samsung sharing. We will not stop talking about NFC bump sharing, which I don't think that's not even unique to Galaxy S3, is it? I mean, that's an Android feature. I think that they enhanced it, but they enhanced it in the same way that Android 4.1 enhances it. It can transfer more types of information and larger chunks of information than Android Beam could in 4.0. It also uses Wi-Fi direct between the phones, but unhelpfully, it's not universal Wi-Fi direct connectivity. It's only Samsung phones, of which the only supporting device in Galaxy S3. But yeah, basically, you can initiate a link between two Galaxy S3s by bumping them with the NFC connection. And then from that, you can establish a Wi-Fi direct, which means you don't need to have them side by side. Then they're just working with their wireless radios, the Wi-Fi radio. Right. So Apple's, or not Apple, sorry, excuse me. Samsung's entire ad campaign for this is like, this is what we can do that no one else can do as far as we want you to know. And they're doing a pretty good job at doing that. I think they've taken a page from Apple's playbook, which is to say, let's show functionality. Let's not say this is just a sexy device that has these specs and can go this fast. We're just going to say, you can do this with our phone. And the assumption is it's only our phone and it's something no one else can do. And by the way, we're everywhere. So you're just going to think about us anyway. Yeah, I mean, pretty much that seems to be the case. I would factor a lot of it on their impressive ad campaign, name recognition, and the fact that there's just one Galaxy S3. It's not the Evo 4G LTE. It's not the the X, V or S with varying qualities, varying tiers. Samsung just come out with one flagship phone and has made it their baby across all carriers. I mean, Samsung has come out with, I think, half a dozen phones. Yeah, they're only advertising the one, though. Right. Yes. Three. Right. I mean, I think, yes, the bus, the mini, the something that is like a 4G, I think there's a Galaxy S2. Like, how did you manage to get the two of a phone that nobody ever cared or knew about? I think most of those. But then maybe maybe Samsung is such a massive company that it might even be operating like two separate businesses where one is the old fashioned, you know, churn out as many phones as you can, try and reach the low price points, sell it to, you know, developing markets, emerging markets, yada, yada, yada. And then a separate business, which is like the beat Apple section of the office. Basically, where did you where did you say, OK, I was doing this. We're going to do it, but just differently enough so we don't get sued into oblivion. I don't think you're that far off. I think that that they definitely are still producing a wide variety of nameless, you know, practically nameless devices with the sole goal of placating their, you know, their their sold in carrier base. They, you know, they know that they have all these slots they need to fill and they're just like, ah, you know, we have such scale. We can we can pump out, you know, a dozen bespoke models for Metro PCS if if we want to. And, you know, nobody cares. And they'll sell 5000. And, you know, it's it's fine. And then they have their their real Samsung strategy, which is that the S3, the note and and now the note ten point one and all that is built around the Samsung ecosystem and things like like all share. And, you know, that ties into what they're doing, trying to do in the living room. And, you know, that's that's that's the real Samsung as far as I'm concerned. The rest is just, you know, you know, make a quick buck by selling into these carriers that are expecting us to fill these slots. Yeah, that's fair enough. But I was just thinking on that point, actually, because you're saying just a little earlier, Chris, about the note to that it might come out. I think Samsung has already made it official that it's announcing the note to. Yeah, I believe so. So is that it's definitely announcing the note to at the end of August at IFA, which, you know, the rumor and the speculation and the expectation was that it would be a five point five inch device and the all sorts of amazing whatever. Do you think Samsung would at any point just kind of say, well, actually, these are our top three selling devices. This is our range of devices, say, the Galaxy S3, you know, the flagship regular smartphone, the note or note to or note whatever in the five inches middle ground, whatever, like Ross was saying, a fabric range and then something like the note ten point one for the full size tablet. Do you think Samsung will ever get to a stage where it will say, OK, we're just going to work on these three products? And that will be our range. I don't think they're showing any signs of that. Let's put it that way. I mean, the Galaxy S. I mean, maybe they're trying to set a precedent with the way they handled the Galaxy S3 launch, but I don't think so. I I'm not I'm not seeing that. If you look at some of the court documents and look at at the at the road maps that they have for 2012, I mean, there's all sorts of weird garbage on the mid range and low end for for the US market on all these carriers. And, you know, I think that Samsung has the design and manufacture of these meaningless devices down to such a science that their development costs are as close to zero as they could possibly be. And so it's almost to the point where these things are just pure profit. As long as carriers are saying we want this stupid phone with this keyboard and it's got to have a a button to our Web portal on the keyboard and junk like that, as long as carriers keep saying that and paying for them to range them, Samsung is going to be one of the companies that that honors those requests along with Huawei and ZTE in the long term. I think that you're going to see, I mean, obviously Apple doesn't play that game. Nokia, I don't think, is going to ever play that game. And I don't think Sony is either. So on the subject of companies who appease carriers as a matter of course, we've done a bit more coverage on rims, fortunes and fate recently. And I'm hoping one of you guys actually wanted to read this stuff because I'm a slip by me. Well, but so. Go ahead. Yeah. So so so so let's just say that if you haven't read Jesse's piece, Jesse actually lives in metro Detroit, which is not far from from Waterloo, which of course is RIM headquarters. So he he traveled up there and and and talked to some of the people in Waterloo to see how rims, fortunes and misfortunes actually affect people on the ground. And I and please take the time to read this piece because it's a very interesting piece. And of course, Jesse had a RIM piece that went up. Was it two or three months ago as well? And you should read both of those those articles because it's it's a really fascinating look at the decline of the company and what it means for the local economy. But what what fascinated me about this piece is how how how these people are realists. I mean, I guess that shouldn't be a surprise. Right. That you you you you wouldn't expect. I mean, these are smart people. They're they're good people and you wouldn't expect them to be fleeced by RIM necessarily. But they they I mean, most of the people that he talked to are realists about rims, fortunes and where they stand in the market and what their opportunities are. And and it's it's it's kind of it's it's sad. It's sad to read. And it really makes you hope that that RIM finds a way to to make it in this market. But it's I don't know where they're going to go from here. Torsten Heinz has not shown me anything that that that proves that he is able to lead this company out of the nightmare that it's in. And that's not to say anything about whether he's a good CEO or not, because I don't think I think that that all the you know, every single possible set of odds was stacked against him by the time he took the helm. It's it's squarely on Jim Bell, silly and Mike Lazaridis who brought that company to where it is today. It's not not Heinz. So I don't think we can really make any ruling on what kind of guy he is. But yeah, it's it's it's a good piece. Please take the time to read it. Dear, dear pocket or how it is that you read these sorts of things. But but speaking of Heinz, we should we should talk a little bit about this latest thing that he's saying, which kind of goes along with what he's been saying along with it's the strongest. Now he's saying he's hinting very strongly that they could license Blackberry 10 because rim itself is not able to achieve the economies of scale that it needs to to compete with who it needs to compete with in the smartphone market. And I think the perennial question that everyone has been asking since day one is who would license Blackberry 10 and why? So I want to get your guys take who do you think would realistically license Blackberry 10 and what good would it do them? I would be Blackberry 10 to exist, first of all, but let's see what he's asked. I don't have much better answer. I was going to say Samsung, because why not? They have everything else. They make Windows phones that are, by the way, really bad. You can definitely tell where Samsung actually cares to put its design in. I don't know. I mean, I feel like those people if if rim can leverage any carrier and I don't know if it can anymore, but if it can, it could maybe talk to the people who do make those orders for cares. The Samsungs, the Huawei's, the ZTE's. I don't see anyone going like really jumping at this saying this is the way I'm going to differentiate. I'm going to get a Blackberry 10 device out there. I'm going to manufacture one. I don't see anyone really wanting to do that. Anything I've seen from Blackberry 10 doesn't impress me enough beyond Windows phone or Android, which have become more the de facto choice. Yeah, I think I agree. I think the only opportunity that that they have here is for an OEM to get fed up with Google shenanigans or Microsoft shenanigans enough to say, you know, we the only way we can do this only way we can continue to make phones the way we want to make them is to go a different direction that has a chance of surviving. And they might be led to believe that the only way to do that is to license something that has a name brand and is already built and exists and, and kind of does everything that needs to do as an operating system. And of course that would be Blackberry 10. The other, the other option would be a open web OS, I guess, but it's not, not showing any signs of doing anything interesting. So all about the time. Yes, right. Tizen, which is what the fourth or fifth transformation of that platform started as a Moblin, right? Moblin and then Migo and MIMO and all this jazz. So yeah, I mean, that's the only thing that I can, I can think, I don't know who that would be. I don't know if that would be a ZTE or a Huawei or, or what, I don't know. It would be nobody, Chris. I mean, that's, there's so much, there's so much wishful thinking slash, uh, conditional circumstances that you need in order for somebody to even give a damn about licensing Blackberry 10. It's silly. I mean, when you're saying that the people of Waterloo are realists, uh, my interpretation of that is basically that they're leaving town because that's the only thing a realist can do in the circumstances that room is in. And when you said, uh, we can't judge Thorsten Heinz as CEO, I completely agree. And I don't think we'll ever be able to judge him because as far as I'm concerned, he's stuck in this sequence. Like if you think of the CEO's job as a game of chess, he's stuck in the sequence where he's basically being repeatedly and very slowly, very methodically being taken apart and he's trying to do the right move, but there's only one right move, which is always the wrong move. So the best he can do is, you know, make the least wrong move in these circumstances. I don't even know what that is anymore. I don't. And yeah, okay. There's only two circumstances in which, um, Blackberry 10 licensing would ever be a significant thing in the mobile market. One is if Blackberry 10 is amazing, it actually compels people to go and use it, which would be such a, such a high standard because everybody who's taken up windows phone has clashed with the fact it doesn't have an app ecosystem. Um, and it's the reason why people are sticking with Android as long and as much as they are because it has a built in ecosystem. Um, and you know, people will dance to Google's tune because so much is kind of given to them and so much is there already in the software. So I mean, even if your profit margin isn't huge with Android, at least the things that your consumers seek are there. Right. Blackberry 10, you are extremely likely to have the full set of basic OS functionality to start with. Uh, if we use the Blackberry playbook as an example, uh, I think it's a very instructive example. Um, but even if you did, the Apple ecosystem will never be there from day one. So the idea that BB 10 will be so compelling that guys like ZTUV thinking, yes, we license this, we get ahead of the curve, get ahead of everybody else. I just find that extremely unlike the other thing is let me, let me just play real quick. Let me play devil's advocate with you here because I think that's exactly what black or what room is trying to do this year with the black rate jam events and uh, by delaying the platform into Q1 2013 is they're trying to make sure that they don't have another playbook on their hands. They want to come out of the gate a with, uh, with excited and ready developers and be with a functionally complete platform. Okay. But excited and ready developers are not an ecosystem. They're, uh, um, you know, to put it bluntly, they're like the sperm before the ecosystem, the seeds of one, right? But they're not an ecosystem in existence. So nobody's going to license BB 10 in Q1 2013. And if nobody's licensing it, then how long is this game that was the highest is playing? Because I mean, his plan seemed to actually extend beyond the point at which rim needs to essentially sell out or go bankrupt. Like that's, that's kind of the way that it seems to be. Uh, you know, going back to the old joke, um, that somebody made in our comments, it was a rumours postponed the release, uh, of blackberry 10 until afterwards shut down and go bankrupt and gone out of business. Uh, which was a really neat way of summing it up. But yeah, the second scenario, um, that I think you alluded to Chris is this idea that people feel, um, I guess oppressed by Google in the entry ecosystem, oppressed by the fact that they can't generate profits, which you know, LG can't, but then LG has this other issues, uh, that are not just related to Android. Um, and then maybe people don't feel that windows phone is competitive enough and then out of desperation, they go and jump to a branded alternative. I just don't see that desperation happening within the next, how many months until Q1 2013, seven, eight months. I just don't see that happening that quickly. Yeah. Yeah. They are just rude. They're in the proverbial hurt locker. You know what they really need? There's a, there's a lot of money to be made here in inventing, uh, some sort of supercomputer. Uh, this, the scale of which has never before been seen in the supercomputing industry where, uh, Torsten Heinz can sit down at a terminal and simulate in, in their entirety, every possible scenario. Um, we're like, you know, if we sell, then here's what happens if we, if we don't sell, here's what happens right down to like simulating individual consumers everywhere around the world and what they buy and why they buy it. Someone's got to come up with the software. Maybe it already exists and I just don't know anything about it because I'm not a businessman, but someone needs to do that software. We are being told, uh, dear listeners by our, by our, uh, production team that, uh, our window to broadcast is closing rapidly. Uh, so we, uh, we are going to have to pick and choose from our remaining topics. Um, and it's probably just as well because it's kind of slim pickings this week. Uh, should we talk very, very quickly and like one minute about the T-Mobile, my touch, uh, because David Pierce, who has been a guest on this program before, reviewed these devices and they are from Huawei and, uh, Vlad, I know that you're a huge Huawei fan and, and Ross, I think you are actually almost, yeah. Yeah. Ross actually little known fact about Ross Ross. Uh, if you go into his home, he has a collection of every Huawei device ever released in the US plus a selection of, of, uh, of a few European and Asian Huawei devices. This is a so little known that I didn't even know it myself. Wow. Like a kind of self realization here. So here's the thing. Um, we don't need to talk too much about these because I already played with them before and we talked about them on the show. Um, they're, they're very mid range, uh, low end to mid range. And I feel like T-Mobile has been pushing the my touch line lower and lower and lower with each subsequent generation of device. They're very heavily carrier branded because T-Mobile is, uh, the owner of the my touch brand. This isn't like a global range for them. This is a bespoke device or set of devices from Huawei that they made specifically for T-Mobile. Um, and I think that David sums it up very nicely. These could have been say six and a half to seven scoring devices on one condition. If they ran Android four, 4.1 out of the gate, the fact that they're launching in August of 2012 with a Android 2.3 is it's not even ridiculous anymore. It's just, there, there isn't a word in the English language to describe this travesty. I don't, I don't want to bad mouth David, but I think we did score these a little too high. I think it's 6.6 for a phone that I can't possibly recommend to anybody at any given moment is a little, it's a little too nice. It's too forgiving. It's definitely Huawei fanboyism at its finest to get six points, recording time. And we're discussing gingerbread phones. I hear outrage. Okay. Vlad, you, you lead the way to tell me what you want to talk about. Yeah. What's next on the list. Okay. Since we're talking about my outrage, um, Aaron from our European team, from our team, uh, wrote, he wrote, uh, this is my next article, which, you know, on our website is, uh, an homage for a device, which we, or well, one particular member of our staff feels particularly passionate about and tends to purchase as his or her next gadget device machine. Uh, significant other. They do talk about this, the, uh, the latest deep dark desire from the world of technology is this is my next description. Uh, Aaron took deep and dark way, way too serious. That's a good way of putting it. Uh, I mean, Neil, I put it as this is the craziest thing we have ever published and he's probably accurate in that respect. Uh, and the subject of Aaron's desires and passions was actually the Nokia 808. Which, uh, something that Ross mentioned before the, before the show today was, does Aaron actually know that this thing is a phone as opposed to a camera? Well, and that's the thing, right? Like we've said before, uh, that if Nokia had stripped this of its GSM radio and positioned it as a novelty, like, you know, really cool point and shoot camera with like a giant touchscreen display on the back, they probably could have, could have sold it in a completely different way for less money. Uh, and it may have been moderately successful. I don't know. But now because it's a, it's there, you know, it's a Symbian phone that completely changes the, the landscape of how you sell this device and the kinds of people who are going to buy it, which is nobody. No, no, no. Come on now. Yes, there's Aaron. Excuse me. I mean, if you're going to spend this much money on a cutting edge camera, why not get the light show? I mean, it just seems if he, if he's using this as a phone and I haven't, I haven't stomached to get through past like graph five, uh, Vlad, what are you doing over there across the pond? I mean, you trained this man. Yeah. This is an extension of you. I hope you realize and I'm, and I'm also the guy who introduced into the 808 POV. So this is really just, uh, uh, my influence playing havoc onto the world. Well, I think to, to defend Aaron's point, which we've done really successfully, but to defend his point as his local colleague, uh, he does make the point that being on the cutting edge of technology is rarely a comfortable experience, right? So, so he's not, as far as he's concerned, the compromises of Symbian and the compromises of losing essentially losing smartphone functionality, we're using theater at POV. Okay. Stop laughing, Ross. Come on now. And you know, he's never said that he wants this to be his only phone, right? To him, this is the perfect secondary phone, which you might, um, which you might, you might be able to sympathize with because if your secondary phone is just something you may phone calls with, and in this particular case is something that you specifically for photos, it can work. I mean, the thing that I know for a fact is that it pretty kind of blows to have this with a proper phone because it's bulky and heavy and carrying two phones around is a pain in every side. Um, so personally, I just, I just feel he's wrong, but I mean, he has a point he's wrong, but he has a point to some degree. I mean, I can see, you know, it's, it's, it's empathy, right? Where you don't agree, but you can kind of see where a person's coming from. Well, I mean, we can, we can revisit this once a peer, peer review actually comes to a windows phone. There you go. This is what we call the HC phone. I would love to own a phone called peer boy, peer boy, your boy. Yeah. It sounds classic. It sounds kind of like Savoy or something. Um, but it, I know it's not a word. It just can't, you know how people make things sound French to make them sound classy. Well, that's it. Ah, at first, I, at first I thought you said pure void, a VO ID, pure void. And, and there are many different ways that you could take that. I was thinking like, you know, this is, this is going to be a little disgusting, but you know how, like when you drink way too much water, that's like a pure void. You know what I'm talking about? Like it's just, you know, I do Chris. I think everybody got it. So we should just move on. Okay. Uh, we should, we should talk about exactly one more topic before Creighton kills us. And I think that should be your dead trigger interview personally. Okay. Okay. Oh, before we do before we do, I want to, um, repeat the shout out from earlier on for Brian, uh, because he's, he's killing it with the Apple when he really is. I, I know I work at the verge, which makes me inherently biased and I, Oh, I'm sorry. Not inherently biased, inherently bias. Uh, and I should not be trusted, but seriously, like I come to the site and I see how much firsthand reporting we have from the Apple and Samsung lawsuit. And I am just surprised like, and it's, most of it is done by Brian who's killing it. And but, but that's not to say that he's my favorite news manager, Nathan, which might be you. Uh, I actually want to say not just Brian, I say, uh, to his Brian's a great support, uh, support staff. Neil has been helping out a ton. Matt McCarrey is our, another resident legal expert we have, uh, who can't be there at the trial in person. He's actually very depressed about that. Uh, he cries himself to sleep at night thinking about, uh, reports and all that. But Matt is helping from a distance as much as he can. Uh, Neil is chiming in, um, a bunch of, you know, a dozen other writers on staff have done everything they can to help Brian. Uh, it's been a huge collaborative effort. Obviously Brian has been killing it in every single way possible. Um, and it's just a fascinating, like the fascinating case to watch. And clearly the judge hates both sides. So, so much. This is the part that I love that the judge is just so finds the whole thing. So repugnant, like Apple and Samsung are getting into the nitty gritty and trying to argue these really wooly, you know, well, it looks like this, therefore such and such, such and such. Uh, and the judge is just like, Oh, you guys disgust me. Go away. Yeah. I love those reactions. I love those little outbursts. It's a, it's a wild case. And like literally every single day that the case has been progressing, there have been a really insane revelations that have come out of it or really insane rulings from the judge. And I have a feeling that's going to continue for the entire duration of the trial. So we have, um, we have, uh, one of our very special story streams may have heard of them devoted to this case. Um, and all of the news that's coming out of that case is getting attached to that story stream. We'll post the link to, uh, on the site, uh, attached to the podcast post so that you can get right to that stream. And stay tuned this week. I'm sure on the verge cast, Brian will make another cameos. We're hoping he will every week. Uh, and then some to talk about the trial. Yes, we need, we need some more West coast bodies and West coast accents, uh, to, you know, diversify our video. Does Brian, I'm trying to think, I don't think Brian or Scott or certainly not Deeter since he's not from the West coast, but those guys don't really have quote unquote West coast accents. Do they do they? Maybe they do. I don't know. Um, we were talking about this a little early on when, uh, when we're saying about mispronouncing things because you never actually hear people say them. You just read things. You just write them. Yeah. I don't actually know many people from the verge. I just see texts from them. So brave new world, man. Digital world. But yeah. Okay. Let's, uh, let's discuss the trigger, uh, and this whole hype slash controversy slash whatever that is developed around it. Um, so my finger games, the guys who make that trigger, uh, shadow gun and samurai, samurai to some of the more popular mobile games. I spoke with their CEO, uh, Mark Ravas, and we just discussed the whole thing with, um, that trigger actually go in to a free to pay free to pay. Yeah, I like that. Free to play, uh, monetization model. Uh, it used to be a paid app. It used to be 99 cents, uh, both on iOS and Android is switched to a free to play model. And when it switched on Android, uh, the word from Matt finger, uh, was that there's an unbelievably high rates of piracy on Android. Um, when it made the same switch on iOS, there wasn't the same outburst, which I think struck a lot of people as, uh, kind of disingenuous because they didn't, you know, uh, you know, they didn't have the same outputs about iOS. Um, but, but in any case, what I did was I exchanged a few emails with him, we had a conversation about that and he provided me with some stats, uh, behind what they were saying. So on Android, the piracy rate is apparently 80%. Um, so 80% of players of that trigger were playing unlicensed copies. Uh, and they're basically comparing their sales data versus, uh, analytics data, which might not be perfect, but it gives you kind of a rough idea. Uh, and on iOS is 60% and in general, the point from him is that it's, it's an unsatisfactory situation for people and they're kind of forced into the whole, uh, let's make it free to play. Let's make, that's essentially nickel and dime people and just try and make, make our money by selling tiny little things in the game, which to me is kind of annoying. I much prefer to pay for the game upfront and then just enjoy it and use it and not have to pay real money again for small parts in it. Uh, I don't know how you feel, Chris. No, I, I totally agree. And I also want to point out that, uh, I was shocked when, when he came out with the, um, the iOS piracy rate, I, you know, I assumed that it would be like single digits or something, but it's, it's nearly as outrageous as the Android number. So it's just, it's like, what are these people? Like I, you know, I, I, I get that, that people don't like to pay for stuff. I get it. But you lose sight of the fact that there are real people doing real work to bring these games to the market. Um, and it's very easy to obscure that when you're looking at the, at the Android market or your Google play market. Um, so, uh, it was a little dis disheartening, but, uh, he did kind of, he, he was surprisingly upbeat, I would say, wouldn't you? I mean, I'm sure he's generated a lot of press from this. I'm sure it's helping his download rates and his free to play model quite a bit to have it in the news so much. Yeah. Just to, just to clarify, the CEO's name is Marek Grabas. Grabas? Grabas. Grabas, got it. Okay, got it. I've got it. Okay. Listen, dude, it is late. I am tired and I haven't had a drink in a while. Okay. Drink of water, obviously. Water, yes. So my lips are obviously parched. All right. Um, well actually I asked him about that, about whether this was essentially a ploy for publicity. And the thing that he said was that, um, and I mean, again, you kind of have to take him at his word here, uh, is that the company wasn't actually so happy about all the hype that came out of it. Uh, they were asked why you reducing the price to free. They said, uh, well, you know, they gave a blunt response. They said, well, it's really high piracy rate. And honestly, I have to agree with that. If 80%, if that figure is legitimate of players of a 99 cent game are playing unlicensed copies, then something is really wrong there. But beyond that, sorry, go ahead, Chris. No, no, no. Cause I mean, I'll get off on a tangent. I finished your question. Okay. But beyond that, what, what, what, um, uh, what I got from him was that they actually had to spend a whole bunch of time answering questions from guys such as myself. And they had to dedicate a whole bunch of time repeating the same answers over and over again, uh, talking to people as opposed to, you know, using that time to produce plan, et cetera, do whatever game studios do. So, you know, for them, it was a, it was a big time sink, even if it increased, uh, you know, publicity at least temporarily. Um, so I could kind of see that perspective, uh, but you're going to launch it on tangent for us. Not so much attention. I, you know, I'm, I'm happy that he actually got back to you and kind of explain the kind of methodology of coming to that figure still 60% seems really high. Um, and I was trying to find, I couldn't find a good number for at least Cyanogen mod downloads. Do you even get a feel for how big that is versus the entire iOS field? Um, it's interesting to say is shadow gun and, you know, samurai two and dead trigger, uh, is that market just so, uh, tied and connected to the jailbreak audience. Um, I find it surprising. Um, however, to disagree with both of you on the business model section, I'm actually really happy about free to play. I think it's actually quite an interesting model and I'm curious to see kind of how it goes. You're offering something for free, getting people into it, giving you some free experience. It's actually really high quality and then kind of adding onto it. Of course, the question is what you do beyond that. Um, we've seen this kind of happen for a long time. Xbox live, um, has mandated demos for all those big releases. Um, so you have a somewhat free to play model there where you're getting a demo experience and you play, you know, you pay for the full game. Uh, and you're seeing a lot of people experiment with obviously more disingenuous, sometimes even more genius, uh, ideas, um, depending on how it affects the gameplay, specifically single versus multiplayer. I am all, I'm all honestly for trying out this new business model. If it helps them great for them. What is your specific concern with a free to play business model in this case? Let me give you a very specific example. This has nothing to do with dead trigger, but I want to give you a very specific example of where free to play is, uh, is super annoying or freemium, I guess would be the correct term here. Uh, triple town, triple town has the most annoying freemium model in history. And you know, I mean like you're going to end up paying because like they, you know, they it's brilliant. It's both brilliant and extremely annoying because you get a certain number of like moves and then, um, you run out of moves and you can't make any more moves unless you pay, or you can wait some ridiculous amount of time to get a new move. And actually, I think a lot of those turn based games work the same way, but it's, it's super annoying in that is terrible. You want to make, you want to make like 10,000 moves every time you play and you can only make like 50 and then you have to pay like, you know, a dollar for a hundred moves or something. Right. No, that's, that is insane and unfair. I don't necessarily like that model at all, but there are other things you can do. Like you can value it. I think team fortress two, a valve is of course an exception because they've made millions and billions of dollars, you know, pretty much just kind of doing what they want and they have a loyal fan base. Uh, there are ways of making it work. I think they're still experimenting. That is a great example of a terrible way of making something free to play. Uh, I would, with them, with you, I'd much rather pay $10 and just have unlimited moods for a game that, and I've played triple town. I'm with you on this, uh, is a big waste of time, but I can't stop playing. Yeah. Well, just, just to make that distinction as well, um, because Marek was really keen to make it, uh, between the idea of freemium where you do have to pay to continue, uh, and free to play, like as far as he's concerned, there are two very distinct things because a free to play game is one that you can complete without ever needing to make any extra purchases, but it's a freemium one where you fundamentally can't get to the end of the game without making extra purchases. Now, a lot of people will say this, and a lot of people in comments have said this, that trigger is more of a freemium game than it's free to play. Um, you basically have to go into the store, spend some real money in order to get a gun, which will get you through the game in some reasonable amount of time, as opposed to committing your entire life to grinding for it. Just, you know, fine. That's a separate point. But, um, the other thing, and then the thing that actually bothers me more is that, okay, if you pirate a 99 cent game, which relies on in game purchases to begin with, you're not really going to, uh, disturb the equilibrium too much. I mean, we know where the money's coming for for that game, but if you're doing that to games, which costs $5, $8, $10, right? Things like shadow gun, uh, every lease, and then you're kind of undermining the entire market for games of that, uh, class, right? Because in order for, I mean, this isn't just games, this is applications as well. I mean, the reason apps are thriving as much as they are on Mac on the desktop is because people are buying them, right? And, and small, uh, kind of tailor made apps, exactly the apps that you lack on windows. I mean, if you get one of those apps on windows, it gets pirated so quickly and everybody knows is pirated and available so quickly that nobody bothers to pay for it. Nobody bothers to go and invest however much cash in it. Um, whereas on Mac, most people have been paying for it. And then you kind of get this culture and you also get, um, you know, you also get the history of people making their money back when they invest in developing, uh, you know, more sophisticated, high quality applications and games, uh, which again encourages further investment in the same thing. And that's not going to happen if we're going to, you know, power the crap out of these games. Right. That's the thing that bothers me. I mean, I think the idea is that you can't stop piracy, but you can incentivize, uh, purchasing in some way. Um, however, I guess to, you know, to the point of Madfingers, now that if you're going to pirate the game, you can only get so far, you have to pay for them at some point. Of course, someone will find a workaround for that too, but it's another level of, uh, of annoyance to the point where you just say, screw it. I'm going to give you a dollar because it's really not a big deal. Yeah. I mean, I mean, that's, that's the thing we, we just, we started off this, uh, podcast last show talking about the H C superfunk. And we started off with me excited because it has so much potential. Like even when he comes out, that's what we'll be talking about. We're talking about the potential of a TSP display and a crazy processor and LTE and all of those things. And we'll be like, well, actually, where are the games? Where are the things that make use of the adrenal pre 20 graphics? And they won't be there and they don't exist. My right. And my feeling, and this is a guilty feeling from my perspective as well, because I don't make much of a habit of spending in app stores. I don't make much of a habit of pirating, but I just don't like spending in apps. It was precisely because when you spend little amounts, you never realize how much you're spending until you end up spending tons. So I tried to refrain from that. But the guilty sense that I get is because I'm not doing that. I'm not encouraging the things that I want to see. Well, I think there's also a more fundamental problem with the Android marketplace, Google play, and I'm not trying to hate on it too much. Um, I could just be snarky and say, well, you can always get infinity blade too for your HTC device because there's a bootleg version of that now available. Um, there is, or there was, I don't know if they, they don't really took it down. It was up for breaking news. Russ, what the hell? No, it's I've never, I've worked with Vlad for a long time. I've never heard him get that spontaneously excited about anything. I know it's actually quite a thing of beauty. I know there's that fake thing, but the point is, um, I don't trust the Google play store. Uh, I have an inherent distrust of a store that's not vetted properly where a fake infinity blade too can just be put on there, uh, for many, many hours. Oh, the fake one. Right. Yeah. The fake one. Sorry. It's not, not actually real. Uh, but that's my point though. It's like, there is so much, uh, I don't know if you say malware. I'm sure there's a lot of malware in the Google play store. It's just not vetted that much. Uh, there's a level of distrust among the consumer. I don't want to give money to these people, uh, unless they're very, very trusted and sifting through that is still a pain. You know, it's still a painful thing to do even when there's editor's choice and there's trusted developers or whatever you want to do to differentiate Um, I hate to give Apple credit for this, but the closed gate system of the marketplace really does stand out. Uh, and if Google, if Google wanted two marketplaces, one I can trust and one that's just everything, uh, I think I might learn to trust it a little more in that sense. Uh, for now that extra freedom has led to a level where I'm not sure if I want to pay. Um, it doesn't mean I'm going to download. It just means you're not going to get as much of my money and I'm not going to have as much of a trust level with paying for anything much to the last point. One thing that really helped was when they, uh, used to have the 24 hour return period, which I think that they, they came to the conclusion that that was inhibiting, like developers really hated that cause it made it too easy to develop buyers or more so over the course of a day and return the app. So they, they reduced that window to 15 minutes, which is barely long enough to download it and install the app, much less, uh, test it out and decide whether it actually is any good. So, um, even if that were like an hour or two, that would I think make a big difference and kind of instill some confidence. Well, it's definitely also like teach people that's an option and how to do it. It would, even when it was a 24 hour period, it wasn't always the most obvious way of getting that, you know, getting to that return. Right. No, I, I do feel like, um, demo versions of any sort of software are just kind of inherently necessary and useful and helpful. Um, and anybody who's, you know, pissing and moaning about they're not paying the upfront price because, um, they think it's too high, but then you're not offering a demo version. You're kind of undermining your own argument because I always feel if, if I'm a software developer, I can give people with demonstration, I can give them an idea of my software and then hope that they would find it useful enough to use longterm and pay the full price for like, Oh, I always kind of prefer, I mean, this is personal preference, but I prefer to just pay how much things cost. I personally hate the American thing with tipping because it's such a imprecise science and you're supposed to pass these subjective judgments about people's performance and the other, the other, whereas I'd much rather say, okay, just charge me however much it costs you to produce this food, uh, host these facilities, hire these people, et cetera, et cetera. And that will be that. Why do I have to tip? Why do I always have to get so granular with the payments and the money and all of this mess? It's a beautiful dream. Beautiful dream. Keep dreaming Vlad. Dude, it's real. It's called Europe. The American dream is real. It's called Europe. That's a quotable right there. We should, we should, we should wrap this thing. Seriously. It's rapid. It's rapid time. It's a we're on the hour with precise and now I'm rambling. So breaking up that position, but whatever. Okay. Uh, so quick, I just want to mention a couple of quick, uh, news tidbits before we do run away. Microsoft has renamed the windows phone marketplace, the windows phone store. So be excited. Uh, fewer syllables. Yay. And AT&T is apparently announced that it will shut down his 2g network by 2017. Chris, one sentence reaction. Who needs 2g? Boom. Done. Uh, okay. So does that count as a bomb note, a down note to end the show on? I think so. 2g, you know, old school, uh, nostalgia, et cetera. Like maybe, maybe, maybe the first time you fell in love with someone, it was over to GCO on AT&T's network. Oh, I didn't make myself. That would have made a good, a cold open right there. Vlad, you were onto something there, you know, falling in love with someone 2g network. You could have made that work. Yeah. It's actually awake when I was doing the introduction. Uh, it would have been beautiful, but that's a beautiful drink. Um, but anyway, you can keep in touch with us. You can keep track of us on the verge.com website available on the internet. You can find us on Twitter. I have Vlad Savov. Uh, Chris is at Z power. As you know, uh, Ross is at owner Roscoe Nathan. What's Nathan's uh, to the handle. Anybody's looking at wait, what? At Nate Ingram, Nate Ingram at Nate Ingram, Nate Ingram, which is I N G R a H M. Yes. And I know my people's names, even if I don't know that to the handles, uh, altogether we are at verge. You can email us. Actually, we still got that email going on mobile show with the virtual com. I believe it is, and you can drop by in our forums. You can leave a comment on this life post and you can leave a comment on the adventure post where we publish the whole video and the audio and all of the RSS, iTunes, et cetera, et cetera. If you see us in person, you can hug us if you want. That's allowed. That's allowed. It's permitted. And we'll see you next week to get a read out these bone who on Twitter can be found at back alone. Thanks guys. Bye.